Oric is not popular. Why ?
category: general [glöplog]
Hey, I would like to know why the Oric demoes never manage to get more than 3% of popularity after one year on line on pouet. Never get more than 10 comments...
At VIP3 and VIP4 we get a lot of points during votes, we made special versions of the demo including pre-installed windows emulators, the download is something like a 500kb zip file, and we never get more than 10 comments ?
Comme on, explain me !
Is it so crappy ? Is the "scene spirit" so dead that oldskool does not interest anyone anymore ?
Please, take a look to our latest prod (read the NFO if you have windows 2000/XP), and reply me. I want to understand.
The prod is here "Quintessential" by Defence Force
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=6864
At VIP3 and VIP4 we get a lot of points during votes, we made special versions of the demo including pre-installed windows emulators, the download is something like a 500kb zip file, and we never get more than 10 comments ?
Comme on, explain me !
Is it so crappy ? Is the "scene spirit" so dead that oldskool does not interest anyone anymore ?
Please, take a look to our latest prod (read the NFO if you have windows 2000/XP), and reply me. I want to understand.
The prod is here "Quintessential" by Defence Force
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=6864
Well, I have personally never touched an Oric and so it follows that I'm not particularly interested in it.
Most of the "oldskool" crowd here probably come from Amiga or c64 (I'm from the latter, although I dabbled in the first) and that's where our interests lie. So while you may catch me commenting a c64 or amiga demo (or even watching them in a *boo! hiss!* emulator) I'm not about to do the same for an Oric, for which I don't know the specs, the limitations or whatever.
So there you go. :)
Most of the "oldskool" crowd here probably come from Amiga or c64 (I'm from the latter, although I dabbled in the first) and that's where our interests lie. So while you may catch me commenting a c64 or amiga demo (or even watching them in a *boo! hiss!* emulator) I'm not about to do the same for an Oric, for which I don't know the specs, the limitations or whatever.
So there you go. :)
never even seeeeeen an oric
"Why wasn't the pc scene popular in '92?"
"Why isn't the amiga/c64/oric scene popular now"
"Why wasn't the dreamcast/atari/mac/amstrad scene popular ever?"
popular is something many people have interest in. Oric may be nice, it just doesn't interest many people now. So what can you do? You can't force it on anyone, you can't start a propaganda campain. Build something beautiful for Oric and (maybe) the interest will come.
I always liked that the scene changed and found new interests, new platforms, new ideas. I always liked that it was free.
I want to be free.
"Why isn't the amiga/c64/oric scene popular now"
"Why wasn't the dreamcast/atari/mac/amstrad scene popular ever?"
popular is something many people have interest in. Oric may be nice, it just doesn't interest many people now. So what can you do? You can't force it on anyone, you can't start a propaganda campain. Build something beautiful for Oric and (maybe) the interest will come.
I always liked that the scene changed and found new interests, new platforms, new ideas. I always liked that it was free.
I want to be free.
Actually, if you want something new, that's cool, because the Oric demo scene was created in 1998 (the oric computer itselft exists since 1982)...
Instead of trying to code yet again something on well known hardware, I've think it would have been more interesting to do something new on an hardware that never see any demo before, because considered too crappy at this time...
Instead of trying to code yet again something on well known hardware, I've think it would have been more interesting to do something new on an hardware that never see any demo before, because considered too crappy at this time...
oric is sweet ..
hand-portable machine (only need a screen to plug) (though actually oric coders prefer emulators)
btw, i was two years old in 82, so probably at that time i wasn't geek enough to be interested in oric stuff :)
nice demo of you btw =)
hand-portable machine (only need a screen to plug) (though actually oric coders prefer emulators)
btw, i was two years old in 82, so probably at that time i wasn't geek enough to be interested in oric stuff :)
nice demo of you btw =)
Don't look at me, dbug, I pretend to be a musician :-)
People are too much interested in 3d-accelerated pc-demos ... instead of exploring -limited- hardware.
:(
Which processor is in the Oric? Z80?
Nope. Since it seems that almost no one here know the machine, here is a small summary:
Processor is a 1 mhz 6502 processor (the version without weird secret opcodes).
There is 64kb of memory, but in standard mode only 48kb can be accessed. The 16 top kb of ram are masked by the 16 kb of ROM that contains the BASIC.
When you plug a floppy disk, you gain access to the 16kb, and the Operating System use them for his floppy commands. (In this demo we flush out the operating system, simply keeping a small "read sector" code, thus getting 16 more kb).
For video, we have a 40x28 character text mode, and a 240x200 graphic mode. No hardware scrolling, no sprites, no rasters, no programmable colors. You can have a maximum of 2 color per 6 pixel blocs, and you cannot change those colors every blocs... (a full explanation would require a two page long explanation).
For the sound, it's a Genera Instrument AY-3-8912 sound chip, with 3 voices, like in amstrad cpc, spectrum + or atari st.
Processor is a 1 mhz 6502 processor (the version without weird secret opcodes).
There is 64kb of memory, but in standard mode only 48kb can be accessed. The 16 top kb of ram are masked by the 16 kb of ROM that contains the BASIC.
When you plug a floppy disk, you gain access to the 16kb, and the Operating System use them for his floppy commands. (In this demo we flush out the operating system, simply keeping a small "read sector" code, thus getting 16 more kb).
For video, we have a 40x28 character text mode, and a 240x200 graphic mode. No hardware scrolling, no sprites, no rasters, no programmable colors. You can have a maximum of 2 color per 6 pixel blocs, and you cannot change those colors every blocs... (a full explanation would require a two page long explanation).
