by Jack Kincaid / jkinca1@cugkc.cjb.net
Hear Ye! Hear Ye! All come close while I tell you a story of the Ninth Wonder of Greater Kansas City! This is Mayor Kay Barnes talking to tell the people of the nation to come to KC to see not one, not two, but three bridges across the wide Missouri river all lit up in glorious color at night. This is really high up on her priority list, along with the Black Hole of KC, The Arena, The Music Hall, Union Station, and Recycle-First. Is this the best that all those high paid consultants for KC can do? I was down at 31st and Troost lately and saw several burned out buildings. Why not tear them down and make a little green space or a garden for the neighborhood? That would help the people and make the place look better at the same time.
At the June meeting, a grand total of 6 members attended. Lenard regaled us with his trip to the Commodore Expo. I am sure that it can be seen in a more humorous light now that it is over; long, quick trips can extract a toll at the time. The Club wants to thank Dan Fisher (new member) and Jon Searle for their contribution to the newsletter; Thanks Guys!! Go to our website and leave messages at the forum!
Scott Heider received the Club's LoadStar disk for this month. Vance has it for the month.
NEXT month: July 8, 2004 at the Waldo library. Hope to see you there.
I still have 64s and 128s with 1541 and 1571 drives. I also have monitors and printers just sitting in my basement doing nothing. For a small price they can be in your home doing something! Call or see me at the next meeting. My phone # is 816-761-4777 and I am home most days after 4 PM.
Financial Report
Balance May 2004 .................... $349.17
Income: June 2004 ...................
$ 0.00
Expenses: June 2004 .................-$ 0.00
Closing Balance June 2004 ........... $349.17
by Scott Heider / sheide1@cugkc.cjb.net
The Group meeting for June was held Thursday, June 10th at the Waldo branch of the Kansas City Public Library. 6 members attended.
Lenard Roach and family returned safe and sound from their road trip to the Commodore Spring Expo 2004 in New Albany, Indiana. For more info about the expo, see Lenard's report in June's Ryte Bytes. Also, if you're interested in playing "Where's Lenard?", check out this photo from the Expo at http://209.151.141.59:8000/lucki2004/images/Img0529.jpg. The photo is rather dark and blurry, but I believe that Lenard's smiling face can be seen.
Speaking of Lenard, before Memorial Day he received a phone call from someone at the Waldo Library requesting that he immediately remove the C= items that we had placed in the library's display case at May's meeting. It's a good thing that Lenard obeyed their orders, because at June's meeting we noticed that the display case itself is now gone! Oh well, hopefully some folks saw our display during its brief appearance. If you contributed items to the display, then please see Lenard to get them returned to you.
As I keep mentioning every few months, Bruce Thomas from the Commodore Users of Edmonton (CUE) club has been posting a GeoPublish tutorial on that club's website at http://edmc.net/cue/geopindex.html. Bruce's announcement: "I would like to announce that I have started posting the files for a thorough GeoPublish Tutorial. This series of articles (about 24 the way I have it planned right now) will take you through the creation of a handy reference guide for using geoPublish. The files are available in HTML format for viewing online and in CONVERTed GeoWrite format so you can download them and use them as you follow along and make your own printable manual. After 15+ years of using geoPublish I feel that I can pass on some info to help others get the most out of this complex piece of software." Indeed, from what I have read in the first few articles that have been posted, Bruce is providing a great service to those of us who have always wanted to use GeoPublish but couldn't figure out how to use it. As of May 22, Bruce has published the first 14 parts of the tutorial, and he has been publishing a new part on the average of every 4 weeks.
Attention, GEOS gamers: Here is some more great news from Bruce Thomas: "After nearly 3 years of searching and dealing with numerous people the GEOS Games Series of 4 disks containing 17 games for GEOS users has been released to the Public Domain. There are Card Games, Logic Games, Strategy Games, Brain Teasers, and Action Games. Many of the games have built in Editors so you can create your own levels. A number of the games maintain High Score lists. There are single player and two player games and some provide computer opponents. While some are familiar almost all of them present very interesting and unique feats of GEOS programming. These disks were previously available in the early 90's as Commercial Software in Germany in a format similar to the ReRUN disks with an accompanying manual. The original disks can be downloaded in D64 format from the CUE web site at http://edmc.net/cue/geogames.html. All of these games and their documentation will also be available on future issues of Loadstar - The Premier Monthly Software Digest for the Commodore 64 and 128."
Finally, a reminder about the next Group meeting. It will be held at the usual place, the Waldo Library, on the usual day, Thursday, July 8th at 7:00pm. Hope to see you there!
by Jon Searle / jsearl1@cugkc.cjb.net
Of all the games that I never thought would be fun or addictive, this little gem has to be the oddest. As often happens, I thought wrong. Qix has the player trying to control territory, in pieces or in chunks, while a shape changing, speed changing, random direction sprite is moving around the enclosed area of territory. Contact with the 'sprite' causes loss of a 'life' and frequently happens just when the player thinks he has a particularly large chunk of the playing field claimed.
Each board area consists of empty space and the 'sprite'. The player moves around the circumference until he sees a way to claim an area. This is done by moving area, dragging a boundary line with your cursor, and rejoining it at some other spot on the circumference. The surrounded area is then shaded, and a printout of percentage of territory gained appears. When at least 75% of a board is successfully claimed, the player is able to move on to the next board.
Sounds easy, doesn't it? Maybe sounds a little boring, too. As to easy, the 'sprite' just plain doesn't cooperate. Even if it contacts just the line being pulled around by you, the player, a life is lost. That is, unless the line is joined back to the circumference, or the circumference of a shaded area, one already under your control.
As if that weren't bad enough, the 'sprite' can generate tiny 'mini-sprites' that can travel around the boundary lines and circumferences, briefly existing only to give you grief. If they hit you, and they can, then you lose a life. These 'mini-sprites' move randomly also. Each board successfully won wins a higher score.
The Commodore Users Group of Kansas City is a not-for-profit educational support group for persons using Commodore computers.
Membership benefits include a monthly newsletter as well as access to CUGKC's library of over 1000 public domain and shareware disks.
Dues are $15 the first year, $10 annually thereafter. Disks of the month and library disks cost $3 each for members.
Meetings are held on the second Thursday of every month at the Waldo branch of the Kansas City Public Library, located at the corner of 75th and Oak Streets, Kansas City, Missouri. Visitors are welcome to attend any meeting. For more information, contact any officer:
Email us at cugkc@cugkc.cjb.net
or visit our web site at http://cugkc.cjb.net.
Our snail-mail address is:
CUGKC
6025 Corona Avenue
Kansas City, KS 66102