DHS
ONLINE COMPO
The Dead Hackers 10th Anniversary Online Competition - ST and STe stuff
The ST/STe response to the DHS online compo was lighter and less ambitious
in general than the Falcon entries. The majority of the entries for these
machines were lightweight, or more correctly, lighthearted in approach. But
there are some promising signs in there for the future. Here are their
stories.
'French Kiss'- STe 1MB
We kick off with 'French Kiss', an MJJ Production from Cerebral Vortex and
others. Effects follow upon effects in a fairly thick and fast fashion, so
here goes...
We start with a very fullscreen upwardly scrolling infotext with a
background texture. This comes complete with an Amiga-ish modfile playing,
to emphasis the STe-ness of this intro. At this point, the whole look and
feel of this intro is curiously old-fashioned?
Following on, there is a pastel coloured title picture, which gives way to
the first full screen of the intro. This takes the form of some pixel packed
top and bottom borders, and a large expanse in the middle, where the main
action takes place.
The top border is filled by a '10 Years Anniversary' graphic, with a
rotating 'DHS' 3-D logo, although this is probably a pre-rendered animation.
A 'Cerebral Vortex' logo crams into the bottom border. In the middle, a
variety of effects and events follow. We start with some good old style
vectorline 3D, outline objects, boxes and all. In between things, there are
some horizontal starfields, complete with "what's next" infotext.
Another older looking screen follows, which can be described as
multiscrolling textures going around a logo in a sort of parallax effect, to
show how "busy" the machine can get. C-Rem donates a sweet rear view of a
babe in a pool. I guess he gets to be the lifeguard in some interesting
places! To end the main part, we get some twirling comets which were
"borrowed from the Electronic Images 'Pete' megademo. To round things up and
conclude, we get some greets, which are a repeat of the very first screen.
The whole intro is very oldschool indeed. I'm not sure if this was
intentional, or a way of using up that decades old source code? Anyway, for
those people wanting an instant nostalgia blast, but can't be bothered to
get one of their old demo's out, this would hit the spot!
Rated at:- 6 out of 10 - (Code) Partying like it is 1991!
'First Step'- STe 1MB
The ever-eager MJJ Productions open their second front with this, probably
the best of their entries. 'First Step' aptly describes a first attempt at
Asm coding by Tobe of MJJ Productions. I would have to say it is not at all
a bad first step, from what was on display here. Indeed, this seems to be
the only really ambitious ST-based 96ktro from this competition.
Tobe is keen to reprise some of the classic French scene 1 vbl Dune-alike
older school style effects.
The intro starts with a back and forth scrolling large logo text. You are in
no doubt it is an MJJ Production. What was a plain screen then gains a bunch
of overlapping colour circles in the background, to immediately liven it up.
Musical matters are very ably handled by Floopy, who could give his
distinguished zik-composing peers a decent run for their money.
C-Rem gives us a lovely crystalline effect MJJ logo, followed swiftly by
some bouncing rubber balls onscreen, each with an MJJ member's names on it.
These crowd out the screen, and overlap onto each other.
A scrolltext waves up and down the screen, with some colour graduated
sunbursts forming behind it. These merge and demerge with each other for a
while.
We get a pause for the highlight, a still pic proclaiming that "This is
Gloky style!" Indeed a 512 dots sineous, constantly morphing 3-D bag, or
cloud does its thing immediately after.
Getting near to the end is a very smart looking infoscreen. An animated
monkey head jabbers back and forth, and in the background, some transforming
squareish patterns impose their presence. To complete it, we get to read the
semi-transparent infotext as it appears.
A final 'Happy birthday DHS' still picture finishes the intro, with a sort
of lava lamp look in places.
This is a solid effort, rather than a spectacular demo which puts itself
respectably midway on the achievement curve. The only way from here is
upward. Future releases of greater ambition and artistic scope from this
direction are awaited with interest!
Rated at:- 7 out of 10 - A good first step leading to some giant leaps?
'Cosmotro'- STe/Falcon
This is a short and sweet production. In fact, you could consider it as a
digital greetings card to Dead Hackers and the rest of the scene. It
showcases some sublime graphics and sound from two masters of their
artforms. That is, Exocet on the pixels, with Dma-Sc kicking out a sweet
tune to go with them.
There is also a tiny bit of well-realised GFA code from Cooper, with some
slight star-shaped dot effect going on in the far corner. The infotext
updates with happy exortations, greetings, and in time to some variations on
the dot effect theme, such as solid vectors and large bobs.
Exocet draws a spaceman fruitlessly alien hunting on a very small but
perfectly formed planetoid. There is a Gary Lawson 'Far Side' twist right at
the end, where it turns out that the "hunted" alien is more than a match for
the space guy!
We look forward to this winning combination of graphics and sound in
something with a bit more code to it!
Rated at:- 7 out of 10 - Small but perfectly formed!
'Gwem Intro'- Any ST 512k
This one barely makes it into the category of "intro". It was a last minute
throw-together, merely intended to showcase the new killer sound routines
from Gwem's forthcoming 'MaxiMiser' chip tracker. The intro serves to
include the 'Readme' comments that Gwem was not allowed to put in with his
standalone music entry.
There is very little to it. A picture of Gwem, slaving over a hot tracker,
and a big yellow infoscroller at the bottom, that's it. Coding and
presentation wise, there's nothing at all to write home about, but listen to
the fantastic music! The tune singlehandedly picks this intro from face-down
in the lake and carries it to dry land for a quick spot of heart massage, a
swift towelling down, and a nice cup of tea with a drop of brandy in it! To
be fair to Gwem, he really is not expecting too many votes for the intro,
but do vote for the stunning tune in the music compo instead!
Rated at:- 5 out of 10 - (A 9 out of 10 tune is dragged down a bit ;-))
'Gloky Cat'- STe 512k
Where do Badger badger's go to, when severe competition file size limits
start to bite? Well they might mutate into a Gloky cat perhaps?!
This is yet another production from the extremely prolific MJJ Productions
team. This time, the main part of the honours, such as they might be, go to
Mr Nours.
There isn't a lot to this one. They've converted another flash animation to
the 'humbler' world of a standard STe. The 'Gloky cat' is a farting and
laughing cat, but that is as far as he goes. Samples splutter and scream,
and the cat seems to be constantly laughing his head off. This is less of an
intro, and more of a screen saver. If you consider it in that light, then
this intro might have some longer term value, otherwise it is gone in five
seconds.
This one isn't reset proof by the way, I checked!
Rated at:- 5 out of 10 - Nicely done, but a very slight production..
CiH, For Alive Mag,Dec '04
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