Batman Forever

I decided to express my feelings for this demo. I know I have to. Because this is going to have impact. The scene will remember this. This demo owns in many different ways. It doesn't just own the CPC. It totally owns!



Amazing feats this demo has achieved. First of all this demo teases both the CPC and the C64 scene at the same time! I don't remember any demo doing such clever and hilarious teasing of two scenes simultaneously! This is a first.



Secondly, the presentation reminds me of Amiga. It's such a fast paced and impressive presentation that I can hardly think of any better in other 8bits. Maybe I exagerate with this because what is a succesful presentation is subjective and people might mention Edge of Disgrace but I think Batman Forever shows more energy.



How about the effects? I don't think I exagerate here and actually some of the records and effects would impress even if they were running in an Amiga demo. Maybe to this add the beautiful graphics and vivid colours of the CPC. Honestly, that texture twister with it's big size, smoothness and neat CPC graphics would be praised even if it was running on a 16bit machine. Or the dot records! This doesn't look like 8bit. The last good C64 record I remember must be 512 dots tunnel in Soiled Legacy except if this was beaten but surely it hasn't reached the record of this CPC demo. The dot tunnels even in Desert Dreams on Amiga (oh, or the amazing C64 conversion) or other demos on this machine aren't so much populated in dots. The vector city (compared to the one in Soiled Legacy again) is more high res and with much more buildings (even if it must be animation) than similar I have seen on C64 or even AtariST. I think I have seen a record of 6000 sine dots in an AtariSt demo.



Do you understand what that means? Some of the effects surely beat any 8bit records out there by far and maybe even 16bit records!!! I haven't seen such a feat in any demo before. Oh, maybe except in a single effect in Numen, the bump mapping somewhere in the middle which is smoother and has higher resolution and size than anything I have seen for example in AtariST and I don't remember a really good big bump mapper in a 16bit Amiga either.



Another thing I enjoy in this demo is the great use of zooming, probably by X-stretching with a fast software rendering routine and using the CRTC for Y-stretching the X-stretched bitmap. This is my guess and what else could it be when the size is enormous and the speed 50hz! I did a fast enough X-stretcher used in my demo X-kore and for a long time I wanted to learn the CRTC so that I can combine it with this routine and make the similar zoomers as seen on C64. But guess what, I never bothered to learn the CRTC. I know it was possible though and finally I have seen it now! The only thing where C64 is still better in this domain now is that their zoomers show much bigger bitmaps. One reason for this is they store their bitmap in char mode with different chars of preshifted graphics of the bitmap, that they combine for the X-stretch (in some manner I have to figure), so the time it takes for CPC to stretch one line they would probably stretch 8 lines, well not precisely because of different CPU but you get the point.



Last but not least, what rules in a demo is the initiative. It is the will to make impact, to push things, to motivate, to be a milestone for others to follow. This is what this demo has managed to achieve. This has created serious noise in our minds. This was a mental bomb that totally shuttered our vision of what is possible and how things could be improved. I tell you what. After this demo, two things have changed in my way I see CPC demos. When I remember all the past CPC demos released, when I try to watch them, I know I will be laughing now. When I think of my released and unreleased pieces of code, I cry.

I was scared for a while that the effect of this would be to not want to code anything anymore because it will take time to top this but no. What the effect of this has to me is to be willing to take more time to improve what I already have (there are many ugly elements in the ASB2 demo we are working on that makes me laugh now :). And another change is that I am willing to learn the CRTC. It must not be that hard really! I just have to focus. My X-stretcher (even if Rhino's might be even faster judging by some code I have stared at with the Winape debugger) and your average CRTC line splitting code would be enough to do the zoomer effects Rhino did and even more cool stuff!

All the pun in this demo is truly well said. Amstrad Begins. Now!

