Well here is a history to THE CRYPT. It was started by
myself and Steven Hyde around November 1996. Disk magazines were
two a penny in those days and most of them were rubbish and lasted
just a few editions.
Steve and I decided to start a NEW style of Disk magazine which would
be totally free from censorship and prohibitions and thus THE CRYPT
was born.
In those early days the disk mag was written by just a hand full of
people for just a few folks. Our early circulation figures were around
5/6 copies per issue, But did improve many months later. I should
explain that THE CRYPT was published on an "as and when" basis.
Later on Jonathan Bryant (XLR8) joined our team as Musical Editor
along with a few others. THE CRYPT was written on an early edition
of DMC from edition No1 to No4.
Things changed dramatically for us during the summer of 1997.
We teamed up with Ian Ison (Triadian) who promptly coded a new
front end with Amos2 called TUMM (The Ultimate Magazine Maker)
First use of TUMM was with Edition No5.
TUMM was to be a great success for THE CRYPT as circulation figures
scaled overnight from 20 plus copies per edition to over 100 :)))
However TUMM like most newly coded programs was a little bit "buggy"
and crashed on some versions of Amiga. Not that it deterred it's
popularity one little bit. Triadian worked hard on the code and by
THE CRYPT No7 TUMM was pretty stable.
I thought that things were looking very good at that point in time as
circulation figures exceeded 120 copies per edition and contributions
were flowing in, but there was disaster just on the horizon.
Just as with the Ripper there was trouble in the camp. Steve Hyde
fell out with Triadian. Triadian fell out with Ginja Ninja and I was
left to pick up the pieces. Oh what deep joy it is to run a disk mag ?
June 1998 saw the last TUMM edition of THE CRYPT (No8) when
Triadian came home early from work one afternoon and found his
young wife (married just 6 months) in bed with his best mate :(((
Triadian packed his bags and Amiga and buggered off, never to
be seen or heard of again.
With Triadian out of the scene, Steve Hyde rejoined us along with
a newcomer Craig Daines (Hercules) and THE CRYPT carried on its
merry way now using DMC v2 as we are still using now.
Alas the departure of TUMM and the return to DMC brought a
substantial reduction in the number of editions that we sent out.
We dropped from around 120 to 30/35 copies almost over night.
It would also appear that the readers rather enjoyed all the
bickering and slagging off between Steve Hyde and Triadian in the
various articles ;)
However THE CRYPT went on until I finally put her to rest in June
1999. Edition No13 being symbolically the last !
Why? well the usual story.....Lack of contributions... as simple as that.
One point that is perhaps interesting is that we STILL have
most of the old Crypties with us. Namely :-
Myself (The Dungeon Master) From Edition 1
Steven Hyde (Dr. Jekyll) From Edition 1
Jonathan Bryant (XLR8) From Edition 4
Craig Daines (Hercules) From Edition 9
That in itself must say something :)))
Ray.
| 