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DemoNews Issue #78
January 8, 1995 - January 14, 1995
<The definitive guide to The Party '94>
Start.of.DemoNews.078,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,
DemoNews is a weekly publication for the demo scene. It is produced at the
Internet FTP site ftp.eng.ufl.edu (HORNET). This newsletter focuses on
many aspects of demos and demo making. Everyone is welcomed to contribute
articles, rumors, and advertisements.
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SIZE: 110,132 SUBSCRIBERS: Last week: 1102 This week: 1125 Change: +23
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SECTIONS
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Standard Information
General
THE PARTY 1994 - Results and Reviews
- The Party '94 Report by Stony/HORNET and Friends
- What happened to PC-Demo competition at The Party 94
Editorial - TP94 = ASM94 part 2
Music - Egg2: Trancescrambled Review
- More Fast Tracker 2.03 Criticism/Hints/Explanations
Code - General Rambling by Denthor
New Uploads
Advertisements - RECKLESS LiFE BBS
Back Issues
Closing Comments
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,
<<Standard Information>>
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Most information about HORNET and DemoNews can be found at
/demos/news/howtoXX.txt where XX is the most recent version of the info.
It may a few weeks before this document is officially posted.
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<<General>>
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[Christopher G. Mann]
- We are still working on the HTML and DOS-based version of this newsletter,
stay tuned for more details.
- New directories under /groups will NOT be created except in rare cases.
I could not find an effective way of managing this without creating a lot
of extra work for myself. Several of the directories under /groups will
be removed. However, if you upload your group.txt file, I will be happy
to post it under /groups. If you are planning on using HORNET as a
refernce to people for where to find your files, I suggest you send up
a current version to reflect those files' current location.
- I will be swapping several Escape CD's here soon, in exchange for: ASM94
CD, The Party 94 CD, Brian Jones' CD, and several others. I will no doubt
do a review of these when I get them.
- I have stripped off the headers for most of the sections in DemoNews. In
addition, I have tried to format this newsletter more efficiently. The
"Standard Information" section is now contained in an external file.
Despite all of these efforts, this issue of DemoNews is the biggest ever.
At around 110k I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing. I will try
and keep the size down, but no promises.
[Ryan Cramer]
Well, a little more then a week after The Party '94, we finally seem to be
getting a good collection of the releases. Pretty much all of the demos
and intros have made it up to HORNET. I'd like to send a big thanks to
Moebius who has put a lot of time into providing these files for HORNET.
All that is left is the four channel music which hopefully we will be able to
check out soon. I'll keep you up to date in the next demonews. This week,
my articles include a commentary on The Party '94 multi-channel music, and
a look at Impact Studio's Project Angel demo. Next week, if everything
goes as planned, we will be doing an interview with Jugi of Complex. Jugi
is mostly known in the Amiga scene, but he is starting to do some work in
the PC scene too. For those of you that have heard his MODs, you know
that his music is some of the best on either the Amiga or the PC! Next
week will also include a review of ZERO-G's Ambient-1 Sample CD from
EastWest. I will also be including some Fast Tracker 2 .XI instruments
for you to get a good idea of what's on this sample CD.
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<<THE PARTY 1994>>
The Party 1994 was one of the biggest demo parties the scene has ever scene
and the staff at HORNET was there to cover the event! Stony, our roving
HORNET columnist for the Art section presents on-site reviews of many
productions along with his friend Meriadoc. Back in the USA, Ryan Cramer
(our Music section columnist) has done a commentary on the multi-channel
tunes and a review of the 1st place demo, Project Angel by Impact Studios.
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<Results and Reviews>
............................................................................
<DEMOS>
Note: The following files can be found under /demos/alpha/NEW/tp94demo
Place Name Group Filename.Ext Size
----- --------------------- ----------------- ------------ -----
1 Project Angel Impact Studios project .arj 1456k
project .a01 1456k
project .a02 822k
2 No! NoooN nooon .zip 1109k
3 Contagion The CoExistence contagio.zip 1109k
4 So be it Xtacy sobeit .zip 351k
5 Dimension Realtech dimen .zip 1012k
6 Lethal Display 5 Bonzai ld5 .zip 499k
7 Vortex Taurus
8 Hellraiser The Megabusters raiser .zip 1180k
9 &i Symptom y_eti .zip 470k
10 Bugfixed Acme acme-bug.zip 729k
CPC is Back Arkham akm-back.zip 1332k
Goma Amanaman amana1 .zip 820k
amana2 .zip 839k
Claustrophobia Goto10 claustro.zip 1143k
Comatose Fear Factory coma .zip 515k
Dole Planet Hardcore dole .zip 194k
Liberation Force II f2_lib1 .zip 344k
f2_lib2 .zip 1205k
Black + Ice Success ice .zip 884k
Incentiv DID incentiv.zip 210k
Yo! Krewel Krew kk-yo! .arj 636k
Seeds Abstract Concepts seeds .zip 623k
Shrine Guru Magic shrine .zip 666k
Son of a Gun Hardnoise hn-son .zip 80k
Trippin' on Megaperlz Who's That Bert perlz1 .zip 793k
perlz2 .zip 704k
Seeds Abstract Concepts seeds .zip 621k
Stoerfall ST90 stoerfal.zip 760k
Trapped GLP trapped .zip 716k
Strange Feelings Extreme x3m_sf .zip 191k
Xorgasm Genuine xorgasm .zip 552k
Regression Yodel ydl_reg .zip 297k
Zero Pulse Nuclear Threat zero .zip 559k
0 Amen zeroamen.zip 283k
--- Demo Review ---
[Stony and Meriadoc]
The Party is fully going. There's a big party going on in every hall, where
the musics run into and over each other. At almost a primetime the demo-
competition for PC's will be held.
Then the trouble begun. During the music compo's everyone knew that the
organisers hadn't learnt from last year. The sound system was rather buggy.
But, as soon would be clear, the sound system was not the only thing that
was bugging.
Ten demos where to be shown. Alright, you amiga freaks, the PC's just crash
a little earlier than amiga's, but what happened at the party, was out of
proportions. Seven, 7, SEVEN !! demos crashed before the coder planned. One
or two didn't even start up. The demo compo was delayed for twelve hours
due to these technical problems. It was probably the GUS that was bugging,
however this is rather unusual, seven demos out of ten crashing is it
either. There were 37 demos but not all have been shown.
Here is the review with the later competition on the demos.
- (1st) - Project Angel by Impact Studios
Nice graphics and vector routines.Original and good subject. A piece
of doom routine in it.Nice watching this one will end high !
- (2nd) - No by NoooN
Well ... ehmm I can't read my own notes anymore and I don't have the
demos yet but it says something like.. nice graphics... ... smooth 3D
faces ... and more, not negative :) so worth watching.
- (3rd) - Contagion by The CoExistance
First a 3D object. Then there was a very, very good piece of coding in
which 3D faces, almost pixeled 3D, had a very good spacecut. They also
were Gourad-shaded. It didn't run in two frames on a 486DX2-66, but I
saw it running on a pentium, perfectly smooth !
Was also done twice, was very nice with realtime calculations.Still
some rendered images which I think is bad ( except if you don't have a
graphic- artist).Nice faces having fun together.The F1-Car in 3D was
also done very nice, just like the StarWars ship in 3D.Also a very
nice and smooth landscape for the credits.The coding has been done
very good.This one will have a very good chance to end high !
After this a nice voxelspace leeded to the end of the demo. During the
entire demo, the music was good, and the music was fit at every part.
The dark-colored, smooth moving voxel had some nice, calm music was
being played. I think this is an important part of the design of the
demo.
- (4th) - So Be It by Xtacy
This demo started with very nice graphics. Old effect from a tunnel,
imitation of the rotatin picture from Bill Gates from Assembly '94 but
now with another picture.No decent music-timing. Some of the effects
are playing too long, so it gets boring. This demo was played twice.
The first time, when all other demos crashed, this one survived the
unstable machine, the second time the computer reset suddently.
- (5th) - Dimensions by Realtech
This one was also runned with both competitions. It started with a
nice graphical setup screen.Too bad there were a lot of rendered
images in it, the landscape spreading from green to white on the white
background gave a nice effect.All the texture mappings were done nice.
Again the 'Intel Outside' which is a bit foulish.Nice background with
the credits, scanned ?!? This is worth watching.
- (6th) - Lethal Display 5 / Bonsai
This one has been started 3 times.Did have some nice graphics.Nothing
to say about this one, just watch it.
- (7th) - Vortex by Taurus PC
This demo was also worth running again in the second compo. It had an
easy beginning, simple zoom function and only uses Soundblaster.
Nothing new, plasma/shade figures etc. the whole demo was using
existing functions.But the graphics were nice.
- (8th) - Hellraiser by the MegaBusters
This one is in one word great because of the very nice design.It
started with the James Bond intro scene.Original graphics, too bad the
gusroutine wasn't 100% well.It is done to the Hellraiser 3 concept.It
has been done nice, the box rom hellraiser etc.Then all people thought
'What a short demo' but that was the trick.... Remember the Pirate TV
at MTV a while ago ? Well here it was too the Pirate TV and it isn't
short after all.Nice effect done with lenses.This one is very original
and is also worth getting it.
- (9th) - &i by Symptom
Totally crashed due to the system the first time, the second time the
computer had to be reset but then it worked. Tries to be a techno
demo but doesn't look nice.
- (10th) - BugFixed by Acme
Looks nice, has good graphics, good design.Typical Acme style with
vectors in vectors.Good fade routines, nice 'RTL NEWS' look-a-like
world vector. The Vector duck has been used before also old known
fractals. Nice landscape effect, again an old zoom effect but it sure
is worth watching it.
- Zero Pulse by The Nuclear Threat
Did run the first and second time, too bad the big screen didn't
manage to show the colors well so it was a bit unclear, also there
were no graphics but as one of the members explained to me they don't
have a gfx-artist. And because of the sound hardware used by the Party
organisers for the compo the sound became lousy.The music timing
wasn't working 100% but did show out good enough.
- Goto 10 by Claustrophobia
Was only run the first time, the music was nice, the design was
appropriate but the whole thing wasn't original.The graphics weren't
that good either. You have to see this demo, according to the coders
it was totally made in QuickBasic so it has been well done then.They
could have done a datacopy with use of BLoad but probably not.
- Regression by Snooky + Yodel
This one ran two times too. Also no Gravis supported.Most of the
pictures were rendered, no nice graphics, all old effects used as
shade-bobs, the music was badly flowing over into the other module,
the greets went much to fast.This one was bad, looks like it has been
made some years ago.
- Klara +31 by Trance PC
Was only shown the first time, probably because of the many text.
Started with a short memory refreshment, original but an error in the
coding with one fading.It does have very nice pictures and fonts, all
original without anything raytraced except the palmtrees at the
end.The whole coding was a bit slow but it is worth watching it (well,
actually 1 time is enough :-) ) The whole coding was a bit slow and
the change of modules between the parts was very bad because of no
fading.The sound is very nice but hasn't been specifically made for
this demo.If you rename the .dat files to .mod you can listen them,
they are quite good.Everything in the production has been made by
Trance.The snowy ending was the best I have ever seen.Also the funny
parts are nice like the cow and the 'Dutch Girls'. This production has
been made in a few weeks time.
