SPACE Newsletter

NEWSLETTER for January 2014

President’s Corner by Michael Current

Welcome to the New Year! Did Santa leave something for your Atari last month? Sounds like SPACE had a great party last month, hope you were there! In what should be the final update in the Atari bankruptcy saga, we should report here that on Thursday December 5, Atari Inc. received court approval of its plan to exit bankruptcy under the control of its French parent Atari S.A. This according to Wall Street Journal reporter Stephanie Gleason (I mention that because the official website for the proceedings hasn't been updated since the proceedings apparently came to a close.). So there you go, 12 months of bankruptcy proceedings later, Atari is right about back to where they were this time last year, just without as much debt. I wonder how they plan to make money at this point? It's a mystery. Thanks, keep using that Atari, and come to your next SPACE meeting, Friday January 10, 2014.

Treasurer's Report

Secretary's Report

by Greg Leitner

by Steve Peck for December 2013

We made it through another year and finished it off with another SPACE Christmas party. Plenty of good food and music made it a very enjoyable night. Special thanks to Jackie for setting the table, Brian for the Xmas music and Nolan for the Roku demo which I was especially interested in. All in all a great way to end our SPACE meetings for 2013. We had six members and two spouses attend the December meeting and that brings me to discuss what is happening to our treasury for the end of 2013 and the beginning of 2014. Here is how it looks for the year ended December 31, 2013: We had total receipts of $33.00 for December, which included one membership renewal, and three DOMs each of our ST and 8-bit versions. We had only the monthly web-site expense for $10.00, which means we added a net $23.00 to our treasury for December. We started with a balance of $414.48 and ended the year with a balance of $437.48. This gives us our needed $300.00 to pay for the 2013 yearly room rental with over a hundred to spare. Looking to the future for 2014 it will be another struggle to make our budget of about $450.00. With less than ten members, we can only expect less than $150.00 from membership revenue. That means we need to sell enough DOMs to make up the difference and with three members buying both versions of the DOMs monthly and others buying one once in awhile we should be able to add about $250.00 to our treasury. That leaves us with a very small amount to make up to get to the $450.00 mark so I think we will be all right for 2014. We haven't received the bill for the room rental as of the day I am writing this report which is the 18th of December so I will wait until the first of the year and if I haven't received it by then I will have to call them again as I have had to do the last few years. Anyway, enough business talk. I want to extend to all our members a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year. See you all next month; I mean next year, and let's make our SPACE 2014 another success.

Well, here is yet another Report from your friendly neighborhood Secretary! The meeting commenced at 7:30 PM on, of all days, Friday the 13th. It was not as unlucky as it sounds, believe me. The meeting adjourned at 7:40 PM because of the Christmas Party, where we enjoyed good food and good camaraderie together. When we were done with the Party it was almost 9:00 PM. Lance was talking about the new S-video cable and demoed it on an Atari 130XE. We used a flatscreen television that Lance provided for the picture. More Svideo cables will be coming for the XL/XE machines. Well, since I do not have much else to report, I will conclude this edition of the Secretary’s Report by saying… EXCELSIOR!

8-Bit DOM Review by Steve Peck

CantaLoopAtari (by LiSU): In this third music demo on the DOM, originally by H. Hancock (Herbie Hancock?) and US3, I found the music peppy and delightful. Two thumbs up because I thought it was not too shabby.

for November 2013 SIDE B: Well, folks, I am back with another DOM review for the 8-bit for you. There were some good looking and good sound demos on there including a Pong game and a topview driving game. So, I will start the review then!

SIDE A: WAP-NIAK Invitro: This is the introduction to the DOM that we received from our fellow Atarians in Warsaw, Poland. It shows a bunch of scanned images with brilliant graphics that come in and fade out and some catchy music. There is a message in Polish and English that scrolls on the bottom of the screen. I like it myself and give it two thumbs up for the graphics alone. ThereAreManySheepInOuterMongolia (by Miker): This stereo music demo, about 3 1/2 minutes, could be construed as techno-pop (I guess). The music is impressive and there is a message that says, “There are many sheep in outer mongolia - by Miker/bjb/ng.” I will give it a thumb up because I do not understand the significance of the message. Of course, there are many sheep in Outer Mongolia! Druid (on triangle waves; by Miker): Another music demo. It sounds trippy, but cool. But, unlike the previous music demo, this one is in Mono. There were a couple of high notes that did not come out quite right, but I quite liked it. I will give it two thumbs up for the effort. Soccer Pong (by Iron): A Pong clone, but made to look like a soccer field. Basically, it looks a lot like air hockey. Joysticks can be used to play this game. The joystick works in reverse in this game - up and down are left and right for controls to move your character so you have to turn the controller sideways to play. But, once you understand the controls, the game gets too easy to play. One thumb up for this under-challenging game.

This side of the DOM contains a music synthesizer called Softsynth, created by Christian Nieber in 1985. The problem is this software is mostly in German. But, it looks cool and I might want to do more with this software in the future. Two thumbs up. NOTE: Softsynth is the only application on Side B of the disk because of its size.

Well, that concludes the DOM review. So, I will close by saying Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and this: EXCELSIOR!

ST DOM Report by Nolan Friedland

Greetings and welcome to another edition of the SPACE ST DOM! Enjoy!

Kolmik is a horizontal sliding puzzle game where you match columns of three tiles each.

Nuclear Waste Dump is an action puzzle and reflexion game that puts emphasis on your reflexes and fast thinking.

