TUHBzine

By Adok/Hugi


TUHBzine was the diskmag of the Dutch group TUHB (The Unstoppable Hacker Bunch). Six issues were released in the years 1996-1999. The main editor of the first two issues was The Watcher of TUHB, then GraphTech (GrefTek) of TUHB took over. All issues can be downloaded from scene.org (less than 100 downloads per issue) and they work with DOSBox.


TUHBzine #1

Except the title picture (drawn by TFM), TUHBzine #1 was in text-mode. The engine, coded by The Watcher, featured various background "pictures" and fonts. The composer of the music was unknown.

The magazine consisted of the sections Programming, Miscellaneous (Computer related) and Miscellaneous (Miscellaneous). The programming section contained tutorials on smooth scrolling in textmode and about a VGA mode with a resolution of 256x128 pixels with 256 colours and two pages. Moreover, there was the first part of the series of "Bug Hunter - The Exterminator", in which The Watcher wrote about his coding experiences. This series was continued in the other issues of TUHBzine. The computer related miscellaneous section contained an article about the "War of the Programming Languages" and some other texts. In the "Miscalleneous (Miscalleneous)" section, there was only one story, which was a parody of Star Wars and Transformers. Furthermore, a programming contest was announced. A small issue, but the coding articles might be interesting for some people.


TUHBzine #2

TUHBzine #2 was released in August 1996. Again it had a title picture by TFM. The music in this issue was composed by The Peric, The Watcher and GraphTech.

In the programming section we could find tutorials about playing FLI files, graphics programming in C and Assembler, VESA (Super VGA), scrolling in VESA, and how the memory was structured in DOS. Moreover, there were some miscellaneous articles about topics such as music and the results of the contest that was announced in the previous issue.

What was quite annoying about the design of this issue was that the background "shone through" the text. With some backgrounds, the texts became hard to read this way.


TUHBzine #3

A rather long time passed after TUHBzine #2. The third issue was released in March 1998. It featured a new SVGA based engine coded by The Watcher and The Mad Maniac. The graphics were made by Bookie and GraphTech.

There was now a scene section ("About the zene"), which dealt with the Ambience 1998 party and some other topics. The miscellaneous section contained two articles in the Dutch language as well as several English texts (mostly fun stuff such as "If operating systems ran airlines"). The coding corner was pretty big again. Some of the topics were bitmap rotation, approximating fraction and writing terminate-stay-resident (TSR) programs.


TUHBzine #4

TUHBzine #4 (from June 1998) contained really cute graphics by Bookie and GrefTek. The engine had changed a bit although the structure of the interface looked similar as in the previous isue. The main coder was now The Mad Maniac. Linewise scrolling was now supported in addition to pagewise one.

In the new Graphics Corner, GrefTek explained how he had created his picture "Incoming". One section was dedicated to the Takeover 1998 party (report etc.). There were interviews with Sonic and Underdog. In the miscellaneous corner an article about Gothics could be found. The coding corner dealt with the making of the 4k intro Purple Dreams by The Watcher and with creating a 3D engine.


TUHBzine #5

This November 1998 issue was designed by GrefTek. Actually it was supposed to be the last one, as the staff wanted to join an online mag called OverFlow. But as the OverFlow project didn't materialize, TUHBzine was contained.

A new feature of the engine was animated (!) images inside the texts. Content-wise, this issue offered more than 340 kbytes of articles. Most of the articles were in English; only the articles about the Nederkomst 1998 pub-meeting and a few other ones were in Dutch. Topics covered in this issue were e.g. the Bizarre 1998 party, "autumn depression" (why Skin has a lack of motivation to work for the scene every autumn) and how to create ANSI graphics. There was also an interview in this issue, with Purple Viking, a US American scener.

The coding tutorials dealt with Midas and JPEGLib, 2D tunnels, Purple Dreams II, 2D rotations and matrices, and more. There was also a new section: the Tanuki Studio's Corner. This was the corner of Bookie's manga/anime drawing studio, with some rather weird articles.

A nice issue all in all.


TUHBzine #6

The final issue of TUHBzine was released in June 1999. It was designed by Bookie and GrefTek again, and it had music by Silence, Ryo Ohki, and Buur. There were more articles in the Dutch language than ever before, e.g. an interview with the Aardbei group and a report about The Party 1998. It's a pity that they weren't translated to English.

In the article "Short-sighted Sceners", The Watcher tried to find the reasons why some people claimed that the demoscene was dead. The Development Corner contained articles about Win32 coding, DirectDraw and web design. Moreover, there were also the Miscellaneous and the Tanuki Studio Corner again.

Adok/Hugi