__ / ___/ _____ ___ ___ _ \ / __/ / / / __ / / / / / /_ / / /_ / /_ / / __/ __/ \____ __/ \____ \ \ / ___/ / __/ > 505 < > RA < > The Paranoid < > Zweckform < __ ___ ___ ___ | | ______ / / / / / / | | \___ \ / /___ / /___ / /___ | | \ \ \______\ \____ \ \______\ |__| \__\ / / /__/ P a r a d o x " a g a i n " A 96k demo for the Atari STE for Outline 2008 Prologue: This little document accompanies the Paradox' 96k demo named "again", released 2008 shortly after the Outline 2008 party organized by LineOut. It is meant to explain why the release of this little demo has been delayed with regard to the competition and what has happened since. Please copy all files only if you want to spread this demo. Legal stuff: No member of Paradox can be held responsible for any kind of damage that occured to your hardware, software, mental or physical health or anything else related to you in any obscure way, while, before or after running this demo. The 96k demo named >> again << may be copied as long as it is distributed free of charge. If there is one Public Domain Service left in the whole wide world still supporting the Atari community - feel free to offer it but don't expect anyone to pay anything for this. It should be copied without excluding or adding any of the related files. Hardware Requirements: The minimum requirements to run this demo are - An Atari STE compatible computer - At least 1MB of free RAM - A colour monitor or TV set capable of displaying ST Low resolution of 320 x 200 pixels - A diskdrive - A clockspeed of 8MHz The demo does run on any machine which exceeds the list of requirements listed above. It has been successfully tested on the following machines: - An Atari Falcon030 with 14MB of RAM, VGA and RGB monitors, NVDI 4.11, Videlity screen enhancer, Nemesis accelerator - An Atari MegaSTE with 4MB of RAM, NVDI 4.11 and harddisk, - An Atari 1040STE with 2MB of RAM and a DD Diskdrive The memory usage is quite extensive. The demo runs on STE computers with 1MB of RAM only from the AUTO-folder from disk with no other extension in memory and will not run at all when being executed from the desktop (such as FOLDER100.PRG or any harddisk driver, RAM-disks or any other extensions). Also, the demo relies on most of the fundamental components of the Atari STE hardware, meaning that it will not run on - Any Atari ST or MegaST computer - Any Atari TT computer Also, the demo will not run correctly on a Falcon030 with a ct60 equipped and switched on. The ct60 does not cooperate too well with the BLiTTER, which is no problem for most applications but does not work well with a demo that makes extensive use of the BLiTTER, which is exactly what this demo does. Party version: How come the release of this demo has been delayed (again) ? To be honest, we were confident it wouldn't be unless a few weeks before the party (again). However, the demo was put together on the party (again), it even lacked a few graphics (again) which were being provided on the party and the soundtrack has been made completely during the first two days of the party (again). We had little to no time to really synchronize the demo with the soundtrack, we had just been lucky that it worked out fairly well but still not up to what we had in mind. Also, memory management was kind of non- existant so that the party-version required 2MB of RAM. Therefore, we asked for a 2 weeks delay and the organizers were so kind to grant it. So we had the time to go over the demo a couple of times, iron out a few bugs, change some of the graphics, re-sync many of the effects, introduce memory management and add a few minor things, too. Thanks to the Outline organizers for this. However, while trying to finalize this demo, major effort has been put into debugging a few things that turned out to be fairly odd: The demo had serious problems with video synchronisation on the Falcon on VGA and crashed every 2nd time it has been run without rebooting in between. We managed to track down the reason in the music replay and were confronted with the fact that our integration of gwEm's powerful maxYMizer routine is a bit too simple, seeing how many of the top notch effects it offers are actually being used by 505's soundtrack. Since we cannot cure this problem in time since we badly rely on gwEm's support while he's on a business trip, we decided to release the demo - as promised - with 3 restrictions: a.) There's a minimal flicker on Falcon/VGA sometimes b.) The demo does not exit at all, a RESET is required c.) Random crashes on Falcon/VGA, clean machine preferred We're very sorry about this and hope to be releasing a bugfixed version that runs cleanly on any Falcon030 and STE soon. Full Credits: All music: 505 Code, Most Graphics: The Paranoid Some Graphics: RA Puzzle Picture: ukko Music Replay Routine: gwEm Effect Synchronisation: 505 The Paranoid Again, additional thanks must go to Evil of the Dead Hackers Society for the initial demo-engine this demo is based on. Fundamentals of C2P being used in this demo courtesy of Kalms, Llama, Dynacore and ultra. Finally, to match memory requirements IcePacker has been used. Technical stuff: The demo is about 360KB unpacked and IcePacker squeezes it down to just below 96KB. It requires about 540KB of additional RAM for data being generated on the fly and that's also why it has problems running on a 1MB machine with any extra software in memory, seeing that it also needs to allocate memory for screens, music and stack. The STE-feature being used rather excessively is, again, the BLiTTER. While we had several ideas of using other STE features such as screen splitting, hardware scrolling and so on, but we had to drop most of them because of the lack of time. Naturally, the music uses the National LMC1992 excessively for various effects and might sound spoilt on the Falcon030. Otherwise, the only additional STE feature being used is of course the extended palette of 4096 colours. The effects in Detail: 1. Bouncing Logos Intro Effects The logos are pure BLiTTER stuff, we do not like preshifting. Music: 505 Graphics, Code: The Paranoid 2. Greetings Tunnel Double Alpha-Layered tunnel with realtime zooming logos that shine on the tunnel according to their distance from the viewer. Music: 505 Texture/Packer: RA Graphics, Code: The Paranoid 3. Jigsaw Puzzle Zoomer Realtime zooming