- Xorgasm by Genuine
Had some good and fast effects, nice graphics.It started with a poor
design but turned out to be nice afterwards.
- Black Ice by Success
Poor sound, it bugged all the time with its sound on the
linevectors.Did have some nice graphics.There was a nice tunnel at the
end.It kept getting better and better towards the end.(Well I -Stony-
fell asleep with this one and kept sleeping with Lethal Display 5
though it had a nice beat said Meriadoc.)The tunnel was nice and
probably pre-calculated.
- Zero by A-Mem
Nice starting graphics, nice music until it turned into techno.Some
standard effect but these were too dark.They probably have watched
Verses some times...
- Explicit Coding by Mystic Bytes
Good music and graphics, it was one big textdemo.Not even a simple
fade in it.
- Liberation by Force II
Well these notes weren't that clear either but one thing I can read is
the following: 'If they used a line of code for each member they
mentioned then they would have a demo.' And some more about the Party
4 in Aars ?!!? Weirdos....
--conclusions--
We fully agree with this final results except that HellRaiser should end
higher because it was done really nice and had a suprising effect ! and
Xorgasm byGenuine should be 9th instead of &i.
All the things written here about demos is the opinion of the writers from
this report and other freaks helping us making the decisions easier ! We do
respect all people involved in the scene no matter what they make or do not
as long as they remember that friendship rules !
The Future Crew didn't do a production for The Party '94 because they are
busy with other projects. This was told to me personally by him [Psi?] so
no rumour.
The amount of demos was high this year, the effects used weren't very new
but the demos did crash less than last years according to some people here
at the Party.This is a positive point for the PC because a lot of Amiga
users saw now that a PC doesn't mean the f*ckup of the demo. Some of the
demos were nice but this year there wasn't really anything interesting,
time again for the famous groups to do some again !
[Ryan Cramer]
- (1st) - Project Angel by Impact Studios (extended review)
=Introduction=
Demo review done on a 486/66 computer with 8 megs and a Gravis Ultrasound.
Since the last issue of DemoNews, somebody uploaded a working version of
Impact Studio's Project Angel demo which got first place at The Party '94.
The previous version which was on HORNET (ANGEL.ZIP) did not work and I'm
not sure why somebody uploaded that 500k file as the demo is actually close
to three and a half megs. Well, I took the opportunity to download Project
Angel and here's a little review...
When you first unzip Project Angel, its a little strange to see almost
thirty different EXE files. The party version of this demo was unlinked,
and as a result, a seperate EXE was used for each part of it (thats what I
assume atleast). Impact Studios put a little message at the beginning of
their demo apologizing for this, and apparently in the final release
version, they will have the demo completly linked and hopfully they will
fix up some of the problems mentioned in this review as well.
=How to get it to work=
I had to play around a bit with my memory managers to get the demo to run
on my system. The only way to get this demo to work was to use just
HIMEM.SYS (and initialize your GUS with ULTRINIT of course). Another thing
I should mention is that this demo requires 8 megs of RAM to run. It will
not work on a system with only 4 megs of RAM. If you don't have 8 megs,
don't run out and buy more memory; I really doubt that the final release of
this demo will require more than 4 megs.
I also received a message from Ervin / Abaddon where he mentions another
option for some of the coders out there. Apparently, you can DEBUG the file
"23.EXE" and rewrite the XMS memory reservation from ?? megs to 3 megs. By
doing this, the demo will work on a machine with four megs. As I am not a
democoder, I'm not sure how to find the XMS memory reservation, but Ervin /
Abaddon says its "quite easy to find it". This is further proof that the
final version of the demo will most likely not require more than 4 megs of
RAM. Good luck! =)
=A look at the demo=
The introduction/credits sequence is quite impressive, and it has a very
"epic" feel to it. What makes this introduction so impressive are some of
the best animations that I've seen. They look to be 3DStudio animations,
but they are very effective. This is probably also one of the reasons why
this demo is so huge (animations take up a lot of space). The introduction
switches between credits in a starfield, and short 2-3 second animations of
this spaceship. Animations are usually looked down upon in the demoscene,
but watch the demo, I don't think you'll be complaining! =) This
introduction sequence also has some very powerful music. This sequence lets
you know that your in for quite a show!
The final section of the introduction (yes, its quite a long introduction)
shows a vectored ship flying through objects. Finally, this ship flys
through a vectored "Project Angel" logo, and the logo is spread across the
screen. Very cool!
Before I get too far along in this review, I should mention that this is
one of the few demos that I have seen which actually has somewhat of a
theme. There are no random demo effects displaying cool video card tricks.
The entire demo focuses on an environment in the future, and the demo takes
you on a journey through this environment. There is definitly not a
plotline or anything of that nature, but the demo is cohesive in that it
was well thought out and it follows a theme. Somebody could actually
develop a plotline around this demo if they had some creativity. =) I hope
that we see more demos take this path in the future.
The next sequence kind of reminded me of the "World Vector" part in Future
Crew's "Unreal" demo. We are placed in space among many ships flying all
over the place, its very Star Wars like. Unlike World Vector, the movements
of these ships were kind of difficult to keep track of since the camera
positioning was hacked around and the scenes changed too fast. Also, the
spaceships had unrealistic coloring. However, the vectored ship objects
were quite impressive and they really managed to get a lot of objects on
the screen at once. Nice!
Next, we get a closeup sideways view of a vectored ship decending on a
planet and we end up taking a rear view of this ship flying through a voxel
landscape similar to the one found in the Comanche game and many other
demos. This part wasn't so original as voxel landscapes are quite overused,
but it fit into the theme of the demo quite well. Also, in this voxel
landscape, our camera angle was not just horizontal, but it panned to
sideways views and even upsidedown!
After the voxel landscape, we are taken to an outdoor virtua-fighter
sequence. This part looked very cool, but I can't comment too heavily on it
since it apparently didn't work 100% correctly on my computer. Through most
of the sequence, the vectored character stood there frozen, then after
maybe 10 seconds, they started to fight. I could tell from the music and
the strange screen change that this part didn't work quite right on my
computer. What I *did* get to see looked very cool. If you've seen the
arcade game virtua-fighter, this sequence is an attempt to duplicate that.
This sequence is of course not nearly as fast or as impressive as
virtua-fighter, but it was pretty damn good for a PC. Congratulations to
Impact Studios on their creativity and coding in the development of this
part. I think this part is one of the reasons why they won the competition.
This sequence ends with one of the characters winning the fight and then he
points up into the sky. The camera then also looks up into the sky to show
a ship flying by. We get a closeup view of this ship and it drops a
vectored parachute with a person on it.
Next, we fly through a vector world, most of the objects are purple
colored. This part has some nice choreography as far as the camera angle is
concerned, but the vector world itself is somewhat uninteresting and this
part lasts a little too long. Finally, we decend into a tunnel going down
...down .....down.
After decending through the tunnel, we end up in a full screen DOOM
sequence. Everything here looks exactly like DOOM, its an entire
underground texture mapped 3D world. However, their 3D engine is VERY slow.
Even on my 486/66, I can see each frame being redrawn. Despite the fact
that this part is VERY slow, its quite impressive that they were able to
code this. With a lot of optimization, it would be like DOOM!
In the last part of this demo, we are flying through a vectored landscape
of greetings. Each group that they greeted had its own vectored logo. This
is where the demo ends, and the final screen shows a high resolution
"Project Angel" picture with a beautiful "angelic" looking girl on it.
=Nit Picks=
I've already told you all of the things that I really like about this demo,
but I think that it could have been even better. My main gripe is that many
of the transitions just were not very fine tuned. Some parts were just
plain kind of messy. To better describe it, this demo did not posess the
"Future Crew Quality", even though many of the effects were quite
incredible. However, I think that it is a little too early to make this
conclusion since this is the party release version and Impact Studios is
probably taking some time to enjoy a few beers (IceHouse?), spend some of
their cash, and work some more on their demo. I can't wait for the final
release version of Project Angel!
Another gripe of mine is that their GUS music drivers weren't so hot. If
you turned up the music, you could hear quite a bit of distortion in it. I
think that they have their output level turned up a little too high or
something.
Finally, at the end of the demo, the music suddenly sped up quite a bit.
This leads me to believe that the actual tempo of the music in this demo
was quite a bit faster then what we got to hear!
=Conclusion=
This is definitly one of the best demos produced in the PC demo scene!
Impact Studios has shown themselves to be one of the leaders of the scene.
This demo had some EXCELLENT music that fit perfectly with the demo. The
music had a large effect on my enjoyment of the demo.
It must have been quite a close call between Project Angel and Nooon's "No"
demo in the Party '94 demo competition. I preferred Nooon's demo to Impact
Studios's, but both demos leave you breathless! =)
Congratulations to Impact Studios on a fantastic production!
- (2nd) - No by NoooN (extended review)
The second place demo is from a new group called Nooon. Strange name eh?
Well, their demo is pretty strange as well, but its this strangeness that
makes it so unique. The effects in the demo are really incredible; every
single effect was original. All of the effects ran quite nicely on my
486/66. Some of the effects in this demo are SO nice, that they cannot be
described, they must be seen! In addition, this demo has some really
excellent design. All of the effects blend together and they are tied in
with the music. Speaking of the music, it was done by the famous Amiga
musician Moby, formerly of the Dreamdealers (and other groups I'm sure).
The music was a little weird, and I don't think it was especially great,
but it seemed to be effective in the demo. Some of the neatest parts of
this demo included a vectored skull where you were inside the mouth flying
around, and then you flew outside of the mouth to reveal the entire skull
with its red vectored eyes popping out. Quite cool! Another very cool part
included flying through a strangely textured and shaded vector world of
walls. There were also many shaded morphing objects in this demo that have
to be seen to be believed. The final effect was the most amazing. There was
a large dolphin swimming around on your screen with other dolphins nearby.
They really had the movements of the dolphin down quite well! All of the
effects ran FAST, obviously this demo was very optimized. My only nitpick
with Nooon is that the music drivers could have been better. At times,
there were some cracks in the sound due to ultraclicks. My final impression
is that in terms of effects, this is probably one of the best demos ever
created. Note that this demo will only run if you have a Gravis Ultrasound.
- (10th) - BugFixed by Acme (extended review)
While this demo did not place very high in the competition, it had a couple
of elements in it which really impressed me. Namely, the music and the
design. The music in BugFixed is very nice and well tied into the demo. All
of the effects follow the music which is extremely effective. Vic / ACME
did a nice job with the song, and it is VERY high quality. If for no other
reason, download this demo to hear the music. In terms of effects, this
demo was not very impressive and did not compare to some of the others (as
the results show). ACME did do a nice job with the overall transitions and
design though.
