Preview
October 13, 1994
ESCAPE DEMO INFO
Welcome to ESCAPE--the DEMO and MUSIC CD. I thought up the idea
of a DEMO CD over a year ago when I was thinking about writing a
book on demos. Well, the book never got written but the CD, or a
version thereof, is now in your hands.
This CD actually started as a "MC][" music/data CD by Snowman and
progressed into a DEMO/MUSIC CD. I felt a "mixed mode" CD with
demos would have a greater selling value than just "music." That
and the fact that I wanted to see a DEMO CD convinced me to join
forces with Snowman. So, that is the brief history of this
disk...and some six/seven months later the talk is reality.
SMALL CHANGES
As this CD goes to press I discovered ISO formatting takes up a
huge amount of space. Thus, to allow all the music (hopefully)
I had to delete some DEMOS and MUSIC items. Even with the cuts
we will be pushing this CD to its MAX and may still lose part of
a song--sorry if this happens, just chalk it up to inexperience.
The files deleted include:
MUSIC: All of MC1, and music disk CHROMATI.ZIP and XTCPLAY.ZIP
DEMOS: amourfou, batoba, bparty3, b_ware, cpu_uf, dancube, dartdemo,
fraggel, gustrit, idh_anim, london, loaders, re, and vectrat.
WHY ESCAPE
To me it is obvious. At first the CD's name was "ENOLA" or alone
spelled backwards. Solitude spelled backwards was also considered.
I then discussed the idea with a few artist--one of them being
Puppet Head who was going to contribute some art but never did--and
the name "ESCAPE" came up between PH and I. It sounded great so I
decided to call this CD "ESCAPE." Everyone has their own way of
dealing with reality--drinking, drugs, TV,computers, etc.
Computers are my escape, my abode. Most can not fathom that so I
do not bother telling most. Especially those whose "escape" may
be drinking and socializing. This is my world. A different
surrounding with those whom I can relate to. Those, who like me,
share similar ideals and can relate to what I do and why I do what
I do. As "ROLLINS" says: "See me--Put yourself in my place.
Be me--Put my eyes in your face. Maybe then you'll see why this
place terrifies me and why I've got to get myself away. So hard to
deal with the ones who can't feel. They continually blow my mind."
SNOWMAN TALKS
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GENERAL BABBLE BY SNOWMAN/INDEPENDENT
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I have been asked to write a few words for this CD. As I have
nothing particular to say, I will ramble for a bit...
This CD represents the culmination of two and a half years of my
life. When I first entered the "demo scene" in early 1992, I
decided to concentrate on music. The following two years I spent
learning how to write tunes in various trackers. In chronological
order, I used Whacker Tracker (.MOD), Composer 669(.669),
Farandole (.FAR), and finally MultiTracker (.MTM/.MOD). I have not
yet taken the time to learn Scream Tracker 3 but it seems like the
next logical tracker for me to tackle.
An abrupt slow-down to my musical progression was, oddly enough,
caused byMusic Contest 1. Since I had so many non-musical duties
associated with MC1, I began to think of myself as
Snowman-Organizer rather than Snowman-Musician. The 2 Music
Contests have taken up 14 months of my life, and consequently I am
not as good a musician as I had hoped to be at this point.
Lately, I have also been branching out into other "demo" areas;
namely coding and graphics. I picked up Pascal, C/C++, and some
basic 8086 Assembler over the past year. As yet, I have only done
very simple things with this knowledge. My graphics prowess
still remains highly in question. One unexpected benefit of
learning coding came from a much different area of my life. I am
currently a sophomore at Akron University, majoring in Computer
Science and minoring in English Literature. Until recently, I had
thought these two areas completely unrelated. However, that
appears to have been an erroneous assumption. I can now see many
relationships in structure between both literature and code. This
may seem a bit odd at first, but it is truly a beautiful thing
that not many people are able to experience. The Music Contests
have given me a lot to do, and the rewards seem to have been worth
the effort. It has been a pleasure and an honor to listen to all
of the wonderful music that has been submitted. One undisclosed
source paid MC2 the compliment that the contest seemed to have
better entries than CC1 and even the Assembly 94 Music Compo.
After seeing all of the work musicians have put into making MC2 a
success, I believe this to be true. I hope you enjoy this CD. It
has taken a great amount of effort by numerous people to produce.
You may find the occasional mis-printing in the insert, or an
error on the audio portion, but I think that this is to be
expected given the inexperience of those of us who put it
together.
Now turn off the lights, take off your shoes, and get
in a comfortable chair. Plug a set of headphones in your stereo
and turn the volume up to 7. Hit play and close your eyes. Its
time to forget about all of the homework you have to do. Its time
to forget about all of the sleep you are missing. Its time now to
ESCAPE...
-Christopher G. Mann October 5th, 1994
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/ Christopher G. Mann (Snowman), r3cgm@dax.cc.uakron.edu. \
/ Contributer : DemoNews Weekly | FTP-Op : hornet.eng.ufl.edu \
/ Coordinator : Music Contest ][ | Independent musician & coder \
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
GETTING THINGS TO WORK
Most demos on this disk can run
with your normal configuration--memory managers and about 570+K.
