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2wice knightly by Maggie Team

                                      .-.
              .--.     ___  ___  ___ ( __)   .--.      .--.
             ;  _  \  (   )(   )(   )(''")  /    \    /    \
            (___)` |   | |  | |  | |  | |  |  .-. ;  |  .-. ;
                 ' '   | |  | |  | |  | |  |  |(___) |  | | |
               / /     | |  | |  | |  | |  |  | ___  |  ' _.'
              / /      | |  ; '  | |  | |  |  '(   ) |  .'.-.
             / '____   ' `-'   `-' '  | |  '  `-' |  '  `-' /
            (_______)   '.__.'.__.'  (___)  `.__,'    `.__.'
    ___                                    ___       ___      ___
   (   )                    .-.           (   )     (   )    (   )
    | |   ___    ___ .-.   ( __)   .--.    | | .-.   | |_     | |   ___  ___
    | |  (   )  (   )   \  (''")  /    \   | |/   \ (   __)   | |  (   )(   )
    | |  ' /     |  .-. .   | |  ;  ,-. '  |  .-. .  | |      | |   | |  | |
    | |,' /      | |  | |   | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | | ___  | |   | |  | |
    | .  '.      | |  | |   | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | |(   ) | |   | '  | |
    | | `. \     | |  | |   | |  | |  | |  | |  | |  | | | |  | |   ' `--' |
    | |    \ .   | |  | |   | |  '  `-' |  | |  | |  ' `-' ;  | |    ___ | |
   (___ ) (___) (___)(___) (___)  `.__. | (___)(___)  `.__.  (___)  (   )' |
                                  ( `-' ;                            ; `-' '
                                   `.__.                              .__.'

 -+*%$%*+-+*%$%*+-+*%$-+ Da legendary read me first! +*%$-+*%$%*+-+*%$%*+-


              "Do you see the hand behind the strings?
              If not, then don't ask stupid  questions!"

          Remember this phrase, it may be significant later on..


                        W e' r e     b a c k !
          ,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,__,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,__,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,

After  our  stellar debut (Don't you mean sunk  without  trace  debut?)
'Freak in the Window Cameo',  we Wee Knights have returned for a second
bash at this ascii demo making mayhem.

This time around, we've opted for a more ambitious and hopefully crowd-
pleasing approach with our new release, '2wice Knightly'. This features
a number of sights and sounds to appeal to the audience.  If everything
goes to plan,  and as the demo is pretty much finished now, I don't see
why  not,  then we should be showing this at the forthcoming  'Sundown'
party on  the 16th July 2016.

I  guess this is a good venue for a new Wee Knights production.  As the
population  of  Budleigh  Salterton like  looking  closely  at  elderly
things, including themselves in a mirror, no doubt!

Anyway,  this time around, I'd like to talk a little bit more about the
making of this thing...


                        U s e d     t o o l s !
         ,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,__,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,__,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,

After a little casual experimentation, and working out where some vital
but  well hidden ascii characters were hidden on the Mac  keyboard,  it
turns  out that the Mac's own default 'TextEdit' program was up to  the
job  of  initial creation of the ascii goodness.  Once that was up  and
running, we were away

Which  leads  nicely to the next stage,  which is getting them into  an
Atari friendly format. Hatari, the friendly Atari emulator is extremely
convenient  for  all sorts of reasons.  Including creative  stuff  like
this.  Pretty  much  all  further tools needed were to be  found  here.
Hatari  also does a decent impersonation of a Falcon these days,  which
is nice.

The  Everest  text editor is the final destination  for  my  previously
created ascii text files. It converts the raw plain text into something
that an Atari ST series is at home with.  Also,  the overwrite mode for
final editing is very very handy indeed.

The  chip tune side of the audio was composed on 'Music Mon',  and  not
just  any old Music Mon,  but only the original and crusty V1.0 itself!
This has a nice tracker style interface and is very easy to work  with.
You  can get lost for hours playing with the sound editor on  its  own.
I'll have to have a play with the latest version sometime.

A  number of samples were converted and edited by the 'Audacity'  Audio
editor  back  on the Mac.  It was able to save out to an  STE  friendly
sample format, so these can slot straight into the rest of the demo.

A few websites played a part in the creation of this demo, but specific
mention  flies out to patorjk.com/ This is where all the kickass  fonts
used  here and in the earlier demo came from.  They have a neat text to
ascii  font  converter.  This  also  helped in  the  creation  of  some
additional non-text graphics as well.

Anyway,  that lot kept us going nicely. We now look at the tricky issue
of *cough!* not entirely original material used in the demo.


       A  n o t e  o n  n o n - o r i g i n a l  m a t e r i a l s
     _,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,__,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,__,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,_

As well as drawing a lot of stuff found here,  I also searched around a
lot of ascii-art collections for inspiration. I found lots!

