What do you call a demo crew in hospital?
- The Intensive Carebears!!
(Howl Hiaarrhhh Laugh Har Snort Chuckle Barf)
Aenigmatica joke
(nothing personal)
THE EUROPEAN DEMOS BY LOTS OF PEOPLE SMELLING LIKE GARLIC
by Stefan Posthuma and Richard Karsmakers
The second demo to be finished at the ST NEWS International
Christmas Coding Convention was the "European Demos" by
Overlanders and friends.
Starting Screen
A bit like the Union demo, really, with a moving background in
full-screen, with text on top of it.
Second intro
A bit like the Life's a Bitch demo with the spotlights, followed
by some nice full-screen pics.
The Main Menu
No not another one of those walk-around-in-a-huge-playfield-and-
select-a-demo-by-entering-a-door-screens!
Yeah. It's full screen and all that stuff, but animation of the
female is a bit like she's wearing panties that are too big,
really. A bit awkward. You immwediately notice that the thing is
so fucking big that you're very likely to miss out on the odd
screen or so (or maybe even a dozen).
But we tried!
Vector II
It's amazing how un-original people can be those days. It's got
rasters, a scroller and a wobbling logo the likes of which we
have continuously seen ever since the first Swedish Newyears
Demo. Let's not waste any more words on it.
TCR I
A screen that builds itself up step by step, probably due to the
fact that it has to calculate its head off. Once it really
starts, you find yourself looking at a pre-calculated full screen
background with a disting scroll line on top of it. Apart from a
logo in the lower border, that's about it, really.
FM I
Well, basically what we have here is a large scroller at the top
(through the borders), some graphics (maybe ripped?), two
cylindrical scroll thingies at the sides (pseudo-cylindrical,
though, because it's rasters actually), a perpetually
shrinking/expanding bit of logo and highly imaginitive
shrinking/expanding balls for VU metres.
Newline I
Newline I has an open lower border with a logo in it (even
Martijn of SOD can do this), and then some bits and bobs of
tracking sprites and two scrollers on top of a multi-direction
scrolling pattern with repetitive pattern. It sounds more
complicated than it is. Two scroller (identical) thingies go up
as well.
(No offense Martijn!)
OVR I
A nice bit of graphics with a starfield rapidly coming towards
you at the top half. Some digi music with it (four voices).
There's a grid (3D) rotating in the middle (two VBLs) that
modifies itself with the music. Pretty neat.
HMD I
A very full full-screen with a repetitive pattern. The upper
border boundary, however, is jittering slightly. Then, there's a
screen-high scroller on top of that (2 planes). It's rather gigo-
normingly-giganto-fuckingly big but has been done quite a few
times before. But still impressive. There's digi music and a logo
wobbling and flying behind the scroller but before the background
as well.
Pendragons I
The top of this screen consists of a cylindrical cylinder with
the names on it (it's a bit more like an pentagonal or
something). The lowest bit is like the twist scroller we all know
from the "Def Demo" of mid 1988. The middle is basically a load
of blue rasters, a wobbling Pendragons logo, a starfield and
quite a nice sphere bouncing to and fro and whatever. Too bad it
looks very pre-calculated.
OK. Next.
Vector I
"Oh my God no!"
Another bit of flickering rasters here. Just imagine a load of
rasters around which a (surprise, surprise) twist scroller winds
itself into monotonous eternity. Then there's a "Vector" logo
that distorts vertically. Also, there's some balls on the screen
that form a rotating circle, that bounces off (and deforms) at
the borders (which are closed, by the way).
Silvers I
Nice, and something totally un-French: You can select three
languages here: Swahili, Servokroatian and Kantonese (well,
actually French, German and English). Not too bad, but this is
game stuff, really.
After that, you get a scroll line in the selected language which
has four colours and is about half the screen in size (made us
remind a Volume 3 ST NEWS demo, actually), rastered VU metres
with the music and a few cartoons of the group members in the
lower part of the screen.
The nicest bit of the demo is when you exit it, in which case
you'll be confronted with a picture of Eddie as on the Iron
maiden "Piece of Mind" album.
OVR II
It has to be said that Mr. Bee has done some really good things.
Unfortunately, he did not really do them in the intro of this
demo. But the real demo gets kicking really nicely. There's a
huge scroller that goes into the lower border during its
wanderings over the screen, and there's also a violently
distorting logo....
And then, all of a sudden, there are two of these scrolls. Nice
thing: There are disting backgrounds in the font (we all know how
planes work on the ST, don't we).
When you press space, thinking all is over, you're suddenly
confronted with a totally and utterly full-screen disting
background with a totally and utterly large scrolline on top of
it. And some tracking sprites as well.
Pretty startling stuff.
And then, finally, it's over.
OVR IV
By Ziggy (yeah, the man with the perpetually closed nose).
Well, this is by no doubt the best screen of the whole demo. It
is clear that our friend Ziggy spent a LOT of time on this
screen. All text messages are not simply scrolled on the screen,
but slammed onto the photon ejaculators in smooth 3D rotating
perspective. All 3D shapes that you will witness here (and there
are quite a few) are very fast indeed, and it is rumoured that
they are NOT pre-calculated! In the beginning, the simple shapes
are at 50 Hz but later the shapes get very complex (and the frame
rate gets lower, accordingly). Her has also done circles and
balls, and this screen is generally very brilliant.
Hail thee, Ziggy, for allowing the ST world to behold this
wholly amazable screen!
The Humungus animations are the best ever seen on the ST
(except, of course, for Jez San's next game which will have half
a zillion polygons per minute as well as scrolling in 27
directions at the same time).
