Old news from 1997-98

Old news from 97-2003

08-22-2003

12 new reviews from old Amstrad magazines are available in the articles section and on the appropriate game pages. The reviews were dug out, retyped and kindly donated by Nicholas Campbell.
Scans of the official Myth solution book are available on the Myth page. The scans were recovered from his treasure chest and kindly donated by John P. King.

Jeff Mitchell is porting Magnetic 2.2 to the Palm. If you never really knew what your Palm is good for, you should give it a try. It looks very promising:
http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/magnetic.html
The Glk port and the source code package of Magnetic 2.2 have been updated. All ports and the latest source archive are available on the Magnetic page.

The fact sheet was updated to include new information about "Fred". You can get it here or from the online fact sheet.
Here is also a new screenshot of the someday coming new JMagnetic (the core is fully compliant to Magnetic 2.2 now, but several dialogs are to be done before a first beta...)

03-28-2003

Magnetic 2.2 is here. While it is mainly a maintenance release, it also includes a new text only mode for the in-game hints. Not to mention it is much nicer than the separate window, it makes porting much easier. Up-to-date versions are available for Amiga, Dos, Dos32, Glk, GTK, and Windows. All ports and the latest source archive are available on the Magnetic page.

The fact sheet was updated to include Magnetic 2.2 plus some minor typos. You can get it here or from the online fact sheet.

07-12-2002

Another update of the Magnetic 2.1 source package including the latest sources of Simon Baldwin's glk port and the latest sources of Torbjörn Andersson's GTK port. The updated archive is available on the Magnetic page.

I have compiled a new Magnetic Scrolls fact sheet, which replaces the almost three year old fact sheet from Gunther Schmidl. You can get it here or from the online fact sheet.

06-30-2002

Some more Magnetic 2.1 news:

Torbjörn Andersson's GTK port was updated. The latest version is available on the Magnetic page. Besides Simon Baldwin has upgraded his Linux/Glk port to Magnetic 2.1.

Some new additions to the fact sheet.

06-11-2002

The first update this year brings a lot of Magnetic news:

Magnetic 2.1 is here!
Magnetic now supports the online hints of the Magnetic Windows games (Wonderland and The Collection). The source code, a new Windows port, a new Linux/GTK port and precompiled hint files are available on the Magnetic page. Hopefully a lot of the current Magnetic 2.0 ports will upgrade to the latest release soon.

New Magnetic 2 ports!
Several ports of Magnetic 2 were released during the last weeks:
Magnetic 2 for EPOC by Simon
Magnetic 2 for Glk by Simon Baldwin

These are available on the Magnetic page,too. The Magnetic 2 source distribution is updated to include the sources of the new ports.
Small additions to the fact sheet.

11-19-2001

Thanks to John P. King (http://www.pcwking.freeserve.co.uk), I finally got the last missing piece for my Magnetic Scrolls collection - an orginal of Myth. The missing cover page of the Myth Adventure guide and a scan of the original Amstrad disc are available on the Myth page.
Added alternative cover of The Pawn and scans of the official The Pawn solution book by Magnetic Scrolls to The Pawn page.
Seven reviews added ( The Pawn, Guild of Thieves, Jinxter, Myth). You can find them on the appropriate game pages and on the articles list.
New menu bar and loader page which should get rid of the problems with Netscape 6.
Any news on JMagnetic2? The sad, but simple truth is: Since months I am overloaded with real world work, which also explains the rare updates of these Memorial pages and Adventureland (and Peter from the Magnetic Scrolls Chronicles waiting since ages for a review of his Jinxter novella). Fact is that I started reworking larger parts of JMagnetic with writing a new framework, however progress is slow, and even came to halt for weeks several times. As I do not expect many changes in my available spare time, it is impossible to estimate a release date. I intend to continue working on a new version, but it will take time. The current alpha release is missing some features, however it supports all games including the Magnetic Windows games with static graphics and from what I know is quite stable, so it might do until the next version is here (Here is a screenshot of the upcoming version)
Minor corrections on several pages (fixed some linke, HTML cleanup)

07-10-2001

The rumors are put to an end. The mysterious second issue of Guild of Thieves' What Burglar did exist. It is available as pdf on the Guild of Thieves page. A very BIG Thank you! goes to Mario Möller for the scans!

