Welcome to Hugi the 19th, the magazine for royalists, James Bond fans and milkshake freaks, anarchists, Rambo fans and potatoe-wedge freaks, liberals, Mickey Mouse fans and roastbeef freaks, in short, everybody around the globe who cares about quality! With a variety of topics like the Brazilian rainforest, Hugi the 19th is the magazine that will widen your intellectual horizon!
Okay, okay, enough hype, let's be serious, shall we? Hugi has the reputation of the most serious magazine in the scene, after all. So, first of all, quick aid for the people who had speed problems with Hugi 18 (and might also have some with this issue): Try the different modules by pressing 1..3. The CPU time playing a module consumes depends on its channel usage. Some use more, some fewer channels. The fewer channels a module uses, the faster Hugi will run. Press L to loop the tune in order to prevent Hugi from cycling to a more CPU consuming tune. Without music, of course, Hugi is fastest: press 0. Second, you can disable graphic effects such as scrolling by pressing F4. If this is not enough, start Hugi again and disable all options, such as True Color Display (in Hugi 18, use the command line switch /hicolor) or Quality JPEG - then you have the maximum speed possible with your config. The recommended configuration for Hugi is a Pentium 120, 32MB RAM and a 2MB+ video card such as S3 ViRGE. Then you should be able to enjoy the mag without any further problems.
So, what else is to say? (Quickly browsing through the editorial of Hugi 18... Damn, by now I should know how to write an editorial, at least! *grin*) Well, the Hugi 18 edito mainly included information on new features and thanks to all the people who played major roles in the creation of the issue, so let's go:
Although you may have not guessed it yet, Chris Dragan almost entirely rewrote the whole engine. Main advantage: It is much easier to port to other platforms now, so perhaps you will be able to read Hugi in Linux or BeOS soon. If you are interested to help port the mag, contact Chris! Moreover, he enhanced the engine with some funky new features. Have you noticed the config window? Sure you have. Or the fact that we have two title screens? Yeah! And if you listen to the music for a while, you will notice some more coolness! I won't say more, read the words of the master himself.
Next, let's thank Bridgeclaw, Sappy and TAD for all the graphics. And let's thank TAD once again for all the articles! You'll see, he's really become a writing and painting maniac. The latter started only a few days before the deadline. Inspired by Sappy's pic, he created several background pics, the main menu, the closing screen, some nifty cursors, the parchment screen you may have seen as the second title picture, the logos like the one you saw at the beginning of this edito and and and ... so that we are now able to offer you four different themes in this issue! You can active them by pressing ctrl+1, ctrl+2 etc. (Cool, at least once I've managed to write down the right key combinations! *smile*)
Thanks also to our new staff member Ghandy, who gave me permission to publish some articles from Scenet and his Amiga mag Showtime here.
Furthermore, my gratefulness goes to Paradox who wrote so many coding articles that he's got his own corner in this issue. Also, thanks to Dante for proofreading - a work which is often not noticed by the readers, but whose missing would surely be noticed! -, Makke, P-rat and JKL for this issue's music, all the many people who've written articles or news, and finally the many of you who've submitted music or graphics to Hugi which hasn't been used yet. Don't worry, all your precious work is lying safe in the Hugi pool on my harddisk (and back-upped on several other media), and it will be used in a future issue of Hugi!
Of course, more gfx and music is always welcome - we especially need background pictures! For this issue, the first background pic (Sappy's, press ctrl+4 to active it) reached me only a week before the deadline. Before this point in time, I could not finish formatting any article, because the text window size depends on the background pic. I could have also done it the other way round, i.e. make up a text window size and ask the graphicians to create their pictures accordingly, but I prefered to leave the graphicians as much freedom as possible. For Hugi #20, I already have a new background picture by TAD, so I will be able to start formatting articles right after getting the first. I grant you that this will speed up the mag-making process a lot, and you'll thus probably be able to enjoy a new Hugi issue sooner than it was the case with Hugi 18 and 19! If you want to create a background picture for Hugi, too, feel free to contact me, and I'll give you all the info you need.
