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| falcon contribution - by Cruor /////////////////////////////////////////// |
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Once upon a time there was a group of pizza eating coke drinking, no social
life having people called atari sceners. These kids liked to spend many
hours behind their ataris. Some machine flavours were common amongst these
sceners. First the trusty old ST and later the slightly crippled, but oh so
exotic Falcon.
When the falcon came about half the scene was already poisoned by the
influence of the pc empire and simply never bought the bird. Anyway, for the
ones that did buy one it was impossible to avoid the demoscene.
There weren't too many games, so people found themselves drawn more to the
closest alternative : watching demos. And some great demos there were. What
started as single screens showing some (for that time impressive) gouraud
shading, fli playing, rotozoomers and rotating balls with 6000 dots, evolved
some years later to massive and original demos like autowaschen verboten
and obnoxious.
Ofcourse we all know the rest of the story. In '96 the falconscene shrank
to the size of a walnut, and after 97 to the size of a peanut, leaving some
handful of freaks to do the painting, tracking, coding stuff. The last
couple of years have been quite steady. We saw some good stuff, but the
quantity is low.
Certainly nobody expected some crew from the 'golden age' to spring back
into action.....
At eil 2003 Cruor, known from painium disaster, released their new demo :
"Falcon Contribution" =))) Let's cut the crap and get on with the review :
The demo starts out with some text telling the viewer of cruor's absence.
I personally always hope such textscreens don't last too long. Spacehitting,
resetknob grabbing actions are often seen here ;)
Then a nicely done winter screen comes completed with twirling snowflakes
over some siberia background ;) This background slowly changes into a great
image of the falcon casing. The flakes disappear and the drivelight is
activated. Good idea =)
For a while a good panoramic handpixeled pic of a city in flames comes up.
The credits are displayed. Font and pic are extremely nice. Something that
would have fit to a quality game for instance. This is maybe a bit too long,
but the music is good enough to keep you amused.
Then the titlescreen comes up. The background is slightly less good and
appears to generic. The wireframe (blurred?) object in front of it makes it
acceptable though.
Two cones made of sprites come up. Not too stunning, although fast enough.
Our old friend the tunnel visits us, this time with a fuji of dots over it.
It's fast and the texture is colourful and well done.
A picture in Japanese style is next. It shows some samurai gear complete
with katana blades and stuff (I don't know what I'm talking about ;)) The
fuji's look nice in this one.
Now comes some lavalamp screen thingy with a metallic 'trophy' saying
"falcon 10 years". The particle lavalamp things on the side are well done.
I don't know what kind of trajectory the particles have, maybe it's somekind
of physics?
Also another picture is shown. And this is in my eyes truly astounding.
A woodpecker did it's work on a branch. It now reads 'cruor'. Nice theme,
and great execution. One of the best pics ever done on Falcon in my humble
opinion.
The final screen comes up. Some gouraud vector objects. They have a moderate
amount of polys and it's doublepixeled.. However there is a background and it
looks clean and smooth.
So, a new demo from Cruor. Welcome back to the falcon! I hope you will make
more stuff for this rare bird =))
Conclusion :
code: 65%, nothing really earthshattering, but clean and smooth.
(and runs well on my ct2!)
graphics: 90%, most pictures are absolutely stunning.
the only thing i miss is some more coherency. maybe some more
graphics within the fx would be nice, but that's all.
music: 85%, rather nice tune reminding of the good old times from the
falcon. it sounds clean and has a good feeling.
overall: I'd say 75%, a good example of an oldschool falcon demo.
Yeah, I think this is a nice production. It's amazing what a flashback this
one gave. I want more of this =)) Welldone guys!
- earx 2003 ------------------------------------------------------------------
Note of STS : sorry for the intrusion here but I thought I had something here.
Indeed this demo DOESN'T work on my Falcon and from what I've heard I'm not
the only one stuck ! I have a bare Falcon, meaning 4Mb and FPU, and this demo
definitely freezes after the 'Falcon Contribution' screen :( Just too bad to
see that the guys of CRUOR haven't cared about a fully compatible version :(
No update seems to be planned and really that makes me sad to see tgat a
humble contribution to the Falcon Scene doesn't even run on ALL machines...
Please guys, move your ass and make the demo run on every Falcon coz this
sounds like peecee non compatible shit !
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Since Paranoid also wrote a review, you can find it here !
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