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© 1997-2006
Gareth Knight
All Rights reserved

 

The Crypt
First issue release date: November 1996 (or thereabout) Final issue release date: -
Publisher: RIYAN Productions Coverage: Amiga & other subjects
Country published: United Kingdom No. of issues: 27
Medium: HTML Status: Alive
Web Address: The Crypt

A history of The Crypt

Former editor, Ray Hawkins provides a brief history of The Crypt, charting its early days as a disk magazine.

Yes, there is a history to The Crypt. Myself and a good friend Steven Hyde around November 1996 decided to produce a disk magazine. Disk magazines were two a penny in those days and most of them were rubbish and lasted just a few editions. However Steve and I decided to start a NEW style of disk magazine, which would be totally different and free from censorship and prohibitions, and thus The Crypt was born.

In those early days just a hand full of people wrote the the disk mag. Our early circulation figures were around 5/6 copies per edition, but did improve many months later. I should explain that The Crypt was published on an "as and when" basis.Later on another friend Jonathan Bryant (XLR8) joined our small team as Musical Editor along with a few others. Jonathan wrote and composed the music modules that played in the background. The Crypt was written on an Amiga 500 using an early edition of DMC (Disk Magazine Creator) 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 around 20 copies per edition to well over a 100 !!

However TUMM like most newly coded programs was a little bit buggy and crashed on some models of Amiga. Not that it deterred its popularity one little bit. Triadian worked hard on the code and by edition 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.

June 1998 saw the last TUMM edition of The Crypt (No8) when Triadian left the scene and we lost TUMM. Alas the departure of TUMM and the return to DMC albeit a new version brought a substantial reduction in the number of readers. We dropped from over 120 to 30/35 copies almost over night. 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.

However The Crypt was not to lay dormant for very long. The summer of 2000 brought forth the formation of a new team, named RIYAN Productions. That summer Steve Evans (Zola) started work on The Crypt website and by August it was up and running at the old URL of www.thecrypt.org.uk. Meantime the RIYAN Production team where beavering away and October 2000 saw the Resurrection of The Crypt (14) using the DMC format of previous editions.

The new editions were toned down and all adult material removed, this lead to the start of our climb to success. By March 2001 The Crypt (16) was available to read on line and the first Amiga only DMC hard drive version was available as a download.

Things have gone from strength to strength over the editions and in well under two years the website has received over 10,000 visitors. At the time of writing (April 2002) we are composing edition No23. As they say, the rest is just history.

Read and enjoy..... The Crypt.

Ray.

The Crypt #20

One of the few Crypt images that can be published

Vulcan

The Crypt #23

Ian c Fyvie, Editor of THE CRYPT Magazine provides an overview of The Crypt - an online Amiga magazine like no other

The CRYPT started life as an adult (Over 18 only) Magazine for Amiga Computer Users (Disk only) However as happens to most Disk Mags it closed it doors due to lack of contributors.

The CRYPT was rescued almost 2 years ago and is still currently alive and well (We get around 1200 site visits on the week of issue and a regular 120/160 visits each week after that (The CRYPT is released every 2 months)

Recently the CRYPT has become a Dual Platform online Magazine, Supporting both the Amiga & PC. We in the production team feel that this provides a valuable service to Computer users who might:

  1. Decide to move to the PC ...The CRYPT still allows them to read the latest in Amiga News/Views.
  2. Users that have both platforms can take advantage of the CRYPT adverts for software or just general News.
  3. We also have a lot of readers who have only ever used a PC ..We carry an extensive range of articles (Not just pure computing) as we prefer to be classed as a Mag FOR computer users, Rather than a Computer Magazine.

Thus we carry articles/Pages on items like:

  • Recipes
  • Steam Trains
  • Caravanning
  • etc.

This of course attracts readers that would not normally know or search out info or news on the Amiga, Thus in a small way, Keeping the Platform alive.

We believe that the format of the CRYPT is pretty unique in these days, and carry many articles from companies/People once in the Amiga scene :-

  • Dr Martin Reddy ...Author of EDWORD Pro
  • Vulcan Software ... Regular new section
  • WE even have a surprise in our next issue regarding some one using Lightwave.

The CRYPT is produced only in html ..However a downloadable "Zip" file is available and it is ensured to be Amiga compatible.

To download a copy of The Crypt and read more about this unique Amiga zine, visit The Crypt web site.

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Last Update: 15/02/2003


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