If you wish to read some of the feedback we got on Hugi 18, read on, otherwise: Enjoy reading Hugi 19 - The Superior!
Letters to the Editor
A Prophet of Hugi Hungry for Feedback
Here are some of the IMO most interesting comments on Hugi 18 and suggestions for the future I've received.
Rheyne writes in his votesheet: "The new interface looks great, but my main criticism is that its loading routines are working quite slowly on slower systems like my pentium 133. I know we're living in a world of high speed systems, but maybe your coder Chris could at least try looking through his code again and maybe optimize some routines. If I remember right, you, Adok, were always the one blaming the game producers for wasting cpu power in their game codes, so why not stopping the waste of cpu power in your own diskmag?
About your 'Charts Suxx' chapter, well, maybe you overreacted a bit. Anyway, a newsletter is no diskmag, where comments about the sense of charts and categories in the charts are neccessary and helpful. A newsletter/chartsmag editor is always focused on getting votes for his mag in the first place (and comments about voting), because you cannot compile representative charts out of comments, can you? So I can at least understand his harsh reaction a bit. And what prevents you from simply leaving categories you think you're unable to vote for blank? For arguing the sense of this or that charts category the chatgroups or mags are a much better platform than a simple voteform, if you know what I mean.
There are and can't be the perfect charts which satisfy everyone in the scene! And you've got to accept that there are people with different attitudes there, too. Some like comments on the work they're doing, others don't! Try to live with that!
Btw. I really liked this issue's closing pictures. I'd like to see more c64-styled gfx in this mag rather than always rendering to the maxx!"
TAD comments on several articles in Hugi 18. But let's start with his introduction first: "The end is nigh... the world is about to end and the last of the Christmas turkey has turned green.. Small children cry, old people die in their cold homes while everyone else runs to the shops in time for the yearly acts of insane violence, the Janurary sales.
Oh, here is some Feedback for all those good little boys and girls who created the 'cream of the scene magazine' (sorry, but it is Xmas).
Chris Dragan: New interface... a really nice job!! To be honest I wasn't sure about those small fonts when I saw the preview... but now I'm totally convinced... yeah.. a new mag for a new millennium. Now, please place your right hand over your left shoulder behind your head and give yourself a HUGE pat on the back... Great work Chris!!
Adok & Hugi Crew: Great work as always. I hope you're all wearing a large smile after putting together 2 magazines and learning all about the new interface at the same time.
Nit-picking: It would be good to display the author of each article somewhere on the menu screens (an email-like message at the bottom of the screen would be ideal). Highlight underlined links in another color.
Dines: Yeah... damn fine pixels.. The style reminds me of something, but can't remember exactly what.. Kinda like the film Dune crossed with Hellraiser.
Letters to the Editor: Good source of info about how others see HUGI. It's really nice that there seems to be no censorship, the good, the bad and the misspelt are all included here.
Diskmags: Wilby successfully resisting the zeitgeist? Good article about a good magazine. I would guess that Adok's article is almost the same size as the entire Wilby diskmag.. #;o) Just when you think you've seen it all before, along comes Wilby...
Quin: Newbie Coders Diary: Great idea. Seeing thing through a fresh pair of eyes. I hope Quin continues this diary for a long time and describes the highs and lows along the way...
Coding: Generating textures for 64k Intros: Fantastic!! I really hope theres another 1 or 2 articles like this in the future. Perhaps looking at creating the usual primative textures for objects (wood, paper, grass, sky, clouds, water, plastic and crystal etc..).
Coding: Win32 assembler tuts by T$: Didn't quite get the 2.718 number reference. #:o( Good article, made even better by the words 'asm' and 'assembler'. Nice work T$.
Coding: Adding 16bpp using MMX: Happy to see a MMX article.. For a moment I had given up all hope of seeing one about MMX (Mediocre Marketing X-rays, everyone knows these instruction exist, but they choose not to see 'em or use 'em). I hope someone writes an article about using MMX for other purposes, such as sound mixing.
