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Dark Avenger information 14 glöps

• general:
• level: user
• personal:
• first name: Adonis

• demo MS-Dos DoWhackaDo by Shadow Productions & Renaissance
• BTW, for any White Shadow fans, I've added the proper group, Shadow Productions, and 3 more of his released stuff. He didn't release most of his screen hacks, but one day I'll dig'em out and upload them on here.
  
  Cheers
• isokadded on the 2007-02-28 06:00:29
• demo MS-Dos DoWhackaDo by Shadow Productions & Renaissance
• @ryg:
  There are others too that managed sound and IRQ handling without hickups, but not many did it as well :) It was certainly a mind-numbing, "WTF! my computer isn't SUPPOSED to do all this" type of experience indeed :)
  
  @keops:
  No worries, I will not, especially as I'm a huge retro-Amiga/Atari/68k freak myself these days :)
• isokadded on the 2007-02-28 05:58:07
• demo MS-Dos DDD Megademo by Dungeon Dwellers Design [web]
• Read the NFO, dubmood, it's got much more (64 effects rooms), than your typcal Windows screen saver. OH, and a big scroller at the bottom! How old school! :p
  
  Anyways, just a quick synopsis of the demo: it's big/long and boring, but the intention was not a typical demo, it was an homage to the old Atari ST demos which had a game-like interface, and you'd enter a room and see an effect, go onto another room and see another. And at the same time the interface was 3D instead of 3D as an homeage to the most famous 3D game from the Atari days: Alternate Reality. Read the NFO file for more details.
• isokadded on the 2007-02-28 04:48:08
• 8k MS-Dos Revolt by Shadow Productions
• The first public release by White Shadow of Shadow Productions (later a member of Renaissance), for our trusty old school machines (pre-386).
  
  Some technical info, although I'm only watching it in DosBox at the moment so the colors and effects have all gone bonkers!
  
  First of all I believe the demo is in 320x200 or 240 16color VGA mode, with more than 16 colors on screen. At the top we have a 4-bitplane background, which has some very colorful raster/copper bars behind it, but which don't show in DosBox :( On top of those is a 1-bitplane fast scroller with some sort of sinusoidal bouncing. Underneath those we have the Shadow Productions logo, which has the "SHADOW" part bouncing. I can't tell much else as the colors are missing and messed up, and memory fails me.
  
  All in all this "screen hack", even though simple, was small and rather nice back in the day, other than the touchy/buffered keyboard code which doesn't let me take screenshots easily :)
  
  Even though it's rather simple, and White Shadow's first public release, he had other un-released screens at the time (1991!). I'll look for them and put them up one day.
  
  R.I.P. Dave!
• rulezadded on the 2007-02-28 04:16:52
• 40k bbstro MS-Dos Deadbeat BBS by Shadow Productions
• Another masterpiece by White Shadow of Renaissance, for our trusty old school machines (pre-386), and an invitation to one of the biggest, baddest BBS's, back in the day, in the NJ area.
  
  Some technical info, although I'm only watching it in DosBox at the moment so the colors and effects have all gone bonkers!
  
  First of all the demo is in 320x200 or 240 16color VGA mode, with more than 16 colors on screen. At the top we have a big, fast-moving, slowly-bobbing, 4-bitplane scroller with some awesome fonts (probably of Amiga or Atari origin). This is hardware scrolled. There's also some sort of palette cycling going on, but I can't see it on DosBox. In the middle we have the BBS logo, and on top of it we have 5 bobs spelling out "RULEZ", doing some nice sine/cosine loops. The logo and bobs share bitplanes to get 16colors, and he's restoring the background before moving the bobs.
  
  Finally below all the we have the best part of this "screen hack": another big scroller with some vertical bobbing, and some very cool sine/cosine waves running through it, making it "interlace" at certain intervals, and to top it off, it has raster/copper bars running in the middle of it, a correctly scaled/compressed reflection underneath it, with faded colors, 6 bobs spelling "SHADOW" bouncing on top of the scroller, and a semi-transparent "PRODUCTIONS" logo over the scroller reflection!! Woa! I love it! All this is re-drawn each frame. The scroller and "SHADOW" bobs share the 4 bitplanes, while I have a hunch that the "PRODUCTIONS" logo is on bitplane 3, while the reflection is scaled to 3 bitplanes to save on re-draw. Not 100% sure. I'd have to see it on a real PC, coz the messed up colors throw me off :(
  
  Love this "screen hack", other than the touchy/buffered keyboard code which doesn't let me take screenshots easily :)
  
  R.I.P. Dave!
• rulezadded on the 2007-02-28 04:04:59
• 64k MS-Dos Titswinkle Lost In Space by Shadow Productions
• Another masterpiece by White Shadow of Renaissance, for our trusty old school machines (pre-386).
  
  Some technical info, although I'm only watching it in DosBox at the moment so not everything is right:
  
  First of all the demo begins with a text-mode screen which starts you off into the story of Titswinkle and Whitney getting Lost In Space. It's got a horizontal text scroller at the top which you should read. One thing to be aware: on pressing any key it moves to the next screen, but it's very sensitive, so press a key very quickly, don't hold on to it, because it buffers the key presses and uses them to exit the next screen, which you will miss. Another hint for DosBox'ers, I droped the cycles to 1000 otherwise it would exit right away.
  
  Next, I believe the demo is in 16color VGA mode with more than 16 colors on screen. The top planefield is hardware scrolled, the "Shadow Productions" logo with transparency is bouncing around and has a sinewave running through it, and it flips between the two words once in a while. I really love the bounce and sinewave! Anyways, it's re-drawn each frame.
  
