The Final Frontier 3

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/ The Final Frontier 3 / Final Frontier 3 (Disk 1 of 4).adf / EDITORIAL / INTRODUCTION.pp / INTRODUCTION

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Text File | 1992-01-01 | 13.3 KB | 229 lines

INTRODUCTION -------------- by Simon Plumbe ----------------- Welcome to the third issue of THE FINAL FRONTIER. As you will have seen from the intro, this is our STAR TREK VI special with several full reviews of the film, the novel and anything else we've been able to get our hands on to do with the film! I've been quite surprised over the last few months at the growing hostility that seems to be forming within the ranks of most "normal" Amiga disk magazines. A large number of them now seem to spend more and more time criticising their competition for their presentation and facilities on offer. Are they beginning to realise that you can't have over 30 magazines on the Amiga scene with the same basic contents? An example was in the British disk mag, DEADLOCK. In their premiere issue in January this year, they made a MAJOR point of comparing themselves to as many other disk magazines as they could, commenting on the presentation of their rivals, highlighting features in their menu system that were missing from the competition and generally boasting about their presentation. In all honesty, who really CARES about the presentation and menu systems of disk magazines? Most of them use the same basic system of a text display in the centre of the screen, with a control panel at either the top or bottom. There isn't really that much to differentiate between them. Okay, some "normal" disk mags have the option for different coloured text, flashing text, different fonts and other useless options, but it's all gloss and deep down they all have the same basic articles! I wish they'd stop criticising each other and look at what makes a GOOD magazine and try and concentrate on that - the articles. Why am I going on about this? Well, for reasons that are explained elsewhere in this issue in the article called "THE FINAL FRONTIER - THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA", our regular coder, Andrew Wilk, has now left our production team and unfortunately, because of the way our old menu was created, we have not only lost Andrew's intros, but also the menu system. We are busy trying to find a new group of coders ready to take on the task and create a menu system to my EXACT requirements, but for now, we'll have to make do with the system we are using for this issue. We're sorry about this, but it was unavoidable. With saying that, it's not a bad menu, it's just a little crude in terms of presentation and it's limited to only 32 options. An update to the above. We are now working with a programmer who is creating our custom menu-system for future issues of the mag. The new system will have a menu on one disk, and the remaining disks will act as "data disks" with some disk swapping required to load files from them. This may be slightly annoying, but it will mean that we will be able to feature an extra 500K of material on every issue, so it's worth it! It will also mean that we will be able to have larger articles spread over more than 1 disk but still only be featured on ONE menu. As an extra to losing our coder, the magazine is also no longer produced under the Power House name and it is now produced under our new independant name, INFINITE FRONTIERS, a fanzine publishing team devoted to bringing the best disk mags we can to the Amiga scene. We will also start to produce the occasional paper zine! Again, there is an article in this issue telling you all about the new crew. Onto another point. With all fanzines, the main thing that is needed is contributions from the readers and I hate to say it, but we're still not getting enough material and feedback from YOU! If some of our regular articles such as the Letters or the Trivia section don't start to get more of a response from you out there, they'll have to be axed. We know there are a large number of you out there reading this, so why not drop us a line letting us know that you're out there! We need to know what you think of the mag - if there's anything we are doing wrong, we don't know unless you TELL us! Why not start to send us some reviews as well. I know that most of you don't want to read reviews that are written entirely by me, so why not give it a try? To coincide with this, we have a questionnaire in this issue and if you can send your answers in to us it would be a great help in making decisions on what elements of TREK to concentrate on, what articles need to be improved or dropped and what people actually like about the mag. It's only going to cost you the price of a stamp to help shape the future of THE FINAL FRONTIER. When it comes to writing for THE FINAL FRONTIER, there are probably quite a few of you who have considered writing for us, but you don't really consider yourselves to be Trek "experts". Well, we don't care as long as anything is readable and fairly entertaining - if there are any so-called "mistakes" in anything you might write, we'll let you know and correct it so even the most casual of Trekkers can be made out to look like an expert! We'll use almost anything that's sent in as long as it's not appalling! I'm getting quite concerned about PD libraries as well. Although I made it quite clear that PD libraries weren't allowed to sell the mag without buying a copy direct from me (with the exception of Ground Zero and Strictly PD who receive the mag automatically as it is released) and that they can't sell the mag for more than £2 a disk, there have been a growing number of libraries ignoring these restrictions. Because of this, there are now a number of libraries who are BANNED from selling this and all previous issues of THE FINAL FRONTIER including PD SOFT who thought it would be a great idea to sell the mag for £2.50 a disk even though we specified that it couldn't be sold for more than £2 a disk. If we make restrictions on the distribution, these should be followed, not ignored because it inconveniences the libraries. If this attitude continues for this issue, we may have to ban ALL libraries from selling the disk and release it as Licenceware only. If you know someone who runs a library, tell them what they're doing to us authors! You can begin to understand why so many demo coders