Borderlands

I wasn't playing modern PC games for a long time. It's too much of a hassle, installing some GBs in your hard drive, getting into the game, calibrating tons of controls and then not playing it. So, I used to play old stuff and emulators because it's easier to set up and the controls are simple and you might finish a game in half an hour. So, if I review a modern PC game I have been playing it means something. Because I rarely have the motivation to install and play one. The last good FPS I loved on the PC is Return To Castle Wolfenstein to give you an idea how away I am from hardcore (not casual or indie or emu) PC gaming. Also, there were two recent PC games I played too much the year that passed (and I still play). One is Test Drive Unlimited and the other is Borderlands. Nuff said!



I see that Borderlands has created a fan base on the internet. And I see lot's of people hating it. This happens a lot with succesful games that miss that something and you think they are overrated. Many people find Borderlands boring. It's exactly the opposite with my case, cause I find it extremely addictive. Needless to say that I play the single player mode only, while most people say the game is worth for it's multiplayer. I can't imagine how that will be!

Ok, I will start for the bad points and I agree with some of the haters that something is missing. And then I will go on with what makes Borderlands so unique. They say there is no scenario, just pointless missions. There is some kind of scenario unravelled here even though it's not very strong. This is not important though to enjoy such kind of game. You are a treasure hunter on planet pandora, being lured by some kind of guardian angel to go into the search of a legendary vault that is supposed to hide some alien technology. There is some progression on the story, you find a young scientist called Patricia Tanis, there is Atlas corporation who wants the alien technology for itself, etc. And some side missions that sometimes have some relation to the story, like collecting audio tapes that people left that tell the story (like the Patricia Tanis audio tapes) and some other stupid missions like collecting bottles of beer and such stuff. The ending is not that good, maybe leaves you with expectations for another sequel, maybe not. But the scenario is there to fill the gap and it's not supposed to be important, there are also humorous elements in it and funny character presentations. But it's there, it doesn't suck entirely as people say.

Ok, the annoying stuff that I agree with. Lot's of side missions where you have to go somewhere and find some stuff scattered around, like "Oh, those bandits have stolen my cigarretes, go find them" and such. But if you just love moving around and mowing people done and getting loot then the punny missions are just the motive to go at some place and do that and then finish and go back to collect your reward. Such side stories existed in Fallout 3 and Oblivion too. Then, having to run around from one far side of the map to the other far side to collect something for a mission can be boring, although you have some vehicle you can use for faster travel too. Oh, and those signposts where you can teleport at different location. One sidenote, in the DLCs (aka expansions) that were released for this game, there are no teleport posts to move around, I don't know why they did that and it's very annoying for example in General Knoxx's Secret Armory DLC where the distances are vast (but you always move with the vehicles) - a very good DLC anyway.



What makes Borderlands good is how it combines the FPS and RPG elements together. It's more focused on the hilarious FPS action (with some sense of humour and funny cartoonish style graphics) rather than RPG itself, but borrows some of the most addictive elements of RPG games. You won't find any serious role playing in here, all you will find is what made the Diablo series addictive. Constant leveling up and ability increasing and (drumroll :) LOOTING!!! This is the single thing that makes it addicting for me. You can either kill enemies and they randomly drop loot, which can be money, ammo or weapons, shields and special items. Or you can find these stuff by opening chests. We are interested of course in chests that contain special weapons and stuff, not those ammo chests because you always have plenty of them.

There are any random combination of weapons (some say 1000000... number I don't remember) in the sense of being a pistol/revolver/SMG/Rifle/Sniper/Bazooka/Alien but each with random characteristics sharing, like different percent of accuracy, recoil, damage, reload speed, etc. So, you might find something totally funny, like a rifle with very strong damage but firing so slow like a fucking pistol or a powerful shotgun that spreads the shots so widely that you can't hit anything over one meter of distance or an SMG that fires X2 or X4 shots at once and there are also elemental powers attached to some of the weapons like fire, shock, acid or explosion damage and way much more funny stuff. What might come into your posession is so vast that it's such the excitement when you find new weapon chests scattered around. And there are also many different 3d models/styles of weapons and different weapon manufacturers that affect differently some of these elements. Well, most of the times there is some balance in what you find, so you end up with 95% of the weapons being already worse than what you have which you go and sell in vending machines (another place to find and buy weapons) till you reach higher levels and find more interesting gear around.