Misc: The richest computer illiterate alive: Great sign off.. 3v37y 7iM3 u 8uy m1(r02oft a 7itt3 8unny Ra88it 6i3z
Fun: My secret life as a lamer: Whooaa.. THE coolest picture ever.. who ever said that coders aren't kewl? One puzzle, whats with the reindeer horns? And more importantly, wheres the rest of the reindeer? Does anyone know where I can buy one of those kewl, test-card wool jumpers?
Music: One of a kind by Acumen and Late nights by Andromeda: Some random notes and samples put together in a pleasing way... #;o) Ahhhh... it makes you glad to have ears..
Feedback, the promised land, by Dario Phong: Mostly I agree, and yeah, I was pissed off when I wrote that article, but it was only due to lack of feedback.. I kinda understand why so few ppl give any kind of (positive or negative) feedback, usually lack of time and/or interest. As Dario said, 'feedback is a little gift'. It's not just a blantant request for kiss-ass emails, but the other half of a Yin-Yang interaction between a writer and the audience.. How can we hear if you do not speak, and how can we learn if you do not teach? Thanks for the part about 'bashing ppl & Mode-X articles' but I didn't take Submissive's words badly. I knew that Mode-x was long past it's sell-by date when I wrote the article. The real reason was to demonstrate the technique of splitting a line into 4 individual parts and thereby reducing the number of OUT instructions down to just 4 no matter how long a line was. Has anyone seen this method demonstrated before??? I haven't, that's why I wrote the article..
Adok: I hope the giant is still hungry for success and ready to do battle with any other Thor which may come along... #;o) Yes, I still believe in Santa Claus (Dieter Volko).
What about also including the music-selection in the Music Corner ?? Newbies to the Hugi diskmag would probably never think about going into the Editorial to change the toon..
Another idea (as seen on many large web-sites) is a site-map. All you need is a single page in the shape of a tree which shows the overall Hugi diskmag and provide a quick-way (ie. link) to each section and sub-section...
Everyone else: Sorry that there's no individual feedback, but please keep on coding, sounding, writing, drawing and dreaming...
Our commercial world is such a f*cked place. So keep it cool ppl, in your cyberspace."
Thanks for the extensive feedback, TAD! As you see, most of your suggestions, such as the e-mail-style author information in the menus, have been implemented in this issue.
On comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos, cp of witchcraft and teklords writes: "yeah, this is what i call a scene production with FEELING. well done, adok, and i think the composers' and designers' work are really cool too. (i still don't think that hugi is god or that you (adok) are some kind of prophet but nevermind... ;)))"
Also on csipd, Saffron published his first thoughts about Hugi 18: "Your new engine is very cool. But here's a quote from your Wilby review:
'The first to come with the idea was Hugi. And then, all of a sudden every international diskmag had it. What am I talking about? Non-fixed width fonts of course. - - [cut blahblah about pain and shine ripping this idea from hugi] Non-fixed width font support is one of the latest fashions of PC diskmags. Another is a Win32 interface (which Hugi has had since August 1998). Or clipart support (also an old feature of Hugi's). - -'
My dear Adok, do you honestly believe that you came up with the idea of proportional fonts, clipart and using win32? Presumably you've already filed for the U.S. patents on these? Despite your claims that all this 'scene god's prophet' crap of yours is just sarcasm, I'm beginning to suspect that a serious concentration of urine is forming in your cranium. (Sorry, I'm probably right now infringing on your patent concerning another invention of yours, namely the use of proper English...)"
Otis reacted to this statement: "The fights between authors / contributors of several dismags are starting to look like wars with a similar high rating of lameness: Linux vs Windows, nVidia vs 3Dfx, UT vs Q3a, Intel vs AMD etc.
When I read diskmag X, it contains reviews of other diskmags, and doesn't rate any of these higher than 'average', or there has to be a certain connection.
Stop it. Do your thing and shuddup, all of you. No one cares if Diskmag X finds diskmag Y boring, crap or stupid. And vice versa."
In the further discussion, Saffron apologized for his harsh statement; he said that it sounded "much more confrontational" than he had intended.
Unreal of Sunflower stated on a public IRC channel: "I finally liked Hugi's gfx and music! :)" Thereupon Fred of Calodox, using the nickname "fredPAiN", mentioned by passing that "the search option is really useful".