nowadays are stopping their demos from being sold. Software authors are being treated badly by the libraries and it's got to stop. It takes a lot of work to produce software and it's no fun to see some company making profit from your work without your permission. If the situation continues, we may change our distribution system so that only a handful of libraries can sell the mag who make some sort of sponsorship deal with us, investing a sum of money into the mag's future. This way, our production costs can be covered, and we can keep track of who can and can't sell it. We don't want to stop libraries altogether as there are some Amiga owners who have PD libaries as their only source of freeware, but that's entirely up to the likes of PD SOFT etc. to decide. One final gripe. I'm sorry if any of you are offended by this comment, but I'm starting to get EXTREMELY annoyed at the way the British press seems to handle the deaths of celebrities. Just a few months ago, the two comedians Frankie Howerd and Benny Hill passed on. Now, I agree that both of these comedians have made a fantastic contribution to the world of light entertainment and yes, they both deserved tributes in the press. What annoyed me was the fact that they were both featured as front page headlines in many national papers and most also ran a 2 or 3 page tribute to them. When Gene died, did we see any tributes? Did we see front page headlines? No. All we saw were small mentions, hidden out of sight. Gene single handedly changed television as we know it - Star Trek was and still is a revolutionary TV show and there were NO tributes. It seems as if the press are only interested in British celebrities or MAJOR film stars. To top it all off, the major UK TV stations also transmitted programmes as tributes to both of the stars. The least that could have been done for Gene was to have shown one of the better Classic Trek episodes, or one of the films, but we saw nothing. Enough of my ranting and raving! In this issue we have some more great items for you including another handful of TREK parodies from Edwin Yau, two convention talks, this time featuring John de Lancie (Q) and Carel Struycken (Mr Homn), a plethora of photos from the recent convention, SOL III, here in Birmingham, our regular updates to our Books Guide and the Fan Club Listing, more reviews, a selection of one-off articles, more art, and more of everything else that makes THE FINAL FRONTIER the mag it has become! We've also re-vamped the mag slighly and dropped a few of the regular items! Our charts section has been axed, primarily because of the Reader's Chart as we felt it was a waste of space even mentioning it! If we start to get feedback from more readers, we may consider re-launching it in the future. To co-incide with this, we have also dropped the video chart as we didn't really feel it was totally representative of what videos were being sold. This issue also sees the end of our Timelines article. There is an official book in the pipeline covering this subject, and we know most of you will end up buying that. We can't compete with a book that has people like Richard Arnold and Guy Vardaman working on it, so we've gracefully accepted defeat! However, if the book is late, we'll carry on with this next issue! Finally, we've decided to merge two of our existing articles. As you'll see, there is no longer a "Screw Ups" article in this issue. We felt that this type of article often crossed over into the trivia area and that's where you'll find it from now on. If you remember from the last issue, we were planning on adding a selection of password-protected articles for all of you who obtained your copy direct from us. Unfortunately, I didn't really have enough time to get this idea put into operation and I've decided to put it on hold and concentrate on releasing a good mag for everyone. However, we'd still appreciate orders for the mag, or even a donation or two. I have now PERSONALLY spent over £700 on getting the mag out in terms of general costs and in the purchase of a scanner and a second Amiga to produce the mag on. This mag is freely distributable and is not shareware, but any cash donations would be very welcome. We do have expenses such as competition prizes, free copies to authors, mag adverts for new writers etc. and prizes for our various competitions (see above). As you know, we are trying to give the mag an income by selling copies of THE FINAL FRONTIER ourselves. The prices are: Issue 1 - £3 (2 disks) Issue 2 - £4 (3 disks) Issue 3 - £5 (4 disks) All prices include postage and packing - outside UK please add £0.50 per issue. ALL the money left over goes back into the magazine to cover our growing costs! If you want to make a donation, but you don't really want to send a sum of money, buy your next copy of THE FINAL FRONTIER direct from us - every sale helps! There are no subscription rates yet, as the mag isn't being released on a regular basis, although from this issue onwards, the size of the mag is going to be fixed at four disks for each and every issue. Please make all cheques/PO's payable to "Simon Plumbe". If you want to order future issues, feel free to do so for the same price as this issue, and they will be sent to you as they are released. This mag was produced and edited by Simon Plumbe, Colin Gunn and Edwin Yau. Additional help from Tobias Richter, Bjørn A. Lynne, Alex Kerr, John Kitts, Vince Hirst and all the other guys at INFINITE FRONTIERS. Thanks! Editorial Address ----------------- To contact THE FINAL FRONTIER either with contributions (all text to be sent on paper or Amiga/Atari ST/PC-formatted 3.5 inch disks as 74-column ASCII files or on audio cassette as dictated articles!), donations, orders or just comments or if you are a software house or magazine interested in contacting one of our contributors then write to:- THE FINAL FRONTIER c/o Simon Plumbe 14 Rousdon Grove Great Barr Birmingham B43 5HN ENGLAND Or you can call me on (+44) (0)21 358 1213 between 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm, Mondays - Fridays, or at anytime on weekends. Peace And Long Life...... Please note - we are NOT connected in any way with THE FINAL FRONTIER audio fanzine (is this still going?) or the new British Trek mag with the same name (why is it that everyone seems to take great pride in using our name?!). We've already had a number of people confusing us with the new paper mag!