This is the main thing that makes this game addictive to me. But of course it's not the only one. The FPS/RPG mix is better to my liking than say Fallout 3 where you had to play with the turn based fighting mode (R.A.T.S.) instead of the real time because it was simply more effective and also you felt sort on ammo (this game is more focused on true role playing than action but it' still a good game but not as addictive as Borderlands for me). There is a scenario that I like as a concept even if it's not deep and just there to fill the gap, but the characters, the humour, the stylish presentation raise this up to a good level imho. If you like moving around in vast areas, enjoying good action and the leveling up/looting elements of RPGs like Diablo then this is for you. Don't listen to people who say this game totally sucks, it's not that bad, it's quite good in my opinion but that depends whether you will be bored with such kind of games or not (if there is a playable demo, try it first).

One last thing I forgot, you choose between four characters, each one of them have different special abilities. One is better with snipers and pistols and carries a sword while he sends a hawk down to enemies, another is the soldier who can set up a turret with a shield to mow down enemies, then there is the girl who can phase in another dimension and come back and likes elemental weapons and then Brick the monster who can punch people to death. So, if you finish the game with one character, you can play another one for an entirely different experience (there is a tree list of different abilities you can choose too). Till now I am playing with Mordecai, the guy with the sword and the hawk, because he had great style on the intro presentation and I also enjoy snipping :)

For me it's one of my most favorite games ever now! I hope more FPS will follow these RPG elements with such success.



p.s. Words about the DLCs. Dr.Ned's Zombie Island, small nice, with Zombies and purple colours and gothic atmosphere. Mad Moxxi's Underdome riot, this is a sequence of arena matches, too many of them, I stopped playing it at some time because it took me 6 hours to finish 3x25 rounds and there were 3x100 later(!!!), might catch up with it later, also it doesn't give you XP by killing enemies so it makes less sense. Then we have General Knoxx's secret armory which is one of the best DLCs, relies a lot on driving vehicles (3 of them) and have some nice ideas and a good finale. Killing the boss (which looks like the general inside a robot suit like in Avatar the movie :) you are into his armory where you set up a bomb to explode in less than 3:00 minutes and you are in a room with maybe a hundred of special weapon boxes with tons of loot, being extatic while your acomplish tells you "Hurry up, you have xxx minutes left" but you ignore and collect loot, LOL!!! And then Tartarus Station where you find Tanis again and she asks for robot parts and more robot parts and she has you complete a boring mission for several times (whyyyy???) before you reach a nice town with a railroad and take some more interesting missions. I wonder why these DLCs don't have teleport signs for their various locations as the original. Though they are generally smaller in size so except from the General Knoxx DLC, the others are ok. I am also hoping for a new Borderlands 2 instead of more DLCs. Maybe improving some of the stuff I don't like (I almost forgot, the Bazooka's sometimes pass through an enemy so you have to shoot for the floor and they still don't do much damage, ugh :P)

Luck in games

I never understood Bejewled.

It's fun, you move jewels, jewels break and a lot of funny graphics, explosions, 3d tunnels, warps are happening in your screen per click.

But I don't get the concept. You can just click and make some random pairs and things break. What forces me to have a strategy to choose the right jewels to break? It seems random. Sometimes I loose because there are no jewel pairs to break. Are people thinking strategically which jewel to break in order to not be out of pairs after 20 plays? I don't get it! The only strategy I could think is to break the ones that are lower in order for more stuff to fall off and make compos. A puzzle game like tetris was based entirely on how you set up the 7 pieces that came randomly. You were building stuff, there was logic, there was skill. But what is there in bejeweled? Except if I am missing something..

There is an interesting article about luck in games that inspired me to write this post. It shows with pie charts how much skill, luck and other factors are there in different game genres. It also reviews the bejeweled case.

It also has as an example of luck, the funniest game video I have ever seen (if you exclude any video of big rigs of course :)



WTF?

Led Blur slit-scan representation

This is an oldie. I found the image again. The next scanline of every frame of my demo Led Blur is displayed at each line. It's like a brief timeline representation of what's happening in the progression of my demo. I liked this very much so I decided to upload. It's reduced in size in blogspot so I split the very high image (5700 pixels) in three parts. It's still reduced a bit but not so much. Enjoy!

