★ DEMOSCENE ★ CPC in the year 2010 ★ |
| Demoscene Review2010 |
I have just realized it's ten years since my first article about CPC in 2000. More than ten years have also passed since the beginning of my scene career. Sometimes I go back in time by reading my older articles to bring back memories and compare how things have changed both in my life and the CPC scene. Well, this is an article about the CPC and not my life, yet I always left fragments of my own psyche or self-sarcasm in my articles. But let's go back to CPC. Ten years of CPC in the new millennium. It's still amazing that I am writing this near the end of 2010. An interesting(?) comparison of the CPC activity during these years was exclusively written for the site pushnpop.net (ex cpcscene) in this link here. Leftovers from 2009 In my last article I didn't give a proper review of one demo. My response was something like "don't watch it, there is nothing in it". Somehow I mistook it for another joke demo, must be that I have seen the group being OFE (a jokegroup from I don't know which people). It's a pity since I have written quite more words while reviewing the demos from Hellas-Laser (or rather talking about my hilarious crazy friend). When I later checked the demo at youtube I found out that it wasn't bad at all. I promised to write a proper review for this demo in the next year's CPC article and so here it is. The demo is called Killmax. It seemed like a joke release (mind the title referring to the Climax slideshow series). There is an intro with an eye made out of binary code which is just like the eye on Climax. The next part is a slideshow of mode 1 pics (320*200) which are transfers and changing the colours frequently during the retrace to produce more than 4 colours and beautiful displays using the CPC+ palette. The next part is a car driving and hitting a yellow being that is supposed to be an inside French joke or something? I am wondering who is that being. Another thing that stands out is the music. Well, they are transferred Atari ST musics with dual sid voice emulation. So, it's not that bad, it's definitely better than Hellas-Laser, one can stand and enjoy the transfered graphics and the music (even if there is nothing original here) in a small rare release in the empty world of CPC demos. Recently I was wondering whether to review this demo or not. That's because I learned much later the sad story behind it. It's yet another case of someone stealing the work of somebody else and releasing it without his permission. I should mention that some of the parts, graphics and design behind this demo were from an original project from Sylvestre. Yes, the original author of the Climax series. I remember someone explained me the whole story I was missing while I was at the Amstrad Expo 2010 meeting. I can now understand the controversy at Pouet comments on this prod. It's a shame that one cannot respect the work of another scener, especially in a scene that is dying. I remember this happening again several years ago in the Greek CPC scene, resulting in new blood abandoning the scene. This totally pisses me off! Anyway, my decision was to write the review, state the facts and then move on. The demos How can one review his own demo? I might have done this at least two times before. So, this must be my third CPC demo (not counting some random crap) and my comeback to the CPC scene (Well, I never left). I can of course speak a little about it without boasting, just giving interesting technical details or personal stories behind it. Like the fact that this demo was done during a period in which I was mainly inactive from the demoscene, that I was working on it while I should be studying or working on my master final project instead, that I was highly motivated while working on this thing because of some big changes that brought the CPC scene more close to the international scene world, also because of my motivated friend Voxfreax and our plans to visit Amstrad Expo. Or the other funny facts that this was my first demo not entirely written in assembly, it also didn't steal much time from my studies because the main demo was done a week before the party (but the C framework and most important functions were started a little more time ago). A demo written in C language. A concept already tested with success by NoRecess in his demos Phat and Pheelone. Later on, NoRecess released his own C compiler for CPC called PhrozenC (his previous demos were written either in z88dk or sdcc compiler). I decided to play a bit with it. At first I was joking about the idea to write a demo framework for CPC in C and use this compiler for my future projects. Then I started playing with it. There is the usual reaction you know, an 8bit demo in C? Of course the most crucial routines would have to be written in inline assembly, something that is quite easy in PhrozenC by using the #asm and #endasm directives. But the memory consumption? That's a problem and it makes me want to avoid C for big projects. But for middle sized demos like Chunky Chan or for code experimentation it's ideal. The initialization, unrolled code generation, demo part scripting, transition animation (not the rendering) and other minor stuff are so easy to write when it's not assembly and it makes the code more redable. One can always replace a C function with assembly code if it still proves to slow down the main demo. The resulting code is bloated and even doing simple stuff for 10 loops (like moving sprites and checking for clipping with the screen) still wastes enough raster lines, which makes you wonder. But as a speed developing experiment this was just right for what I needed. Yes, the concept was speed developing. I didn't need to develop the smoothest routines ever for this one. My plan was to test if I can still make a proper CPC demo after so many years of inactivity, in a very sort time before the deadline. And keep the process as fun as possible. So, except from the choice of C language, another concept for speed developing was to make