Timothy Smith posted on csipd: "3465kb download later over a shit 28.8 modem and was it worth it? No. So, nice new interface, methinks. Oh fuck, its locked up. I suppose it was just all the other stuff I had running. Still locks up. Switch music off and it works. The user may want to disable sound from some reason (bugs in player, listens to CD audio, etc.). What's this 'may' crap??? On a 'sluggish' computer (P100) the waste of time fades are removed. Who wants to read a disk mag and say 'ooo - look at that a nice fade'? Tracking the large (32 track (?)) XM might ve expected to cause some slow down but not the legless tortoise pace hugi manages. Moving in articles seems sort of, well, random. Two columns of text wander round in an effort to stay coherent. The pics are a nice inclusion though (not all bad then :-)). So slow, shite and completely lacking any DOS viewer. A a big sack of steamy shit."
FMB has included the following reaction in his votesheet: "When I read Hugi #17 I thought 'Woah, does it get any better?', with Hugi #18 you showed me it can be MUCH better. The music really gets you into the 'reading mood' and the new interface is really uhmm... useable? Anyway it looks very nice. =) Even though I'm not that involved with the demo scene (don't think anyone reading Hugi knows me exept Makke) I always find articles that interest me, I'm happy to see that you have some lowrez articles, if you are planning on having more ascii compos, put an ad on these two sites thuglife.org and acheron.org. Uhm that's all. Oh, special note to Acumen: your tune 'One of a kind' in issue#18 kicks ass! :> Peace!"
FatCrazer writes in his votesheet: "Well. This time I am dissapointed. :( It is sad, but true. The new interface is much worse than the old one. The most evil thing is its slowliness! I have a fast PC (Celeron 500), but even on my machine it works slow (slower than the old interface on old P150). Slooooow effects between articles! HELL!!! While writing this feedback, I tried to load HUGI and it simply didn't work! It is hanging now!!!! }:E Ohh... I deleted the task... Ok. I go on. There is no DOS version! I can't save articles to txt files! And the last bad thing is new articles layout. It was better with vertical scrolling. It was easier to read by scrolling by one line, but now... :( Well, Adok, HUGI is my favourite mag, but #18 is buggie like hell. :( I wish Hugi #19 will be better.
P.S. The only thing that I liked most of all in Hugi #18 is music. :) It is really great!
P.P.S. Hugi crashes too often! It crashed again, when I tried to enter the article with the 4k intros review. :("
It's possible to save articles to HTML using the F2 key. The reason for the sudden exits was fixed short after the first release of Hugi 18, and a new version was released; for the original version, a bugfix is available at hugi.de.
In Morph's votesheet, the following lines were found: "If I loved Hugi 17 I don't know what I did with 18. Acumen's tune was fantastic, Andromeda's was great too, the design was suiting and beautiful and there was a lot to read. The new engine worked smooth and the search-feature rocked.
To be a little negative I must say I was a bit unlucky. The 'borrowed' pictures from Kowboy in my Dreamhack report didn't please me really... The insignificant pictures displayed young gamers and had nothing to do with the text. I mean, someone might think I'm one of those kids, and I sure wouldn't like that :) I'll take my own pictures next time, but big thanks to Kowboy anyway.
'Alternative Asylum' was a bit sloppily formatted, but who cares. I was really proud of being a part of such a great diskmag, and I guess I will feel the same with this issue."
UT writes: "Hugi 18 came out at last. And it was HUGE. Imo, too huge. And way too much of that space was used for simple thing as background music! Three tunes is too much. Two is recommended. Did Acumen use 16-bit samples or why is that song 600kb!?
Something about the articles... DARiO pHONG's review about 4k-intros showed at Assembly: Yes, I HAVE seen Matriisi by Mooze. It WAS shit. But were all the intros as shit as dario said? They can't be... But of COURSE there was a referring to Dario's OWN intro, garbled. Dario has become a BIT too arrogant after his 'great' garbled-intro, which had MANY effects, that's for sure, most of them being pure shit. And the great 'desing' in the endtext. But there were a couple of nice effects, too. But no piccies, no background music. Just simple 2d-effects. That DARiO should hold his horses.
