BreakSpace is a joy to read, and your reviews in particular are fantastic. Thank you for putting so much care and love into it!
That said, would you consider publishing the PDF with selectable text instead of just images? At the moment, something in the way it’s prepared makes it hard to copy or translate — which is a real pain for those of us who aren’t native English speakers. Having selectable text would really improve readability and accessibility. It would make an already great magazine even more amazing :)
Note : The BREAK SPACE : The Game listing in page 20 had errors in it. We've uploaded a new fixed version, so download again if you want to type it in. Sorry all!
THANK YOU so much for featuring my BASIC programming shenanigans in your magazine, amazing! was a joy doing the interview and providing the Type in. cheers! and best of luck for future Break Space issues, brilliant magazine!!!
Hi guys, thanks for reviewing my indie ECHOES OF ATLANTIS adventure game. I get your points, and overall thank you for the support. More games to come. Two things. The reason I have the graphics as a full screen, but only with the tiny location window for each area , is first of course because it helps to save memory but also because if I would only draw the tiny location window, that would not increase the area available for the text anyway. With GAC is always the same area, no matter you draw a lot on the location screen or you don´t. So as it does not take much memory to merge a central main illustration for each location, I do that and only draw the location area at the center.
If you guys play my ECLIPSIA or Shangri-La adventures you´ll notice I use graphics in another more colorful way, but in Echoes of Atlantis due to the "invisible" complexity for each adventure, I hardly had memory left for the basic location illustrations at the end.
I may be trying Pawn or other engines in the future, but the main reason I´m not in a hurry is because despite everything else, writing my games in GAC is a nostalgia thing for me as it takes me back to 1990 when I was doing that just for fun, never expecting someone to ever look at my games. So GAC for me is like a time machine, my Zen thing. Also as I mentioned , it´s the perfect tool to sketch the structure of an adventure that later i can take and write another book, create a comic, etc. I have some sort of an idea for a book for Echoes of Atlantis...like I did with the House that Wept or with A Terrific Weekend adventure, but I think maybe with Echoes I may create either an illustrated storybook or some sort of a graphic novel. I don´t know yet. But I didn´t write the game just thinking it would be only a ZX Game. My thing is telling stories, so everything starts like that for me.
Echoes initially was going to be just a game called Alexandria. No more. But then when I was writing the story and the game at the same time, my imagination kept opening doors that needed more expanded settings. By the time I wrote the second part, I knew I was doomed. But I never expected to write a 6 part game which took me a year to complete. And actually, I had to stop myself becaus the game was going to have a part 7. Which I still plan to write as an Epilogue for the main six part adventure. It will be a standalone adventure, hopefully with one part only, but it will be a closing of some bits I left open at the end even though players didn´t noticed them.
Anyway, once again thanks for noticing my game.
And I´m not just saying that because of it, but this magazine of yours is really special. Best speccy content I´ve came across on a ZX magazine.
Thanks for the reply and the games Luis! I went on quite a journey with 'Echoes' for about a fortnight :)
I did wonder in my review about the text area, since most GAC games do obey the same screen layout as your games. I checked before writing and saw several GAC games that allow much larger text areas, e.g. 'Play It Again Sam', 'Not The Lord Of The Rings', 'Pete Bog,' and 'Murder, Mystery'.
I'm not as familiar with GAC as you. Are these examples unusual extensions of the regular engine?
If I've made a mistake I can clarify in the next issue.
Cheers
Dave
PS - it's also a proud member of the 'Maoi cameo' group in ZXDB
Well, if there is a way of extending the text area size, I´ve never came across it. "Not Lord of the Rings" to my knowledge for example, uses the same area size, as I do, but I do need to check this out now that you mention. Maybe there is a way. I just didn´t noticed before. I don´t think Play it Again Sam is GAC adventure, just based on the layout...
Great 2nd issue! (And I can neither confirm or deny whether or not cheese is instrumental in inspiring anything in any of my games). Good to see so many games, and so many fun looking ones!
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Knocked it out of the park again lads! Brilliant work.
BreakSpace is a joy to read, and your reviews in particular are fantastic. Thank you for putting so much care and love into it!
