A.D.A. Amiga Demoscene Archive

Personally I have again picked up the dentro/demo project I was working on before deciding to participate in the Breakpoint compos. The music is finished and once Outline is over, the graphician and I will (re)plan our stuff. God it's nice to work with real graphicians, instead of trying to Google some graphics for our productions!

After a year of complete inactivity, i painted a "real" logo. I consider it my first proper logo because i got away from the "a line should be straight or 45° degrees" syndrome that plagued all my other so called "graphics". I used grafx2 and it was made purely for fun.

I didn't know you could also do graphics. Seems we have a new Doom, then :-)

I wish... but i can't do graphics nor code. I just had some fun dabbling with grafx2, that's all. And since it's demo-related, i thought i'd post it in this thread :)

Also, great to hear about the dentro/demo project!

Well, after doing a final version of a party prod for the first time in my life, I re-structured my intro framework to deal with 64 byte alinged bitplanes.
I'll now try to finish the effects that were originally meant to occur in Fibomoodcci
( a Sierpinski carpet and an L-System tree ) but got stalled due to lack of time and general lameness.

Also I've resurected StingRay's FX-LIB AGA framework and set up a dummy-project where I can fiddle around with chunky stuff.
Additionally I'm looking for better (faster) ways to feed data to the copper.

But no definite project in the pipeline, yet ... ok, the usual "memberlist - releaselist" cracktro will come up in due time.

The dentro/demo project will feature a great soundtrack by Mice. It's amazing what great funk he can do in just 4 channels. The effects and the design need some work, and therefore I look forward to working closely with the graphician we got on board this time. When I set the project on hold in January, I really thought that it look like crap - I really hated one of my effects and that one has been thrown into the trashcan now :-). Got to make something which at least I enjoy watching. It's really more motivating to actually work together with other people on a project. I don't know if it will be a compo production. I like when people release stuff outside competitions. However, if there is a compo around the time when we decide the prod is finished, it'll probably participate.

z5: don't quit the coding. Maybe you should try working on chunkyeffects instead. I would truly did, if I had to make blittereffects, which you and Dodge seem to like to do :-)

did = die :-)

...believe me, I have a hard time wrapping my brain around chunky stuff.
Actually, I don't know where to start. Once you have a collection of primitives for the most used Blitter funtions (i.e. plain copy, barrel shifting, filling, cookie cut & line draw) you're pretty much good to go on the low level stuff.
When I f.e. want to do a gfx overlay on, say, a 1bpl effect, I'll just switch to dual playfield mode and make the best out of the remaining 8 colours for the overlay on the high priority planes :)
I guess on a chunky screen this would be copy-loop-mayhem, with the advantage of having much more colours at hand.
And then there's the stuff you can run in the VBI, I didn't touch/try yet.

I'm currently working on several projects that will kick all of your asses ;)

@ z5 - I agree with Corial - you shouldn't quit coding. I'm not a great coder like a lot of the guys on here are but I'd be more than happy to try my best to help you with some coding stuff. You can always drop me a line if you want. :-) Contact details somewhere on here: retro.untergrund.net

@ doDgE - Sierpinski Carpet! \o/ An Amiga version of that effect would be cool. Will you beat JackAsser/Instinct to it I wonder...? He posted on EAB about having a go at making that effect on Amiga a few weeks back.

I've never tried chunky stuff either - but then again, the sort of stuff I prefer to do is old skool planar / custom chip bashing effects. Chunky can wait till later, probably much later or never for me considering my lack of brain power. :-D

@pmc&z5

do not fear chunky effects, it's easy to start with Kalms or Azure C2P... in fact you wouldn't need to know much about amiga internals to make chunky fx: just paint in the chunkybuffer, call c2p routine, switch buffers and it's done. Anyway I think it's better to start with planar so you take more advantage of Amiga chipset when it's possible. Using c2p for everything seems like a waste of resources.

I envy your planar skills!

Everytime I watch Starstruck parallax at the beginning I think "they should have used planar to make this scroll at one quarter pixel" :-)

For me, it's not so much about fearing chunky effects (although it does make my knees tremble a little bit. :-P) it's more that I don't like to use other people's source code because I never feel like I understand something properly until I've coded it myself.

So, for me to do chunky stuff I'd have to work out how to do my own c2p routine first before I did any effect using it and I'm not sure I've got the skills within me to make a c2p routine that's anywhere near as good as one by Kalms for example.

Also I think that everything being done with chunky on Amiga has moved Amiga AGA demos more towards being like PC demos and away from the demo being truly "Amiga".

There's really cool AGA demos and I still really like watching them but for me personally they're not my favourite cos they're not what I would call classic Amiga demos using blitter / copper / modulos and other things.

Anyway, sorry, I'll stop taking this thread off topic now... :-)

@britelite :) (amiga related or other platforms for the assembly oldschool compo?)

btw. i used c2p for my 2 intros (hence the "i don't understand why you need c2p for such simple effects comments").

