News And The Internet

By Dave E

Originally published in EUG #48

Hot Elk Adventures Are Freeware

One of the biggest names of yesteryear, at least when it came to the text adventure scene, Peter Killworth, has withdrawn his copyright on all products released for the Electron. He was the brains behind not only many of the Topologika series of disk-based adventures for the Elk but also educational packages such as How To Write Adventure Games and the compendium Paul Daniels' Magic Show (Both from Acornsoft).

We are currently negotiating with Topologika for the adventure programs themselves (Acheton, Avon, Countdown To Doom, Kingdom Of Hamil, Murdac, Philosopher's Quest, Return To Doom and The Last Days Of Doom) with a view to distributing them on future EUG disks. Meanwhile, Peter has submitted disk-images (For the IBM PC) to a German internet site. You can download both the adventures and the full documentation (including the "Online hints" sheets) from 'ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/phoenix/games/pc/'.

Bryan McPhail's Emulator Enters Second Stage

Work continues, unabated by a dodgy e-mail system and a developer never in the same country from one week to the next, on the PC Acorn Electron emulator. Bryan has now implemented an Electron with Plus 1 expansion and also emulated the Plus 3 to a certain extent.

A gallery containing screenshots from Acornsoft's Maze and A & F's Chuckie Egg, amongst others, is present on his Work In Progress home page at http://www.tendril.force9.co.uk/electron/. He is also maintaining a diary of his progress at this address but admits that he is finding the going tough at the moment, mainly with the implementation of MODEs 0 and 3 - and finding any Electron software around to emulate!

Mega Utilities By Robert Sprowson

This issue of the EUG magazine contains a number of utilities from 'Rob' Sprowson. They were originally submitted as far back as June last year but all went to the previous EUG editor's neighbour - who deposited them in the dustbin!

Each one contains full documentation but not all can be executed directly from the menu. Print out the respective manual then follow its simple instructions to utilise LCD and Ssaver effectively.

Everything You Ever Needed To Know

Here at EUG, the finishing touches have been put to thirty - Yes, thirty! - disks of documentation on Electron software. Currently only available on the DFS format, each disk contains information relating to anything from one to 26 pieces of software. Any text file is selected from a MODE 0 menu system and displayed with the EUG text file displayer. Full details of the software house, version, year of release and any bugs in the code are included. Each file is easily printed out too.

Full catalogue details will appear shortly.