<INTROS>
Note: The following files can be found under /demos/alpha/NEW/tp94intro
Place Name Group Filename.Ext Size
----- --------------------- ----------------- ------------ -----
1 Cyboman 2 Complex cyboman2.zip 67k
2 Peripheral Vision Valhalla val-pv .zip 72k
3 Finkel Jamm finkel .zip 71k
4 Abraham Project Plant ftj&eros.zip 69k
5 The Rising Blank
Dragon Core Image dragon .zip 64k
7 Vomit Cryonics vomit .zip 29k
8 Soap Promixma muq_soap.zip 64k
9 Revenge Realtime
Live S2 s2live_f.zip 74k
Zorlac Arkham akm-zorl.zip 73k
Anorexia Hazard anorexia.zip 52k
Blow SPP blow .zip 52k
Fastmaster Shooter unknown fullintr.zip 38k
Fun Sorrox fun .zip 67k
Grey Abaddon grey .zip 68k
Infinite Space Dreams Massive isd .zip 56k
Mind Crash Spirit mind .zip 64k
Plenty We plenty .zip 56k
AscII Dreams II Remal TM remal .zip 52k
Shadow Unreal & Scorpik shadow .zip 72k
Too Big Phoenix toobig .zip 56k
Trendy Inzane PC trendy .zip 34k
Tylsae Tarzan tylsae .zip 55k
Ugly Morrari ugly .zip 38k
Shout Symptom y_shout .zip 32k
Back to the Past Yakuza yakuza .zip 62k
Zetor Hipmu zetor .zip 45k
--- Intro Review ---
[Stony and Meriadoc]
Here is the review on the PC Intro competition, all reviewed by Meriadoc.
Seen, reviewed and typed by Stony. Sorry for the short reviews but they all
had to be done while seing time at the big screen so no big review.
- (1st) - Cyboman 2 by Complex
Graphics : Good logo, and good fonts either.
Music : good.
Effects : - Very good torus around the logo,
- Inside view of a torus (very original) with nice swimming
gouraud-shaded fish. Very good and fluent.
- Plasma cubes, and a very large (almost full-screen)
gouraud-shaded object.
Design : Nice, good design. This probably will be a winner !
- (3rd) - Finkel by Jamm
Graphics : Very good.
Music : Not too good, not too bad
Effects : Very good, zoom 'n rotate with zoom lenses.
Design : Good.
- (4th) - Project Plant by Abraham
Graphics : Nice original graphics.
Music : Rather good.
Effects : As it was the first intro, I couldn't describe all the
effects in time. Sorry for that, it was a great intro.
Design : Good.
- (5/6th) - Dragon by Core Image
Graphics : Very good.
Music : Good.
Effects : As well as standard effects as original effects.
For instance:
- Wolfenstein 3D lookalike landscape.
- gouraud-shading on 3D objects.
- 3D-Sinewave, like voxelspace.
Design : Very good.
- (5/6th) - The Rising by Blank
Effects : - Nice rubbertunnel with texture mapping.
- A pity was the dark part. At The Party you weren't able to
see what was happening.
- There were cool effects. Even a glenzvector torus in two
frames.
Design : Very nice design. The demo runs fluent, no black screens etc.
- (7th) - Vomit by Toz / Cryonics
Graphics : Ugly logo
Music : Midi/adlib, no sample-based music.
Effects : No effects, not even a scroll. Hmm, maybe some fade...
Design : No effects, no design.
Remark : Crashed, or seemed to first time...
- (8th) - Soap by Proxima
Graphics : Good.
Music : Ok.
Effects : A voxelspace, which was a bit rough.
7 Plasmarubber cubes were pretty cool IMHO
Even gouraud-shadings were in it.
Design : Less than the above would suggest.
- (9/10th) - Realtime by Revenge
Music : Some Christmas edit, nice tune
Effects : The best: A landscape like in the PC vistapro animator, but
faster then :) Realtime! Just cool, the audience was amazed !
But, other effects were also present.
Design : Good.
- (9/10th) - Live by Alfred / S2
Graphics : Could be better.
Music : Not too well.
Effects : - tunnel, slow, even on a 486DX2, flickered sometimes,
- nice pixeltunnel,
- Weird tunnel, nice.
Remark : - Short intro.
- Grey by Abaddon
Graphics : Not that well what we've seen...
Music : Mediocre music. Nothing very special, but not bad either
Effects : Fractal morphing, Juliafractals that change realtime
Design : Nice design combinations
- Retor by Kirm
Graphics : Bad, reletavely bad.
Music : Bad.
Effects : Easy effects, like 4-6 oly 3D, some gourald shading
Design : No.
- Skalon by Imprise
Graphics : cheap and easy
Music : No music, when the 'sysop' tried it, the thing crashed
Effects : Most beautiful was a fractalzoom, which was ugly. After it
there was no applause. Very tiny.
Design : No.
- Anorexia by Brainsaw
Graphics : Not much. easy and cheap
Music : adlib tune.
Effects : - Many pixels, strange effects
- texture mapping
- plasma
- I by Helga / Information
Graphics : Easy and ugly flowers.
Music : bad.
Effects : some 3d-effects
Design : no.
We fully agree with these final results, too bad we only could do a short
review but most of our opinions do reflect the final results.
--conclusions--
After having seen all compos it came out that the PC intros were better
than the demos. Nice intros have been shown.
[Ryan Cramer]
- (1st) - Cyboman 2 by Complex (extended review)
The first place intro by Complex is quite amazing as well. This intro
really packs some amazing effects into 64k! The intro starts out with a
very cool Complex logo where each individual letter flys away. Next, a
circular doughnut shaped object flys onto the screen. This object has
beautiful texturing, coloring, and shading. I'm not sure what kind of
shading their using here (Phong?) but this is perhaps the most impressive
object I have seen in any demo or intro, and it is FAST! Next, we fly INTO
this object to reveal many fish swimming inside of it! This part is really
amazing and must be seen to be believed! This whole thing is full screen
too. I felt like I was watching the "Mind's Eye" instead of a demo. :)
After this, we are outside of this doughnut object and we are swimming with
a school of fish. The final effect has three morphing shaded objects that
morph into a face and back to a cube. The coloring and shading on these
objects is fantastic! At the end, the Complex logo appears again and the
demo ends. The music by Jugi is quite awesome, and fits the intro
perfectly. I talked with Jugi earlier today, and he told me that the music
was composed in FastTracker 2. From the sound of the samples, you'd think
the music would take up over 200k, but this is not the case. Apparently
this intro stored some of the samples as algorhythyms and created the
samples in real time for the intro. The entire intro only occupied 64k! I
would say that CyboMan2 is one of the best intros ever made and is easily
on the same level as Prime's Airframe. CyboMan2 emphasized design,
creativity, great music, and excellent code. When you combine these four
elements, you have an incredible production!
<MULTI-CHANNEL MUSIC>
Note: The following files can be found under /demos/music/songs/tp94mult
Place Name Author / Group Filename.Ext Size
----- --------------------- ----------------- ------------ -----
1 Reflecter Zodiac / Cascada reflectr.zip 496k
2 Bud Moby & Ra / Nooon bud .zip 148k
3 World Of Dragons Lizardking/Triton wf .zip 406k
4 The Banana Incident Trap / Bonzai tbi .zip 699k
5 Starlite Symphony Emax / Trsi star .zip 230k
6 Escape From Pori Purple Motion /FC pori .zip 653k
7 Kukby Gandbox / Eden
8 In The Mist Edge / EMF
Xero Gravity Devillock / Tal
10 Charella Mig / Weird Magic charella.zip 207k
11 The 6th Dimension Jazz/Diffusion
12 Lenni goes groovy Breeze/Capacala
13 On the moon Blue Adonis/Traxx
14 Aldea Azure/Prime
15 Modern Tune Contagion
16 Trip to Pluto Cygnes/Fidion
17 Fantasm Marvel / FC fanta-sm.zip 207k
18 Grave Disgrace Soundwave/VV
19 Broken Promises Kaiowa/Sorrox
20 Something DJ Psusic
Clover Leaf Prism / EMF cloverlf.zip 362k
Hors d'oeuvre horsdoeu.zip 206k
Shades of Fall+Winter Alpha / LD sofaw .lzh 201k
--- Multi-Channel Review ---
[Ryan Cramer]
This week, I downloaded the top 10 winners in the multichannel music
contest from The Party '94. I'm not going to discuss too many individual
songs, but I found the results to be very inconsistent with my personal
opinions on the songs.
FYI: These results were provided by Multimus & SauberSound.
First off, Zodiak's song DEFINITLY deserved first place, that was one of
the best songs I've heard! Moby and Ra's second place song also was quite
excellent. However, Purple Motion's song "Escape from Pori" was one of the
best pieces of music at The Party, and it got 6th place! My feeling is
that Purple Motion should have gotten second or third place, and I think
that he really got ripped off by this contest. Obviously, Purple Motion
put a LOT of work into "Escape from Pori". He sampled all of his own stuff
(including a lot of great guitar samples) and the song was very
professional. I felt the same way about his song "When the Heavens Fall".
Compare for yourself, listen to the top ten songs, and see if you agree
with me. I think that some of the songs did not belong in the top 10,
yet, some deserved a much better standing.
Another thing that surprised me about the multichannel music contest is
that some of the songs which did not make the top 10 were better then some
that had made the top 10. An example would be "Shades of Fall and Winter"
by Alpha of Legend Design which was a really nice song and should have
been placed in the top 10.
This leads me to believe that the judging of songs at competitions (such
as The Party and Assembly) is not fair to the musicians. The judgments on
these songs is based on a single listen. In my opinion, most great pieces
of music are not instantly likeable, they take time to grow into,
understand, and appreciate. When a song is instantly likeable, this will
often mean that the song was composed using an imitative style. When
people hear something they recognize, they tend to associate with it a
little faster. This isn't always true; Zodiak's song was instantly
likeable, and yet it still grows on you the more you hear it.
My feeling is that the best way to judge music is from a panel of
experienced musicians who have the opportunity to listen to the music as
much as they like.
I'm looking forward to checking out the Amiga 4 channel MOD songs from The
Party '94. Does anybody know where they are?? =) Let me know...
<4-CHANNEL MUSIC>
Note: The following files can be found under /demos/music/songs/tp94_4ch
Place Name Author / Group Filename.Ext Size
----- --------------------- ----------------- ------------ -----
1 Electric Church Hithansen/Rednex
2 Folx-vagen Dreamer/TRSI
3 A Kind of Love Zulu&Grey/Rebels
4 CyberFuck M.C.MP/Remedy
5 Outer Funk Zouf/Access
6 Bridge Tricktrax/Tribe
7 Hans Wurst Drehmt Auf Mr.Looping / IP
8 Illusions Andy/Essence
9 Nadir FBY/Sotrone
10 Conspirito Nation/Dragnet
11 Island of Sadness Klorathy/Freezers
12 Mental Motion Amadeus/Meka D.
13 Peace and Chaos Smooth
14 Mystical Mouse Mystical/Purple mouse .zip 32k
15 Beyond Cyberspace dada/abnormal
16 Emphutured C-Quence of Gods
17 S.O.S. DPL/Platin
18 Legend Unix/Chryseis
19 Bouncing The Fox 2/Reality
20 Mayday 2 Mr. Mister&Ravage
21 Jazzy Byld Releif/TLL
22 Unbored Fantasies Kallestrup
Piano Kix Alpha / LD pk .lzh 182k
--- The 4 Channel module review ---
[Stony and Meriadoc]
The music competition begins at 14:00 on Wednesday the 28th of December.
