› ›

INPUT magazine

BiNMaNBiNMaN
edited April 2009 in Sinclair Miscellaneous
Did anyone else have this magazine back in day, I did. Spent hours typing in the examples and it did helped me develop me a few techniques in basic and assembly. Did anyone else find it of any use? My parents threw mine away a long long time ago along with my crashes, sinclair users, your sinclairs and my collection of 2000 AD.

I still haven't forgiven them *sniff*
Post edited by BiNMaN on
«1

Comments

  • joefishjoefish
    edited April 2009
    Yep, had all these. My parents bought them. They're probably still in the family home somewhere. I learned some machine code off them - even learned a few things about the C64 and its sprites.
    But they were horribly inefficient. Cost a bloody fortune for just a few pages that were relevant to the Spectrum. What were the other machines they covered? Dragon 32 and was it the Electron?
    Joefish
    - IONIAN-GAMES.com -
  • VampyreVampyre
    edited April 2009
    YUp, I had 'em. Don't remember too much apart from typing in the "pacman" clone from the first issue.
    ZXSR - Speccy Mags Reviews
  • zxspecticlezxspecticle
    edited April 2009
    Wasn?t this the magazine that the original Imagine Software was supposed to be doing software for during their Mega-Game phase and ending up losing the contract because the stuff they produced was naff?
  • snigfarpsnigfarp
    edited April 2009
    My brother bought these back in the 1980s. I learned a bit about programming from them, but also good for mining ideas. It was also interesting to see how other machines did things. I didn't type many of the bigger examples in, except the Cavendish Field war game which I converted to the QL.

    I don't know what my brother did with his copy, but I saw a full set in binders at a car boot sale a few years back and bought them for four quid. I haven't done much with them but they're good for a bit of nostalgia.
  • GreenCardGreenCard
    edited April 2009
    I should still have 3 issues stashed around somewhere. I remember typing in a wee game (not much of a game, mind) once from one of them (called Paratroopers maybe?).
  • Scottie_ukScottie_uk
    edited April 2009
    I've got 3 Ringbinders full of them (I'm missing binder four), but picked them up for ?1 in a Cardiff carboot sale.
    Calling all ASCII Art Architects Visit the WOS Wall of Text and contribute: https://www.yourworldoftext.com/wos
  • redballoonredballoon
    edited April 2009
    I found all the issues perfectly preserved in my parents loft a while back and are now sitting up in my loft next to my Crash and ST Format on a shelf.
  • chop983chop983
    edited April 2009
    redballoon wrote: »
    I found all the issues perfectly preserved in my parents loft a while back and are now sitting up in my loft next to my Crash and ST Format on a shelf.

    Great to know there no being wasted. :p
  • redballoonredballoon
    edited April 2009
    Hah, I know. When I was sorting them all out I went through every issue just looking and reading the odd snippet. Man, it brought back memories. That led me to go through some of the issues of Crash again and then I had to - just had to - go through some ST Formats. I eventually emerged about 3 hours later before crying real salty tears, naked in the corner of a darkened room.
  • frobushfrobush
    edited April 2009
    zxspecticle wrote: »
    Wasn’t this the magazine that the original Imagine Software was supposed to be doing software for during their Mega-Game phase and ending up losing the contract because the stuff they produced was naff?
    Imagine also signed a deal to produce games for publishing giant Marshall Cavendish's Input magazine, but this later fell through, apparently because the software wasn't delivered fast enough.

    http://www.pcmag.co.uk/personal-computer-world/features/2045724/golden-years-gaming

    Some of the games were later released - Pedro and Space Cruiser for two, though not Stonkers.
  • GrazGraz
    edited April 2009
    Love INPUT. Best series of collectable magazines...Ever. I've still got the 4 binders from when they first came out, and luckily picked up another set at a charity shop for ?4.00. Then another set in the same shop a week later for ?3.summink. I don't want to ever be without Input. Infact, I started reading binder 1 again two weeks ago. Bliss.
  • chop983chop983
    edited April 2009
    frobush wrote: »
    http://www.pcmag.co.uk/personal-computer-world/features/2045724/golden-years-gaming

    Some of the games were later released - Pedro and Space Cruiser for two, though not Stonkers.