In classic mode, you must align three tiles of the same color. If you succeed in this, you will get some points. The number of points given is proportional to the number of combos you do - The bigger the number, the better your score.

The object of the game is to dispose barrels full of nuclear waste without blowing the facility up! How many barrels will you manage to dump before the dump explodes? It is up to you!

You can move each row in three different ways: First, you can drag and drop the whole line. Press the left mouse button, move the cursor on the left/the right then release the button. Otherwise, you can use the arrows that are put at the end of each line. Finally, you can use the keypad to move each line. Squared mode is the same idea as classic mode with a little twist: you can drag and drop lines AND columns to complete some of them. With each new combo, you have nine tries to complete your task. If you cannot manage to clear a line or a column then it is game over.

Space Battle is a 2-player shooting game with vector graphics, AI mode and optional joystick control. Fly around and shoot your enemy until his shields are gone. You can play either against a friend or against the ST with various game modes.

Press H to see the highscore table. Press I for short instructions. Press ESC to quit the game and return to the desktop. This will also properly save your scores to disk. Any other key or the fire button on your joystick or jagpad will start the game. You can use the cursor keys+SPACE, a joystick in port 1 or a jagpad in port A to control the game. At the start of the game, you are standing on the edge of a pit and handed a container of nuclear waste, which you maneuver above the pit. Tap the button to drop it. The barrel falls into the pit until it comes to rest. Sounds simple, right? Well, almost... There are four types of ordinary waste barrels, each having its own distinct shape and color. The catch is that a container may not end up on or next to a container of the same type. If it does, POW - the end of your little corner of the world! Momentary contact between barrels of similar waste is allowed. For example, a container of Type 1 waste may be dropped onto another Type 1 container as long as it bounces to a different location and does not come to rest in contact with Type 1 waste.

Due to the toxic nature of the barrels, you have to dump them quickly to avoid contamination of yourself. If the countdown reaches zero, the barrel will be dropped in the current position. This might be hazardous so react quickly and think before pushing the button. The countdown becomes faster with time so it is important to act quickly. Besides the four standard barrels from time to time, special barrels appear. They are intended to help you with your task. The TNT barrel can be dropped anywhere and it will not detonate in its rest position. However if you drop something on the TNT, it will detonate and erase all the barrels surrounding it. Of course stacks of barrels will come down and may detonate the whole dump so be careful with the TNT! For some strange reason unknown to the current state of physics, this will not blow up the whole dump! The FREEZER barrel also will not detonate anything but it will freeze its direct neighbors. This will disarm them so you can safely drop anything on top or beside of them. Frozen barrels can be blown away with the TNT or be squished by the WEIGHT! The WEIGHT barrel simply falls straight down and squishes all barrels in its way - a neat way to clear a full column of barrels. You will score for each barrel that has been dumped successfully. The game will end if the dump blows up or the stack of barrels exceeds the height of the concrete pit more than one row of barrels.

Poker Square is another puzzle game where you have to arrange poker hands on a board. Check the dedicated screen in the game for further explanations.

Spy4k is a 4K game inspired by a game by Nick Kouvaris. Use the arrow keys to move on the numbers. When you move on a number, it automatically bring you N times forward, where N is the number you walked on at the first step. Each time you make a step, the top right counter decrement, and the level is finished when the counter reach zero. Each number you walk on is added to your score. Be careful, if you walk on a bomb or if you automatically walk outside of the screen, you will lose! Use the space bar each time you finish a level. Press Esc key to exit the game. NOTE: If you are on an ST run SPY4K_ST.PRG or SPY4K_FL.PRG if using a Falcon.

Znax is a little puzzle game, inspired from a flash game, where you have to select the largest possible rectangles on screen. You must do the biggest square, or rectangle, by clicking four tiles of the same color. Once clicked, they disappear and randomly chosen tiles take the place of the area done by the selected tiles. The bigger the area you select, the bigger your score will be. Two game modes are available: 2 mn and 5 mn. Only the time during the game will change, and a specific highscore table is dedicated to each mode. Press F10 during a game to exit to the highscore table.

CLUB OFFICIALS

Michael Current

President: (608) 787-8548 michael@mcurrent.name

Vice President / Webmaster / Newsletter Editor (763) 689-5340 Nolan Friedland ilmarinen1976@hotmail.com

Steve Peck

Secretary: (651) 408-1096 artisan213574@gmail.com

DOM Librarian / Membership Chairman: (763) 786-4790 Glen Kirschenmann kirsch@netzero.net

Greg Leitner

Treasurer: (651) 455-6550 greglites@hotmail.com

Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE) meets on the second Friday of each month at 7:30 PM in the Falcon Heights Community Center at 2077 West Larpenteur Ave. Doors open at 7:00 PM.

S.P.A.C.E. c/o Gregory Leitner 3407 78th St E Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076-3037

DISCLAIMER Published by the Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE), an independent organization with no business affiliation with ATARI, Inc. Permission is granted to any similar organization with which SPACE exchanges newsletters to reprint material from this newsletter. We do however ask that credit be given to the authors and to SPACE. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of SPACE, the club officers, club members or ATARI, Inc.

Visit our website at: http://space.atari.org/ The SPACE BBS is currently offline. We apologize for this inconvenience and hope to have it back online in the near future.

Articles for Publication must be received by the Newsletter Editor two weeks prior to the Club’s next Scheduled meeting.