This is the 'mod-only' competition, so just 4 channels.
First some statistics, then I will give some comment on the selection of
the mods for the compo. Besides; It's not Stony who's typing this, it's
Meriadoc. I, Meriadoc, am a scenefreak, I like all that's in the scene, and
I sometimes try to code.
Stats:
The Organisation got 143 mods from composers. They had to do a selection.
That selection led to 22 mods, which are the following. Stony and I give
our opinion on every mod we heared:
- (1st) - Electric Church by Hithansen/Rednex
opinion : Stony: + Meriadoc: +
- (2nd) - Folx-wagen by Dreamer/TRSI
opinion : Stony: -- Meriadoc: --
- (3rd) - A kind of love by Zulu&Grey/Rebels
opinion : Stony: +/- Meriadoc: +/-
- (4th) - CyberFuck by M.C.MP / Remedy
opinion : Stony: - Meriadoc: -
- (5th) - Outer Funk by Zouf/Access
opinion : Meriadoc: - to +/-
- (6th) - Bridge by Tricktrax/Tribe
opinion : Stony: - Meriadoc: +
- (7th) - Hans Wurst Drehmt Auf by Mr. Looping/Interpool
opinion : Stony: - Meriadoc: -
- (8th) - Illusions by Andy / Essence
opinion : Stony: + Meriadoc: +
- (9th) - Nadir by FBY/Sotrone
opinion : Meriadoc: +/- to +
- (10th) - Conspirato by Nation/Dragnet
opinion : Stony: + Meriadoc: +
- (11th) - Island of Sadness by Klorathy/Freezers
opinion : Stony: + Meriadoc: +
- (12th) - Mental Motion by Amadeus / Meka Design
opinion : Meriadoc: ++
- (13th) - Peace and Chaos by Smooth
opinion : Meriadoc: +/- to +
- (14th) - Mystical Mouse by Mystical / Purple
opinion : Meriacod: + (this because the mod was only played
for the first 30 seconds)
- (15th) - Beyond Cyberspace by dada/abnormal
opinion : Stony: - Meriadoc: -
- (16th) - Emphatered by C-Quence / Gods
opinion : Meriadoc: -
- (17th) - S.O.S. by DPL/Platin
opinion : Meriadoc: -
- (18th) - Legend by Unix/Platin
opinion : Meriadoc: +/-
- (19th) - Bouncing by The Fox II/Reality
opinion : Meriadoc: +/-
- (20th) - Mayday 2 by Mr. Mister & Ravage
opinion : Meriadoc: ----
- (21st) - Jarry Dyld by Releif/TTL
opinion : Meriadoc: +
- (22nd) - Unbered Fantasies by Kallestrup
opinion : Meriadoc: ++
--conclusions--
I had planned to use a scoringscale between -- and ++. As you can see, the
scores are very low. The mods didn't have the quality we expected from a
party like this. I can't imagine that there was no better quality in the
entire compo. The 143 entries have been reduced to 22 by a good jury, as
they did us believe in the (invitation) information we got from the
organisers.
Sometimes the quality of a mod was so bad that we thought it was a joke.
The quality of the mods could be good, but the soundsystem was very bad. I
wasn't here last year, but it is said that it is even worse than then. Even
that I cannot compare, the system was buggy and had far too less power. The
Organisation had hugebudget, but the prizes to win seem to be more
important than the quality of demo presentation. The prizes are important,
but for good judging, the quality is truely important.
<GRAPHICS>
Note: The following files can be found under /demos/graphics/TP94
Place Name Author / Group Filename.Ext Size
----- --------------------- ----------------- ------------ -----
1 Helgi Schneider Peachy / Masque peachy .lha 171k
2 AH. Self D Ra / Sanity ra .zip 42k
3 Vampire Mirage / Bonzai
4 Self Portrait Dize / Silents DK
5 Digital Modelling Luma / P5 Crew
Beholder Pixel / FC beholder.zip 63k
The Breakfast Reward / Complex brekfast.lha 77k
Bubble-D Marvel / FC bubble-d.zip 37k
Face of Nature Cougar / Sanity cougar .lha 58k
Daddy Dearest Devilstar / VD devil .lha 75k
Fish Food Fiver / TRSI fiver .lha 100k
Divergence Neuron neuron .lha 55k
Levelling the Land Noogman / Complex noogman .lha 59k
Why? Pixie / Polka Bro pixie .lha 70k
Fire Emblem Pris / Edge pris .lha 104k
No.18 Dragnet Shaman / Dragnet shaman .lha 232k
Tete Final Slaine / Ivory slaine .lha 150k
<WILD COMPO>
Place Name
----- --------------------------
1 Wild Demo
2 Twisted
3 Da Ride
4 Maximum Overflow
5 Realtime Animation Concept
--- The Wild Compo Review ---
[Stony & Meriadoc]
Here is the review on the Wild Compo as good and bad as possible. All
people are very interested and are running to the big screen, I myself have
no time for it because I have to do the review and this time I don't have
the laptop to do so. I am doing this realtime so no fluent sentences etc.
- (1st) - Wild Demo
A whole 3D animation, moving around through halls and turning cars
etc. It is very nice and fast ! Very nice and loud music playing.. It
is a demo done by The Wilders on an Amiga 4000 with 12MB on RAM, 1.5
Gigabyte of Harddiskspace if I can read it correctly from here.It
probably has been done on the Personal Animation Recorder (PAR).
- (2nd) - Twisted
Nice graphics, very fluent fast build up of cubes, flames, credits, a
very fast scroller of textures.Plasma.A face zooming in/out a sort of
a morph. Cube and texture mapping.Some bugs, nice b/w animations. A
large 3D scroll going around in a room or something.Technopart going
really fast. This one isn't as good as seen yet.It's going too fast
which makes it unclear. Nice linedots, Terminator II animation of the
marmer floor but this is also possible on my PC :) a lot of other
videorecording. Done by Gargoyle / Polka B. Equipment needed is an
Amiga 1200 with fastram.
- (3rd) - Da Ride
It starts with a lot of colorplasm looking things.It is faaaaast !
Nice 3D Stuff, meteors, hammers hitting, fire, nice animations with
morphing, vector cubes, nice credits showing, landscapes, greetings
part. I think it is all precalculated. The presentation has been done
by Dreamline Designs on an A4000 with 18mb of RAM and 200 MB SCSI and
Yamaha.
- (5th) - Realtime Animation Concept
Some logo's and pictuis. Nice resolution.. Hmm, no effects till now,
precalculating ? Anim with realtime video in it. Rendered animation,
great landscape. Some nice design in this one. Video animation,
realtime digitizing and color effects. Needed hardware: amiga 4000 1Gb
HD 18M RAM
- Technical Input
Scrolling in 3D, fractal realtime in gigantic resolution as fast as a
turbo, fractal zooming, looks realtime to me.Texture mapping with a
lot of text. 3D animations, a strange rotating zoom fractal thing, as
if you are diving into the sun.The sun things takes too long !
Landscape in female shape. 3D Logo morphing.Yeah credits included
etc.Precalculated renderinginfo for the credits.Happy newyear being
wished to all! Done by Rioter / Equinex and is Computer generated
video.
- Gettin' tired off....
Barking Mad Hedgedogs Some music, and a scroll. strage effect, not too
difficult it seems from this distance nice logo, but the coder thinks
himself being funny... Rather ugly font. It seems to be
precalculating, some black screen for many seconds.... Ohoh, seems to
be a crash, I hope not... it's true, a crash Needed equipment: amiga
1200 4 Mb RAM 170 Mb HD
--conclusions--
Above this line stood 10 additional reports of this wild compo.
Unfortunately a big friend of mine pulled out the main power, when pulling
another computer out. The 'great' dos-editor doesn't support autosave,
neither do I... It's a pity, but I will tell you one story. The Wild-compo
was meant for VIC20 to Silicon.
One took it serious, a real VIC-20 came up. But, the hardware was a bit
more complicated than usual. The owner and coder made his own RAM-extension
of 200Kb. The communication ran via Joystickport and the Parallel port.
THere was a fractalrotating in it. He had calculated the fractal on a PC,
and crunched it into 200 Kb. In his RAM he had a 8 Kb realtime decruncher
and plotter. The other 16 Kb were for the decrunching itself. All this took
him less than one frame, for coders: he had three buscycli space, three nop
instructions. That's timing...
All these demos were just great and have been done very good, all people at
the Party were positive about the Wild Compo. We did enjoy it too !
............................................................................
<The Party '94 Report by Stony/HORNET and Friends>
............................................................................
NOTE: I have written this in diary style so that it reflects my current
impressions at the time. I won't be checking this after the Party
again, so some errors may exist.
---------------------
On our way to Denmark
---------------------
Hi, busy doing a report in the dark of the bus on a little notebook, - not
very comfortable - , I can't find any key of the little thing but it is
nice enough to do some work in the bus.
We left in Nijmegen/Holland at the Central Station at 8:16. We had a
difficult time trying to pack everything before we could leave. I'm in the
bus with Wizz, Buzzy, The Fox ][, The Raver, Whale and Tycoon all from the
Amiga group 'Reality'. In the same bus is also my friend and one of the
coders of Trance PC called TyZM. We are stranded in a bus full of Amiga
Freaks..... AAAAAHHHHHHHHH :)
We reached the German border i Beek at 9:06, Whale says it is harder to
sleep in a bus on the German roads because they are very bumpy, he is
saying this while eating M&Ms.
It is now 00:27 and we have stopped at two gas-stations now, we did buy
some batteries and some food. We are in Cloppenburg/Germany now. We have
been singing 'Oh Christmas Tree' (in Dutch of course) and now we are
actually singing 'Oh Colabottle' (in Dutch again). I am in a bus with some
psychos!! It is a bit rainy outside, and I'm wondering if thers is some
snow in Denmark.
It is now 02:19 and the weather is still bad, there is now wet snow
everywhere so we also have to be carefull with driving. I do not know
where we are now, but no one has slept in the bus because we have some
really nice people with us. We have been to another gas station but this
time for toilets only :)
It is now 04:59, we just crossed the Danish border, it was raining again
and we even had to show our passports which is bit unknown in Holland
because of the European Community. No one is asleep in our bus, but in the
other bus there will have been some. Now I have to stop, another break.
We finally arrived at Herning at 8:03 in the morning so we have been 12
hours on our way.... The weather over here is still rainy but at the moment
while typing this, the weather is clearing and we have settled down at our
tables. Table 66!!
I met my German friends from Xtended Fantasies right at the beginning so no
hard time finding them.
------------
On the Party
------------
Well it's very crowdy but it will become crowdier with the days. Some of
the dudes from Reality brought some 250 Watt speakers with them!! We
certainly are able to make the most noise! By the way, it's now 12:47 at
the 27th of December but it feels as if it is night....
