Ocean Machine by The Black Lotus
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Final version released 2005-04-10
(Party version released at Beakpoint 2005, on 2005-03-27)
This demo won the Amiga Demo competition at Breakpoint 2005.
-= Requirements =-
Run this demo on either:
Real Amiga with 68060, 32+MB fastmem and AGA
or
WinUAE 0.9.92 or newer on a PC with an 1+GHz CPU
... or watch the video version.
-= Perpetrators =-
Louie - Graphics
Tudor - Animation
Yolk/CNCD - Music
Kalms - Programming
Rubberduck - Programming
Nichosen - Graphics
-= Story =-
Another year, another demo. Breakpoint 2005 is coming up.
Tradition bids us to join the pilgrimage to the fertile soil of
southern Germany, and participate in the ritual bigscreen battles.
Our weapon of choice this year is a less industrial, more
ambient/atmospheric audiovisual demonstration. Which of course
is far from being finished when the time has come for us to begin
our journey.
Dear friends and and lethal competitors at once, they are all
gathered in the hall. Working, toiling away; giving their machines
a pounding in a sudden fit of rage.
One by one their visualizations reach completion. A few are
however losing momentum bit by bit; slowly grinding to a halt, at
which point the creators turn to the bottle for consolation. Their
creations will not reach the public eye this time -- perhaps never,
if fate so decides.
Our process takes place elsewhere: at the hotel room. Scurried
away in our own corner of the world, isolated from the other
pilgrims. Always absent, always late, always busy. Time is
scarce, and there is yet lots to be done.
We submit our bodies and minds to the process. Code is
written, objects are modelled, scenes are synchronized to the
audio. Parts are created from void -- at first rough sketches,
then they become more polished and sleek by each iteration.
After more than 30 hours, the process ends prematurely: a
savage bug is lurking somewhere in the code, and it may at any
moment lash out and stop the production dead in its tracks.
There is no time for more process, so with this potential
Achilles' heel buried within our production we join the other
pilgrims in the hall and hope that the bug will give us peace
for the duration of the video recording.
And shortly afterward... the battle. It is a magnificent
sight! Each production with its own style and theme, vying for
the favour of the pilgrims. Local phalanxes cheer on their
compatriots' attempts to take the crown.
Despite rough corners and lack of complete process, our
production comes out ahead. We return to our homeland with
satisfaction and another story to tell.
All does not end there, however; we let the process reach its
completion within the confines of our own homes. This is the
result: What you see is what could have been, what should have
been. Now it plain is.
-= Changes =-
Various changes have been done in the final version:
* A very nasty crash bug has been removed (that one nearly
stopped us from participating in the compo at BP05).
* Music synchronization has been fixed.
* Palette fades during greetings part.
* Dancing girl interpolation has been bugfixed (in the party
version, she would move jerkily if that scene ran in 3 frames).
* The landscape part has been updated, as the original version
just looked too nasty.
* Performance has been improved in some places.
* Datafile is now crunched on-disk.
-= Thanks =-
* Volker Barthelmann, Frank Wille and the gang for VBCC,
VASM & VLINK. (www.compilers.de) Making a tailored set of
cross-compiler/assembler/linkers from the source snapshots
was surprisingly easy.
* Hansoft (www.hansoft.se) for their project management tool.
See the screenshot in the "bonus" directory for a section of
our project plan.
* Hotel Krone in Bingen for good service and friendly
personnel, which happily fulfilled our sometimes odd requests
without hesitation!
* Vedder, for doing some betatesting of the final version
on his machine.
Until next time,
Kalms/TBL