  Then we have a copper bar in the middle, I believe it's based on White Shadow's IRQ Amiga-like Copper system.
  
  Below that is a non scrolling playfield, which has a copper horizon, a vertical scroller on the right, 3 bobs in the middle and an animated checkerboard. The 3 bobs are 2 bitplanes, so 4 colors and they are pixel-smooth animated with correct z-order ("leading" ball is drawn behind the others when going into the screen, and in frond of the others when coming towards the viewer). They're also scaled, but they're most likely pre-scaled in memory. Finally they're weaving around in some nice multiplexing sine/cosine waves. Really smooth. The vertical scroller on the right is also 2 bitplanes and is real-time scaled, so you can see it compressing at the top/bottom edges, and expanding in the middle. It also continues the Titswinkle story from the intro. Read it, if you can :) Finally, the checkerboard floor is 2 bit planes, so 4 colors and I believe he's using a combination of palette scrolling and redrawing for the motion, but I can't recall at this moment.
  
  Love this "screen hack", other than the touchy/buffered keyboard code :)
  
  R.I.P. Dave!
• rulezadded on the 2007-02-28 03:40:51
• demo MS-Dos DoWhackaDo by Shadow Productions & Renaissance
• I just noticed EViL's comment and I must add the following:
  
  First of call, people, make sure you freagging WATCH the damn production. I know it's hard for the Amiga/Atari/etc folks, but hey, you wouldn't like to be judged by mere photos either, would you? I'm sure most cool Copper effects don't come out nicely with a screen shot. Then there's also animation and smooth motion, which certainly can't be captured by a photo. Let alone the music...
  
  Second, don't compare the Amiga demos with the PC demos directly, at least not the old school stuff. The Amiga was FAR ahead of any PC at the time. I was programming the x86/VGA all along "crying" that I didn't have a 68k with 16 registers under the hood and an ECS/AGA chipset to play with. Most of our old school PC demos/intros were trying to come close to the Amiga/Atari productions. Any self-respecting old school PC scener will tell you his works were an homage to the phenomenal Amiga/Atari demos/intros/etc
  
  Judge by merit while taking into account epoch (the year), the (lack of) hardware, and after witnessing (watch the damn thing!)
  
  Old school forever!!!!! :)
  
  PS. I know most old school demos won't run easily, so hopefully in-time emulators will get better and more videos will crop up. Once I figure out how to add a video here, I'll try to capture one.
• isokadded on the 2007-02-28 02:57:12
• demo MS-Dos DoWhackaDo by Shadow Productions & Renaissance
• Forgot to mention: the SPD logo I believe was pre-scaled and not real-time scaled, to save some CPU cycles.
• isokadded on the 2007-02-28 02:42:13
• demo MS-Dos DoWhackaDo by Shadow Productions & Renaissance
• This is one of the best "screen hacks" from White Shadow of Renaissance, and Phoenix is right: it pushed the limits on the old school systems. I have and did try it (hell, watched it for hours before realizing Dave (White Shadow) left his then address at the end of the bottom scroller, after which I wrote him a letter (old school, no email :p) and met him in real life), and it did indeed run on my 286-16Mhz flawlessly, 60-70fps, (you could also change the sampling rate as far as I recall, for slower machines).
  
  Dave was my friend and guru while still around, and I got to know a lot of tid-bits about his works, but also many tricks which I used in my old school stuff. So, here are some technical details which lamers might not appreciate or understand:
  
  Phoenix is right about the bitplanes more or less. First of all, it's in 16color VGA mode, 320x240 or some hacked higher-res mode, I don't recall and it won't run on DosBox right now, primarily for the following reason: it's using Dave's custom Amiga-like Copper system. It's IRQ based and can be told when to switch colors on a palette entry, as well as other hardware "commands". In more detail, the purple background is bitplane 0, the huge ass blue scroller is bitplane 3 (front-most), but it's coppered to have a blue gradient, every few scanlines. The vertical scrollers are bitplane 1, and they are also coppered, thus having a gradient, and the trickiest bit is the SPD logo which is 2 bitplanes, as far as I recall, thus giving it 4 colors, BUT what the astute and true-scener might notice is that it goes infront AND behind the big blue scroller. Now how the heck is that possible? If you know VGA programming, you can't order the bitplanes arbitrarily, unless you fake the effect by swapping the bitplane data (by copying it), but that's a costly operation on a 286 with a crappy 16bit ISA bus video card... even if you use VGA's vidmem to vidmem 32bit copies. Any guesses? I won't give it out just yet :)
  
  Next, there's another very cool scroller at the bottom, which is using all 4 bitplanes, to give it 16 initial colors, but it's also coppered by Dave's system to give it a faded look on the edges, and the scrolling is done by a very fast vertical scaler, all on 286-class machines.
  
  Finally the big playfield at the top is scrolled in hardware, and the blue scroller is redrawn each frame so it stays "in position". Of course it's also got a sinewave on it.
  
  CCCatch's music is phenomenal, which makes this an absolute master piece!
  
  Dave's inspirations were Atari ST and Amiga demos, and I'll be adding, in due time, some more "screens" as we used to call them, which have never been seen before.
  
  R.I.P. Dave, you kicked ass!
• rulezadded on the 2007-02-28 02:18:07
• demo MS-Dos The Byron Question by Dungeon Dwellers Design [web]
• Hemmm, it was never meant to be serious, guys! :p
• isokadded on the 2007-02-28 01:51:03