COMPUNET Update

PETER HARDCASTLE clues us in on the new COMPUNET Multi User Game - REALM...

Every year when the Christmas season comes along the COMPUNET users huddle around their computers and start to do nutty things! This year is proving to be as silly as ever. With online pantos and parties and a masterquiz with excellent prizes there is always something for everybody. We also have a CIN night which always raises a vast amount for the charity. One mad subscriber cycled to the French Alps and back and raised around £500 in donations from COMPUNET users. His adventure proved popular online too as he sent daily reports which we uploaded.

AWARDS

Another annual feature of COMPUNET is the Year End Awards competition run by the ICC (Independent Compunet Club). Subscribers are nominated by fellow users for a number of different awards categories. These include: Best Demo, Best Text, Most Humorous 'Netter, and (of course) the Cnet Personality of the Year. The nominees names are uploaded and - by using the online voting facility - all Cnet users are able to vote for their favourites.

Christmas aside, the big COMPUNET news this winter is the launch of the Multi User Fantasy Game REALM. Written by a 17 year old Leicester computer wiz-kid, Martin Hardcastle (no relation - honest!). As well as having the best sumame in the known universe he also has (for my money) one of the best Multi User Games too.

It's a Middle Earth magical fantasy in the traditional Dungeons and Dragons style. Here is how REALM's creator describes the game...

REALM is a Multi User Gamie set in a world very like Tolkien's Middle Earth (or the setting of many other 'fantasy' or 'sword and sorcery' novels) - a world where magic works and heroes are as common as the monsters they slay. Where there are few natural laws; a world which can change and grow with its inhabitants.

The Realm itself can be thought of as a land which was once prosperous and populated, but which has been devastated due to natural disaster and overrun by nasties of the worst kind.

You are cast as a typical greedy and blood thirsty human (or elf, dwarf etc.) interacting with other players and computer-controlled 'mobiles'. Your task in REALM is to amass points by collecting treasure, solving puzzles and fighting enemies in order to rise and become Immortal.

KILLED BY ORCS

REALM is just the sort of game I'd hoped to see on COMPUNET one day. A true, traditional MUG in the style of MUD and SHADES. I liked it because it is very fair to slow, stupid, beginners like myself. This will appeal to those who haven't normally got the patience to sit and work out hard puzzles while continuously being killed off by Orcs etc. Thankfully the mobiles tend to leave us beginners alone. On the whole the game is well written, the many locations are well described, and the puzzles I have managed to solve seemed to have just the right level of difficulty.

REALM is currently running on an ST with lMB memory, located in the Cnet office in London. It costs £l.50 per hour to play, and to access the game you first need to be a member of COMPUNET.

For further details ring Tracy on 01-997-2591 or write to COMPUNET, SHERATON BUSINESS CENTRE, WADSWORTH ROAD, PERIVALE, LONDON UB6 7JB.