04-29-2001

The manual of Guild of Thieves - What Burglar - is available as pdf now. You can get it from the Guild of Thieves page.
Magnetic 1 for the Epoc (written by Simon Quinn) is available on the Magnetic page.
Kim Heath has donated a scan of the Wonderland poster. You can get it from the Wonderland page.
Update on JMagnetic 2: The development is continued, but due to my real world work it goes much slower than I want. On the JMagnetic2 page there are some new screenshots of the upcoming Alpha 2, which should be feature-complete.
Tidied up the Links section, i.e. added some new links.
Background information: Some days ago, an auction on ebay ended with one of the highest bids for a single interactive fiction title (at least as far as I know): £178 for an orginal of Magnetic Scrolls' Myth.

01-27-2001

Now there is an addintional Magnetic repository available at http://magnetic.sourceforge.net. The project site is here.

01-09-2001

JMagnetic 2.0 Alpha 1 is available on the JMagnetic2 page.

01-02-2001

Magnetic 2.0 for Linux/GTK Beta 0.10 source available on Magnetic page.

12-27-2000

Added status page for JMagnetic 2.0.

12-23-2000

Magnetic 2.0 for Linux/GTK Beta 0.10 r2 available on Magnetic page.

12-19-2000

Magnetic 2.0 for Linux/GTK Beta 0.10 available on Magnetic page.

12-17-2000

MAGNETIC 2 released

After nearly two years of work, Magnetic 2 is finally here (We started working on Magnetic 2 in Feb. 1999 with extracting story files for Wonderland...).

The main highlight of the new Magnetic is the support for Wonderland and the Collection games.

Magnetic 2 is immediately available on the Magnetic page.

Enjoy it (perhaps there is some time during winter holidays for Wonderland?)

Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!

11-16-2000

The first update after a long time brings mainly a status update for Magnetic 2. The good news: We are really, really close to release (click for screenshots):

Currently in the works are ports for Windows NT/95, Amiga, Dos, Dos 32 (all by David Kinder), Linux/GTK (by David Lodge), Java and QNX (me).

Besides there are now cover scans from the US packages (Corruption, Fish!(!), Wonderland) available, kindly contributed by Manuel Schulz.

The last months were full with Magnetic related work and the takeover of Adventureland, but updates of the Magnetic Scrolls Memorial will come more frequently again after the Magnetic 2 release.

04-14-2000

The old wav files of the Corruption tape have been replaced by MP3 files now offering stereo quality and slightly reduced download time. The MP3s are available on the Corruption page

Feature "Software Specialities" taken from Happy Computer magazine 6/87 is available on articles page.

New Jinxter review taken from Your Sinclair 30 (written by Mike Gerrard) is available on Jinxter page.

03-03-2000

Jean Marc Barbier has contributed a complete scan of the Wonderland manual. It is available on the Wonderland page.

Good news for all Mac users: JMagnetic for Mac is a special compilation of JMagnetic that supports Mac Look&Feel and integrates with the Mac system. It is maintained by mathew and can be downloaded here.

.02-03-2000

Mostly technical update: Navigation bar on each page, several changes in the page layout, especially the main page was splitted for reducing download time. The MSMemorial now has a server-side search engine, a more automatted newsletter subscription and a new guestbook.

Please note: The pages now contain DHTML,CSS and Javascript-elements and thus require a browser version 4 or higher. However for those of you with an older browser who do not want to upgrade or do not have access to a browser that supports the above, there is also a "Browser 3.x-compatible" set of pages available. Not as comfortable and beautiful as the normal pages but with the same content.

There are also some non-technical updates this time:
Separate overview page for all articles on Maggot Rolls and the games plus a new Fish! review taken from Your Sinclair 41 (written by Mike Gerrard)

12-23-99

The Magnetic Scrolls Memorial is back online. Together with Manuel Schulz, maintainer of the Level9 Memorial, we decided to open a new i.f.-related server after the webspace from my friends at datura.jump.org was gone. The result is
IF-LEGENDS.ORG - A world of legendary storytellers

Besides this site and the Level9 Memorial, you find PDD's Adventure page, Ye olde Infocomme Shopper, and the Adventure International Memorial. Explore the world of storytellers...

07-02-99

JMAGNETIC 1.2 available now. For details please refer to JMagnetic page.
Search applet added to main page. The MSMSearch applet is freeware and can be downloaded here.
An interview with Magnetic Scrolls' Anita Sinclair available on main page (kindly donated by Richard Karsmakers).

05-31-99

JMAGNETIC 1.2.0 is coming soon...some of the benefits of the new release:
Modern Swing based user interface,
Freely scaleable graphics,
Both the interpreter and graphics handling are much faster than before,
Game selection menu,
Support for external MP3 players,
and ...

