What is dis ?? Ya thought that this was just another lousy demo ?? Naah ... sorry to disappoint you but this is not a 300 bob or solid vector gfx demo ..... this demo belongs to a new generation of demos ! The usual stereotyped demos are too boring for us ... so PANTHEON SOFTWORKS brings you an intelligent demo called >>> HUNGRY DROID <<< All code, gfx and muzak was done by Christian Fiott of Pantheon SoftWorks. Usually I do only coding but our gfx artist and our musician have other more important works to do ... so I decided to make it all by myself ... the music (as all dIRE sTRAITS fans should know) is called WALK OF LIFE .... and talking about life that is what this demo tries to emulate ..... imagine yourself being locked in a series of mazes and you must find the way out ... all you can see is the 4 directions (North, South East and West) and whether there are any exits in these directions ... not a pleasant situation eh ??? Well but this is an everyday rutine to animals (most often rats) which are used in laboratories for experiments. Hungry rats are usually put in such a maze, and they must find their way to the food ... well in this experiment a DROID is used, so that we will not cause any mistreatments to living animals (WWF rules OK?)... but this experiment is a bit different from those types of lab experiments I have mentioned coz YOU will be the subject of the experiment !! The DROID is very intelligent and he knows that he will be able to handle any situation ... you can place him anywhere in any maze and he will be able to find the food in a very short and efficient way .... if an average human being was put in the same situation he/she would not do as good as the DROID !!! You do not believe this ??? Well this is your chance to check the abilities of the DROID ... the screen below shows an overhead view of the maze in which the droid will be placed ... The platform with 4 squares is the starting point and the one with the grid is the ending point ... the other platforms are just the corridors that make up the maze ... you can select predefined mazes by pressing F1 to F10 .... or you can even design your own mazes !! Pressing DEL key erases current maze, and ESC starts the DROID action When the DROID is inactive you can edit the maze by clicking the left mouse button to put a platform at the current cursor position and by clicking the right mouse button to change current cursor type. Move the cursor by moving the mouse !! When you have edited the maze you MUST press RETURN to store the maze in memory ... if the screen gives a red colour it means that you have done something illegal (Eg. did not put a starting/ending platform, or put 2 start/end platforms !!) if all is OK you can start the DROID by pressing ESC ... and after a couple of minutes the DROID will report success to his mission by flashing the screen green !! If you are a smartass and try to cheat (eg. put the end platform not connected with the rest of the maze) the DROID will still report success !! Anything you can do the DROID can do better than you !! ................... I know that many of you will not find this demo interesting coz it does not have the usual contents of a demo ... I used to do those type of demos but what the fuck ?? There are many demos around most of them having similar (if not the same) rutines ... and these last only a couple of days .... And what have you got at the end of the day ? What have you got to take away ? Nothing ... so if you want the usual type of demo fuck off and reset your Amiga ... but to those who wanna try something different here is the choice of a new generation (No not pepsi !) of demos ....... some facts about this demo ... No blitter is used anywhere in this demo !! ... sorry about the quality of the presentation of this demo ... but I could not waste much time on it ... I got more important things to do too !! The parts of the maze which the DROID thinks that are useless to it (i.e. do not lead to the food) are wiped out from the screen .... The DRIOD speed is slowed down just for your slow eye/brain system to try to understand what is going on ... if no display is made the DROID can find its way in a split second ... but that would not be nice for you eh ?? The DROID only differs from intelligent mortals in that it REMEMBERS everything and has a very good sense of orientation ... humans in the same situation might find it difficult coz the human brain is not made for this situation ... that is why I think that artificial intelligence can be implemented to handle most situations which are required in computer games ... the problem is to isolate the task which the computer must carry out, and the INPUTS and OUTPUTS which the task must have ... the only problem I see is that such artificial intelligence carries out a series of PREDEFINED tasks ... the computer cannot actually LEARN ... but that problem could be solved too ????? If you think that all this is easy to do .... go ahead ... make my day .... Now lets go over to some messages ... first of all I wanna tell all ya out there who do not already know some facts about Pantheon SoftWorks ... Pantheon is a NORWAY based software developing company and soon you will have the opportunity to obtain from the shops our first releases .... HQ address is PANTHEON SOFTWORKS PO BOX 2049 HOLLEN 4641 SOGNE NORWAY Fax (047) 42 66 647 If you have any questions about this demo or you want to send me a postcard (?) contact me at CHRISTIAN FIOTT, ID-DWEJRA, SONG THRUSH STR, PAOLA, MALTA now over to some personal greetz ..... Hellos and Thanx to : CRITICAL (john) CREATIVE THOUGHT SOFTWARE (derrick) ARTS (riku) LEVEL 4 (jpn) PHAZE 101 VISUAL ARTS (megaman) Special hello to JPN coz this demo woz done to prove an argument I had with him !! Hi freak !! Last but not least a big hug (??) to all other Pantheon members up there in the cold - hoping to see ya next summer !! That's all Folkz !!