That said, would you consider publishing the PDF with selectable text instead of just images? At the moment, something in the way it’s prepared makes it hard to copy or translate — which is a real pain for those of us who aren’t native English speakers. Having selectable text would really improve readability and accessibility. It would make an already great magazine even more amazing :)
Thanks ! Keep up the good work guys !
Note : The BREAK SPACE : The Game listing in page 20 had errors in it.
We've uploaded a new fixed version, so download again if you want to type it in. Sorry all!
THANK YOU so much for featuring my BASIC programming shenanigans in your magazine, amazing! was a joy doing the interview and providing the Type in. cheers! and best of luck for future Break Space issues, brilliant magazine!!!
Thanks for the listing, and sorry for goofing it up!
Great job guys!
Thanks Juan!
Cool! Keep going, guys!
Hi guys, thanks for reviewing my indie ECHOES OF ATLANTIS adventure game. I get your points, and overall thank you for the support. More games to come.
Two things. The reason I have the graphics as a full screen, but only with the tiny location window for each area , is first of course because it helps to save memory but also because if I would only draw the tiny location window, that would not increase the area available for the text anyway. With GAC is always the same area, no matter you draw a lot on the location screen or you don´t. So as it does not take much memory to merge a central main illustration for each location, I do that and only draw the location area at the center.
If you guys play my ECLIPSIA or Shangri-La adventures you´ll notice I use graphics in another more colorful way, but in Echoes of Atlantis due to the "invisible" complexity for each adventure, I hardly had memory left for the basic location illustrations at the end.
I may be trying Pawn or other engines in the future, but the main reason I´m not in a hurry is because despite everything else, writing my games in GAC is a nostalgia thing for me as it takes me back to 1990 when I was doing that just for fun, never expecting someone to ever look at my games. So GAC for me is like a time machine, my Zen thing. Also as I mentioned , it´s the perfect tool to sketch the structure of an adventure that later i can take and write another book, create a comic, etc. I have some sort of an idea for a book for Echoes of Atlantis...like I did with the House that Wept or with A Terrific Weekend adventure, but I think maybe with Echoes I may create either an illustrated storybook or some sort of a graphic novel. I don´t know yet. But I didn´t write the game just thinking it would be only a ZX Game. My thing is telling stories, so everything starts like that for me.
Echoes initially was going to be just a game called Alexandria. No more. But then when I was writing the story and the game at the same time, my imagination kept opening doors that needed more expanded settings. By the time I wrote the second part, I knew I was doomed. But I never expected to write a 6 part game which took me a year to complete. And actually, I had to stop myself becaus the game was going to have a part 7. Which I still plan to write as an Epilogue for the main six part adventure. It will be a standalone adventure, hopefully with one part only, but it will be a closing of some bits I left open at the end even though players didn´t noticed them.
Anyway, once again thanks for noticing my game.
And I´m not just saying that because of it, but this magazine of yours is really special. Best speccy content I´ve came across on a ZX magazine.
Thanks for the reply and the games Luis! I went on quite a journey with 'Echoes' for about a fortnight :)
I did wonder in my review about the text area, since most GAC games do obey the same screen layout as your games. I checked before writing and saw several GAC games that allow much larger text areas, e.g. 'Play It Again Sam', 'Not The Lord Of The Rings', 'Pete Bog,' and 'Murder, Mystery'.
I'm not as familiar with GAC as you. Are these examples unusual extensions of the regular engine?
If I've made a mistake I can clarify in the next issue.
Cheers
Dave
PS - it's also a proud member of the 'Maoi cameo' group in ZXDB
Well, if there is a way of extending the text area size, I´ve never came across it.
"Not Lord of the Rings" to my knowledge for example, uses the same area size, as I do, but I do need to check this out now that you mention. Maybe there is a way. I just didn´t noticed before. I don´t think Play it Again Sam is GAC adventure, just based on the layout...
If this is not actually your favourite zx magazine idk wth you're doing with your life
Great 2nd issue! (And I can neither confirm or deny whether or not cheese is instrumental in inspiring anything in any of my games). Good to see so many games, and so many fun looking ones!
Thanks for letting me in.
😍