a renderer for a chunky rendering mode that points at a linear framebuffer which I can use during the whole demo without caring anymore about the confusing CPC videoram. That was a concept I was thinking years before I even decided to code C on CPC. Even the name of the demo was thought back then. Finally it was completed. The result? Ugly chunky mode with 4*4 dithered blocks in Mode 1 resolution (320 * 200, 4 colours). Kinda slow effects. Still they look shady with the dithering. I like the 2d metaballs (blobs) but they are slow. The tile renderer already spends 2 VBL iirc. The advantages are that I can write effects in this chunky mode very easily. The metaballs were coded in a hurry while I was in the boat from UK to France. Usually I am scared to open a CPC emulator and code assembly in a hurry in such situations. Well, the blob rendering code was unoptimized assembly :) I don't think I would normally have the courage to code a 100% assembly demo in such a short time and while I am busy with studies or other stuff. Modern tools and an open mind for C coding on 8bits made it possible! I could now move on to other releases. I have spent three paragraphs already just for my own creation but think this as a review (sort of) of PhrozenC too. Let's move on to Moody, released by Vanity at Main 2010. This is probably the best 4k on CPC yet. And I should mention that tiny intros of sizes equal or less than 4k is something new on the CPC. Thus, this intro compared to the best 4ks say on C64 would be an overkill. So, those who happen to know demos from other scenes and have seen really great 4ks should not expect much. But it's still quite good in both technical and artistic aspects. The only drawback is that there is only one single effect yet a good one. It is a 3d maze untextured. The screen area is big enough and wide and the frame rate is very good for the size (could be 2-4 VBLs if my eyes are not deceiving). At least the effect is not just thrown away as it is but is presented in a sequence where the action stops and some vectorlike fonts are writing credits/greets/etc and then the next sequence continues. The colours look vivid and there is dithering (not exactly in the real sense, but a chessboard grid pattern) that uses nice combinations. The music is nice too, not something that stayed in my mind though but very good for the small size provided. Even the loading is well thought. It's a good quality 4k with a single effect that is good enough to enjoy. Since I've talked about 4ks being a rare entity on the CPC scene, I should say there is a recent interest this year that could expand. The Spanish party Euskal 8bit had its first 8bit 4k competition and they were accepting CPC entries too. This was a great thing to do and the competition received two CPC entries. One is even the first release from a newcomer on CPC scene, Ham, who is also known for his demos on other platforms like Amiga, PC or Gamepark GP2X. This is great news, every time I see newcomers on the CPC I am happy and I hope they stay longer and be more involved. His 4k Endless Superloop Iteration has no real effects, except from some blocks moving in parallax in a small window and the bouncing of the screen. There is also a very simple write and a cute animated robot. What I like in this 4k is that it's a honest first attempt at CPC coding with nicely designed screen and simple presentation with some noizy sound yet it feels complete. It's a very nice way to join the CPC scene. My own entry, bloids1k, was more moving on the technical path. It's using the tile rendering from Chunky Chan and the blob rendering concept. Of course I didn't port the C code involved because it would never make it into 1k this way. Everything is rewritten in 100% assembly. Code that generated unrolled codes for the blob rendering had to be written among with other stuff and heavy optimization went into reducing this under 1k. Originally I was planning a real 4k with this code but time was rare and I also had to get rid of this since I was still busy with my master thesis at the time. This intro doesn't show the full potential of this routine. The movement is not nice, I noticed that myself too, though I was in such a hurry to get rid of it and I didn't bother with how to fix my sine curves. Overflow has helped to optimize some more bits both in size and speed and a bigger number of blobs at the same speed is possible. I think it will be very impressive using the blob renderer for exploding particles and other stuff and I will keep this idea and the code for a true 4k. Next time I should search for a player and compression engine for those sizes as they are already used in the other two 4ks I have reviewed and I might need them too. Plasmorphy by Benediction was another single part release at Amstrad Expo 2010. It features a hardware screen with some plasma that rotates on X like a pseudocube. It's not a real soft rotation like how I did it in X-kore with a X-stretcher but a simple hardware one where one chooses the lines to display. And so it's really smooth and fast with many bouncing and rotating plasma cubes. The screenshot I provide doesn't show the real deal but capture a better one if you can. :) It looks better as it moves. I mostly enjoy the very well chosen colours in this demo and the great music from Factor6. Voxfreax has taken the artistic lead in this demo and also made the graphics. Nice to see a new Benediction demo. I am curious for some multipart demos from these guys in the near (I hope) future. And I leave Phreaks by Condense for the end since it really was released late as an Xmas present. What Phreaks consists of is a tv screen with some splatters in the foreground where some animations of a dancing guy are showed. It's only interrupted by a quite simple writer yet with nice fonts. This is supposed to be an attempt to make something similar to State of the Art from Amiga on CPC. The good parts are: nice antialiased animations, rasters and little details to feel less empty. The bad parts are: too slow