We firstly have to mention various animals, which were drawn by 'Ness',
apart from Ted,  we're not quite sure where he originally came from?  I
might mention in passing that I did a few changes to make these more at
home in the Atari character set.

The  floppy  disk  pseudo loading screen  was  adapted  from  something
originally made by Philip  Kaulfuss.

The  attractive  'lady in a bandana' still picture was done  by  'bug',
albeit added to a little bit by myself.

The  tiling patterns were pre-made by someone,  but there does not seem
to be any author name?

The  cubes in the 'Cubism' screen definitely came from  somewhere  too,
but the author eludes me yet again.

The rather excellent 'Four Candles' original still drawing was by 'apx'

With  reference  to the boat in 'Boaty McBoatface',  I'm not even  sure
where  I found this any more?  It resembles a gif to ascii  conversion,
but  manages  to  carry this off decently at quite  a  low  resolution,
ascii-speaking.

I will point out that all animations were painstakingly assembled  from
disparate parts and brought to life,  in an agonised hand built manner,
by me!

Most  of  the  sound  samples used were  fairly  'generic'  in  nature,
including the speech synth extracts.  However,  mention will be made of
audio  recognisable from 'Captain Pugwash',  Monty Python's Holy Grail,
and the Two Ronnies.

Needless to say,  all copyrights for third party materials appearing in
here remain with their respective owners.


          H a r d w a r e         r e q u i r e m e n t s
    _,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,__,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,__,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,_

The demo engine we are currently using, was authored in 2003 and is not
the  quickest.  I had hopes of getting this to run reasonably on a bog-
standard Atari STE. It turns out you will need a 16 MHz machine, so the
Atari Falcon will be the starting point for most people.  If you drop a
bit  of  extra  speed in on your Hatari settings,  that  will  also  do
nicely.


                  C o m i n g  u p   n e x t  t i m e ?
           ,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,__,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,__,.-=~'`^`'~=-.,

No funny stories about Knights of Old to finish off with? - Nope!

There  is another "demo" planned.  This will feature more in the way of
actual effects,  or cunning emulations of same.  This production is due
for November 2016, at the forthcoming 'Sillyventure' party in  Gdansk.

In  fact,  this  was  planned to be the follow up to 'Cameo',  until  I
decided that some of the material drawn or collected could be  diverted
and made into a third production,  this one!  Which has actually become
the second release. Erm, confused? I sure am!

Anyway, if there is going to be a final word, I'll leave it to Ted.

Take it away Ted!

                                .---_____------_____----____---.
         ,___      ___,         | Voyez-vous  la  mai          |
        ( i  )""""( i )        :  derriere  les  cordes?        :
----- -  ",;  `--   ;;" - ,_____' Si non,  alors  ne  posez    |
          )  >'~'<  (     \______ pas des questions stupides!   ;
    ,,,,,, ~ <_O_> ~,,,,,,,     '.___--_____----________--___--'
   ( O )   (       )  ( O  )  ---    |;::   |::.  "   |
    ''' (   ]     [   ) '''   \\     |;::-..|:::  |-..-
        ',,, \,,,,/ ,,,       |\\    |;::   |-..-'
        (oo )'""""' ( oo)     ||\\   '-::-''
         '''         '''      || \\

CiH - June 2016...


               Very very last minute add-on note...

 14.7.16

 Well this demo has been ready to go for more than a month now,
 and has been sitting quietly,  ignored for the last few weeks.

 In view of the convulsive  political change of direction that
 has been decided upon, I thought of adding a 'Brexit tribute'
 as a last minute thing, made out of pictures of Boris Johnson
 looking gobsmacked, as if he were saying "Who me?!"

 However,  a real world event  has coldly taken precedence over
 this, with the sudden death of a long term Atari Scener, Steve
 Jones, also known as 'Bod'.

 Bod was a member of Effect, and promised great things for them.
 He was best known for his ongoing project to revamp and improve
 the classic arcade shooter,  R-Type for the Atari STE.  Judging
 by the build released last Christmas, he was well on the way to
 getting this one done almost to an arcade faithful version.

 When he was at  STNICCC last year,  it was apparent that he was
 not in a  good place, health and lifestyle-wise. It seemed that
 he had learnt lessons  from  that trip and was starting to turn
 things around, but unfortunately, this was not to happen.

 The  only lesson for the rest of us is  that we've all got less
 time  than we'd like,  and we should not  waste it on pointless
 quarrels, emnity and bitterness, within the scene or elsewhere.

 So I have changed the ending a little bit,  to  reflect a while
 on Bod's passing on.

   All the best - C!H

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