Rift

Rift was the name of the only South African diskmag in the PC demoscene. Only one issue was ever released. Its main editor was Rawhed of Sensory Overload. The mag can be downloaded from scene.org and it runs under Windows.

Rift #1

Rift #1 was released on December 6th, 1999. The magazine uses the Windows-based engine of the German (language) diskmag WildMag. First you have to run setup.exe, then you can start rift.exe. The mag starts with an opening picture, then you get to the menu where you can select articles and navigate through the magazine by means of buttons. Navigation is a bit less intuitive than in most diskmags as there are no keys which you can press instead of the buttons (e.g. ESC for exiting an article won't work), the right mouse button doesn't do what it usually does, either, and you can use neither the mouse wheel nor click the progress bar in order to scroll. What's also annoying is that after exiting an article, you'll get back to the beginning of the main menu.

There are three songs in this issue, composed by Jahya, NiMH, and Viper of Serenity. They are pretty pleasant and don't disturb reading.

Content-wise, we have about 280 kbytes of texts. After the editorial the magazine starts with a section about the Optimise 1999 demoparty, featuring a party report, a photo collection and galleries of the graphics entries from that party. It's interesting that we can see only white people in the photos, although whites are a minority in South Africa. Next come a(nother) mugshot gallery and a few articles on topics such as Linux and SoftICE. Then there are the interviews - quite a lot of them: Andre LaMoth, Deadpoet of Shunt, Eclipse of OO, Elemental of Night55, Foxx of Freelance, Getafix of Tribal Nunz, Maverick of Serenity, Rawnerve, Saurax of Sensory Overload, Viper of Serenity, and Zero Impact of Tribal Nunz. Not exactly the best known people outside South Africa - that may, on the other hand, just be what makes it interesting for the international reader. Then there are several coding related articles, dealing with very technical stuff (Assembler), Glide, 16-bits-per-pixel graphic modes and other things. Finally, there are four poems.

So in short, the coding, the interviews and the Optimise 1999 coverage are the highlights of this issue. Overall it seems to be an interesting magazine for people who want to learn more about the demoscene in South Africa, and even if you aren't interested in South Africa, the mag may have something for you to offer if you're into coding.

Adok/Hugi