    If I'd typed in Pedro I'd be well pissed off
  • mel the bellmel the bell
    edited April 2009
    yeah my dads still got "ours" all in binders at his house..........ive got some here too that i got off somebody off here........think theres a few missing tho
    Professional Mel-the-Bell Simulator................"So realistic, I found myself reaching for the Kleenex King-Size!" - Richard Darling
  • zxspecticlezxspecticle
    edited April 2009
    chop983 wrote: »
    If I'd typed in Pedro I'd be well pissed off

    Regardless of how poor Pedro and Cosmic Cruiser are, I think Input would have benefitted enormously from having games like these that could have had their core machine code routines listed and explained in detail every week until eventually you had a finished game.

    Writing machine code routines is one thing, linking them all together to form a complete game is quite another. It would have been a great way to teach machine code programming and applying it to games programming.

    I wonder if this was the intention for these games? It would explain why they are so basic in their design.

    It would have meant the programmers at Imagine actually writing these weekly articles for it to have worked I?d have thought.
  • frobushfrobush
    edited April 2009
    I think they were meant to be cover mounted games for the Spectrum and C64. (Yes, way back then.) You'd never be able to type them in!
  • zxspecticlezxspecticle
    edited April 2009
    frobush wrote: »
    I think they were meant to be cover mounted games for the Spectrum and C64. (Yes, way back then.) You'd never be able to type them in!

    Having a cover mounted game each week doesn?t seem to fit in with Inputs intended purpose as highlighted by its tag line:

    "Learn Programming For Fun And The Future"

    I?m not convinced that was the intension for Pedro And Cosmic Cruiser.

    Why wouldn?t you be able to type in those 2 games, spread across all those issues?
  • frobushfrobush
    edited April 2009
    I don't know the ins and outs of the deal - maybe you sent off for them of something. And it's not unusual for these 'part work' magazines / encyclopedias to have things strapped to their covers - be it videos / dvds / books or plastic model kits.

    You'd have to be pretty dedicated to type in a game of the sizes we are talking about. And there was supposed to a game a week on 2 formats for however long the run was.

    No, I'm pretty sure they were to be a cover mounted. Maybe this was 'one' of the reasons the deal fell through - making the publiction too expensive to sell - a final nail in the coffin.
  • zxspecticlezxspecticle
    edited April 2009
    frobush wrote: »
    You'd have to be pretty dedicated to type in a game of the sizes we are talking about..

    Although they only run in 48k, I wouldn?t have thought they filled that amount of memory. If the games were cut into core routine chunks with articles explaining what was happening and how they worked then I'm sure that would have made it interesting enough to endure the typing. One of the early Melbourne House books did much the same, teaching machine code by example with a frogger style game to type in. (can?t remember the title of the book)
    frobush wrote: »
    No, I'm pretty sure they were to be a cover mounted. Maybe this was 'one' of the reasons the deal fell through - making the publication too expensive to sell - a final nail in the coffin.

    Having said all that, yeah your probably correct, you were much "closer to the action" so to speak to know after all. I guess there really is no excuse as to why both of those games are utter crap.
  • frobushfrobush
    edited April 2009
    zxspecticle wrote: »
    Having said all that, yeah your probably correct, you were much "closer to the action" so to speak to know after all. I guess there really is no excuse as to why both of those games are utter crap.

    Maybe the actual original versions of the games were much smaller in scale (?) and when the Cavandish deal fell through Imagine developed them into full scale releases.

    I don't know.

    Dougie Burns would know. He was there at the time. I think Imagine took loads of people on just to cover that Cavendish contract (it's a pity that they cut corners and got loads of school kids in, who had never produced anything commercially before).

    And it would have been a good concept to have the games split over numerous issues as type-ins. But I got the feeling that INPUT was aimed at a more commercial, lowest common denominator market for the masses. People who wouldn't know how to, or want to, type things in.

    EDIT - I remember an ex-Imagine musicain coming looking for work at Ocean and he showed us all a peice of Spectrum education software - for young kids - which I'm sure was also meant for INPUT. An Asian (?) bloke. The music was really good.

    He's the one on keyboards holding the guitar...

    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=SinclairUser/Issue025/Pages/SinclairUser02500088.jpg

    And here are Imagine asking for 30 programmers, and loads of other people too...

    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=C+VG/Issue027/Pages/CVG02700170.jpg

    ...probably the advert Doug applied to!

    The musician guy was/is called Abdul Ibrahim...

    ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/company-pics/ImagineSoftwareLtd/ImagineSoftwareLtd-ad10.jpg

    ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/company-pics/ImagineSoftwareLtd/ImagineSoftwareLtd-ad10.jpg
  • frobushfrobush
    edited April 2009
    Just found this...