to enjoy, some weird colours I don't like. The music was ok but still nothing that reminds in my mind (I miss great musics on CPC that you keep singing, like those great tunes from Atari ST you can't stop hearing in your mind, even good recent demos like Pheelone or From Scratch have a fairly good non repetitive tune yet somehow it doesn't stay in your mind). People who were hoping for a new Pheelone might be disappointed. Neither should you expect a non-boring State of the Art alike demo here. As a technical concept it is fine. I can't speak with certainty whether it could be done faster or not and what a faster code would mean for the amount of data in the limited memory space. I should try this before speaking about it. But such slow animations spoil the whole fun of a state of the art alike demo. It's still nice to see a new demo by NoRecess even if it might be his last. Wishing to give more time to his family and being busy with real life, it's getting harder for him to give so much effort to CPC. I understand this and I won't ask here for more demos from retired sceners like a silly demo consumer. (But please, don't omit to make that version of PhrozenC with specifying org I begged for :)) There were a few more demos at Amstrad Expo. Most of them are insignificant. I could only speak shortly about each of them to not tire the readers with the less significant releases. One small release that is still a bit interesting was Conway from Benediction. It was Krusty's release for Amstrad Expo and I was curious about it because I like Krusty's software demos. It was a bit different this time though. Not exactly a demo but a game of life with controls to draw/erase cells. Instead of squares, specific graphics like drops of blood were selected for rendering depending on the neighbour cells. But that's it, nothing more to see. The rest of the releases were single graphics screens with some tricks to the eye. Apart from demos few other good stuff was released. The most interesting pieceis a tool of course, which is Arkos Tracker. Finally, one can compose CPC tunes using a PC. One can save in the AKS format but also extract the music in uncompressed YM format, which might be suitable for playing on other computer bearing the same Yamaha sound chip too. There is also an option to connect a CPC booster with the PC to compose on the tracker and play directly the sound on a real CPC. This could open the way for Spectrum or Atari ST musicians composing for CPC. Another good surprise of this year was the long awaited release of Color Lines by Tom et Jerry. This is an addictive puzzle game with very good graphics and tunes. One special thing is that this game is skinnable and several different skins were available all ready with the release of the game. The same happens with the several tunes where different musicians contributed to this project. This game actually looks more like a big graphic and music disk at the same time. Last surprise was a release of the music disk Now! by Brainstorm. Wow, Brainstorm on CPC! There are some members that joined Brainstorm I already knew from the CPC scene like Ultrasyd who did the music and some guys from Brainstorm who worked on the gfx and code. The graphics are likeable, interface is simple, some tunes are very good. It's a nice surprise to see new groups on the CPC. I am curious if there will be future releases from Brainstorm on CPC. The scene The most important thing for the CPC the year that passed was not the demos released (which were fewer and not very significant than the previous years) but a sudden change in the community. Probably the most important news of 2010 and the reason for my raised interest on CPC was the opening of the CPC site Push 'n Pop, formerly opened as cpcscene.com but changed domain for some reasons I don't know. Finally, this was a true CPC demoscene oriented website with discussion forums, articles, news and an interest to connect with the international scene. I don't remember when was the previous time we had a CPC demo discussion as a community with the majority of the French sceners, while using the English language. I was feeling connected with the scene, not alone. It was also nice to see people from other countries in the memberlist interested in our discussions. Another good attempt that this site does is to connect the CPC scene with the demoscene in general, regardless the machine. I mean, something like a CPC outreach, for example there were news about Breakpoint and Main and other parties in the main news page and trips were organized, like the visit of several CPC sceners at the last Breakpoint. There was some participation in graphics and music competition with CPC entries on the big demoparties too. For example Soleil Vert for the freestyle graphics competition at Breakpoint or Fairy by Futurs as executable music in the same party. There was more CPC participation in demoparties like Euskal with two 4ks and Main with one 4k and a musicdisk. I think very positive of this, not only is this an outreach of the CPC scene to the outside world but also CPCers can have a look at demos from PC, Amiga, C64 and other platforms in the demoparties, meet new people, get inspiration, feel more connected. I don't see why the CPC scene should stay closed in its own shell, especially in 2010 where the CPC sceners are so few. For me it feels so lonely if you just keep being a CPC scener not interested in the demoscene from other platforms. Outing is essential. CPC rebellion? The thing is, would such an outing do bad to the CPC scene? No. Would the eliteness and trolling from Pouet or the very high standards from the big demoscene community damage the CPC? No. Because you can find the elites and you can also find BITS. You can find cocky people and also really really nice people. And the really really nice people are sometimes elite in the good sense. They do really great stuff but they can still be polite with all of you. Some people do mediocre demos and they don't care. Other people do whatever they want