Well, I made some phone calls to everyone, friends etc. The Party
Organizers are really friendly people. I needed a phone number here in
Denmark but it isn't possible to call the operator from the public phone so
one of the organisers did it for me! It is now 15:21 on December 27th, and
the Party officially opened at 14:00. This just Rules !!
Burrrpppp, Hi, I just competed in the Coca Cola drinking competition. The
winner, Kristian, drank 1.5 liters of Coke in 47 seconds, which is a new
world record!! I had about 150cl left but I didn't puke :). I walked to
the toilet to wash up because I wasted some of the coke on my face. At
that point the winner walked in, opened a toilet door and.. bwuuurrgfrhghg.
Despite throwing up, he DID win a free bottle of coke :). The Coca Cola
competition started around 19:00 on Dec. 27th. I don't think I need any
more caffeine anymore today. It is still getting busier with new freaks
coming to the Party.
It now is 23:48 and a lot of people have gone asleep. I'm still wide awake
and will continue to fix up our demo. I'm also busy with the cover for the
PS Muzakdisk but I am still not sure what kind of picture to use and what
kind of font.. The Assembly '94 CD is here for sale but this is turning out
to be a commercial thing, about $30 for the CD!! I think some people are
getting rich by this.
It is now 02:26 and I my attempts to fix up our demo have not gone well. :)
But it still looks nice. I have been doing my picture for the Graphics
Competition but I am not satisfied with it because I haven't had enough
time to work on it. I have also been busy with helping Dose and Maniac on
their 4 channel modules to release in the Music Competition. TyZM is still
asleep and I will wake him up in a few hours.
Have been to bed from 07:00 till 11:00 today (28th). Time is really going
quickly. Have been finishing the demo with TyZM, too much text in the
whole demo but noone will puke seeing it I guess. :) The intro competition
started at 14:00 and a review is included.
This Party RULES, we are having a lot of fun over here. It was really worth
coming. The Demo Competition will start in a few minutes (18:00). We also
will do a review on this.
Its 22:00 and the Amiga Intro competition has started, a lot of 'Intel
Outside' everywhere.... I wonder why ? :) No review will be done on this
one.
The C64 competition has also been done, some really nice effects for such
an old thing. The best one according to me was the one from Access Denied.
It is now 00:48 on the 28th of December, the time is going much too
quickly! In a few minutes I will go to the Rave Party also held here and
it is for free ! There seem to be a lot of girls...
At 02:00 they should have started with the Graphics Competition, but this
was delayed until 03:40. There were a lot of graphics, so we couldn't
manage to do a review on them but this will come. A minor point of this
whole Party is that not all things delivered for the competitions will be
shown.
At 06:00 the PC democompetition started again. This time it worked out
quite well. It lasted 2 hours instead of the planned 3. Read the demo
review for more about it. All graphics delivered for the Graphics Compo
will be shown later this day.
At the moment the Amiga Demo Competition is still running. There are some
very nice demos being presented. After the Amiga Demo Competition the
other 51 of the 150 graphics for compo will be shown.
Well it just couldn't be true, the graphics are being shown and again the
screen fails.... I am really getting pissed with this Competition's
organizing!
The Wild Compo has started. It is now 19:37 and all people are running to
the big screen, it looks awesome !!!! I will try to review it as well as
possible, look at the Wild Compo Review.
----------
Going home
----------
Well, it is time to leave, I haven't copied anything yet because everything
was delayed due to the voting program stuff acting oddly. I gave a Tape to
Fnuxie, one of the organisers, and he will send me all stuff asap! Thanks
goes to Fnuxie !!
Well, we have packed everything. From all the guys in our bus, a total of
15 CDs have been stolen. I really hate those lamers doing this!
The Party was a success according to me, too bad some things went wrong
with the compos etc, but things like this happen on all Parties.
We went home at 02:27 on Friday the 30th. After we had driven about 20
kilometers we had to refuel but all the gas stations were closed!! We
needed a special card for this but we don't have one. We tried to stop
some drivers but no one did except some drunk people :) After a while the
police came and the escorted us to a gas station which was open. Really
nice police officers: we even convinced them to let us take a picture of
them wearing red christmas hats!
After we had refueled we could continue. During the night most people
slept in the buses and at about 8:30 we stopped near the Danish border to
go to the toilets, we looked like zombies. After that we talked a bit and
moved on. We arrived in Nijmegen (Holland) again around 17:00 and the
first thing we did was getting some oil dumplings.... We have had very
rainy weather in Denmark and Holland but in Germany the sun shined all the
time...
At home I unpacked everything and got a shower then a lot of eating and
then watching some videos till 02:00 and then I went to bed.
...Stony
-----------------------
Party people's opinions
-----------------------
A short note from RokDaZone/INFECT AMIGA:
---
Short? Why only short? Well, then... it's pretty much the same as last year
so this means noisy dudes, massivly releases, expensive food, boozed Poles
(just kidding), humiliating organizers (behaving like they were supposed to
replace our parents) and - by the way - it's fun being here.
Spontaneous grouped characters by B.Brain/ReALiTy
---
Intel inside, Intel outside, who gives a shit... Its all about Code, Manga,
GFX, FX, Manga, SX/DX, Compo's, Manga and offcourse dirty cartoon pictures
of young Japanese girls. Rumours have it that The Party is going to be a
commercial event next year, which might just be what it needs to survive.
The Party has grown out to be too big a happening to be run in this
non-commercial way. On the other hand - with the big C=64 going downhill -
chances are that the scene gets spoiled and turns into a simple
house-party. Up 'till now, booze, drugs en obscene behaviour are not
allowed during The Party, so here I am - drunk and stoned - typing a silly
text in a non-word-wrap-assembler-editor harrassing every girl at eyesight.
I hope things will never change...
The Wizz/Sardonyx
---
Well..This is actually my first real party so I can't tell you if it's good
or not..But I think the organisation could be better for example the
PC-demo compo had been delayed for 12 hours because of some technical
probs....And the modulecompo really sucked...There were 143 competitors and
22 were picked out to be played but they were all (techno-)crap and I
haven't heard any song from a good and/or famous composers. The strange
thing is that no one knows who are the organisers of this Party..So maybe
it is already a commrcially event this year (see BB's comment)..I don't
know....Anyway..I met a lot of kewl people here and I'm having fun and
that's what the scene is about.. Well,that's all from me I guess....Have a
good day...
Xyq of Devastor
---
This Party is really FUNNY !!! Except the fact that it is nearly impossible
to find the time to sleep, it's fun 2 be here. It's also interesting 2 talk
2 other Coders/GFX'ers and I really enjoy it. But on the other hand, I
CANNOT understand those _lamers_ steeling equiment like mad ! They have to
be stopped ! B.T.W. Stony.. Thx 4 giving me the chance to tell my opinion.
TyZM of TRANCE
---
If a weird person would drop a bomb into this place, there wouldn't be any
light in our current society anymore. Here, at the centre of all creation
energy, I'm currently located. Everywhere music is composed, graphics is
created and demos are coded hand in hand. Although the organisation failed
several times, people are still in good mood. This is the international
gathering of phun; Anyway, if you decide to join us next year, certainly do
NOT forget to take the microwave with you! :-)
ThE FoX ][ / ReAl!tY
---
The Party 4, what should be a party turned out to be a nightmare for me !!!
the Party was quite good organised except for some pitiful things. On the
way to the party, I lost my contactlens. Happely I was insured. The Pc-demo
compo was delayed for about 12 hours, bummer ;( The Music compo sucks. Oke
I myself was in it, but from the 143 tunes, only 22 wre played. In the
TXT-file from the party they didn't have a limitation for the tunes. The
tunes should only be played on a standard Amiga 1200 but what a shame for
the organisation when we found out that the lenght of the tunes had to be
between the 0KB and the 390 KB. That's why some very nice tunes weren't
played. It sucks, doesn't it Lizard / Spaceballs.
Then another thing. They said that they would play each module for 5
minutes, NOT !!! Only 2,5 minutes for a module was reserved. That's not the
way to handle your customers !!!!!! The sleepinghall was very big, but they
had only one. In 1993 they had two and we had enough place to sleep. Now it
was a bit crowded, but also nice :)
Quite nice was the fact that they held a Rave Party for the people with
goodlooking ladies. Ok, because I myself are a Dj, I can say that the music
was old, and the couldn't mix one record into another. Oke not so
depressing, 10% was good !!!! :) After the Rave I went to sleep. That's the
nicest thing that happened around here. The next morning I came to the
conclusion that 6 of my Cd's were stolen.
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!! 2 Cd's came out of Japan
and they costs about $45. Shit Shit Shit. Now for some good things !!!
-I met some nice fellows in Danmark -The whole team had been in a good
mood, that counts a lot.
-We made a link with some PC freaks, maybe useful into the future ?????
-It's almost 1995 !!!!!!!! Conclusion : This year more bad things happened
than good things. Last year, 1993, nothing bad happened. It wasn't a good
year !!!! :) We will go to the party next year, but without any Cd's or
precious things.
Meriadoc
---
Luckily I am no victim of hardware crimes, but I think there are also some
'software' crimes. Except for illegal copying etc. It's more a moral
question. All people who had their productions delivered in time must have
been busy for days, weeks etc. Composers, painters and coders have a lot of
work getting a demo or intro ready. They have prepared themselves with
releasing demos and or other stuff.
For them it is a huge dissappointment when their contribution isn't showed
on the big screen. Who is telling what code is best, what mod is best,
which picture has to contribute. It seems randomly, at least in the module
contest. Only 22 of the 143, that's just 1% of the total of mods, where
shown. And then, as you can see in the mod-compo review, it was a very low
average quality in there. I can't imagine that with so many productions,
the quality wouldn't be better. I do understand it is difficult to choose,
but if you are honest, you should give everyone a chance.
As an organiser one could reduce the length of which a mod is being played,
so one could try to keep the compo fast and various. This could even be
with the other compos. There are more wys of limitting time then only
reducing the amount of competitors. But, I had a great time here, and I
will be having for the next 16 hours... Then we will quit, what a pity. I
didn't sleep as well, all four days since we left monday ;)... Don't try to
imagine what I look like now.... Thanks for the great time, and hoping
seeing you in the future....
My own opinion (Stony)
---
The Party just rules, time is flying.I have done all kind of stuff, drawing
for the compo which didn't work out, for the PS MuzakDisk and I even did
someone's keyboard which turned out to be really cool but most of the time
went in doing this reviews together with Meriadoc. In those days I have
only slept 4 hours ! But I'm not looking as a Zombie because it just is so
great !
It is just fun but there are some minor points such as how the competitions
are settled. I think that all productions delivered for the competitions
should be shown on the big screen and that they should hold on to the info
given to all people.
The most lamest point is that there are some *ssholes stealing hardware
from all kind of people. As of now the following things have been reported
missing: a 486, Amiga 4000, Amiga 1200, Quantum Harddisk, CD's etc. etc.
The people doing this are too lame to exist.
I would like to thank all Party organisers secially Fnuxie for listening to
my irritating talk :) and for sending me the tape with all available Party
stuff. Also thanks to Ulrik Henderson for sending me the needed
information.