I never really understood the importance on how a demo is made anyway (c2p/banging the hardware/...). As long as it looks good, is fun to watch, has nice synchro and a good flow, i'm a happy demo watcher. Sometimes i consider myself lucky i can't code. It means i have no clue at all as to what is going on technically, which means i can enjoy the demo as is. But that's an entirely different discussion anyway :)


I can understand your point of view but if you decided on doing c2p, there is absolutely no reason to write your own c2p converter. I assume you didn't write your own music player routine for your intros? In that case, consider this the same. Consider it as a black box where you input your chunky buffer and get your planar image as output. But yes, for the effects themselves, coding from scratch is usually the best way to understand and learn.

z5: amigarelated ofcourse (ofcourse I also have stuff in the works for other platforms too)

britelite: great news! you're a coding machine :)

It's hightime this effect goes Amiga when even the C=64 guys broke it with Booze Design & Instrinct's Andropolis.
I don't think I can "take on" any of the tough guys anyhow :/
All I have ATM is a Java Applet that I've understood so far and "unrolled" the recursion to a necessary minimum.
For the L-System, I got stuck before BP in the iterations _after_ the 1st.
I may open another thread in the coding section regarding recursive coding in ASM in time.

As for the chunky stuff. What I fear, is the rather complex math that comes with it.
I won't touch this until I'm able to rotate my coordinates with less fakery as possible ;)

That's a very good point z5, and I must admit I'd never really thought of it like that. Would still be interesting to try doing my own c2p though.


Agreed, it should definitely be done on Amiga too. HCL's one from Andropolis rules.


I wish you all the best with getting it working d0Dge - really looking forward to seeing your routine. :-)

At the moment? Taking a well-deserved break after Breakpoint. :)

I ported Ikadalawampu to OpenGL ES and participated with it in an internal demo compo at ARM Norway, where I work (yes, we actually have demo compos - we are quite a lot of sceners there). It turned out to be pretty quickly done. That's one of the advantages of having a scipting system: You only need to port the rendering engine and the script interpreter and just reuse the script, and there's your intro again! :-D

As for the near future, I am thinking of doing another 4k with the same engine (or a slightly modified one to get a different look). Maybe for GREP...

Oh, and I really should do a C2P tutorial of some sort while there is still some audience left. It's really not that difficult once you get the hang of it. :)

The interesting part of C2Ps is not the C2P conversion itself. It's not the chip mem writes either (that's just annoying). It's all the things you can put in there along with the conversion without affecting the speed much. Color conversion, dithering, clamping, blurring, antialiasing, you name it...

Aske, it sounds good with another 4k from you. I actually had a look at your looniessynth, but time simply ran out before and during Breakpoint :-). However, it could be fun to do a 4k (with music) again, even though 64k+dentro/demo production is more my thing. I happen to like pixelgraphics in productions, and that might be a severe problem in just 4096 bytes. I had a good talk with Farfar regarding todays scene productions. With very few exceptions, it seems that pixelart has faded away and that's really a shame. I like pixelled logos and pictures, and I will definitely add that to my future projects. Farfar, however, not the graphician in the dentro/demo I'm working on, but I have joined forces with another superb artist and I can't wait to see what he has created.

dodge: I have also picked up doing proof-of-concept stuff using java applets again. Well, that is: it's my intention to do it, when needed. Years ago there was a brilliant website, where the were applet coding competitions, and quite a few sceners did some excellent stuff. I don't remember the name of the site anymore, but I picked up some ideas to develop an applet "framework", and made a few utterly crappy demos with it. It was actually fun trying but somewhere along the line I lost interest in doing applets. Maybe I should pick that up again :-)

You certainly made me curious. Looking forward to it :)

With the DESiRE team working on a new Amiga release too. But we are trying to get these old fart active again in Holland (nothing changes used to be lazy bastards and still are)....

The dentro project is cancelled. I could not find motivation to do another funk demo, so the project is in the trashcan. Instead we will do a 64k for TRSAC 2010, and so should you :-). Remote entries seem welcome, which will probably be how we compete. Kid#2 is not very far away, so I am not sure I'll be able to find time to actually attend the party.

Pity that the project was cancelled. I hope the idea of pixeled graphics will carry over to other projects :)

Anyone doing something for Assembly oldskool compo or Posadas?

I had lot of problems with the forum registration, i created a new account and now i can post our current demo status.

_ The engine, tools and player are finish (thanks my god ).
_ All 3D scene are finish.
_ I added the sprite to the intro.
_ Marvin started the song.
_ Bone animation code must be optimized.
_ We need file archive (maybe in a later release ) for improve loading time.
_ And the last part is the amiga porting ( 1 or 2 weeks )

The demo is really not what we expected, we had a lot of problems for the low amiga resolution. Norm has finally leave the project, his motivation is totaly down, i'm lucky his two scene are finish and well designed.
We can expect to finish the demo in 1 month, as i leave in Canada it will be not easy to go to a party.

@jamie: I'm impressed that you have kept your motivation for your demoproject. It seems it has been under development for such a long time now? Good luck with the final stages of the development.

Thanks for the update Jamie! Sad to hear that the project didn't work out as expected. With a project that has had a difficult development, maybe it's best to just finish the demo asap and get it out in the open (release it), instead of risking a burnout?

Anyway, hope to see the demo soonish. I think it's fantastic that you (and the other Skarla members offcourse) have put so much effort in trying to comeback.

@corial: We are near of 3 years of development, all members has familly with kid so it was hard to work on the project. Finally i take a break for a year for finish this demo and to release other personnal project.

@z5: We are in the mood to release asap, the end will be like a miracle for me:)

So, the 64k intro for TRSAC is taking shape now. I must say that things are progressing slowly, since I became a father (again) three weeks ago. It leaves only very limited time at strange hours, but at least I get something done every week. Curt Cool is working (hopefully as we speak) on the music, and it will get interesting to link the module and see how everything eventually turns out. Still plenty of time to finish this small thingie.

Congratulations on your release, Corial!

We are currently finishing Prototype 1 and have a release candidate.