By Reservoir Gods
http://www.reservoir-gods.com
Yes, it's the Brits' time again. This time presenting a little fraud. Why
am I telling that? Read on...
I have a small vice which is this: Before I even see a
game/demo/utility/etc. I always tend to look at the credits, just to be prepared
what am I about to watch (this goes back my 8-bit days, when the games' splash
screens were filled with the game programmer(s). And by the way, I do remember
most of them :). So, opening the text file accompanying Mindwind, I was in for a
nice surprise!
Getting by the fact that the Gods used the Greek letter sigma instead of
'e' (which, as I am Greek, confused me a bit ;), it was clear that the main code
was made by the legendary Griff, ex-Inner Circle and former Reservoir God!
"Oh!", I exclaimed, "I think we're in for a treat here!". Further supporting my
belief were the rest of the credits: "Graphics: Master, Music: Count Zero".
Immediately I remembered a review with MrPink, which he claimed that Griff has a
lot of unreleased stuff on his hard drive and he will release some in the
future. "Well, it seems the future is now!". I was filled with anguish as I
executed the program....
Then the screen went blank, a oh-that's-familiar music started playing, and
a scroller with a oh-that's-familiar-too font called wrote an old message by
TCB: "If you think this is all...boy you are so wrong". After that, in an all-
familiar way, the scroller (which, by the way writes to both left and right
borders), starts going into the lower border to give room for the fx.
Then, I had an instant flash-back: "Hey, isn't this the screen that was on
Pete (AKA T.G.B.I.S.T.D.=The Great British International ST Party Demo)???".
And, yes, it was just that. But, for the benefit of those who have never the
opportunity to see the aforementioned demo, let me describe the effects a bit:
First of all, all effects are fullscreen, and a Module is being replayed at
some sample rate (12 kHz?). The STE's hardware are used here to make child's
play out of effects that only very skilled and patient coders can do on a
standard ST.
The demo kicks off with some vertical bars (which are SO easy to do!
Honest!) which scroll horizontally. Then, in order for the viewer not to get
bored, some horizontal disting is applied to this effect, which is quite
pleasant, actually. Then, another variation of the vertical bars appear. If
you've seen the Respectables screen in Oh Crikey, Wot A Scorcher, you'll
probably understand the effect: a multi-parallax horizontal field of small
vertical bars of varied widths (does this makes sense? ;-). We then have the
previous vertical bars dister with another wave, and then the multi-parallax-
thinghy changing its form and not scrolling (well, that was a bit too much for
me to describe, sorry!). After that it's piccy disting time, the original IC
logo by Master being replaced by a painting by SH3, which is a variation of a
pic entered on the 16-cols competition (what's the matter, guys? Out of
graphics? ;))). The distings (love 'em!) are horizontally, which is bread and
butter for the STE's shifter, with some mirroring added there. Last effect is
some Keftales realtime calculated & displayed with a palette to screw up your
eyes big time! (this is another change from the original version: The
calculations are done faster). Small coder's comment here: The rasters are
flickering a lot during calculations, hehe!
Somewhere about here the review for the original screen would come to an
end, and the reviewer of that time would go, "Well, another typical demo of what
the STE can do, thankyouverymuch". But the Gods have one more ace up their
sleeve here!
Suddenly, Damo (if we are to believe the credits) shouts "REWIND!" and
after some left faced arrows scroll by, the whole demo starts playing in rewind
mode! Even the music! And there are some white lines, just like a VCR playing
backwards a video! The whole demo fastly passes before your eyes and then a RG
logo appears, and then it's the end (small coder's note here: The rasters sort
of flicker while scrolling, and I don't exactly think it was made for effect!)
All in all, a nice joke for those who had the patience to watch it (but for
me the funniest thing so far was the Real Life Demo by Baggio!). But, we must
insist, please use some of Griff's unreleased code next time!
GGN/KÜA software productions/Alive Team
ggn@atari.org
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