04-05-99

"Chuck Vommit - Magnetic Scrolls" interview is available on main page. The scan of the original article from ZZAP! magazine was kindly donated by Iain Black.
"Corruption review" added to Corruption page. This article was also taken from ZZAP! magazine and donated by Iain Black!
Scans of "Stop press" and "Addendum" have been added to The Pawn page.
Build yourself a "Guild of Thieves"-die on the Guild of Thieves page...
Images showing the original floppy disks are available on the several game pages.

03-02-99

The 4th release of Magnetic for Windows written by David Kinder is available on Magnetic page. Now WinMagnetic also plays the title songs in Mp3 format.

I changed the names of the mp3 files to the names of the matching story files.

02-01-99

And now your journey goes even further: You read about it, you played it, but did you ever walk the world of Magnetic Scrolls? The Datura Networks team has created the Tales of Kerovnia MUD , based on the worlds and characters from the Magnetic Scrolls games. Visit all the locations from The Pawn, Guild of Thieves, Jinxter and even more. Start your journey here or use your favourite telnet client with telnet://kerovnia.jump.org:2094

Release 3 of David Kinder's Magnetic for Windows is available on Magnetic page.

Article Message in a microchip can be found on the memorial page. It was taken from Crash magazine issue 55 and kindly donated by Matthew Williams from The Crash Online Edition.

Jinxter map, donated by Matej Pokorn and Helena Kenda, added to Jinxter page.

Updated fact sheet .

Updated JMagnetic page.

Updated links.

01-21-99

The title music of the games is available as MP3 on the Magnetic page. A big Thank you! is sent to Peter Verdi for his great help with getting wav files from the original sounds.

Frank Skagemo has retyped two old articles from Commodore magazine and donated: The Pawn: England's Finest Hour can be found on The Pawn page, Preview:The Guild of Thieves is available on Guild of Thieves page. Thank you!

01-12-99

JMagnetic released! The java port of Niclas Karlsson's interpreter for Magnetic Scrolls games is available on the Magnetic page. A big Thank you! is sent to Paul David Doherty, David Kinder, Jeff Mitchell, and Peter Verdi for their most valuable help in developing, testing and anything else.

The pages have a beautiful new logo that was donated by Peter Verdi. Besides Peter has contributed a lot of articles that will be available here soon. Not to mention his great help with testing JMagnetic. Thank you!

10-05-98

Stefan Jokisch's second release of Magnetic for Dos is available on the Magnetic page. His new release is capable of displaying the wonderfull title screens of the games. The images are also located on the page.

Unprotects for the PC releases of Wonderland and the MS Collection Vol. 1 are now available.

Fact sheet has been updated.

Links have been updated.

06-08-98

Complete Wonderland solution is now available on Wonderland page.

WinMagnetic by David Kinder updated to Release2. Refer to Magnetic page

Added screen shot of David Kinder's WinMagnetic R2 to Magnetic page.

Fixed broken 'Next'-button link on The Pawn page.

04-16-98

HELP! The Datura.Jump team and me, we are desperately seeking for Georgina Sinclair who wrote the Tale of Kerovnia. All I know about her is that she is the sister of Anita Sinclair, one of the founders of Maggot Rolls, and that she got married some years ago most probably. Please, if you have the slightest idea how or where to find Georgina, please mail me. It is quite important to track her down.

Fish! game review added to Fish! page (provided by Matej Pokorn)

Scans of Myth package and adventure guide available on Myth page. Replaced the text with the original description of the game box.

Some information added to Pawn page.

Links section enhanced.

03-26-98

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
This is for all the people who wanted to help me after the sudden loss of my webspace. A very special THANK YOU! goes to Matej Pokorn and Helena Kenda from DaTurA.JumP.orG for giving me the opportunity of keeping the Memorial pages alive (as Helena said: Every cloud has a silver lining... :-).

Another big THANK YOU! is sent to the following people for also offering help:

Jeff Mitchell who also offered web space to me, http://www.icomm.ca/~skeezix/,
Frank Skagemo who offered to collect some web space from different locations, http://home.sol.no/~skagemo/if/
Howard A. Sherman for offering web space on his servers: http://randomonline.com
Joakim Ziegler for offering web space on the FIX BBS: http://www.fix.no
Howard Liu for offering web space on IF-News: http://if-news.gamestats.com

If you really enjoy these pages, just have a short 'grateful' thought on the people making it available. They prove the internet being much more than just a commerce net. And offering such huge amounts of webspace more than 30MB is not a matter of course. Many free projects on the net deserve support from helpful people and organisations. Said in a somewhat philosophical manner, these people take an active part in making the internet an information repository than just a 'nobody really knows what this is all good for'-playground. So, please consider visiting their sites as saying a little 'Thank you' by yourself - of course in addition to signing my guestbook ;-)
Enjoy the pages and keep the i.f. spirit alive!

