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Alive 7
                               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


Alive 7