Also thanks to the sponsors, IBM for sending us OS2 Warp! (If everything
will work out, nothing received yet).
I hope the Party will be held next year again, I sure will get to it again
because it just rules.
Also thanks to Vivian/Hypnosis for organising y bus trip with Reality, also
thanks to Reality for being such a good crew and now being such good
friends. I have made a lot of contact and new friends, it was a succes to
me and it will have been for everyone present at the Party, see ya all next
year !
Greets and till soon again, We will need a lot of sleep !!
...Stony & Meriadoc <still> in '94
............................................................................
<What happened to the PC-Demo competition at The Party 1994>
article by Ulrik Henriksen, The Party 1994 PC Main Organizer
............................................................................
When the PC-Demo competition started, 10 demos were shown (not all of them
worked though). Also, the order was wrong, and not all of these demos were
qualified. Due to this, the competition was interrupted, and it was started
from a scratch some ten hours later at 06:00.
Apparently many people had already gone sleeping or were absent from the
official later viewing. Because of this, their votes were based on the 10
wrong demos.
This came clear from the fact that the demo 2 Regression by Snooky / Yodel
received so many votes that it would have placed second. However, it is
clear that there are other demos that should have placed higher than
Regression. Supposing that most people voting for Regression were really
voting for Contagion (number 2 in the wrong showing) the numbers fit the
reality better.
The problem is, that there is no way to distinquish the correct votes from
the wrong ones which caused disturbances to the demos numbered 1 to 10. In
order to determine the standings the demos correctly deserve Red Scorpion
(the PC-Compo organizer) called a jury composed of six scene members.
First the jury selected the top five demos based on the magnitude of votes
received and on their personal opinion. Next all of these were watched
again, and their order was voted for by the jury. The result gave the top
five (the winners) of the PC-Demo competition:
1. Project Angel - Impact Studios
2. No! - Nooon
3. Contagion - The Coexistence
4. So be it - Xtacy
5. Dimension - Realtech
Placing the rest of the demos is not easy, but some kind of an
approximation can be made using results from the public voting:
6. Lethal Display 5 - Bonzai
7. Vortex - Taurus
8. Hellraiser - The Megabusters
9. &i - Symptom
10. Bugfixed - Acme
Signed by the jury members:
Zteel of Diffusion
Saint of Electromotive Force
Psi of Future Crew
Pit Bull of Legend Design
Lord Cyrix of Surprise! Productions
Pfusuus of Psychosquad
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,
<<Editorial>>
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
<TP94 = ASM94 part 2>
............................................................................
This week, I am slightly embarrassed to present to you the winners of TP94.
This issue of DemoNews is the biggest we have ever produced. Most of the
material is results and reviews of the demos, intros, music, and graphics
presented at this party. I probably could have summed up everything with
the following paragraph:
The demos were ok, but the design and originality left much to be
desired. Download the top 5 and Acme's Bugfixed. Many intros were poor
design and quality, but check out Cyboman. As for music, I liked the
tunes by Purple Motion and Zodiak. The rest are either not available at
this time or not very good. The graphics were done fairly well --
download till you get tired.
After seeing many of the demos from TP94, I have to say that the best ones
were Holistic/Cascada and Verses/EMF. "But those demos were from ASM94!?",
I hear your voices cry. Well, after all of the lockups, sound detection
failures, crappy graphics, music, and design of the demos from TP94, I
found myself watching the ASM94 stuff.
Overall, the coding for the demos wasn't too bad -- things are getting more
complex and tricky -- but the design just ruined most of the effects that
the coders spent all their time working on. I think its time to start
concentrating on the mood, feel, and design of a demo rather than how many
frames per second you can get on a phong-shaded cube.
What annoyed me a bit was the borrowing of such effects as the Hell Raiser
cube (already done in Magic Circle intro at ASM94) and the vector letters
(originally from Holistic, also at ASM94). I was actually surprised NOT to
see a message that said "The 286 Should be Enough For Everyone" followed by
an Intel dude's face morphing all out of proportion.
OK, enough of the negative, let us move on to some of the nicer things
that popped up at The Party 1994:
Cyboman2 - A true classic! I already showed this one to my father and two
ex-girlfriends. They both seemed to really get a kick out of it. Right
as the big torax (doughnut) was coming toward the screen I would ask them,
"ever wonder what's INSIDE one of those things?" Fish! I know that from
now on I'll always think of this intro whenever I see a torax (there MUST
be fish inside, you just can't see them).
Speaking of fish, aquatic life seemed to be quite popular this year. In
addition to the fish in Cyboman2, there was a demo that had dolphins in it.
Who knows what runs thru the minds of coders. There must have been an
ASM94 demo with fish that I missed...
Another popular effect this year was faces, mostly gouraud shaded. There
must be 4 or 5 intros/demos that include this. Once again, I have no idea
why this trend appeared...probably because of that Holistic indian. 8)
On a good note, most of the stuff from The Party '94 was uploaded to HORNET
quickly. I don't like sitting around for a couple months before I can see
what was shown at a party. I would like to sincerely thank whoever has
been uploading TP94 files to HORNET.
Overall, The Party '94 wasn't too bad. If the design and originality had
been a little better, I think most of the demos would already be considered
classics. The multi-channel and graphics competitions were ok. A lot of
hard work went into them and it shows.
Hey, it could have been worse, there could have been an ANSI competition. ;)
Christopher G. Mann (Snowman) / HORNET January 8, 1995
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,
<<Music>>
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
<Egg2: Trancescrambled Review>
............................................................................
How do you describe music with words? For that matter, how do you describe
KFMF's MusicDisk, "Trancescrambled," a collection of 20 new songs, coupled
with GooRoo's Egg2 (Exceedingly Great Grooves) Musicdisk Player? Boomer
described it by saying: "It doesn't sit well with a glass of milk." :)
Included in this release are some of Kosmic's best works to date. With
styles ranging from the gentle, atmospheric, Enigma-esque styles in
Basehead's epic 30-minute piece, "Shades of Night 3" to the tense, gut-
wrenching power of Phoenix's "Supernova," there's a taste of the beyond in
this disk for everyone. The composers flex their rhythmic muscles, laying
down effective soul-shaking beats. They also use stunning echo effects,
which adds depth and texture to their music.
Industrial shines through in both Basehead's "Twitch" (which starts the
disk off), and AndrewM's "Razz." The clanking and grinding sounds add
attitude, amidst the otherwise-hypnotic melodies present. Krystall's "In
Transit" starts with a 3/4 pattern, which is gently layered over by a 4/4
riff, providing an interesting texture of alternating dominant beats. Choir
voices and a medieval style power White Wizard's "Hypnosis," which does as
one of the voice samples suggests, "Open your mind."
Maelcum's "Murderous Intentions" has a piano sample that is flat, which
takes away from an otherwise clever melody. MasterWho's "Tree" has a
droning closed-hihat, which dulls the senses some, but it also has a catchy
riff, as described by Maelcum in the disk's info file, as "the catchiest
bassline in the world."
GooRoo's Egg2 MusicDisk program is the link which holds the chain together;
it provides an eye-splitting, mind-bending interface to the disk. Begun in
October of 1994 (the same time GooRoo joined up with KLF), and completed
just before New Year's 1995, it evolved from a "simple program to show VU
bars in SVGA mode" to what it is now. "Making the player was easy because I
used Carlos Hasan's DSIK," GooRoo said. "From there, Maelcum designed one
screen and I worked around that." Epeius described Egg2 as "The next best
thing to having a chicken sit on your face.. Egg yourself!"
With around 3 hours of new tunes, this disk is not just a music collection,
it is an experience you are likely to remember for a long time. The archive
is more than 4 1/2 megs, and as Phoenix joked, "Definately worth the 4
minutes it took me to get it." A round of applause goes out to all who
participated in this production.
The Disk is available as egg-trn?.zip on these sites:
freedom.wit.com
hornet.eng.ufl.edu
GraveDigger
[uuDW/CoRE]
digger@freeside.scsd.k12.ny.us
............................................................................
<More Fast Tracker 2.03 Criticism/Hints/Ideas/Explanations>
............................................................................
-* Preface thingy *-
All right! Well, before I start writing and you start reading this little
article here, I want everyone to know that I, personally, use and very much
like FT2 by Triton. I believe it's a great tracker and will be spending
much time using it. However, like 95% of the software that we use, it has
it's flaws and bugs and annoyances, amongst the many great features on the
side. That is when we come to this article, where I try to clear up and
explain the many questions and curiosities that we all have about FT2. So,
if you see me ripping on something in FT2 it's only because... well... this
is a critique article :) Now read on and enjoy!
-* Here we go! *-
This article was originally supposed to have come out in Last week's
DemoNews, since Ryan was up in hometown Minnesota Sleigh-shooting :) and he
asked me to write an article. As most of us know, Ft2.03 was released
sometime last week before New years. I decided to check it out, and as
usual pull out as many bugs or new things as I could. Well, I did that, and
I had the article down in bits and bytes, while my evil Linux decided to
crash on me! :( That's where the article was and I wasn't able to pull it
out of there in time to be posted up on DemoNews. My sincere apologies to
Ryan. Anyway, it's all fixed now, and here's the article. I figured since
I have some time, I'll do some touch-ups here and there.
I will now proceed to talk about ole' Fast Tracker 2's new features and old
bugs and so on, in Random order :)
-* Ok, down to business now! *-
When I unzipped the file, the first thing I noticed was the PMP.EXE file.
The first thing that came to mind was "hhmm.. probably a player" and well,
I was right. I ran it, and it said that there's no mouse loaded and that
it needs a mouse. I loaded my mouse driver, and ran it again, giving it a
song name. It loaded up. I expected there to be some sort of a screen
with maybe... oh... Oscilloscopes or something to that extent. There was
nothing. All it said was "Press any key to quit." So what was the MOUSE
needed for?? I don't know. I figured PMP.EXE was just a stripped down
version of FT2, with not ALL portions stripped down. I also noticed that
it uses less memory, shock shock! :) It DOES say "Press *ANY* key to quit",
however, that's not quite true. I found out that you still have SOME
minimal control of the song. The Left-Shift+Left/Right Arrow Keys Do
control the song, skipping back and forward in pattern. Any other key than
those three will quit. So, it's not a bad gizmo to be there. At least I
have ONE program other than FT2 that plays .xm(s) :)
Now on to the big guy himself, FT2.
I load up FT2.03, and the first thing I notice is a very quick and nasty
screen glitch. Something like a flashback of the last program I had ran.
I didn't have this problem with the 1st version of FT2. No biggie, however
it caught my eye. I DO have a crappy computer :) I also noticed that it
takes up a bit more memory than the older one, still no biggie, yet another
thing I noticed. I had already read the documents, well, I had skimmed
through them, so I had a basic idea of what was new. I didn't expect
anything fancy as far as the GUI went, and well there wasn't anything new.
