
                                           < vague logo >

Hooray!  Finally, we have reached Vague Diskmag issue two!

It has been two years since we released our first issue and we are very proud to discover that many of you have found our diskmag highly interesting. Indeed, this was one of the biggest motivations for making a second issue.

We were staggered to learn that literally hundreds of people downloaded the first issue of Vague. Firstly, we were surprised at the level of interest in this kind of production. Secondly, we were delighted to see just how many Amigans are still out there.

In the first three months after the release, we had almost three thousand unique visitors, even after taking dynamic IPs and such into account.

If you're interested in the statistics, here they are (from 24.10.2007 to 30.09.2009):

From our site:
	Warp3D version:		604
	AGA/RTG version:	342
	WinUAE hardfile:	457
	HTML/Online version:	1700
	Video gallery:		1021

From aminet:
	Warp3D version:		284
	AGA/RTG version:	253

From os4_depot:
	Warp3D version:		96

Before we released the first issue, a demo version of deskmag was shown at Planet Amiga 2007, where OS4games presented our work (Both Vague and Bojan's work with os4icons) -- This provided us with the motivation to finalise the issue and after a few weeks it was complete.

Six months after releasing the first issue, I wrote an article for PC diskmag "HUGI" about our magazine, which you can read here: http://www.hugi.scene.org/online/hugi34/ -- They titled the article "The New Amiga Diskmag is born."

	<picture of hugi 34>	<picture of article from hugi engine itself>

After the HUGI article, 'KaoMaster', editor of the Showtime diskmag (and later the EuroChart by IRIS) expressed an interest in getting involved with Vague and working with us. This was excellent news for us, due to his vast experience with Amiga and the diskmag scene itself, but sadly he was unable to drum up enough support from others, and thus it was not to be. Still, you can visit his blog here: http://kaosmaster.leonardo.it

We produced a promo version of issue two for BreakPoint09, where Wayne and his associates helped us to promote diskmag, which we are hoping will help us gather more support in future.

Of course, as is usually the case, there were many problems along the way. However, it was much easier than the first issue because more people were involved with the project, both from the first issue (Daxx, Bojan, FBY) and some new faces (jpv, wayne and others) -- From the coding side, the main part of the engine could be re-purposed from the first issue, although we have made some improvements and (I hope) fixed some bugs.

We had big plans for the second issue. For instance, we were considering improving MP3 support, but after we received such a lot of very good music contributions in MOD format, we decided to hold off on the MP3 support. In the end we settled for some subtle effects on the user-interface, like 3D flips of buttons, coloured text and better organisation of the categories.

Using the diskmag engine is much the same as the first issue, but with some new functionality. As usual, you can navigate using the keyboard, mouse or a combination of the two.

Keys:
	Keys for main menu:
		i - introduction
		s - scene
		c - coding
		o - options
		q or esc - quit (You can also use esc to exit from an article back to the menu)

	Keys for reading an article:
		Up/Down/PgUp(left)/PgDown(right)/Esc/Home/End
		NEW: Shift+Up and Shift-Down keys now do the same as "PgUp" and "PgDn" (more Amiga-ish :) ).

	Keys for music choice:
		Press a number key to select a different track. You can do this anywhere in the diskmag.

Mouse:

Simply click on the appropriate menu or article name. Use the panel at the bottom of the screen to browse within an article. The right mouse button allows you to jump from the current article to the article selection screen. You can also scroll with the scroll-bar and we have added support for mouse wheels.

Finally, I'd like to say some words of thanks to the people who have made this issue possible. Firstly to Daxx, who has been with us from the beginning and provided a major part of the main graphics for this issue, both article images and engine graphics. To Arvind (http://www.arvind.narod.ru) who provided CLIPs for the menu and options sections. To Bojan, who has been with us since the first issue, and has provided logos and sprites as well as web pages for us. To FBY, who provided some great music for both issues and (we hope) will continue to do so for future issues! To Okeanos, who did most some of the more-complicated musical works for this release. To Henes, whose knowledge of AOS was invaluable and allowed us to find and fix many bugs. To TiredOf, who proof-read many of the articles in the second issue. To Wayne who's assistance on many topics was a great help. To the guys from utilitybase.com and the guys from #amigascene and #aros. And finally to wizard, Paul, jPV, Esau, Jakim, aBHO, Frank, Nikos, Itis, Thomas, fishy_fis, AndyLandy and everyone else who's name isn't on this list, because there are so many of you!

I hope you enjoy this second edition as much as we enjoyed creating it. So, without further ado, let Vague begin!