pouët.net

Requirements: STe or MegaSTE with 2 megs of memory or more. Can be started from floppy or hdd (just one executable containing everything). Works on Steem and Hatari emulators as well.

The archive also contains the source code and the music in SNDH format.

And here is the youtube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC_ASBNXFvU

(Not HD, and not fullframerate, so unfortunately all the smooth scrollers are kind of choppy, try to imagine everything moves smoothly!)

Fail - Try again with BB code
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC_ASBNXFvU

rtype: what is annoying in particular? (just soI know what to avoid some other time)

rtype: damn, after some intense name searching for things related to the Atari, it was the only title that fitted. Too bad, but sure, I can accept your answer :)

Photon: you can call that a slideshow if you want, but then it's a slideshow with overscan pictures with multiple palette changes plus dynamic splits.

Onori: It happened I did not really have the time to put all I wanted. Originally it was supposed to be like a movie on a dvd, which explains the snow, the piracy add, the cinemascope/producer logo at the start, and the scroller with credits at the end.
Agree that in this state it looks a bit too much different.
For the pictures, the problem is that I could not come with a workable solution to have both pixelization and one palette per scanline without having to spend an insane amount of time on each picture.
Will try to refine the method :)

Photon: Was not really retaliation, was just stating that I was not happy by what you called the demo (if it had been retaliation I would have thumbed down, and I did not).
That being said, even if it was not in overscan, even if there was not palette changes on every-picture, until proved otherwise there are sprites, zomming logos, distorters, wobbling reflections, raster bars, and scrolltexts. If this does not count as "demo-like object" for somebody like you who obviously are dealing in the oldchool department as well (by judging by your blitter sweet intro), then I don't know what it is.

Ok, for people who are interested, I released the picture conversion tool I used on this demo, you can get it there.

You still have time to release your own 20th anniversary tribute!

ggn: I wrote this comment with a smiley, but I was more like "shit, have to drop this effect they have the same one, ok let's change the whole story again." :)

dOdge. You did notice the '*', no?
Just look on the left side, normally hidden by the plastic border of most monitor, but visible on the videos - written in light grey over the white background :)

While I'm commenting, if you are interested I posted a 'post mortem' on the dbug-automation forum: http://forum.dbug-automation.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1259340918

dODgE: Ok, it was possibly to light/hard to notice. At the same time, I did not really wanted to do something without any second time watch value. Keeping small details here and there for nobody to notice at first glance, is the way I wanted it :)

Hopeless and defeatist?

Just to get the point straight, I did not write any statement saying I believe or not in the global warming, or the fact human action is responsible of it.

What I state is more on the line that people should think about the environment in general, because well pollution is a problem, consumerism without limits (I buy, I use, I throw, repeat and rinse), is not going to work for the whole eternity, so just try to think about it and eventually adapt.

If you see a link on the movie 2012 with a * that says "Joke" as something serious and depressing, then I'm sorry for you.

The whole "ecological" idea was just that by using yours 20 years old computers instead of throwing them in a garbage pit, you are probably doing some right. Nothing more, nothing less.

I'm not sure about why I should do any "artistic statement" (I'm not actually sure of what it may be, guess I should google for that but it's a bit late), and about the scene going to hell, well, it's more like a small nudge to motivate people to produce stuff instead of just commenting and going to parties.

Accept my apologies for having made your day a hell, hope you are not going to commit something horrible to erase these terrible visions of doom!

If you liked this prod, you should also check this one, the 20 Years Atari STE Megademo, which also celebrates the STe anniversary :)

Freddo: Thanks, I initially planned to participate to the megademo, but I quite fast realized I would not be able to fit in their requirements (160k max on disk).

Just tested the demo with Saint (had to copy the .PRG on a blank .ST file since it does not support harddrive), and well, it does not run under saint:
- The demo uses the Cookie Jar to find out if it runs on a STe, and unfortunately Saint does not like the tos 1.06

Leonard, any chance you fix your emulator?

What you see as a pop-up ad is just due to me having failed to make obvious what I wanted the demo to look like.
It was supposed to be a movie about that atari, as shown on a dvd player. That's why there is the snow (tv being switched on), then the ultra annoying piracy-it's a crime statement (which I reworked as an pro-environment message instead, even if I should have avoided the global warming stuff, I'm more in "don't polute", "respect the environment" and "recycle" than in climate change stuff), then followed by some logos (the cinemascope, production company), and then some scenes telling a story (with subtitles) and finally a traditional vertical scroller like normal movie credits.
So yeah I obviously failed to convey the idea itself, and in the end it looks unfortunately like two disjointed parts.

For the texts themself, most was written after the effects were written, mostly because else it would have been a static picture without much reason to stay for more than a second on screen. I'm not saying either that less colors is worse than more colors :) Probably a good thing that we learned how to use the colors with less violents RGB gradients.

/me wonders if you would have thumbed up if the demo had been released as two separate demos (without the "ad")

Cheers!

Thanks for the comment, glad you like it :)

Strider: Trying my best :)
I have some unused material from the development of this demo, who knows, perhaps I'll find time to use it for a new one at some point.

zoolum: thanks :)

(not sure if it was a rhetorical statement or if you actually commented on the source code? :) )

Krusty: Thanks :)

The recent surge in 4 megabytes STe demo let me wonder about releasing a version 2.0 of Save The Earth using the full 4 megs and the remaining free cpu time: after all there was things I had to leave out because it would not fit in memory (like an actual "out run" like section with zooming sprites and parallax background) plus the things I did not have time to iron out (like the non fading music at the end, plus some graphical glitches in the borders).

Hmm... tempting.

spkr: That was not actually disconnected in my mind, the idea was that by continuing to do demos on our old computers we were actually being careful about the environment, by not entering the cycle of buying and throwing :)

But yeah, insight is 20/20 :)

Damn, just realize the demo is now 10 years old, and I guess everybody was right, the climate has not changed at all.