How can I help?

First, read the whole mag. We believe you will enjoy it.. Then, if you would like to see more issues soon, please contribute with your articles. You're free to send any kind of texts! There's only one limitation: Only English texts, please! We want to be read from all over the world(!), you see.

SEND YOUR TEXTS!! don't worry if you won't get a new issue (-8 !!   (updated in 2004)  Please delete my old address! It is not valid! Use my email instead for your texts!   [email protected]

Philosophy

Focus is open to all CPCers! We don't want to make wars with others and we aren't the best nor we want to be! Our primary task is to have fun while trying to bring together all -old & new- CPC freax. The key is total addiction to this good, old computer. A really demo-cratic society, yes!

CPC or CPC+ (not so emulator-friendly, due to split screens!), AMSDOS, Z80A/4Mhz, 128KB RAM, 48KB ROM 1.0, Crtc types 0/1/2, 40-track drive (3/ 3.5/ 5.25" runs on A or B drive), Direct-X 0.01(!) and some good scene spirit.
Alternatively, a Pentium PC running Win APE (The best CPC emulator so far!)...
 

The first issue was released in the end of 1996, after a lot of problems. Really, almost 2 years of delays! Because it was -firstly- planned to be coded by Catloc (after killing his project of Excess mag). Secondly, because we spent many months trying to "advertise" it. You see, we wanted to organize a group of permanent "reporters" from all countries of Europe, thus creating sources of frequent, updated information & articles. Many dreams and plans were made, we forced many times various guys to write something. Perhaps we overestimated the power of the scene, but the response was not sufficient. This way, if you read Focus, you will realize why most articles are mine.

Time was passing, the code was not complete but we had an obligation. Everybody asked "I'm waiting for Focus..." - But only few contributed (Thanks to them!). At some time, I got sick of waiting from others so I decided to take over the project. After having made (for a part for Chaos Megademo in 1994) a nice pixel-perfect vertical scroll routine, I optimized it and altered it to be used as a text viewer. I remember facing strange bugs, thanks to the screen addressing system, but eventually by the summer of  '96, the code was ready.

Another complexity was the fact that I wanted a font easy on the eye (unlike the tiring-to-read mode 2 characters) and the ability to display icons and pictures on-screen along with the text, much like the web-pages. Such stuff is time-consuming and also eats up memory. So, while finishing the main code, I had also to create another program to convert Ascii documents to the new enhanced Focus format. After lots of efforts, the result was to use 8x16-pixel fonts in Mode 1 (with 3 colors). Still, there was more work to be done! Fortunately I had prepared enough Soundtracker tunes, so the music stuff was settled. But what about graphics? I was lucky to find Rex and drew for me some icons (he couldn't cope with the fonts I reckon), while Catloc gave me the main logo and a tune.

The biggest problem remained though. My aim was to release it before 1997 with about 40 articles (I hate small fanzines), but we only received about 5! So I started writing, even translating texts that found interesting. The above may sound a bit disappointing, but that was the climate in that period. Just to make things worse, no other Greek freax bothered to offer enough articles, not even the other Chaos members! Only after many calls of help we eventually collected over 30 texts. Then, the editing and page set-up were the final stage. Me and Catloc managed to draw some bad icons and because I had nothing better, they were used also. Finally, I thought of a small intro and coded it in a hurry to finish up the project. What a great relief it was, when this burden was removed!