Recent demos from X

I just always feel like I really want to write a lot about the recent demos from various demoparties. I am not talking only about the Mekka of the C64 but also the latest PC stuff in Main, Buenzli, Function, etc. But since time is not so much, I will focus on my favorite C64 demos at X and forget the rest. I wish there were more frequent updates here about every significant party out there but it's not possible atm. It would be fun though that this blog would turn out into a more frequent review blog of recent demo releases.

The most important demoparties dedicated to the C64 seems to be X and LCP. When there are months since I have last seen an impressive and massive demo on the C64, those are the two places to expect lot's of good stuff of this kind. And when I mean lot's, I mean the first three or four places being masterpieces, followed by several okayish demos. This is what happened to this X 2010 too. It's one of those times that I am motivated to come back to the C64 (I should keep on with this motivation this time).



The first demo I have seen from X was Mekanix from Booze Design and Instinct (they have recently merged together I've heard) and when I found out it was placed only 3rd I was thrilled by the thought of what masterpieces would follow at the 2nd and 1st place. However, after I have seen all the releases I still liked Mekanix more than the rest. But my high expectations didn't killed the good feeling I got from the rest. They are all very memorable demos.

Actually, there is a different distinctive style between the three releases. Mekanix is all about great code but still features some good graphics and transitions (although not as amazing as Edge of Disgrace). 2nd place, We Are New by Fairlight has very original transitions (although at some places it's slow paced), great artwork, good ideas and few parts with good code among the average ones. It's also different than the older Fairlight demos which were more abstract and conveyed a message, more demoish I would say (personally I love both styles). The winner is a comeback by Offence, an old Hungarian C64 and Amiga group mostly known for their 1992 demo Emotional Breakdown. The style is quite surprising because it brings back the old megademo style where you have to press the long key to load the next part, but each part is done with such graphical design and unique or funny ideas that really makes that old kind of style likeable. I could compare it to Dutch Breeze or the demos from Panoramic Designs. It surprised me at first that this one got the 1st place over Mekanix and We Are New but the great feeling and ideas won over the usual trackmo style. I love both three demos and each one has it's own unique style and distinctive way to show what is a demo.



Going back to Mekanix (and I am sorry about the ranting about both three places, I wanted to make this distinction of the different styles here,. oh the screenshot above is not from Mekanix but the 1st place, Another Beginning), each of the parts is a masterpieces of code and good effect ideas. I don't know where to start from. Should I speak about the amazing per pixel rotozoomers (the best I have ever seen on the C64, how do they do it at such resolution and speed? Don't tell me, with many different char sets? Gotta think this again :), the wonderful 3d dots and strange 3d wireframe cube (I said they look like gouraud edges, but it's just planes cutting the cube, ho I even had to do this detail for my master's project for volume slicing and I forgot it's this one ;), classic booze design zooming algorithms (code recycling?), but the amazing isometric rendering of what looks like a 16*16*16 volume of metaballs!



That's the shit for me!!! This looks absolutely fabulous. I wondered how did they do that and I thought it was impossible at such speed. Then I thought it too much and found out some theoritical ways I have to try and see how they look, that would make it pretty fucking possible. But some people said it's an animation and that could bring down all the magic (gotta try my idea first on CPC, well maybe in 2015 :). Still it's an amazing and unique idea, pretty much another paradigm shift of new effects on the 8bits and not only. They even use this engine as a writer for some isometric texts and then for a second effects which is a 3d torus with isometric feeling (both run at 2-3 frames (screen refreshes I mean)), which must be some smaller blobs in a ring, maybe 16 of them, rotating around the center of the torus. That's neat stuff!



For me, this is the effect of the year for the C64. And it's not the only impressive effect in the demo. The 3rd place is a true coder's delight. Some graphics artwork are also good. The music didn't left me a very good feeling though. I mean, it's doing it's work but it didn't stay in my mind. Overall a really hot demo and now with the merge of Booze Design and Instinct I am expecting to see hotter stuff from them.