One thing though, you have to delete your old .cfg file, or else it'll says
that it's corrupted and not run. Just delete it and re-run FT2, and you're
ready to go. I had just bought my GUS-MAX, as an Xmas present to myself, so
I configured it, and was ready to play. I had the PAS-16 beforehand, and
FT2 didn't quite work on that card (SB emulation). I do not know whether
that's still the case. Any PAS16 owner out there? My problems with it
were that it wouldn't play a song correctly. Take a song, transpose
everything to one octave and two half notes lower, slow down the speed and
tempo, and play it; That's who it would sound on the PAS. Plus I was
getting the crappy SB emulation which is terrible sound right off the bat.
I loaded up a song, and played it was in Awe! :) GUS rulez! If you're
using FT2 and have anything other than a GUS, I tell ya, you're missing out
BIG time!
-* New Features *-
The new features were right there in my face. In the Config screens, I
noticed the "Overwrite warning option" and the "Directory sorting", which
was covering the speed of the mouse speed text under the scroll bar, where
it used to be before. Both good options, I agree. Among other new
features were the:
=> " 'KeyJazz' during play in rec-marked channels only",
(which sounds kind of confusing; I'll TRY to explain it later,)
and the
=> "Keyrepeat in multiedit mode fixed",
(which I never had a problem with so I'm not quite sure what it's
saying :) There were also
=> "Sampler bug on SB-Pro and 'POSSIBLY' older SB fixed"
and finally
=> "Better amplification for SB's."
Hehe, I like the "POSSIBLY" :) As far as the SB, I can't really say
anything because I don't have one, thank god, but I'm sure if there was
something wrong, I would have heard something by now from the SB
population.
KeyJazz during play in rec-marked channels only = You can panic if you
want, and we'll guarantee that you will! :D Well, this is kind of hard to
explain. It's one of those thing where only YOU can understand it for
yourself. Actually, let me give it a shot. Say you've got your beat/drums
and your chord channels down. Now you want to put down a melody, so using
the mouse you mark your melody channels for 'rec' (right mouse button).
Now you play say... the pattern, listen to it a few times, and then start
"Jazzin'" away. It'll put down whatever you're hitting on the keyboard on
the track. A WAY cool feature I might add. That's what it's done for me,
if I got it wrong, or if you've done it differently don't hesitate to let
me know :) I'm in linux right now and can't really make sure that's what
it does, but I'm pretty sure. You can also do this, via a Midi-Interface
whachamacallit and play a REAL keyboard and have it put it all down in the
track. A feature that make me anticipate REALLY REALLY good music coming
in .xm format. Although I don't think that's a very new feature. Do
remember that one of the Bugs/Features is that MIDI only works on GUS. If
you think that's unfair, go get them Triton dudes and hang 'em by the toes
while you whip their butts with an old SB1.0 :) (oooooh! that's gotta
hurt!)
I DO believe though that the PAS16 should be supported. I think (I know) a
huge crowd will be pulled towards FT2, it being the first Good tracker to
support that poor card.
-* Bugs / "I wish it were so"s and other misc. stuff *-
One of the things that we can't do yet on the FT2, even though its really
not necessary is 16-bit recording. It does say in the bugs section in Help
that it doesn't support that yet. And well, don't try it, why? Cuz you're
computer will hang. That's for the GUS-MAX people, or those who bought the
16-bit recording Gus daughter-board. Even if this feature does become
available in future releases, I don't think it'd be of much use. After all,
Gravis hasn't made GUS's with more than 1meg of memory yet. Something the
SHOULD have done with the release of the MAX at least, along the side with
releasing the GF2 chip which blows away the current GF1 on most MAX and
normal GUS's. 16-bit recording takes way more space than we really need
since our resources are low. On the other hand, if FT2 releases flawless
support for other soundcards (I hope they do) then those people with sound
cards other than GUS wont have a problem, and so hey, more power to 'em! I
personally think that if you're trying to get clean sound, 8-bit 28khz>=
sampling will do you enough good. Our ears can't really tell the
difference between a HIGH rate 8-bit sample and a lower rate 16-bit sample,
SPECIALLY when mixed in tracked music. Notice I used the term HIGH rate :)
But I tell ya, if Triton ever gets hit over the head with a mallet and
decides to support the AWE32 (ouch!) we are gonna be WAAAAAAAAAAYY jealous
of them ;) hehehe. Anyhow, the above is just my opinion and I know that
other's will differ with me in certain points.
I noticed that in the help it said that you can load up the GUS patches as
samples. Interested, I tried it. It didn't work. No matter how you try
to convert the file INSIDE FT2 it wouldn't work, giving me static junk. I
guess you'd better first use a converter like convert14.zip (good program)
to convert from patch format to something more comfortable for FT2 to deal
with, ie. .smp or .iff or etc... If anyone succeeds in loading patches
please let me know.
Another feature that would be cool, would be CD-ROM control. Even
something minimal would be nice. For those of us who DON'T have a separate
CD player hooked up, and only have a ROM, that would be a nice feature.
Also, it could be made so it would make sampling a bit easier. A good
example would be the Dynamic ProStudio. Even though I personally would
NEVER pay $55 for a tracker, that tracker has the BEST features I've seen.
An integrated CD-ROM controller/sampler! Just plain cool. You have
complete control of the CD and you also get to mark up what you want
sampled, then select the sampling rate and anything from
8-bit/16-bit/mono/leftchannel/rightchannel and etc.... You can also move 1
frame by frame in your selected CD region make for a near PERFECT start
point. Anyway, I think that would be a GREAT thing to add to FT2 to make
it that much better. I don't even WANT to hear any arguments as to how
useless that could be! Trust me, you'd like it :)
The !&%#@&??@%#*?'s of FT2:
NO SHELLING!!! I know it's considered a "High End" tracker, but that
shelling feature can come in REAL handy at times! I'm not going to example
any, but some of us know what I mean. It's just a good thing to have
around, in case you really want to do something that you can't do from
inside FT2, and you DON'T want to quit the darn thing! What do you think?
I have 32 people so far that agree with me on this :) Vote for SHELLING in
FT2 in 1995!! (it's corny but I'm serious ;)
One thing that bothered me all the time was, when I'm editing volume or
effects. I'd enter say the effect and it would jump to the next line. I
found that rather annoying. I like to enter all the shiznit in on run per
line. I finally switched LineSkip to 0, so it would stay on the same line.
Not that great of a way of doing it, but it's better than it jumping to the
next line and having me do the finger dance on the cursor keys.
What the HELL are those annoying funny noises?????
If you've had that problem before, it's usually because you are a Newly
GUS-wed person :) If you haven't gotten the 1meg mem upgrade, you'll notice
that FT2 makes weird noises with songs that are larger than the memory.
That's one thing FT2 does not warn you about. It's both good and bad in a
way. You CAN load up bigger than GUS memory files, it'll load them fine,
however when you play the song, where there are notes of which whose
samples haven't been loaded due to lack of memory you will hear weird
noises. (dang! Was that a weird sentence or WHAT? :) Couldn't have said it
better myself!) Or you'll just hear nothing. If the melody sample is one
of the Unloaded ones, the song is usually not hear listening to. That's a
hint for you to go and get that Memory Chip! This feature is good because
well you can load up a song, and get to hear SOMETHING of it till you get
an upgrade, and bad because well, sometimes you just Won't know that a
sample is missing, you get emotionally attached to the song, and then hear
it at a friend's house and say "HEY! Why did you mess that song up??" And
he'll just look at you funny :) Also one thing with .xm(s) are that they
have HUGE headers, so you'll notice that, say if you have 512K, you can
still load up a 630K file and listen to everything. FT2 compresses info in
the file too when you save it, I believe Ryan told me that the samples get
compressed, I could be wrong.
The Infamous Keyboard Mapping/Conflict for Non-Swedish keyboards:
Ok. Let me clear this one up. In the config, it lets you choose which
keyboard you want to use. If you're not in Switzerland, you're bound to
bump in to the "Mystery Keys." Well, let me cut the pain short for ya and
tell you where they are. You'll notice that when in editing, you can do
volume ramping with the -/+ keys. Or SO it says in the Help. Well, don't
be fooled o' friends, it ain't so if you're not Swiss :) You'll see that
when in the volume field, if you hit '-' it'll actually put a '+' there
instead. You'll go "What the @#&$^??" And then off to finding the REAL '+'
key. (This is for US keyboards btw, I don't know what the deal with the
rest are.) You'll also notice that in the Help screen it says something
like (1/2) AddSkip and Shift-(1/2) SubSkip. (It doesn't say that exact
thing but you know which one I'm talking about). You'll wonder "What the
!@^%# is (1/2)???". Well, lemme give you the US KeyMap at least:
The REAL '-' is the '/' key
The REAL '+' is the '-' key (Don't ask :)
The (1/2) key is the '~' key. (1/2) = ` and Shft(1/2) = ~ obviously.
The 1/2 key is the SkipLines setting; how many lines you want it to skip
when you enter a note, most of us know that of course :)
And then there was the '|' key! Oh yes, the famous "KeyOff note." Well,
most of the US boyz found out that there just AIN'T no | key. Well, I'm
gonna let you in on a little secret: True, on the US keyboards you wont be
able to enter the | thingy, BUT, this is something only a few of us know
and it's not documented (everyone say OOOHHHH!!). To enter a KeyOff note,
ONE of the things we can do for now, until it's fixed, is to go over to the
effects field and enter ->K00<--. Don't ask how we found that but it works
:)
If you're REALLY desperate and you just HAVE to put in the | thing, there
IS a way. You go ahead and mark the channel you want to work on for
'record' and then press the RightShift, and play away at your notes. Once
you let go of the key, FT2 will enter the KeyOff note appropriately enough.
And you'll be a proud owner of that cool looking rectangle in the notes
field. That pretty much covers all the important keyboard problems. (This
really IS a *little* article ;)
Other stuff:
One thing, when you have someone's or your own song loaded, if you go into
Instrument editing and have hit space twice, say accidentally, and you
start playing with the instrument it will directly put those notes down in
the track that is currently selected. So, watch out for that, it's not a
biggie, usually you can either load up the song or start over. But if you
don't have a copy of the song then you better watch out. Also, watch out
for buttons and mouse handling :) If you accidentally hit SubtractChannel,
BOOM, there go TWO channels byebye! Adding and Subtracting Channel go by 2
channels each. So if you just don't feel like having 10 channels going and
want to compose in only 9 then you're going to have one blank track. Oh
well, you'll get used to it.
The only thing I yet can't really explain is the Vibrato Style settings
that are in the Instrument editing screen below the scroll bars. I have
played with them and haven't noticed any difference. If anyone knows how
to use them or whether they really do something NOTICEABLE please let me
know, I'm interested.
Various Opinions of FT2:
I have talked to a bunch of people and have gotten dynamic responses. Most
of them lie in these groups:
- HotKeys and Mouse interaction is weird, wish you could do more with
keyboard. (I agree with that one!)
- Too Cluttery! Everything in smooshed together, hurts my eyes! (That's
what I thought first when I got FastTracker2, but I got used to it,
however some people still think it's a bit too much.)
- I just can't STAND Hex!! (Too young I guess)
- ST3 still rulez in my book. (I agree, but I like them both)
- I sleep with under my pillow! I LOVE FT2!!!!! (Plain WEIRDO!)
