Infinity

By Adok/Hugi

Infinity was a diskmag from Portugal. Its main editor was Captain Hook. Two good issues were released. They can be downloaded at scene.org (500 - 1000 downloads) and run using the DOSBox emulator. This magazine is not to be confused with an ANSI scene oriented magazine with the same name.

Infinity #1

Infinity #1 was released in April 1996. Right after starting Infinity #1 you get to the main menu. The mag is divided in the following sections: Introduction, "About us!", Interviews, Coding, Graphics, Histories (sic), Poems, Miscellaneous, "Remember" and Final Notes. In "About us!" we learn that Infinity is not only the name of the diskmag but also of a network, which is implemented as a mailing list. The interviews in this issue have been conducted with Dennis Courtney of Imphobia, Trixter of Hornet, AssKicker, and Denthor of Asphyxia. They're quite long and interesting. The coding corner is really big. It features tutorials on copper bars, on displaying black/white graphics in textmode, on the fire and lens effects, and there are a lot of beginner tutorials which were taken from "The Mag", a textfile collection about programming created by Spellcaster. The Graphics section features some more (graphical) coding related articles from Spellcaster. The "Histories" have also been taken from The Mag: The first seven chapters of "The adventures of Spellcaster, the rebel programmer of the year 2018" can be read here. It's quite an exciting story, despite it has a flaw (the rebels escaped from the prison and weren't chased after). The Miscellaneous section contains an overview of the Portuguese demoscene and some other demoscene-related articles about topics like soundcards, the Internet and setting up BBS's.

All code and graphics are Captain Hook's work. There are four tunes, two of which were made by DJ Mind of DuF, and one each were made by Garfield of Radioactive Design and Void Angel of LiT. One thing that is not so good about the engine was that despite having only page-wise scrolling, it will usually not scroll a full page when the end of the article is reached, so you have to search for the line where to continue reading.

It's a good issue all in all with a lot of interesting contents; you'll have to spend a lot of time with your PC in order to read it all.

Infinity #2

Infinity #2 (from August 1996) has a similar section structure as #1. The controls are a bit different: Instead of moving your mouse to the left or to the right edge, you have to move it to the top or to the bottom edge in order to flip pages. The interview partners of this issue are Captain Hook, Garfield of Radioactive Design, Leviathan of Renaissance, Miss Saigon of Threesome, and DJ Mind. Most of the coding articles again come from Spellcaster, some of the topics are scrolling, sprites, starfields and text adventures. Zoltar wrote about ASM opcodes, keyboard scan codes, the CEL format and other formats used in the scene. The Literature section is quite big, it contains stories and poems. In the Miscellaneous section there are a version of Phoenix's demo hidden part list, tracking tips, a list of coding sites and some opinionated articles. On exiting the mag, a picture with the message "Free East Timor" is displayed.

The music of this issue was made by Killer Kid and by Garfield of Radioactive Design.

All in all it's another good issue, mainly thanks to Spellcaster of course.

Adok/Hugi