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OXG STNICCC by Oxygene (A STNICCC 2000 Release) [Atari ST]


Some people leave the scene at some certain point and yet do not manage
to leave completely - which is actually pretty good for all of us.
The most prominent member of this category would probably be Tat of
Avena, but also there is Leonard of Oxygene who always keeps
coming back to surprise us with a new release:
He wrote the ST-Sound Plugin for Netscape so websites can replay
ST music.
He wrote the main parts and the putting together of NoSTalgic-o, an
ST demo that features a lot of superlatives, lots of scrollers, YM-music,
a main-menu and only runs from disk.

Now he strikes again with a STNICCC 2000 release, the party that was
supposed to reunite the whole lot from STNICCC 1990, organized by
Kronos of ST News, featuring well known guests from the past.

The demo starts with a provoking "This is not a Falcon demo", followed
by lots and lots of 3D dots, being used in various environments such
as spheres, 3D sinwave-lanscapes and other, similar effects.
After that, a good looking graphic follows, telling us the reason for
this demo, namely STNICCC 2000 - in a rather new-school style.
Followed by a similar looking Oxygene logo, which, with a flash of
light, suddently turns into a filled polygone Oxygene logo ...
... And now follows a filled polygon 3D movie (using about 3/4 the
width of the screen)

The movie contains nothing but a flight inside the Oxygene logo, which
is of course larger on the inside than the outside and contains tunnels,
valleys, odd and large spinning devices nobody knows a purpose of, large
reservoirs etc. and the movie ends outside the Oxygene logo again, where
the flight ends between a large set of cubes.
The choice of colours varies from golden/brown, grey, blue and red.

Once the movie has ended, it's being repeated again - in a smaller window
accompanied by the credits and greetings written on screen.
All this is accompanied by a smashing soundtrack by Kefrens of Laxity
but only if you have an STE. If you run this demo on an ST, the speaker
remains totally silent.

If you try to run it on the Falcon you will soon find out that it doesn't
run there.

Basically, this demo contains only 2 effects, the 3D dots of the intro-
ductory screen and the 3D movie. And especially the 3D movie makes this
demo somewhat dubious: It's permanently being read from disk.
So you might consider it an animation - even though it uses Leonard's
excellent 3D engine (first seen in Nostalgic-o) and displays really a
lot of faces at once.

The graphics are very nice and the soundtrack is superb - But the graphics
really play no vital role in this demo and if you have an ST, neither does
the sound.

To put it in a nutshell: You'll have to decide for yourself wether you
like this demo or not. It doesn't lack design and it surely doesn't lack
any coding skills and it looks pretty good without a doubt.
But i guess you won't rerun it very often. The 3D dots are being used
only very shortly for the introduction and the 3D movie lacks variation
and innovation, mainly, it is about being moved in very artificial looking
places in very articifial colours.

I wish there were more effects in this demo and the 3D movie was only
some kind of a finishing "outro" (even though i know it must have costed
a lot of work designing objects and pathes). But with the 3D movie
being the main part of the demo, it's unfortunately not as hot as i wish
it was.

The Paranoid -- Paranoia -- Think you can handle it ?! -- Lunatic Asylum


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