Going on with the 2nd place from Fairlight, this is a really nice to watch big demo even if you might get bored if you are expecting coder porn in every screen. I really love the transitions and the artwork in this demo. The only cool effect one can enjoy are the 3d renditions of ninja panda and little monster in the change disk part and near the end too. Those are made by fat blocks that rotate around the Y axis and without a projection. They are pretty unique and original as effects. The bouncing sphere on a graphics picture with other drawn spheres is a nice idea too even if too small and not very good looking. But still a good part. Little mention about the great parallax part in the screenshot above, joking of course. Finally, now we can see the true distinction between a UFO and a balloon and that they are completely different. Those skeptics are truly nuts!



I am showing mostly artwork in the screenshots for this demo. Because one has to see the transitions in movement to appreciate so a screenshot wouldn't suffice. And also because I truly love the artwork. The artwork from the end upscroller in the background is so good and is actually a work from Louie500, famous for his Amiga artwork with TBL. In fact, he also worked on the PC demo Only One Wish and some of the thematic parts (the stamps) in this demo reminds me of the PC graphics. I just remember Fairlight also did the demo One Little Wish on the C64 which also featured his graphics. It's great to see people from newschool scenes coming to the true oldschool. (I should mention that the other graphics are Tempest and Pantaloon (who also did code for this demo, great to see musicians/graphics switching to coding too :) and one of them drew a really great panda upon a tree, absolute great graphics, you can see it here along with credits and other stuff). I should also say, coming back to transitions, that it's not "in your face" but more slow placed yet original (some startling animations at the beginning, diagonal stripes closing screens, etc). Maybe I am forgetting stuff.



Fairlight demo would be a demo to lay back and enjoy at your own pace. If you seek for easy to consume coder porn and slick fast paced trackmo style then run Mekanix. If you want style, design, great art still in a trackmo style go Fairlight. If you really feel the need for something more traditional, Another Beginning is your thing. But this is a demo you really need to have time, lay back and stare at scrollers while enjoying lovely tunes for more than your average short demo attention span. This is Another Beginning.



You gotta press the long key. And you gotta watch parts which consists of oldschool scrollers and good ideas. Clearly, the best part for coders is the beginning with the horizontal twister saying Offence (little shadows too, prerendered of course). Then it's the end for code porn consumers :). But the feeling is so unique, the ideas great, Joystick moving swiftly while the stick animates, man which screams out loud letters, split that shows coder brain (on screenshot), beautiful simple part with man in the rain and text that Optimus likes (you know, the sad kind of stuff :), scrolling screen with background that is a delusion (with the dots, think it's distorting, simple but funny as an idea :), 3d isometric scroller that changes height (that's the only other part that code-hungry people will like), C64 logo at nap. Ok, I still prefer 2nd and 3rd from this, but this is unique that a "press space" demo really catched the feeling and won. I love it!



And we end up with the rest which are still interesting coder-wise stuff from the rest and still good enough demos. I will start with the what is in the screenshot, which is Exotic Excitement by Camelot. I was happy to see another comeback from Camelot and Cruzer. They must be working for their true megademo since ages, which might be called "Meet the Camels". A parody of course of that Crest demo everyone is waiting since forever. But it's gonna be great and I am truly waiting for it. Because this single effect on this little demo is supposed to be a leftover from their big demo, but it's still awesome! This is the biggest, smoothest, greatest and more colorful plasma I have ever seen on the C64!!! And you know how I love plasma. I "smelled" color cycling among other things (yet some formations look like real plasma), but it's not only that. You need a FLI algorithm on the C64 to have that kind of colors so close together. This means changing the colors again and again at each different scanline (here it's per two lines) which needs a lot of synchronization and several cycles wasted. This is a great routine. C64 never stops impressing me and so do Camelot!

The remaining good stuff are Frighthof by Arsenic (5th place) and Portal by Lepsi Developments & Miracles. Honorable mention to the 4th place, Cubase64 by Mahoney which is not exactly a demo but a demonstration of impressive realtime digital sound processing on the C64. This is monumental! Even after so many years we see new paradigms of coding not only on graphics but on sound too on such an old machine. If the C64 scene where one thinks everything is being done already, sceners can still show quite new impossible stuff every year that makes the old records look like a child's play, imagine what is possible in underdeveloped scenes like the CPC and not only. Wow! Simple wow..

