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Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:03 am
by Rorthron
Thanks for putting this together. You've done a fantastic job of capturing the Crash look.

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:03 pm
by Einar Saukas

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2020 1:16 pm
by Ralf
Looks very authentic, like some old mag printed on so-so quality paper and scanned
I'll make a proper reading of it soon,

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2020 5:09 pm
by XTM
Cheers guys. I aim to please! British people (well, those who actually are) telling a German something he made is funny must be a rare accolade.

For some things referenced in the Bloggo's Pow intro text (before the three reviewers speak), I highly recommend you watch this video of Ashens losing it. It is absolutely priceless!
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adkWiJA9xR0[/media]

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2020 6:58 am
by ketmar
oh, please, can we get those SCUMSOFT games?! i am especially interested in Combat Skool Daze, it sounds like an instant hit!

(somebody, please! Spectrum NEEDS that game!)

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2020 10:33 am
by Vampyre
Just read "my" review of Plonker and lol'ing. Me a "master gamer" - hah! I might play these supposed difficult games but in reality I ain't that good at them. I'm just relentless and never give up until completion (although Sekiro I gave up on at the farting/crapping ape). Boozy's 10x the player I''l ever be.

The review comments are just great - loved PSJ talking about wine gums :lol:

The Joffa interview was magic.

And the brilliant Steve Davis Snooker 128k easter egg.

I'd happily pay a few quid for a proper print version of this.

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 9:09 am
by MarkRJones1970
Great work! Very authentic looking. I like how you've made the white pages slightly brown like a real Crash! I've printed this out to stick in with my real Crashes! Good work.

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 9:51 am
by Einar Saukas
I hope CRAP will have a sequel... next issue could be "Crap Your Sinclair" :)

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 10:09 am
by Morkin
Maybe a daft question, but who's the dude on the cover..?

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 10:36 am
by richl
I'm seriously impressed with how much effort you've put into this to make it look so authentic even down to slight blurring of text near the gutter, and the content is brilliant as well. My only gripe would be that I felt the whole aspect of Lie actually responding to people on the letters page totally unbelievable. ;)

It's a shame that people on World of Chit Chat didn't respond more to your post over there but I guess the ones in the mag who've migrated over here have done so and I just have to say again that this is one of the best produced homages/spoofs/anythings(?!) that I've seen in a long time - well done, you! :)

[mention]Einar Saukas[/mention] - if there isn't already a category for DIGITAL would it not be a good idea to make one rather than having it categorised as PAPER? Even if there was a printed copy of this (which I'm sure XTM would be able to confirm) then I'm sure there have been (and will be) other mags and similar that are only available as PDF etc.... right?

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:24 pm
by Einar Saukas
richl wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 10:36 am @Einar Saukas - if there isn't already a category for DIGITAL would it not be a good idea to make one rather than having it categorised as PAPER? Even if there was a printed copy of this (which I'm sure XTM would be able to confirm) then I'm sure there have been (and will be) other mags and similar that are only available as PDF etc.... right?
Actually I have nothing to do with this. ZXDB doesn't even have categories for magazines. It's the SpectrumComputing site that inferred it's PAPER because it's stored as PDF.

Although I personally think this is an accurate classification. This magazine is produced as PDF but it's designed to mimic a real paper magazine. If you print it on paper yourself, you will get the same result as old magazines that were originally produced in a computer, then printed on paper for distribution.

Perhaps someone can suggest a better category than PAPER for magazines that look this way? As opposed to electronic magazines (DISK, TAPE, etc).

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 5:54 pm
by richl
Sorry, I never really know who does what and tend to just see anything on SC as part of ZXDB directly and vice versa. I only tagged you because you'd mentioned it was now official earlier in the thread.

It should be a magazine but PAPER really is misleading as presumably that implies that it was printed when it wasn't. A scanned copy of CRASH magazine would be PAPER because that's the medium it was produced and distributed on but a digital-only title can't be classed in the same way. I know you could print it out but you could also easily convert it to a video format and watch it on a TV but that wouldn't make it a DVD or Blu-ray etc... ;)

Likwise, I wouldn't expect a database such as MobyGames to classify a digital-only game as DISC when no physical version was released even if it could be released on that format a later date.

Anyway, without me banging on too much, I just thought I'd mention it because it seemed (to me) to be an inaccurate way of describing it.

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 6:35 pm
by Einar Saukas
richl wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 5:54 pmSorry, I never really know who does what and tend to just see anything on SC as part of ZXDB directly and vice versa.
There's no need to apologize! I was merely pointing out that ZXDB doesn't have information to distinguish if a certain magazine currently available as JPG or PDF was scanned, or originally produced this way.

But I see your point. The term PAPER is misleading. It would be better to adopt a broader term instead.

I know that SC currently classifies magazines in 4 categories:
  • DISK: Electronic magazine in disk format.
  • TAPE: Electronic magazine in tape format.
  • TEXT: Text only magazine in plain text (TXT) format.
  • PAPER: Non-electronic magazine in JPG, PNG (an image per page) or PDF (multiple pages) format, without distinguishing if scanned or produced digitally.
Is there a more generic term for a non-electronic magazine? Perhaps it could be simply called "MAG"?