For the sound, it's a Genera Instrument AY-3-8912 sound chip, with 3 voices, like in amstrad cpc, spectrum + or atari st.
That's "funny". Since I started this thread, three more people put comments on the oric prods :)
I think this is the problem you face when making demos for 'strange' platforms. Take for example my 'Monochromatic', a demo for the TI-83 calculator.
(http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=5637)
It was pretty well received when shown at Mekka (2nd in wild-compo) but never attracted much attention after that. On another demo-related messageboard I got some people saying things like 'yeah, I guess it looks nice, but since I don't know the hardware limits, I dont know whether to be impressed or not'.
Anyway, back to Oric, I think what Sagacity said is pretty spot on.
I downloaded one of the previous Oric demos (with emulator), and I thought: "hmm..wonder what kind of computer this is, guess it must be kind of like a C64". And since it wasn't as good as the latest C64 demos, I didn't think it was all that impressive.
So thanks for the explanation of the hardware above, now I see that it has rather limited capabilities even compared to the C64.
(http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=5637)
It was pretty well received when shown at Mekka (2nd in wild-compo) but never attracted much attention after that. On another demo-related messageboard I got some people saying things like 'yeah, I guess it looks nice, but since I don't know the hardware limits, I dont know whether to be impressed or not'.
Anyway, back to Oric, I think what Sagacity said is pretty spot on.
I downloaded one of the previous Oric demos (with emulator), and I thought: "hmm..wonder what kind of computer this is, guess it must be kind of like a C64". And since it wasn't as good as the latest C64 demos, I didn't think it was all that impressive.
So thanks for the explanation of the hardware above, now I see that it has rather limited capabilities even compared to the C64.
Yes I do also think that the first Oric demos are not so impressive, but still a nice watch and I respect Dbug for starting the Oric demoscene. But still I feel that they are not so impressive, some effects look a bit slow (Isn't it like C64? But I don't know though how easy it is), some are ugly (but ok, bad gfx modes) few things look nice, e.t.c..
Perhaps that we could add a technical description somewhere of all alternative platforms ? This way, people would have access to usefull information about those machines, and thus we would not have anymore to explain to lenght what is an Atari ST, a Commodore C64, a Spectrum, and so on.
I know that in France the Oric is well known, because it was relatively well released du to it's low cost (when I bought my Atmos, I have to pay 2500 FF, at this time, the Atari 800 was at 3000 FF, the Commodore 64 was priced at 3500 FF, and the Apple 2 was considered as a Rolls Royce with a price like 11000 FF with the floppy drive...).
Sdw: Monochromatic is quite nice :) I believe that with your processor (6mhz Z80) and small resolution you can update the screen @50hz ??? On the Oric I cannot even do that in graphical mode. The fastest known way to clear the 8000 bytes of video memory is to repeat 8000 STA instructions (STA $A000 / STA $A001...) and even this takes 32000 clock cycles (8000*4), and since we have a 1mhz 6502, we have a grand total of 1000000/50=20000 clock cycles per vbl... it require 1.6 vbl to clear the screen :))
And of course this methods uses 8000*3=24000 bytes in main memory to store the unrolled code...
This is the reason why I'm doing most of my effects in Text mode, because there is only 1kb of memory to move around.
I know that in France the Oric is well known, because it was relatively well released du to it's low cost (when I bought my Atmos, I have to pay 2500 FF, at this time, the Atari 800 was at 3000 FF, the Commodore 64 was priced at 3500 FF, and the Apple 2 was considered as a Rolls Royce with a price like 11000 FF with the floppy drive...).
Sdw: Monochromatic is quite nice :) I believe that with your processor (6mhz Z80) and small resolution you can update the screen @50hz ??? On the Oric I cannot even do that in graphical mode. The fastest known way to clear the 8000 bytes of video memory is to repeat 8000 STA instructions (STA $A000 / STA $A001...) and even this takes 32000 clock cycles (8000*4), and since we have a 1mhz 6502, we have a grand total of 1000000/50=20000 clock cycles per vbl... it require 1.6 vbl to clear the screen :))
And of course this methods uses 8000*3=24000 bytes in main memory to store the unrolled code...
This is the reason why I'm doing most of my effects in Text mode, because there is only 1kb of memory to move around.
Dbug: Well, on the calc you have a LCD display, and not the conventional raster/vbl update cycle, so I actually don't know exactly how fast my effects are running. :)
About the 1.6vbl to clear a gfx screen on the Oric, it's actually the same thing on the C64 when you do stuff in hires mode. Ofcourse you almost never clear the whole screen, instead you clear the parts where you have been drawing (say if you do a dot-plotter etc.).
But on the C64 there are other options besides the hires mode, with the redefinable character sets, sprites etc.
Nice to have some technical discussions for a change btw.! :)
About the 1.6vbl to clear a gfx screen on the Oric, it's actually the same thing on the C64 when you do stuff in hires mode. Ofcourse you almost never clear the whole screen, instead you clear the parts where you have been drawing (say if you do a dot-plotter etc.).
But on the C64 there are other options besides the hires mode, with the redefinable character sets, sprites etc.
Nice to have some technical discussions for a change btw.! :)
Oric? Sounds like the name of a demo group, not a computer. Oh well, either way, I've never heard of them/it.
Why is nobody commenting on my GBA prod? Why is there no interest in the atari800 scene? Why is nobody looking at MSX demos?
who cares?
who cares?
I've seen very cool Atari 800 demoes. But I have to say that the Atari, with its 2mhz 6502 is definitively too powerfull for my tastes. Player missiles, display lists that allow programmable video modes, lotsa colors...