                             The S.O.F.T. project
                           commissioned by Valhalla

                    by Optix & his little pixie Hollywood


        April 2nd - bad day for me. Wrote a program, made a mistake, trashed
my HD. Will cost 2500 pounds to untrash. Looks like nothing is coming back
then.

        On that HD was the most recent version of SOFT and all of the support
utilities which go with it. By sheer luck I had given Statix/Psychic Link a
copy of the executable. So after many abortive attempts at disassembling to
retrieve the source code I have decided to release my 4Kb intro.

        What makes this different? Its got a tune - a small very ditty written
by Hollywood which all you GUS owners can hear. He was going to give me a new
one but I couldn't be bothered to wait.

        To that end these are the hardware requirements:

(1) A 486 DX2+ - the effects kill the processor. Anything slower and arrange a
funeral.

(2) A Gravis UltraSound - not required but you lose half the experience. At
least I did.

If it crashes??

        A 4K intro crashing?? God knows why if it did, it hasn't on the four
machines I have tested in on but it does a couple of things which might cause
problems:

(1) It looks for the ULTRASND label in the environment. If it finds it, it
assumes a GUS is present, finds the base port and starts sending rude
information to it. If by any small chance you are stupid enough to have an
ULTRASND label present and no GUS card (or something like an HD controller
sitting at that address) then thats NOT MY PROBLEM. It will BE YOURS. Don't
blame me for your stupidity.

(2) It doesn't allocate memory, it just grabs it willy-nilly out of your
computer. It doesn't give a damn what is sitting in that segment - it just
takes. If your machine hangs horribly then try a clean boot. No, it doesn't
support VCPI or DPMI, ok?

Source code

        I was intending to release the source code to this *but* I lost it in
my HD trash. I am sure I have a copy lying about somewhere on one of those 200
black unlabelled disks. If I find it I will release it.

        I learnt how to code effects by sucking the wrong ends of marker pens
and studying other people's source code. So its my turn to continue the
tradition.

Your in my you're-alright-you-are-list

        these bristoluniversity students:

jimger - <deep breath> anyway john
dan - we know a song about that kids don't we
sarah porter - stoopid
naomi jobson - are you gonna come around for that second cup of coffee
matt deeprose - can't think of anything to say oh i just have
zed - thanks for buying the folder
sam, ru, matt, chris - house we need a house
z-block - oh for f*cks sake
dan russell - chocolate muffin (nottinghamuniversity)

        these sceners:

statix/psychic link - thank you for the info on small time GUS coding and
congrats on headache: marvellous ps i noticed that brender startup in headache

sandman/valhalla - for totally ignoring all my suggestions and code i have
written

jmagic/complex - stay away from this man he is arrogant keep your kids at
home and your pets locked up

distance/orange - sorry

xanthome/darkzone - so when am I coming to see your uk offices?

p-nut/darkzone - cheers for the help on the chaos zoomer


        the follow clans must be mentioned (smallprintinValhallacontract):

         psychiclink legenddesigncubicteamcomplexnooonhybridorangeemf


        and this company (smallprintinmysummerjobcontract):

bullfrog - mentions to glenn,ian,russ(studentjumper),tony


        these bands:

reef, bush, skunkanansie, longpigs, placebo - topgigs, topbands


Wanna contact me

        god knows why but here goes

                        ck5305@bristol.ac.uk

            did you know this nfo file is bigger than the com file
