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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