- It's just another tracker, geeez! (Too many chill pills)
- What's FT2?? (Errr... wrong person)
- Eye'm C0rnH0li0 and eye'm heeeaa t0 rUle! Werd! (Woops, sorry, don't
know where that came from ;)
I had more, but I lost them in the Linux crash. Those are the ones I
remembered. Most of the opinions lie somewhere near those. Whatever yours
maybe, I sure hope that this here TINY article cleared something is up for
ya :) Keep playing Nibbles and your tunes and may FT2 make for a better
muzik makin'. Enjoy and peace!
HeatWave (heatwave@thumper.labs.gmu.edu)
Ali Ebnereza (aebnerez@osf1.gmu.edu)
Like they say: ".XM and the world .XMs with you. .MOD and you shall
.MOD alone!"
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<<Code>>
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<General Rambling by Denthor>
............................................................................
Happy new year, everybody :)
Things are looking slightly better ... I have finished my coding for
Aphyxia's new game (I know some think that games coding is lame, but we've
all got to eat ;-)), and I have secured a job with a local firm coding
internet applications.
I have finally gotten paid! Aside from meaning that I am finally going to
be able to buy the Escape CD, it means that I am finally going to go and
get a girlfriend. A while ago, I told EzE and GoTH that I would only get a
girlfriend when I could afford one (I live in a nature reserve, so just the
petrol money would bankrupt me if I saw her more then once a week), so I
promised them both that when I finally got some money, they could take me
out and introduce me to some women. Then again, those two are scary, and
I'm wondering what I am letting myself in for ;-)
EzE has never introduced me to _his_ girlfriend, which makes me even more
suspicious.
[Conversation : GoTH : Denthor, you _need_ a woman!
Denthor : You have no idea. ]
GoTH is mourning the loss of his pet owl, which he will be sharing with you
in an article to be written soon for DemoNews.
He was composed enough the other night to do a coding session with me ... I
like coding at his place, his parents keep a well-stocked fridge ;-) There
are also lots of dogs on his property, only two of which are his ... the
rest of the neighborhoods dogs seem to like their food better too :) I had
slept four hours in the previous three days, and at about 2am the room was
spinning (nice effect!), but I got done some of my best coding ever!
Of course, I was woken up at 6am by my dad to help fix a car. And then I
had to go to work. Life stinks.
Sorry for the slightly rambling article today... I still haven't gotten
much sleep ;-) It is only the fear of Snowman's wrath if I don't send in
this article that is keeping me awake :)
*thud* No! Christopher! What are you going to do with that cattle prod?!?
I'll be good! Keep away! Someone help me! Send help _now_! Arrrgh! .....
Nevermind.
<aside from EzE> : Hmm Denthor and those whips and chains again! And
he says we're scary! I'm almost afraid to introduce
him to any woman, I mean you can't hate someone
THAT much can you :-).. back to IRC.
EzE has been spreading vicious rumors over IRC that I am dead. I assure you
that that is not the case, I was just hit lightly by a cement truck. If I
was dead, I would be the first one to let you all know. A comment EzE got
when spreading this slander was "Well, at least he documented his code!"
... thanks a million, nice to know someone cares...
The question that has been posed to me by a nameless net user (Hi MaxD ;-),
is to where this column will be heading in future? Should it stay in it's
present "Slightly-humorous-let-the-world-know-what-Asphyxia-does-in-it's-
spare-time" format, or become a "This-is-how-you-derive-the-resulting-
spline-with-reverse-interpolation" coding discussion.
Email denthor@beastie.cs.und.ac.za to let me know what you think ...
I am open to suggestions.
Byeeeeee....
- Denthor
PS. Still no one has sent me a GUS. It's a conspiracy, isn't it?
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<<New Uploads>>
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NOTE: All locations start with /demos and then their respective sub-
directory. Please note however that the actual base directories
(like /pub/msdos/demos) may differ from mirror to mirror.
Filename Location Size Description
------------ ---------------- ---- -----------------------------------------
/demos
santa .zip /alpha/NEW 97 Cool Yule by Mindware
tucxmas .zip /alpha/NEW 21 Xmasdemo 1994 by Universal Coders
p-ctrst1.zip /diskmags 1303 Contrast Diskmag by PURPLE. Released at
p-ctrst2.zip /diskmags 475 The Party '94, Issue #1.
/music
am-sngle.zip /disks 1141 4 MTM After Midnight Mixes by Fortunato
defi-m02.zip /disks 520 Defiance 1995 MuzikDisk 2
must077 .zip /programs/players 72 PipoSoft Musician STudio 0.77
m00n_klf.zip /songs/mtm 197 Both sides of the Moon by The Hacker/KLF
phantasm.zip /songs/mtm 244 Phantasm by Sybaris/TIME
2k-forbz.zip /songs/s3m 138 Forbes Dancin' Machine by Karl
amb1 .zip /songs/s3m 67 Amb1 by P.Kendell
bc_hell .zip /songs/s3m 144 hell by Baron
booghett.zip /songs/s3m 103 Booghetti by Edward Chapin
cllpsnws.zip /songs/s3m 193 Collapsing New Samples by Bolleke
cremix .zip /songs/s3m 32 Chippy Remix by Edward Chapin
cx-hoard.zip /songs/s3m 99 The Hoard by Hirononymous
cx-reali.zip /songs/s3m 204 Reality Check by Zoombapup
cx-refle.zip /songs/s3m 223 Reflexology by Zoombapup
cx-riffa.zip /songs/s3m 106 Rifferamatron-a-phychadelia by Hironony.
cx-shaba.zip /songs/s3m 62 Shaba-Ru by Hirononymous
desire .zip /songs/s3m 293 Secret Desire by Bolleke
dy-glory.zip /songs/s3m 149 Phase of Glory - Pure Resistance+Draygen
frzf-had.zip /songs/s3m 42 Freeze Frame by Hadji
inwbull .zip /songs/s3m 301 Thunderbull II INW remix
nin_clsr.zip /songs/s3m 623 Closer by the Bedlamite
playdrum.zip /songs/s3m 66 I play the drums by The Charlatan
tlanc .zip /songs/s3m 119 The Ancient by Lord Blanka
tlflm .zip /songs/s3m 122 The Lesson of the Flame by Lord Blanka
pro-prsv.zip /songs/s3m 114 Prsv by Elliott Lee (Protocol)
ambiride.zip /songs/xm 296 Ride the Range by KXMode
mld-dnch.zip /songs/xm 315 Dawn of the Child by Mellow-D
mld-wayt.zip /songs/xm 180 Way To Another by Mellow-D
rem .zip /disks 562 Rapid Erection Music by the Hot Dicks
/code
lz_asm .arj /compress 9 ASM Various algorithms Data Compression
lz_c .arj /compress 18 C Various algorithms Data Compression
the_shed.zip /demosrc 12 ASM source for The Shed BBS ad
the_cop .lzh /graph/copper 48 ASM? Copper source
tplas11 .zip /graph/plasma 139 ASM Tom's plasm source w/example
vgafx .zip /graph/text 27 ASM VGA Text attributes & special effect
texmpsrc.zip /graph/texture 47 C Slimy Texture Mapping
text_eng.zip /graph/texture 231 C Texture mapping source
textmap .lzh /graph/texture 11 GIF Text file explaining t.mapping w/gif
texture .zip /graph/texture 112 ASM Shows how to do texture mapping
tf-texmp.zip /graph/texture 34 PAS Little source code for texture map..
tubesrc .zip /graph/tunnel 22 CPP Neat tube effect
tut6new .zip /graph/tutor 34 C++/PAS Demo Coder's tutorial part 6/16
tut7new .zip /graph/tutor 37 C++/PAS Demo Coder's tutorial part 7/16
sbf3 .zip /sound 87 C callable library for SBP w/src
tinyplay.zip /sound 14 Tiny MOD Player v0.1 w/src
tnyplay2.lzh /sound 9 Tiny MOD Player for DOS/4GW 32-bit PMode
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<<Advertisements>>
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<<Back Issues>>
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After reading this issue of DemoNews, you may be wondering how you can get
previous ones. Well fear not! There are two different ways to do so:
1: FTP to hornet.eng.ufl.edu and go to /pub/msdos/demos/news/OLD_NEWS and
start downloading anything you see.
2: Now you can request back issues of DemoNews via e-mail. Start a letter
to listserver@oliver.sun.ac.za (any subject line) and in the body of the
letter include "GET DEMUAN-LIST <INDEX>" where INDEX refers to the
index number of the issue.
For example: GET DEMUAN-LIST 43
This would retrieve DemoNews #76 (part 1 of 2).
Issue Index Date Size Description
----- ----- -------- ------ ----------------------------------------------
73 35,36 12/04/94 78819 History of HORNET, Editorial: Demo Dreams,
Interview with Necros, Lemmings + Psycho
Neurosis, Review of PMODE/W, Using Assembly
Part 1.
74 37,38 12/11/94 77833 Interview with Vic/AcmE, Editorial: A Defense
of Demoscene, The Making of NAID / Apraxia,
Interview with C.C.Catch, Review of Scream
Tracker 3.2, Review of Autodesk Animator Pro.
75 41,42 12/18/94 68009 A DemoNews Reader, The Birth of Commercial
Life, Editorial: Calm Before the Storm,
Interview with Mello-D, US Demo Scene
(Renaissance meeting), Jelly Tots and Pizza
Shops, Review of Wired '94 Graphics.
76 43,44 12/25/94 92589 Interview with EMF, DemoNews Readers Write,
Kimba's Life Story, X-Mas in the Demo Scene,
CORE, Demo & Music Database, Interview with
Purple Motion/Future Crew, Interview with
Krystall/Astek, Common Sense ][ by Perisoft,
Its X-Mas in Africa, Interview with Maxwood
of Majic 12, Assembly Part ][, Common Sense
Response by Stony.
77 45,46 01/01/95 101100 Chart History, Snowman Near-Disaster, Son of
Snowman, The Party 1994, Making Waves, Using
Assembly Part 2.
For more recent issues that are split into multiple parts, you must send
an individual request for each index number.
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<<Closing Comments>>
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Two upcoming issues of DemoNews will be "Tricks of the Trade" and "Nets and
BBS's". For "Tricks of the Trade" we will be collecting tips and tricks
from coders, musicians, and graphics artists. If you have something
interesting to share please send it my way. For "Nets and BBS's", we will
have a listing of all known demo BBS's and Networks around the world. If
you are a sysop or 'net manager, please send information.
The quote for the week comes, once again, from Programmers at Work. (p.250)
"One of the first programs I wrote was a class dating program that was
actually used at a spring dance. Since I was a totally self-taught
programmer, the dance program didn't work too well. I had gotten a
whole bunch of students to gather around and watch the program run.
But I didn't take into account that the same girl would get assigned
to all the different men. One girl just kept getting matched with
every guy and I realized that what I'd forgotten to do was eliminate a
person once they were assigned. Even worse, she was a really weird
girl." - Andy Hertzfeld
Sorry about the size this week, I'll try to keep it down in the future. :)
Take care,
-Christopher G. Mann (Snowman)-
r3cgm@dax.cc.uakron.edu
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