Note: Don't take the latter remark seriously. Ziggy is better
than Jez!
OVR V
You may wonder what the hell happened to OVR III, but al we can
say is that we're wondering just the same...
So here's OVR V...and another Ziggy screen (well, Adso did his
bit here as well).
It's full screen, with a gigantic one-plane multi-raster scroll-
line, overlaid by a 3D pixel-cube and some rampantly tracking
sprites (that happen to be not particularly small, either).
Genesis I
(Not to be mistaken by a certain demo made by a certain
programming group in Holland)
This starts off by a rather not-so-original countdown thingie
during which, supposedly, pre-calculating is done. What you then
get is a circle scroller (wow, we hadn't seen that one yet!) with
a moving non-full-screen-but-with-lower-border background (3
planes). Not altogether worth a lot of words. next time use
better background scrolling tables, guys!
Bluebird I
After (again) some pre-calculating you get a moving background
(the zillionth in this demo) with a large scroller on top of that
(with many colours - yawn) and two smoothly and extensively
shrinking/expanding logos ('blue' and 'bird'). Whether or not the
scroll-line sometimes becomes transparent and the logos sometimes
over-and underlay it and the background can be discerned through
it (is it a bug) we will leave unsaid.
NPG I
The graphic artist of this screen is truly an admirer of ES'
style, for the 'blagger' logo has the same tooth-paste style used
in previous logos done by this German master master of toothpaste
pixel putting. The rest is rather basic stuff, with a crystal
scroll line (YES! Do you remember the ST NEWS Volume 3 Issue 6
demo?!), some pseudo-parallax, a scroll and of course the odd VU
metre.
ACF I
Sorry. We do not like to tell that this is the worst screen in
the demo, but unfortunately we have to. There's VU-metrical
bubbles, a sinusoid scroll and as standard scroll. Even all
borders are closed.
Actually, this screen looks better if you look at it through the
reflection of a window when outside everything is dark except for
a million scintilliting little lights.
NEXT I
OK. It takes a while before everything is actually there, but
then you've got the following things: A three-layer parallax
scrolling background, overlaid by some tracking balls (seem to be
made by Mr. Bubble himself, toothpaste artist extraordinaire ES
of TEX), with a scroll line under that and one above it (this one
looks slightly strange and flickers worse than a busted
whorehouse's light - we don't know if this is a feature or a
bug). At the very top of the screen, finally, there's a shrinko-
rotato-logo (2 planes) which is kinda nice.
There's also a digi-synth.
Next (this is a joke).
Pendragons II
This screen features the unending amount of balls, i.e. ball
after ball tracking each other appears (they are not erased,
though). It's full screen, and there's variable patterns of balls
selectable with the function keys. Not bad, even though you DO
have some busted graphics on the screen between the switching of
patterns...
TV I
Describing this is hard. Basically, you have three parts of a
lower-bordered screen with some nice music (no Mad Max,
probably). There's a scrolline in the middle, and the other two
parts have scrolling bits of four-plane graphics in them.
If these guys are starting on the ST, it's good. If they're not,
they should stop.
The music, by the way, is a liberally interpreted rip-off of a
Rob Hubbard tune off the '64 ("B.I.G. Demo") called "Thrust".
Gudul I
The music is very nice, digital, and completely ripped from the
Sodan-and-Gwar-or-whatever demo by TCB Nic in "Sowatt".
Anyway. It's a full-screen-without-upper-border with loads of
horizontally word-waving raster bars. Of course, there's VU
metres in the lower border, a logo, and a scroller. On top of
those word-whatever rasters, words appear that are made up of
pixels that are slammed on the screen pixel-wise.
This screen is above average in this demo.
OVR III
Rave! Right on! We found it!
This screen it very capably programmed as well. First, there are
a load of standing rasters on top of which there are some rotato-
bouncing ones. On top of THAT you will find an ENORMOUS bouncing
scroller (2 plane), and on top of THAT you find a transparent
200x200 pixel 2 plane "Wizball"...er...ball. Loads of standard-
and sync-scrolling!
On top of that, actually, there's some 2 plane tracking
sprites.
Oh yeah. It's full screen and has a rather below-average digi
synth (though this is the only not-so-good thing about this very
nice screen).
The reset screen
By Ziggy Starduck Productions. It's a full-screen 3D sinus pixel
landscape thingie with looks VERY impressive. There's a little
scroller somewhere as well, but this is none more than trivial.
Again, Ziggy did it. He's probably the best coder in France.
Surely.
Concluding
The "European Demos" are very BIG. Two double-sided disks filled
to the brim with screens. Disk swaps are excellently detected.
Unfortunately, not all of these screens (i.e. MOST of these
screens) are either unoriginal or just not altogether very
brilliant. The OVR screens are all very well done, though.
Without the OVR screens, we wouldn't have bothered copying this
demo, probably.
Hail OVR! Hail Ziggy! May the power of Overlanders forever rule
those who think wearing a black hat with a ridiculously erect
thingie is pretty neat!
(Oh, and let's not forget the loaf of bread)
Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared
in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s)
was (were) a lot younger and less responsible back then. So bad jokes,
bad English, youthful arrogance, insults, bravura, over-crediting and
tastelessness should be taken with at least a grain of salt. Any contact
and/or payment information, as well as deadlines/release dates of any
kind should be regarded as outdated. Due to the fact that these pages are
not actually contained in an Atari executable here, references to scroll
texts, featured demo screens and hidden articles may also be irrelevant.