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:21 pm
by XTM
Alright, replying to various people in order of posting:

@Vampyre
'sup master gamer! That was just another joke of course simply because you kept mentioning the Dark/Demon Soul's Games. On the other hand, by now you should have learned how to down that 'alf a lager without problems, even zx1 could do it!
Sorry, no print version from me, if you want one you have to make it yourself. Or ask Mark R Jones how he did his. I'd assume he cut the each of the double-page files into two halves in some proggy like Photoshop, then rearranged them to the typical (for 12 pages) format "1 2 11 12", "3 4 9 10", "5 6 7 8" on 3 sheets printed on both sides, then stuck the whole thing together.

@MarkRJones1979
Cheers, hope you liked the text in the Joffa tribute too (as I was kinda unsure how people would react to this weird idea of talking to a ghost). My secret regarding the colours and texture on every page looking so real is simple - I scanned original pages from various of my own Crash issues, then used Photoshop to make clean space for my own text. The Clone Stamp, layer masks and the "adding noise" filter are extremely useful! Of course there was still tons of fiddling around with pixels here and there as I didn't always keep the original page layout ...

@Einar Saukas
A sequel with the next issue being "Crap Your Sinclair"? I'm afraid someone else will have to take up that task, as I don't hold much nostalgy for that mag, I grew up with Crash from age 13 (which helped my English loads) but only saw issues of the other 2 major mags every once in a while ... just couldn't get used to their style, Crash all the way for me.

@Morkin
Read the very first post of this topic again and you'll know who he is! Couldn't really have a cover for the only Crap Smash in this issue as that's the only game that actually exists, albeit not on the Speccy.

@richl
Thanks for the praise! I spent way too much time trying to get it look like that but at least it got noticed. Mister Lie F. (as well as a few other of the World of Chit Chat members I picked as reviewers/letter authors) hasn't yet responded to this thing at all so I doubt he read it (or ever will for that matter). I'm looking forward to Pavero's reaction on here as he had the whole section of Playing Tips to himself, and his tips on ACS (from Code Basterds) helped me a lot.

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:34 pm
by cmal
Great work!! Thanks for making this available.

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 6:46 am
by ketmar
XTM wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:21 pm Cheers, hope you liked the text in the Joffa tribute too (as I was kinda unsure how people would react to this weird idea of talking to a ghost).
i can't talk for others, of course, but i really liked it. but i love Monty Pythons, so of course i liked the interview. ;-)

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 8:27 am
by Morkin
XTM wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:21 pm @Morkin
Read the very first post of this topic again and you'll know who he is! Couldn't really have a cover for the only Crap Smash in this issue as that's the only game that actually exists, albeit not on the Speccy.
Oh...Joffa..? Didn't recognise him... :lol:

Guess it's probably a pic I haven't seen before...

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 4:14 pm
by XTM
Morkin wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2020 8:27 amOh...Joffa..? Didn't recognise him... :lol:

Guess it's probably a pic I haven't seen before...
Umm, no ... I'll say it again then: read the full first post of this topic.

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 4:18 pm
by Morkin
Gah..! OK, maybe I hadn't woken up when I read that post - I get it now..! :lol:

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2020 7:08 pm
by pavero
I think there is wonderful. There is for the first time in my life when I have two separate pages in some magazine. :-D

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2020 7:31 pm
by XTM
pavero wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 7:08 pm I think there is wonderful. There is for the first time in my life when I have two separate pages in some magazine. :-D
Cheers pavero! Though I was a little surprised how you didn't publish even a single map in your Playing Tips section ;)

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2020 10:19 am
by GreenCard
I'm finally getting around to reading this now. Fantastic work, XTM! :D

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2020 12:30 pm
by pavero
XTM wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 7:31 pm
pavero wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 7:08 pm I think there is wonderful. There is for the first time in my life when I have two separate pages in some magazine. :-D
Cheers pavero! Though I was a little surprised how you didn't publish even a single map in your Playing Tips section ;)
Surely it will be in the next issue. :-)

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 8:38 pm
by MarkRJones1970
XTM wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:21 pm Alright, replying to various people in order of posting:

@Vampyre

Sorry, no print version from me, if you want one you have to make it yourself. Or ask Mark R Jones how he did his. I'd assume he cut the each of the double-page files into two halves in some proggy like Photoshop, then rearranged them to the typical (for 12 pages) format "1 2 11 12", "3 4 9 10", "5 6 7 8" on 3 sheets printed on both sides, then stuck the whole thing together.
I just printed them out (on both sides of the page 1 at a time) and stapled the whole lot together.

Re: New "special" issue of CRASH (with tribute to Jonathan Smith)

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 5:34 pm
by Luzie
I put together a PDF-File "in Booklet-Format": Could be printed on A3 Paper:

(I´ve done it with Adobe Reader from the original PDF-File in two steps:
1) Resized pages which seems to be A5 to A4 (with Options Size / Adjust and Page Size A4) in Adobe Reader)
printing into a new PDF-File.
2) "Printed as Book" as described here: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/prin ... eader.html
into a new PDF-File called "Crap_2020-06_DIN_A3_Book.pdf" with PDFCreator).

Download here: https://www.magentacloud.de/lnk/s5CFAWAH

btw. [mention]XTM[/mention] Thanks a lot for mention in this issue. I just yesterday find time to read all through this fab issue of CRASH :D