Let's go back to the two demos. The Arsenic demo is a good coder's demo with slow paced music and gothic style (as usual), while featuring some neat 3d effects. I love the big X-rotating dithered stuff (although we have seen this a lot of times before, but here it's BIG) and the use of black 3d vectors for the bat transition (reminds me of some funny old lame Greek PC demo, guess which :). There are some more stuff into this one and I let you watch it. Portal is also a demo with a lot of nice 3d and other 2d algorithm, pretty newschool chunky stuff, even features a nice 3d city and little more stuff. Some of the graphics are ugly though. This is a pure coder demo with not so good graphical design. Still a good release from these Polish groups. There were more demos at X, even if less significant, and you can see the full results and downloads here.

I gotta close this big review and now I see why I can't write more frequent demoparty reviews in this blog. Takes much more time than I plan too. I am just too enthusiastic and spend time taking new screenshot (which I love to) and writting lot's of text :)

My only hope after X and this review is that this will motivate me personally to come back to C64 coding and plan a new demo with more interesting effects than my Livetro this time. I am looking at an older thread at CSDb where I was asking for crossdev tools. Heh. I remember having downloading some of them but I never found the time between my other projects (CPC, Gamepark or PC) to start coding. Till then, I will be watching demos and writing (not frequently) more reviews here.

p.s. You can find youtube links in some of the Pouet links of these demos in case you don't know how to run an emulator.

Beautiful Astronomy Pictures

Ok, I just realized that I have a long time since I last posted something in this blog (among my 7 other ones, OMG) and so I decided to throw a filler or something.



We start with this image which is one of those sky aurora phenomenons I very much would like to see from the ground and with my very own eyes oneday. For that reason and the fact that the shape and colour smoothing reminds me of some plasma effects in demos (but not too much, this could be classified more as a luminous ribbon effect :) this is one of my favorites here.



We continue next with an astonishing image that is just pure blackness with some stars and our own little planet together with it's only moon. Definitely not so beautiful as some of the other pictures in the link I will give you soon but perplexing as you see this in this distance and it gets too hard to grasp that this big beautiful world we currently occupy is such a tiny place lost in the vastness of the universe. Similar emotions arise if you think about time, human civilization being such a tiny time fragment compared to the age of the planets of the solar system, our galaxy or the universe itself. It simply scares me staring at this picture. In the very next moment we could be wiped out in a puff by major cosmic events and that would be a natural event without a special meaning.



One more beautiful image to separate this text and give you the links. They are probably no news, you might have already encountered these images somewhere before this blog post (spare me the ORLY's here, I am not planning to be an exclusive source here but just post something that fascinates me even if it's old news), this is Around the Solar System and then someone pointed out a very obvious website called Astronomy Picture of the Day which I am sure I have encountered several times before but I want to put the link here to bookmark it and maybe view some of it's contents in the near future. As a final bonus, check also this interactive Flash called The scale of the universe, from the tiniest size of matter to the size of the universe. It's definitely mind-boggling especially the fact that you have to travel from the tiniest scale so many factors of ten to reach the first known element. Anyway I leave you to explore yourself.

Chromatic

Such an addictive timewaster. Fortunately, in such games, when I reach higher levels I get frustrated and stop playing. It gets so complicated that I am too lazy to play further :P

The concept is sooo cool and so are the controls (you've got to get used to them) and ideas. You are a ball that can change between three colors. You have to match the colors with the coin colors to collect them or the traps and obstacles of the same color. There are also different abilities for each color, the red can run faster and dash further, the blue can slide and climb on walls, the yellow can double jump. And you have to combine them together as you go through the levels. Then the complex levels start where an area behind you is colored differently and affects your own color so you have 6 colors or more and also some objects that change your primary colors. It's a very effective concept and if you want to be challenged by the advanced levels this is for you!