pouët.net

Go to bottom

again by Paradox [web]

                                           
                               
                                        __
                                       /
                                   ___/     _____    ___  ___
        _  \  /        __/ /      /        / __     /    /
       /   / / /_     /   / /_   / /_     / /      __/
        __/  \____ __/    \____  \        \       /    ___/
       /
    __/ > 505 <    > RA <     > The Paranoid <  > Zweckform <




                                          __
                ___      ___      ___    |  | ______
               /  /     /  /     /  /    |  | \___  \
              /  /___  /  /___  /  /___  |  |     \  \
              \______\ \____  \ \______\ |__|      \__\
                           /  /
                          /__/




                              P a r a d o x
                              
                              " a g a i n "
                              
                       A 96k demo for the Atari STE
                             for Outline 2008



  Prologue:
  
    This little document accompanies the Paradox' 96k demo named "again",
    released 2008 shortly after the Outline 2008 party organized by
    LineOut. It is meant to explain why the release of this little demo
    has been delayed with regard to the competition and what has happened
    since. Please copy all files only if you want to spread this demo.
    
  
  Legal stuff:
  
    No member of Paradox can be held responsible for any kind of
    damage that occured to your hardware, software, mental or
    physical health or anything else related to you in any
    obscure way, while, before or after running this demo.
   
    The 96k demo named >> again << may be copied as long as it
    is distributed free of charge. If there is one Public Domain
    Service left in the whole wide world still supporting the
    Atari community - feel free to offer it but don't expect
    anyone to pay anything for this.
    It should be copied without excluding or adding any of the
    related files.



  Hardware Requirements:
  
    The minimum requirements to run this demo are
    - An Atari STE compatible computer
    - At least 1MB of free RAM
    - A colour monitor or TV set capable of displaying ST Low
      resolution of 320 x 200 pixels
    - A diskdrive
    - A clockspeed of 8MHz
    
    The demo does run on any machine which exceeds the list of
    requirements listed above. It has been successfully tested
    on the following machines:
    
    - An Atari Falcon030 with 14MB of RAM, VGA and RGB monitors,
      NVDI 4.11, Videlity screen enhancer, Nemesis accelerator
    - An Atari MegaSTE with 4MB of RAM, NVDI 4.11 and harddisk,
    - An Atari 1040STE with 2MB of RAM and a DD Diskdrive
    
    The memory usage is quite extensive. The demo runs on STE
    computers with 1MB of RAM only from the AUTO-folder from disk
    with no other extension in memory and will not run at all when
    being executed from the desktop (such as FOLDER100.PRG or any
    harddisk driver, RAM-disks or any other extensions).
    
    Also, the demo relies on most of the fundamental components
    of the Atari STE hardware, meaning that it will not run on
    
    - Any Atari ST or MegaST computer
    - Any Atari TT computer
    
    Also, the demo will not run correctly on a Falcon030 with a
    ct60 equipped and switched on. The ct60 does not cooperate too
    well with the BLiTTER, which is no problem for most applications
    but does not work well with a demo that makes extensive use of
    the BLiTTER, which is exactly what this demo does.


    
  
  Party version:
  
    How come the release of this demo has been delayed (again) ? To be
    honest, we were confident it wouldn't be unless a few weeks before
    the party (again). However, the demo was put together on the party
    (again), it even lacked a few graphics (again) which were being
    provided on the party and the soundtrack has been made completely
    during the first two days of the party (again). We had little to
    no time to really synchronize the demo with the soundtrack, we had
    just been lucky that it worked out fairly well but still not up to
    what we had in mind. Also, memory management was kind of non-
    existant so that the party-version required 2MB of RAM.
    Therefore, we asked for a 2 weeks delay and the organizers were so
    kind to grant it. So we had the time to go over the demo a couple
    of times, iron out a few bugs, change some of the graphics, re-sync
    many of the effects, introduce memory management and add a few minor
    things, too.
    
    Thanks to the Outline organizers for this.
    
