ISSUE 3 - EDITORIAL by Phil Glover Thursday, 26th. March, 1992 Welcome to issue three of the club disk, especially to all the new members/readers who have joined us. First of all, please accept our apologies for the missing file on issue two, which made EMUTILITY impossible to run. The file in question was "UtilCode", which we've put on this disk for those who need it. As soon as our mistake was spotted, we added the file to later versions of issue two, although most had already been despatched by then. We'll try and be more careful in future! We've had to rush this issue a bit, to ensure it was published on time. We're sorry if it doesn't look quite as polished as we'd like it to have been, but Dave Whitmore became a father sooner than expected, when Sue gave birth to Rachel, who decided to arrive earlier than intended, having not regard for publishing dates! I'd like to congratulate Dave and Sue on the birth of their daughter, and hope she inherits their liking for adventures! MORE >>>> We'd like to extend a warm welcome to the illustrious Gareth Pitchford, who has volunteered to have a go at running the review section for us. If you've read some of the other adventure publications, you may have seen some of Gareth's work before, in such things as FROM BEYOND, RED HERRING and ADVENTURE PROBE, so we're pleased that he's offered to help us out. Gareth's first review feature has an introductory piece that makes an interesting read, and I'm sure his column will make good progress as he gets to grips with it. If you fancy trying to review some games, Gareth's the man to send the material to. Personally, I'm very pleased with how the disk is improving as it now has good features written by Dave and Gareth, so making the content more varied in style. I'm sure we could find space for more regular columnists/contributors, if anyone fancies a go. Having a small team to help publish the disk could be very useful, especially if someone's Sam suddenly explodes. We intend to keep the price of an issue of the club disk at `1 until the end of the year, but we're offering a special deal MORE >>>> of six issues for `5 for a limited period, if you'd like to take us up on this. If more members took advantage of this deal, we can work out just how many disks we'd need to buy for each issue and plan accordingly, and it may save you a bit in postage. The offer would take your subscriptions into next year, when price rises will have to be made, so you could save a bit that way. You should find a questionnaire form accompanying this disk which we'd like you to fill in, if you don't mind. Our first attempts at such a venture fizzled out weeks ago, but now we think we're getting to the size where we need to get ourselves a bit more organised. Any personal information you give will be kept by us, and not circulated without contacting you first. The idea of the form is to allocate a membership number to each of us, so any special offers or discounts for members can be easily arranged, but, more important than that, we'd like some idea as to what hardware and software you may have. The results of the survey may affect disk content, say, if many of us have MasterBASIC, or megabyte modules. You're not obliged to fill in anything you don't want to, but some of the findings may be of MORE >>>> interest to members. We'll keep any published details in general form, and won't name names! This issue sees the cautious start of a PRO-DOS feature, which will need your help if it's to continue. Virtually any- thing connected with this new utility would be welcome, so give it a little thought. Any questions, ideas or suggestions would be welcome to get things going. If we can get a few of us involved with the feature, it may be easier to explore the adventure potential of PRO-DOS. Some of the PD material for PRO-DOS looks very good, and there must be quite a bit to discover in the adventure line for us. The potentially big news for Sam adventurers is Colin Jordan's SAM ADVENTURE SYSTEM (working title) There are a scattering of references to it throughout this issue, but Dave Whitmore's technical section is the place to check out first. Colin's made good progress with the utility, but it's got a fair way to go, so we can't give an accurate description of it until MORE >>>> it's near completion. However, we hope that what we have to tell you can give some indication as to what it may be like, and how much hard work Colin's already put into it. We intend to increase coverage of the utility as, and when, we can. On the release of the utility, we hope we can explore the program and help everyone learn about it, and how to use it, although we'll be keen to hear from anyone who can assist in this. This issue's free Spectrum game is BEHIND CLOSED DOORS Part II, in which you need to get INTO the outside toilet, for obvious reasons.... Again, it's only got one location, so make sure you examine everything, and pay attention to details. Next month's game will be one kindly donated by Jon Lemmon, of COMPASS SOFTWARE, and forthcoming attractions include BEHIND CLOSED DOORS III and a famous two-parter from THE GUILD. After that, perhaps we may see a Sam-specific game or two, if all goes well. A quick thank you to everyone who's been of help to us in running the club and disk. Most of you know who you are, so I MORE >>>> won't bother typing out a long list of names. Suffice it to say, thanks to you all for your enthusiastic support and encouragement. We're still a small club, but the friendliness and goodwill we've had is much appreciated, and we hope we can make the club and disk improve with each issue. Naturally, we'd welcome more help, letters and suggestions, so don't hesitate to write if you have anything that may be of interest. It's your club as much as ours. One quick point before I sign off: If my line-space counting is correct, you should see " MORE >>>> " at the bottom right of each page, and the end of any text should be marked with *** --- *** , in the hope that pages will look a bit neater! Good adventuring and good luck, Phil Glover. *** --- ***