The Genocidal
by DHS
One of the things I learned at Outline (since it was the very
first party I attended) is that you never know what you are
going to see next.
I mean, I saw quite some entries before they were displayed on
the big screen. For example Cyclone's boot sector, Paranoid's
screen, Paradize's intro (it helps if you're in many groups ;)
and all of the games (as I, more or less, participated a bit in
the making of them, bar BackGLash).
In addition to that you can never be sure who is going to send
an entry remotely, i.e. one who's not attending the party.
To be honest, after DHS supplied the Outline invitro I was left
with the impression that this was the demo they were going to
present at the party. I was pleasantly surprised to learn
otherwise, when CiH's ct60 was set up to show the demo. As we
saw on the big screen, the demo is not finished, so I'll try to
keep it in mind while writing.
Perhaps I should mention that I'm watching the video again,
since my CT63 still hasn't arrived yet :(. But I did watch it on
a real CT60 at the party :)
Anyway, a formerly black screen starts flashing while the DHS
logo (stylish as always) remains black. It tries to sync with a
buzz that changes pitch up and down, but doesn't quite get it
(half finished version I presume). At least the bit when the
logo flashes and gets proper colours is synced ok with the music
change :)
Then the first real effect is (almost ;) synchronized with the
change of music: A black and white textured floor and ceiling
moves in a circular fashion as some alpha blended intro text is
displayed (gee, sometimes I miss scrollers :P)
A fadeout leads us to the next effect, which is a picture
displaying the name of the demo. Of course it is distorted in
all kinds of weird ways. The extra horsepower of the 060 gives
the two effects mentioned before an extra nice feeling, as it
they are done a lot smoother and with bigger resolution than
usually.
Now DHS have had enough with the old (new)school effects (what?
:), so they try something fresh (old :) : a texture mapped 3D
scene. This one is composed of a floor, a sky, and 4 staircases
(made of stone presumably) in the middle. With the steps of each
staircase being aligned at 90 degree intervals, such as all of
them are joined at the top step, The camera starts far away from
the stairs, but then closes up so we can take a better look at
them. One other thing to mention is that the steps are not
perfectly aligned, so they give the effect of being old and
worn.
A flash gives us another effect in this scene: we get three PIP
(picture in picture) small boxes that render the same scene in
blue-black. Then another three and then another three.
A short while after the boxes disappear and an alpha blended 3D
DNA-like spiral is drawn bit by bit at the top step going
upwards. Then we get a close up showing that the elements of the
spiral are made of alpha blended spheres instead of pixels. Neat
:) At this point the music has gone completely haywire, as to
increase the tension!
Afterwards it softens down a bit, and we quickly proceed to the
next effect, a 3D starfield (yay!). Oh, it has a rendered 3D
face in front of it as well. Again, much smoother and detailed
that most of the stuff we've seen on Atari so far.
Then... darkness... A bubbly tune starts playing, and we get a
reprise of the demo: The face, the DNA spiral thingy (although
it seems to be made up of alpha lines and bobs are only present
at the joints) and the 3D starfield. Also, we get a flashing
"The end" text in the bottom left. Aaaaahhhhh!
Comments? Well, the title suggested weird things, the whole
feeling was set up, the music was gradually building up, we were
expecting to see some epic 3D scenes with sacrifices or battles
or something but that's where the demo ended! Perhaps this was a
good thing, as I'm personally getting sick of too-much-design-
and-let's-show-our-3D-routs-and-make-a-scripted-scene-with-some-
random-stuff-happening types of demos :)
So it's short and unfinished had some synchronisation issues
here and there, but despite it all: I like it!
GGN/KUA for Alive, 2006-06-02
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