"Demoscene Collection 3"
Various DOS/Windows conversions by Jonathan Campbell in his spare time.
NTSC region-free DVD ISO image.
Production notes:
Demos were captured using the DOSBox emulator. In some cases, I
had to modify the source code to DOSBox to make the demo work.
One hack added an option to DOSBox's VGA emulation that forced
the fake "refresh rate" to 59.94Hz no matter what the DOS program
did, which was hit-or-miss depending on whether the programmer
assumed the standard refresh rate. When it works it avoids the
need for framerate conversion. In other cases, I had to resort
to using the Bochs emulator and some backend video capture code
I hacked into it. Actual emulation was done on 1) Windows XP
and 2) a Linux KDE desktop.
In some cases, the DOS demo switched VGA modes or had emulation/timing
problems that required additional editing in Final Cut Pro. Interim
titlecards were made in Final Cut Pro.
Some demos included were written for Windows. These demos were
captured on a WinXP SP2 machine with Kkapture v0.6 and a ATI Radeon
R330 PCI-e graphics card.
In cases where I lacked the hardware or platform to run the demo,
I used the available DivX, WMV, or MP4 files already available on
scene.org.
Video was encoded to DVD format using MPlayer 1.0rc2 + some source
code modifications of mine to add high quality framerate conversion.
The DVD is authored with two titles.
First title has demos captured in 16:9 anamorphic format.
Second title has demos in 4:3 format.
The DVD format does not permit one title to have different aspect ratios.
DVD was authored using DVDAuthor (http://www.sf.net/projects/dvdauthor)
DVD contents:
Farbrausch - fr-041 Debris [16:9 Windows]
* You'd better have at least 1GB of RAM, or else expect the demo to crawl
and your hard disk to thrash heavily. Needs SSE2 extensions that older
P4 systems can't provide (it crashes otherwise). VERY IMPRESSIVE.
SQNY - Chromosphere [16:9 Windows]
* Recommended source material for anyone who things their MPEG-2 encoder
is hot shit that can handle anything---because this will prove them
otherwise. Even FFMPEG/Mencoder choked in many cases. My DVD player
can barely play this part properly.
ASD - Lifeforce [16:9 Windows]
* VERY IMPRESSIVE. Shame that it chokes under Windows Vista.
Farbrausch - fr-025 Popular [16:9 Windows]
Outracks - Gamma [16:9 Windows]
* Uses a pulsing dither/halftone effect to the beat that makes every
MPEG-2 encoder I've tried cry out in pain and agony. The idiot who
uploaded the DivX version to scene.org apparently didn't notice his
capture quickly dissolves into macroblock crap from the effect.
Getting it to encode without artifactly badly required a box blur
filter.
United Force - 100 0 11 111 [4:3 Windows]
Cocoon - Glon 423 [4:3 Windows]
ASD - Dreamchild [4:3 Windows]
* One part (the tunnel) seems to judder due to some timing issues.
Amen - Angel [4:3 DOS]
* This demo triggers something in DOSBox that causes it to panic
and exit. Capture had to be done from Bochs. Boch's SB emulation
sucks. The demo's MOD player sucks too. Fortunately the MOD file
could be directly converted anyway, so it didn't matter. I later
found DOSBox will panic if certain bits are set in the PIC controller.
These bits actually meant something on older hardware, newer systems
ignore these bits and they have no meaning anymore today.
After converting this demo I found commenting out that check in DOSBox
solved the issue and allowed this demo to run.
Unknown - Frame 18 [4:3 DOS]
* The VGA refresh rate hack was used. Only one part seems to not like
that: the "warping bird" logo.
Transformation [4:3 DOS]
Bomb - Eden [4:3 DOS]
* I initially ran this with the VGA refresh rate hack. It turns out
the demo is hardcoded to render at 70Hz and forcing the refresh rate
like that only makes the rendering slightly jumpy.
Complex - Rebel [4:3 DOS]
Contract - Phenomena [4:3 DOS]
Crolyx - Bullet of Autumn [4:3 Windows]
Gamers Aren't Lamers [4:3 Windows]
Farbrausch - fr-08 Produckt [4:3 Windows]
K2 - Aeons [4:3 Windows]
Litening - Faith [4:3 Windows]
Pulse - Reve [4:3 Windows]
* This demo also triggered the panic in DOSBox (see Amen - Angel
description above). By this time I had figured out how to
disable the panic and allow the demo to run normally.
Demoscene party directions [4:3 Windows]
Yaphan - F***ed up distortion [4:3 Windows]
Anadune - 9/11 [4:3 Windows]
* If all you see is a white screen, your graphics card doesn't have
what this demo needs. It will still run though.
Zmoke - Plastic (ripping is art) [4:3 Windows]
* Oh my god what were they thinking? Audio was transcoded directly
from the MP3 rather than using the KKapture output.
Mogol [4:3 DOS]
* I guess this was intentionally written to be corny?
Acme - Club honey [4:3 DOS]
COMA - Under [4:3 Windows]
* The demo uses a scanline effect that required the use of
a blur filter.
Profuse - Habitual [4:3 DOS]
Brainlez Coders - Omtunsff [4:3 DOS]
Next Empire - RushHour 2 [4:3 Windows]
* It's My First OpenGL demo! With code sprawled across multiple DLLs!
I even wrote a DLL that hacks another DLL to make the music go
faster! I also made the tires on my ELEET car... uh... spin!
I'm guessing this was intentionally made bad for comedy's sake.
Septic [4:3 DOS]
Brainlez Coders - Too Ugly [4:3 DOS]
Phenomena - Flight of Dreams [4:3 AmigaOS]
* This was converted to see if capturing Amiga demos using
WinUAE was possible, which it is (but sometimes WinUAE can find ways
to screw up the AVI capture if you're not careful)
Upload to: ftp://ftp.de.scene.org/pub/demos/compilations/demoscene_collection/disc3