And the interface. It worked, actually. It was pretty good. But Dines' gfx had a BIG mistake in it: EYES in the background. NEVER use eyes in the background, it feels awful to read text when someone is staring at you. This is the very reason why all proper background pics have beautiful, deep landscapes. It was a great idea to include some old pics (to consume space). Is the compression really that hard? Let that DARiO pHOnG do the compression if he is as good as he thinks.
And your stupid idea of NOT including the rules of the coding competition in the mag! Bonuspacks aren't always included in BBS' and as some Hugi poll proved, 30% of the readers do NOT have an Internet-connection. Nice.
Thanks for the nice mag afterall. Good articles (for some reason, there weren't many). Mainly good gfx. Good muzak (but too big)."
As there can't be a feedback corner without Seven, let's quote his reaction, too: "I wasn't quite sure if I had voted already for Hugi19, so here's my sheet :) Due to lack of time I haven't given a lot of feedback, but here are a few remarks I had for you:
The new engine is really great. Only one very annoying bug: in windowed mode, when you move the cursor outside the window, you see still a cursor on the Hugi-window where it was draw the last time. That's only a minor aesthetical bug, but also the position of the mouse is supposed (by the engine) to be still at that position. So when you move the mouse slowly outside the window, the engine will think that the mouse is pushing at left/right/upper/lower edge, and it will keep scrolling the text. Very annoying if you just wanted to select winamp or the notebook or so.
I missed the introduction-articles for newbies. Why did you remove them? I thought they were by far the best introduction someone could get in the demoscene. :(
About your article on charts: I agree that charts do not say anything, but is that a reason to stop them? They're fun! And whether you name it 'best demo' or 'most popular demo' or something else, people will fill in the votesheets just like they want. The readers should just understand it. You are the Nr 1 writer while I'm nr 10. Does that mean that you are a better or more popular? No, it just means that you are higher in the charts. ;)"
The introduction articles are now on the Hugi website, which is the place new readers from outside the scene are mopst likely to visit first.
Bacter of Quasars writes: "I saw your new Hugi!!!! And I wanted to report bugs! Well as far as I've seen it has only one problem: the interface speed. I don't have a strong computer (P133 with 32mb ram) and the Hugi interface doesn't MOVE on my computer, even the mouse cursor moves hardly when it's supposed to be loaded by windows on the TSR, it stucks when the music gets to the part with the virtual channels and the whole interface stucks when it's only a damned text which supposed to move with no problem.
Well the magazine rocks besides that, keep going, only fix that bug! I really liked the music this time! It was great and lots of sections were great! Especially liked your 'Charts Suck' article and Makke's 'How to write a music review' article. :) Keep going dudes!! Hugi still rocks the scene as I've seen!!"
v0id of AMC has an idea: "I was thinking of a Hugi-Demo-Review-Group, which would consist of i.e. two coders, two graphicans and two musicians. And this little group would review the top 3 demos from the biggest demo party events. And the demos would be graded from 1 to 5. What do you think?"
I think this would certainly be a good solution for demo reviews, to make them a bit less based on subjective feelings.
Along with a tune, Lesnik of Altair sent me the following words: "Last issue of Hugi was.. hmm.. beautiful? Gfx and design superb, music excellent (especially tune by Acumen). But a mag for windows only is not for me.. But everything else was ok. Congratulations.
Civax of Moon Hunters and CFXweb finds that "Hugi 18 is AWESOME! :)" and adds: "The best you ever had. Really."
Finally, let's quote Optimus: "You know what I think? I sometimes think that a diskmag is the best software ever released in the demoscene! I don't know, I have more fun while reading a diskmag, than while watching a demo! Not that I don't have fun while watching a demo, I have more fun watching a demo than making almost anything else in the computer, but diskmags are my favorites, I will surely start a diskmag when I will be involved in the demoscene. Hehe, we will compete in the future. :D"
Great! To say it once again, every new diskmag is an enrichment for our colourful diskmag sky. Welcome in the diskmag scene!
Please send me your opinion on this Hugi issue and your ideas, too!