When in doubt do a clean boot (check the demos\misc directory for
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files for a clean boot). Some demos
require 600k+. Some will say this while most will just hang
providing you with a "clue." I recommend having LOTS of MEMORY
free (600k), no memory managers, SVGA, a 486DX, a SBpro (port 220,
Irq 7, DMA 1), GUS (port 240, Irq 11, DMA 7, 1024K), and patience.
I do not recommend having any kind of STACKER program.
My setup consist of:
386DX40, MSDOS 5.0, SVGA Tseng video card, 700+meg Hard Drive,
14.4 Supra Modem, GUS (240,11,7), and a SB16 (220,7,5,1).
I have tested ALL the demos on this disk and about
95% ran on my setup. Some require a MATHCO, a few need a 486,
others will crash in the middle or end, and some like UNODEMO and
BORNTRO just did not work at all on my system. Keep in mind that
demos are not games thus the coders do not have the funds nor time
to check every configuration so if you have problems work with
your CONFIGURATIONS and odds are the demo will run. If not then
maybe you do not have a GUS or the demo will just not work with
your system. Good luck.
NUDITY
Some demos DO include nudity.
Only one demo--Women by Access Denied--was excluded from this
production due to being too extreme. The demos/intros that have
even brief nudity include the following: Lovedemo, activity,
B_ware, Cardiac, Dz_debute, Demonic, Motion, Monstra, Phantom,
Portal, Wish, 2phobia, Symptom, Ass_amen, Megamix, Msrules, Btw,
and Tfo_ptm. There may be more but I think this list is
exhaustive. So, if nudity offends then avoid the above files.
GOOD DEMOS/INTROS WORTH CHECKING OUT
Exploring all of the demos on this disk I have come across a few
"Greats" and a few "Notables."
Greats:
AirFrame
Amnesia
Cardiac
Catchup
Cosmic
Crystal Dreams I & II
Elements
GBU_SP
Heart Quake
Images
Journey
Saga
Second Reality (2ndreal)
Show
Symbology
TFO_PTM (The Final Option)
Unreal
Untitled
Verses
Notables:
Comamtng
Cronolog
Delight
M_python
Megademo (2.7 megs)
Megamix
Nintendo
Silence
Ssaft
T_Holic
Tmania
Tphdemo
Vectdemo
Wasted
There are definitly more that can and should be added to these lists
but I have already typed too much.
PERMISSION
Demos not here due to permission denied:
Legend design -- WARP and all their productions.
Dust -- Stoned 4kbyte intro.
I have attemped to contact as MANY people as possible regarding
"permission." Most seemed indifferent (FC) and 95% of the others gave
a YES.
Since there is no intention to "profit" off this CD I hope no one will
be upset if their production appeared on this CD without
permission.
Groups that did give permission include at LEAST these:
Digital Infinity, Admire, Eniac, EMF, DiE, Flash
Productions, VLA, Hystersis, Surprise! Productions, Division
Software Group, DNA, Nostilga, Blacktek, Asphyxia, Renaissance,
Deadly Force Mag, Razor, Gollum, Complex, Technomaster, Capacala,
Remedy Productions, Digital Arts, Wonder Monkey, Immortal
Syndicate, Witan, Iguana, Chromatics, Twilight Zone, Darkzone,
TET, and Soft_One Productions.
Thanks go to all of you.
WITAN was nice enough to include a special demo for this
CD--WTNHOUSE--which is the GUS version of their TECHNO part in the
Facts of Life demo.
GREETS
There are many people to greet in a production like this but I will
keep it brief. Many thanks go to the following:
Christopher Mann--MC][, helping with this CD and the demo site.
Pim Van Mun (Stony)--CD label art.
Jester--Back Insert art...the many hours.
Dana Dominiak--Art, ideas, printing help.
Johnathan Vail--Screen layout.
DareDevil--All the demos uploaded and the QIC.
C.C. Catch--The contribution.
David & Nick--The CD-R.
Joe Schofield--Support and almost a DEMO.TXT interface.
Burning Chrome--Possible art, submitting demos.
MC][ winners--Thanks for letting us use your music.
Uploaders--Thanks for uploading to eng.ufl.edu all these years.
And those I forgot.
FINALLY
This text started off in DOS, went through WINDOWS and was ported
back to DOS. It took more time then it was worth--about an hour
to correct all the crap WP in Windows did when I incorrectly saved
it as a TEXT file. So, if you find any mistakes accept it as
wanting to get this CD to press ASAP. So there you go...now, it
is time for me to get out of here...Escape back to reality.
You can contact me if you have any questions at: (305) 370-1373
E-mail: dmw@inca.gate.net, dmw@eng.ufl.edu
Dan Wright
1320 N.W. 76th Avenue
Plantation, FL 33322-4740
USA
Let the party begin...