and make demos for whatever platform they feel like. There are all sorts of people there. There is no big difference in eliteness or trolling between the big demoscene community and the abandoned French village called CPC scene. What is in the city is there also in the village. The CPC scene won't turn more elitist or loose its identity if it goes outside it's shell. The only difference is that a CPC scene not outing itself will be miserable. It's already too small to outstand. It won't evolve, it won't meet new challenges, new people, a bigger community, people who like demos regardless the platform. I am happy with the vision of pushnpop and some sceners have for the future of the CPC scene. Ok about the harsh (or honest?) reviews, I understand. There are so many times I cried, so many times I opened those threads on Pouet whinning why I can't be a succesful demoscener. All these silly things I have endured for several times and still didn't got a clue then. It's not easy to not be affected when you got used to be involved in the scene emotionally, having your own vision, your own dreams, hating different attitudes, hoping you will do a really good demo one day and people will adore you. It's not easy when you were involved in this mindset for several years. It's not easy even when you wake up after ten years and realize that you got it all wrong in your head. My own escape from this is zen-like, simply focusing on the things that you like and trying to avoid getting involved emotionally in the things that the scene want you to do. Of course you have to get rid of your own preconceptions too, for example say you like doing single effects for the tech but the scene won't appreciate if you release them alone, except if you connect them in a demo, which is something you accept because you have learned an unwritten law that this is what the scene is about, but if there was another community where releasing single effects would be ok then you would adopt its own mindset and it would be just fine. You are involved in a community and then your brain works like you believe in the unwritten rules and you have to make a demo, not your own thing necessary, so that they appreciate. This is just an example of how this thing is in our brains and we can't escape from the machine. We try to get something from the scene, we have our own vision of the scene which isn't necessarily someone else's vision, we are emotionally connected to the scene in such a way that it harms us at the same grade as it makes us feel good (or maybe more harm than good as antitec would say). And so we lose focus, which is to be creative in the way we wish to be. Of course, you may release a preview of effects because that's what you like to do and still you won't get many positive comments because the scene wants a real demo. Or you may feel more confident in the small French village, yet the CPC scene might be moving inevitably towards the outing direction, no matter what your vision is. Sometimes things are not how we like them to be. People are fighting because one wanted a more tech oriented scene like the old times but for example the PC scene has moved to the more artistic side because that's what most people like. How to survive this? Continue doing what you like to do and some people might appreciate, focus on your work, what you enjoy doing, not how it will be appreciated or if it is what the scene wants. In other terms, don't give a fuck about what the scene wants or what the scene means. Drive your mind away from the equation. Stop thinking about the scene. If you still enjoy CPC coding, write an effect in 1k or less, send previews to your friends, open a site with tutorials about coding single CPC effects, or quit making demos, start a game project, code a tool, find another community, get out. Don't get stuck in the scene loop and whine in eternity. This is what I am learning ten years after my personal scene struggle. Demos have still some appeal for me, it's still sometimes nice to release something for the bigscreen, but it's not the sole thing I can do. If I am in the mood I might try coding something but if I am not I might move to another scene, or make a game, app, or just code for fun and not run for a demo release, depending on the motivation and how I wake up :) It's a bit twisted but it's the closest I could get to not quit and still be happy. It says: Don't give a fuck about the scene yet be a part of it in a way you feel good with. The scene is an idea. Everything is an idea. Don't take things seriously. That's what I call politics. Being strongly opinionated about something like it's your own home. Being severly emotionally attached to ideas that it harms you. All these quarrels start because one's own vision of the perfect scene isn't exactly matching how the community works and looks like in reality. But we are so many in this community and a scene that is always appealing to every single person is not always going to exist. Just be there, try to focus on doing your thing and ignore the noise. Or don't be there for a while. Both work somehow. I wish a better year for the CPC scene with more outing and you know what? Invade pushnpop, less Frenchies, more English! That's a joke of course but it's also a concept. There are 42 French people out of 74 users in pushnpop yet the discussions are still dominated by French people. Most people just joined once and are absent from the discussions. Sometimes I am absent from the forums too, I admit it. If 50% of the discussions were from non French people then the CPC scene would feel more international and those Frenchies wouldn't feel like being in the French village with their quarrels. A melting pot for the CPC scene is my vision. Make it real! Ok, I should stop thinking about scene politics now and think CPC.. P.S. Sotsoft of Hellas-Laser has just discovered the internet. Be afraid, be very afraid, it's only time before he finds out Pouet. HUGI diskmag by optimus/dirty minds
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