    However, while trying to finalize this demo, major effort has been
    put into debugging a few things that turned out to be fairly odd:
    The demo had serious problems with video synchronisation on the
    Falcon on VGA and crashed every 2nd time it has been run without
    rebooting in between.
    We managed to track down the reason in the music replay and were
    confronted with the fact that our integration of gwEm's powerful
    maxYMizer routine is a bit too simple, seeing how many of the top
    notch effects it offers are actually being used by 505's soundtrack.
    Since we cannot cure this problem in time since we badly rely on
    gwEm's support while he's on a business trip, we decided to release
    the demo - as promised - with 3 restrictions:
    
      a.) There's a minimal flicker on Falcon/VGA sometimes
      b.) The demo does not exit at all, a RESET is required
      c.) Random crashes on Falcon/VGA, clean machine preferred
      
    We're very sorry about this and hope to be releasing a bugfixed
    version that runs cleanly on any Falcon030 and STE soon.
    
  
  
  Full Credits:


    All music:
                                    505
    Code, Most Graphics:
                           The Paranoid
    Some Graphics:
                                     RA
    Puzzle Picture:
                                   ukko
    Music Replay Routine:
                                   gwEm
    Effect Synchronisation:
                                    505
                           The Paranoid


    Again, additional thanks must go to Evil of the Dead Hackers
    Society for the initial demo-engine this demo is based on. 
    Fundamentals of C2P being used in this demo courtesy of Kalms,
    Llama, Dynacore and ultra. Finally, to match memory requirements
    IcePacker has been used.



  Technical stuff:
  
    The demo is about 360KB unpacked and IcePacker squeezes it down to
    just below 96KB. It requires about 540KB of additional RAM for data
    being generated on the fly and that's also why it has problems
    running on a 1MB machine with any extra software in memory, seeing
    that it also needs to allocate memory for screens, music and stack.
    The STE-feature being used rather excessively is, again, the BLiTTER.
    While we had several ideas of using other STE features such as screen
    splitting, hardware scrolling and so on, but we had to drop most of
    them because of the lack of time. Naturally, the music uses the 
    National LMC1992 excessively for various effects and might sound
    spoilt on the Falcon030. Otherwise, the only additional STE feature
    being used is of course the extended palette of 4096 colours.
    
    

  The effects in Detail:
  
    1. Bouncing Logos Intro Effects
       The logos are pure BLiTTER stuff, we do not like preshifting.
       Music:              505
       Graphics, Code:     The Paranoid
       
    2. Greetings Tunnel
       Double Alpha-Layered tunnel with realtime zooming logos that
       shine on the tunnel according to their distance from the viewer.
       Music:              505
       Texture/Packer:     RA
       Graphics, Code:     The Paranoid
    
    3. Jigsaw Puzzle Zoomer
       Realtime zooming masked sprites using the BLiTTER, ranging from
       192 x 192 pixels down to 48 x 48 - No preshift, no precalc and
       no double-pixel mode this time, it's a 1 x 1 effect. Masks are
       generated in realtime by the BLiTTER itself.
       Music:              505
       Graphics:           ukko
       Code:               The Paranoid
       
    4. Rotating/Scaling/Moving Bar
       This effect has been done on the ST before (and even in 50
       frames) but only using a static bar. We are very sorry to
       report that we can't do it in 50 frames, but we can not only
       rotate but move (!) and scale (!!) and even have a background,
       using the BLiTTER of course. No explicit masking required due
       to intelligent usage of BLiTTER endmasks.
       Music:              505
       Background picture: ukko
       Code, Graphics:     The Paranoid
       
    5. Pseudo 3D Fountain
       This effect is a combination of many effects seen before. It
       features a little offset table for the fountain that is being
       scaled in realtime for the pseudo 3D-effect. Similarly, it
       features a blob routine that actually displays 192 blobs being
       scaled in realtime for the pseudo 3D-effect. Clever palette
       management allows to have a pseudo lightshading effect.
       Music:              505
       Graphics, Code:     The Paranoid
       
    6. End Logo
       'Nuff said.
       Paradox Logo:       RA



  FAQ
  
  ? Why does it run on STE only ? All of it can be done on an ST, too!
  ! Feel free to try. I doubt effects such as Twisting Bar or the
    Jigsaw Puzzle can be done without the assistance of the BLiTTER
    in that quality, speed or resolution and also, thanks to gwEm's
    incredible maxYMizer, 505's soundtrack relies heavily on the STE
    DMA channels and the National LMC1992.
    