Oh, hey, there are also some addittions:
David Kinder's Win32 port and David Lodge's Acorn port have been added to the Magnetic page, and Jan Øyvind Kruse has created download packages of the What Burglar pages, which can found on the Guild of Thieves page.

02-10-98

Some additions/corrections applied to the fact sheet. I removed some sections because that information is represented in the sections of the various releases.

Jan Øyvind Kruse has created a 'fast download' package of the Corruption organizer pages (about 0.5 meg). It is available on Corruption page.

Added some more emulators to main page which support the games.

01-26-98

Article Softstory - Interview with Anita Sinclair (translated from article found in Happy Computer 1/87, written by Boris Schneider and Heinrich Lenardt) added to main page.

Some additions/corrections applied to MYTH section of the fact sheet.

Fixed broken image link on main page.

Minor error corrected on QL-Pawn page.

Added Magnetic Utilities written by Dark Fiber to Magnetic page.

Some changes made on Request page

12-22-97

Complete What Burglar is available now on Guild of Thieves page.

Casino Rules added to Corruption page.

Cypheric Hint Section added to Corruption page.

Image of "500" chip added to Corruption page.

Some changes/additions done to the fact sheet.

Some addition made to request page.

An unknown Maggot Rolls fan has created PDF versions from A Tale of Kerovnia, The Independent Guardian, and the Fish! manual. I found the files at the if-archive/incoming. The files are available on the respective pages. I'd be glad to get in touch with the author, so I can add his name to the credits page...

12-08-97

The design of the pages has changed a little bit... :-)

New page for QL-Pawn, the first Maggot Rolls release ever. Pictures and information were donated by Gareth Williams.

Updated version of Sven Siggelkow's Wonderland password list available on Wonderland page.

Small anecdote on the Douglas Adams advert in What Burglar written by Michael Bywater added to Guild of Thieves page.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I made a big mistake with the Corruption tapes. The tapes from the original Corruption and from the Collection are indeed equal. Sometimes memory is unreliable, so I did not remember that the tapes are two-sided (I played Corruption ten years ago :-). So you need BOTH wav-files to get the full story. The links on the pages are updated. Sorry for your inconvenience.

Updated some release versions on the fact sheet.

11-29-97

Jeff Mitchell's Unix port of Magnetic is available now on the Magnetic page.

Wav file of Tape Derek Rogers March 25th shipped with Corruption added to Corruption page.

Wav file of Tape Derek Rogers March 25th shipped with Magnetic Scrolls Collection Vol.1 added to MS Collection Vol. 1 page. This tape is quite different from the original tape as it contains only a small part of the original dialog plus a 3 minutes soundtrack.

I want to ask you a favour:
I do not know if wav files ( and the IM ADPCM compression ) are supported on Unix, Amiga, Mac,... . So please let me know if the chosen format is not suitable for you.

11-19-97

Remaining chapters (2, 3, 4) of Fish! manual added to Fish! page.

11-09-97

Chapter 1 of Fish! manual available on Fish! page.

Password list added to Wonderland page.

11-01-97

New guestbook (Entries 1-13 have been transfered from old guestbook).

10-31-97

Added release versions to the factsheet.

10-11-97

Cypheric Hint Section added to The Pawn page.

10-08-97

The Independent Guardian added to Jinxter page.

10-07-97

More minor bug fixes :-)

09-28-97

Minor bug fixes.

09-25-97

Sketch of Die provided by Stefan Jokisch added to Guild of Thieves page.

Personal manager pages added to Corruption page .

Too many changes to mention in detail :-)...I hope you like the "new" memorial pages.

07-10-97

Poster added to Guild of Thieves page.

New info added to Guild of Thieves page.

Unprotect for Amiga version of Wonderland added to download page.

Unprotect for Amiga version of MS Collection Vol. 1 added to download page.

New guestbook. Now hosted by LPage.com. The old guestbook can be viewed on the main page.

06-28-97

A Tale of Kerovnia is complete now.

Independent Guardian Page 1 added to Jinxter page.

06-22-97

Chapters 5 and 6 added to A Tale of Kerovnia.

Fish Identification Chart added to Fish! page.

06-16-97

Chapters 3 and 4 added to A Tale of Kerovnia.

What Burglar frontpage added to Guild of Thieves page.

Info Fax Guide added to Corruption page.

06-10-97

Added scans of staff memos to Jinxter page.

06-08-97

First two chapters of the Tale of Kerovnia are now available on The Pawn page. The other chapters will follow soon.