masked sprites using the BLiTTER, ranging from 192 x 192 pixels down to 48 x 48 - No preshift, no precalc and no double-pixel mode this time, it's a 1 x 1 effect. Masks are generated in realtime by the BLiTTER itself. Music: 505 Graphics: ukko Code: The Paranoid 4. Rotating/Scaling/Moving Bar This effect has been done on the ST before (and even in 50 frames) but only using a static bar. We are very sorry to report that we can't do it in 50 frames, but we can not only rotate but move (!) and scale (!!) and even have a background, using the BLiTTER of course. No explicit masking required due to intelligent usage of BLiTTER endmasks. Music: 505 Background picture: ukko Code, Graphics: The Paranoid 5. Pseudo 3D Fountain This effect is a combination of many effects seen before. It features a little offset table for the fountain that is being scaled in realtime for the pseudo 3D-effect. Similarly, it features a blob routine that actually displays 192 blobs being scaled in realtime for the pseudo 3D-effect. Clever palette management allows to have a pseudo lightshading effect. Music: 505 Graphics, Code: The Paranoid 6. End Logo 'Nuff said. Paradox Logo: RA FAQ ? Why does it run on STE only ? All of it can be done on an ST, too! ! Feel free to try. I doubt effects such as Twisting Bar or the Jigsaw Puzzle can be done without the assistance of the BLiTTER in that quality, speed or resolution and also, thanks to gwEm's incredible maxYMizer, 505's soundtrack relies heavily on the STE DMA channels and the National LMC1992. ? How come the demo doesn't run well on the Falcon ? ! The maxYMizer replay routine is powerful and fairly easy to integrate, but it behaves slightly different on the Falcon than it does on the STE. At least it appears to do so. We didn't have the time yet to fully analyze it since we need the support of gwEm who is on a business trip currently, but we wanted to release the demo as promised to the Outline organizers. ? The sound is a bit poor on the Falcon. How is that ? ! As a matter of fact, 505 uses the National LMC1992 of the STE heavily to produce ingenious sound effects. Unfortunately, the Falcon lacks the National LMC1992 so that some of the sound effects simply do not work out. ? Why require a reset ? The demo should exit when pressing space. ! Yes, i agree. This seems to be one of the unresolved mysteria when using the maxYMizer replay routine in our demo-engine. Actually, it initially did exit cleanly when pressing space, but in 50% of all cases, it crashes on exit, that's why we disabled it. Hopefully, with gwEm's support we manage to cure this issue as well. ? Why require to be run from the Auto-folder on 1MB STEs ? ! A 96k intro can't load data on the fly so that we need to reserve a lot of memory to keep all data at once. On a 1MB machine when starting from the desktop, only 870KB of free memory are available which is insufficient. Running it from the AUTO-folder frees about 30KB which are urgently needed. ? It's below 92KB. Why not use the remaining 4KB for something ? ! No chance. Using any additional memory will make the demo unusable on 1MB STE machines and a demo that does not run on 1MB machines are not very welcome for some sceners which usually run the demo on emulators only where memory limits can be freely selected. ? Speaking of emulators. It doesn't work too well on those. ! No, it actually doesn't but we will not take the blame for that. We strongly recommend to run it on original hardware, meaning STE. ? "Atari is dead. Grow up and write demos for Windows." ! Why should we ? We like Atari and we like coding Atari STE as much as other people like to code Windows. The machine thrills us and we definetly enjoy what we're doing. Do you ? ? I read somewhere on the internet that you're all irrelevant. ! Yes, we had been confronted with that some time ago, too, issued by someone who considered himself an "expert on that matter". We feel rather irrelevant ever since, but obviously, that doesn't stop us from releasing demos. The Story Behind This Demo In early december 2007, long after the release of 505's Blubber Songs music disk, RA visited Paranoid for a weekend and while RA was experimenting with his own implementation of c2p effects - a nice change from his usual multi-colour overscan hires graphic modes - Paranoid was tempted to produce something for the Outline 2008. The previous edition of the famous dutch party was a bit low on compo entries and releases so that the Outline 2008 was advertised already very early, inviting numerous groups to provide entries for the competitions and releases. RA agreed to donate one or two entries for the boot sector competition and because Zweckform was known to be unable to provide graphics in a large scale as he did for "Pacemaker", Paranoid decided to go for 96k entry, which would not rely so heavily on well-designed graphics. Luckily, ukko of Sector One agreed to donate a few graphics or screens so work was started early. Naturally, life got in between and work on the demo suffered so while it was planned to have all effects ready by end of february, Paranoid's visit at RA's place late march revealed that two of the major effects were still due. Also, communication did not work out too well and many graphics were left to be done so that Paranoid took a break from coding to provide most of the graphics needed until ukko sent the final picture for the desired effect just a couple of days before the Outline party. On the party, 505 started to produce the music while Paranoid had to put everything together, organize the individual effects and synchronize them to the music. Thanks to gwEm's maxYMizer, especially the syncing worked out far better than expected, but as usual, the fine-tuning took a lot longer than expected and minor bugs kept popping up. As a result of that, the party version ran on the 2MB Compo-STE but behaved very odd on other machines, even on the Falcon it had been written and put together on. Finally, that's why this production was delayed by 2 weeks in order to not only iron out the minor bugs but also to reveal some of the unused potential of some of the effects. It all worked out. Not as good as desired, but it did work out. And thanks to 505, RA, ukko and Zweckform, the work on the demo proved once again that making a demo is fun. Again. The Paranoid / Paradox 2008