  ? How come the demo doesn't run well on the Falcon ?
  ! The maxYMizer replay routine is powerful and fairly easy to
    integrate, but it behaves slightly different on the Falcon than
    it does on the STE. At least it appears to do so. We didn't have
    the time yet to fully analyze it since we need the support of
    gwEm who is on a business trip currently, but we wanted to release
    the demo as promised to the Outline organizers.
    
  ? The sound is a bit poor on the Falcon. How is that ?
  ! As a matter of fact, 505 uses the National LMC1992 of the STE
    heavily to produce ingenious sound effects. Unfortunately, the
    Falcon lacks the National LMC1992 so that some of the sound
    effects simply do not work out.
    
  ? Why require a reset ? The demo should exit when pressing space.
  ! Yes, i agree. This seems to be one of the unresolved mysteria
    when using the maxYMizer replay routine in our demo-engine.
    Actually, it initially did exit cleanly when pressing space,
    but in 50% of all cases, it crashes on exit, that's why we
    disabled it. Hopefully, with gwEm's support we manage to cure
    this issue as well.
    
  ? Why require to be run from the Auto-folder on 1MB STEs ?
  ! A 96k intro can't load data on the fly so that we need to
    reserve a lot of memory to keep all data at once. On a 1MB
    machine when starting from the desktop, only 870KB of free
    memory are available which is insufficient. Running it from
    the AUTO-folder frees about 30KB which are urgently needed.
    
  ? It's below 92KB. Why not use the remaining 4KB for something ?
  ! No chance. Using any additional memory will make the demo
    unusable on 1MB STE machines and a demo that does not run on
    1MB machines are not very welcome for some sceners which
    usually run the demo on emulators only where memory limits
    can be freely selected.
    
  ? Speaking of emulators. It doesn't work too well on those.
  ! No, it actually doesn't but we will not take the blame for that.
    We strongly recommend to run it on original hardware, meaning
    STE.
    
  ? "Atari is dead. Grow up and write demos for Windows."
  ! Why should we ? We like Atari and we like coding Atari STE as
    much as other people like to code Windows. The machine thrills
    us and we definetly enjoy what we're doing. Do you ?
    
  ? I read somewhere on the internet that you're all irrelevant.
  ! Yes, we had been confronted with that some time ago, too, issued
    by someone who considered himself an "expert on that matter". We
    feel rather irrelevant ever since, but obviously, that doesn't
    stop us from releasing demos.



  The Story Behind This Demo
  
    In early december 2007, long after the release of 505's Blubber Songs
    music disk, RA visited Paranoid for a weekend and while RA was
    experimenting with his own implementation of c2p effects - a nice
    change from his usual multi-colour overscan hires graphic modes -
    Paranoid was tempted to produce something for the Outline 2008. The
    previous edition of the famous dutch party was a bit low on compo
    entries and releases so that the Outline 2008 was advertised already
    very early, inviting numerous groups to provide entries for the
    competitions and releases. RA agreed to donate one or two entries for
    the boot sector competition and because Zweckform was known to be
    unable to provide graphics in a large scale as he did for "Pacemaker",
    Paranoid decided to go for 96k entry, which would not rely so heavily
    on well-designed graphics.
    Luckily, ukko of Sector One agreed to donate a few graphics or screens
    so work was started early. Naturally, life got in between and work on
    the demo suffered so while it was planned to have all effects ready by
    end of february, Paranoid's visit at RA's place late march revealed
    that two of the major effects were still due.
    Also, communication did not work out too well and many graphics were
    left to be done so that Paranoid took a break from coding to provide
    most of the graphics needed until ukko sent the final picture for the
    desired effect just a couple of days before the Outline party.

    On the party, 505 started to produce the music while Paranoid had to
    put everything together, organize the individual effects and 
    synchronize them to the music. Thanks to gwEm's maxYMizer, especially
    the syncing worked out far better than expected, but as usual, the
    fine-tuning took a lot longer than expected and minor bugs kept
    popping up.
    As a result of that, the party version ran on the 2MB Compo-STE but
    behaved very odd on other machines, even on the Falcon it had been
    written and put together on.
    Finally, that's why this production was delayed by 2 weeks in order
    to not only iron out the minor bugs but also to reveal some of the
    unused potential of some of the effects.
    
    It all worked out. Not as good as desired, but it did work out. And
    thanks to 505, RA, ukko and Zweckform, the work on the demo proved
    once again that making a demo is fun. Again.
    


                                             The Paranoid / Paradox 2008
Go to top