    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=YourComputer/Issue8411/Pages/YourComputer841100077.jpg
    Mistake number five was the Marshall cavendish project to produce 26 games across 5 machines - this was worth as much as ?11 million to Imagine over two years.
  • zxspecticlezxspecticle
    edited April 2009
    It would be interesting to know who did do the programming for the machine code routines and basic programs that appeared over the course of the magazines run. Apart from the mention of Imagine winning and then losing the contract, I've never seen anyone credited for this work. Maybe some of the work Imagine did was used? I guess we will never know.

    It must have taken an awful lot of planning for this series of magazines, especially with the programs and routines having to be adapted over several computer formats.
  • frobushfrobush
    edited April 2009
    I must admit tht I've never read the magazine (I'd seen it on the shop shelves) - so didn't know it had listings.

    I doubt it had any Imagine code there though...
    Marshall Cavendish became disenchanted by the lack of progress on their games. They had already paid out a lot of money and seem to have been unhappy with the quality of what was ready. They pulled out and wanted their money back. But Imagine had taken on more people to cope, programmers, artists, musicians, gophers. None of these was laid off, the overheads went up alarmingly.

    http://www.crashonline.org.uk/12/imagine.htm

    If Cavendish pulled out and wanted their money back I doubt Imagine would hand over code without keeping payment.
  • snigfarpsnigfarp
    edited April 2009
    frobush wrote: »
    And it would have been a good concept to have the games split over numerous issues as type-ins. But I got the feeling that INPUT was aimed at a more commercial, lowest common denominator market for the masses. People who wouldn't know how to, or want to, type things in.

    As you've noticed later on in the thread, it did have listings; over half the articles in there were based around them. There were some games split over numerous issues too, though none over the full 52. I think the longest one was a machine code game "Cliffhanger" split over about a dozen issues. A lot of the multi-part ones were simplistic but just-playable games in three parts. Cavendish Field was one of these.
  • frobushfrobush
    edited April 2009
    snigfarp wrote: »
    As you've noticed later on in the thread, it did have listings; over half the articles in there were based around them.

    Yeah, and with a name like INPUT I guess it was pretty obvious - but not to me! LOL!
  • zxspecticlezxspecticle
    edited April 2009
    frobush wrote: »
    Yeah, and with a name like INPUT I guess it was pretty obvious - but not to me! LOL!

    Off topic but can you remember what books you used to learn Z80?
  • frobushfrobush
    edited April 2009
    zxspecticle wrote: »
    Off topic but can you remember what books you used to learn Z80?

    Yeah.

    "Programming the Z80" by Rodnay Zaks (the bible - it's thicker too)...

    http://tinyurl.com/cnyk4y

    (I bought from a shop in London when on a school trip, and was reading it on the train back - it didn't get me any girls!)

    ...and...

    "Spectrum Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner" from Melborne House...

    http://tinyurl.com/cdoaq8

    ...this was okay for getting keyboad routines and a few sound bits and pieces - enough to be going on with.
  • zxspecticlezxspecticle
    edited April 2009
    frobush wrote: »
    "Spectrum Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner" from Melborne House...

    http://tinyurl.com/cdoaq8

    ...this was okay for getting keyboad routines and a few sound bits and pieces - enough to be going on with.

    Ah - that was the book I was talking about earlier, which taught machine code by example with a frogger game to type in.
  • frobushfrobush
    edited April 2009
    zxspecticle wrote: »
    Ah - that was the book I was talking about earlier, which taught machine code by example with a frogger game to type in.

    I don't think I typed the frogger game in, but I think it had a pretty neat 'checkers' game with clever AI, which I did (type in)! And the book was written by William Tang - who did the Horace games et al!

    We really are off topic now - perhaps another thread?
  • zxspecticlezxspecticle
    edited April 2009
    frobush wrote: »
    I don't think I typed the frogger game in, but I think it had a pretty neat 'checkers' game with clever AI, which I did (type in)! And the book was written by William Tang - who did the Horace games et al!

    We really are off topic now - perhaps another thread?

    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showmag.cgi?mag=SinclairUser/Issue014/Pages/SinclairUser01400089.jpg

    Nah - I'll just stop asking stupid bloody questions!

    ;-)
  • dougburnsdougburns
    edited April 2009
    frobush wrote: »
    Pedro and Space Cruiser for two, though not Stonkers.

    Cosmic Cruiser - with a theme tune that always sounded uncannily like the Soviet national anthem to me.
Sign In or Register to comment.