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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5048217" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 164: December 1990part 3/6The voyage of the princess ark: Sweeps week on the princess ark, as we discover that they've been catapulted 34 years into the future. Now Bruce doesn't have to worry about accidentally putting anachronisms in his stories. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> However, this means that Haldemar, and all his crew, are now people out of time, with everyone they knew changed dramatically or dead. What's worse is that while they were gone, their enemies have been doing evil stuff in the world at large. To top it all off, the empress decides that what they have seen can never become known to the public at large, so the entire crew are now condemned to roam the world forever, like the flying dutchman, never to settle down anywhere, never able to candidly talk about what they've been through. What a miserable reward for all they've been through. Still, it means we're going to get lots more adventures from them, so it's good news for us. Will they ever find a happy ending? Will the political climate change again sometime? We'll have to keep reading to see. On the OOC side of things, this month we finally get stats for Haldemar. He's certainly not your typical archmage, with his dandyish socialite tendencies and penchant for gambling. He's actually not that twinked, with fairly modest stats and magic items for his level. Talasar, on the other hand, has considerably more innate talent, despite being lower level. This is also a good example of how alignment means surprisingly little, with personal bonds between the crew transcending it. Another interesting thing to note about the way Bruce handles D&D. So what kind of wringer will his evil mind put the characters through next year? I look forward to seeing. The role of computers: Another interesting sign of the times this month, as they talk about sound cards. While manipulating recorded audio still involves an expensive custom rig just for basic 4 track facilities, and most effects need to be tediously rendered on, computer's ability to sequence and create digital audio on the fly is improving quite a bit. We're currently progressing past the age where you only had 4 basic waveforms to work with to try and represent everything in the game, and into the age of General MIDI soundbanks. 16 channels full of cheesy sounds that often differ significantly from module to module. Not an age I remember with fondness. If chiptunes are just becoming the cool underground thing, I hope that doesn't mean general MIDI sounds will be the next in line for a kitschy retro revival. Still, like the things that give us clues to the state of the internet back then, this is very nice for me to see. If they actually come through with their hints and review some music sequencing software, I'll be all over that action. Megatraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy brings the RPG to the computer with a level of success similar to the Azure bonds game, creating a huge universe full of things to do and people to kill. As befits the original game, just generating a good set of characters and running them through the careers system can involve hours of mucking around, which they seem to enjoy. Their main gripe, as is often the case, is that save points are annoyingly far apart. You'll just have to suck up the extra challenge that causes. Flood is an arcade game where you have to collect stuff, avoid enemies, and escape, while water slowly rises. (and of course, you have no swimming ability at all) Now that definitely sounds familiar. Rainbow island should be along pretty soon, shouldn't it. Bloody Wolf is a top down shoot-em-up, where you explore and kill terrorists to rescue the president. Another one that sounds pretty familiar, it seems like most of the big genres are present and correct now. Just a matter of the weird little discoveries and developments to come. The Animation studio is a drawing product produced by Disney. At $179, this is obviously a pro level product rather than a game, and quite possibly is a variant on the software they're currently using to facilitate their movies. It does have several neat tricks to help you produce smooth animations and a whole bunch of preloaded disney characters for you to modify. Now that's something that'll definitely ratchet up people's temptations to pirate. Bad Blood and The dark heart of Uukrul get slated due to bugginess issues. Not only are they continuing to push complaints against companies releasing shoddy material, they're making a new section to focus on this. I guess we should be glad that we don't see stuff like this too often in modern reviews, because it means the complaints have worked. (plus, there's downloading patches now. ) Still, this little subplot of history continues to amuse.</blockquote>

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