### Classic Demos Revisited - Sillyventure 2000 Special! Or, The Finished, the Half-Finished, and the Completely Unfinished! - A story of three demos. As part of our retrospective on the first Sillyventure party, we're going to cast our reappraising eyes over three demo's that were shown there. These are described in descending order of completion and each will be looked at in turn. The Finished - Tut! by Wildfire - Atari ST Firstly, we have the finished production. This is an 'all formats' demo, basically an STFM demo that is quite relaxed about running on newer hardware. One possible reason for its complete status, is that it should have been shown a year ago at a previous demo party. It is effectively a left over from Error in Line 1999. There are good technical skills throughout. We start with a nice water drop into a pool of liquid simulation. There is lots of gouraud shaded stuff in this first part too. The effects are thrown on the screen as they are, design and presentation is minimal. Eye-burning coder colours are averted in a very basic fashion with use of sixteen colours of the same shade, generally blue. This gives a gloomy and dark look to the first half of the demo. We do get some lovely still picture interludes, as Havoc is in top form with his ST pixelling skills. A number of very attractive ladies appear at various stages of the demo. There is also one unlovely pictorial moment, with Baggio and Evil poorly disguised as a pair of Bitmap Brothers! The second half of the demo gives a good look at what might have been. These later effects are much more nicely presented with decent colour choices. A very neat tunnel sequence springs to mind. We've nearly forgotten the musical contribution from Baggio, a decent enough ST-Sound. So to confirm what I wrote in my original Maggie review. This demo is competently made, but not necessarily inspiring. Still, at least it was finished. Retro-Rating:- 70% - Nice, but nowhere near jumping up and down and screaming territory. The Half-Finished - 'Upside Down' by Mystic Bytes - Falcon We turn next to the half-finished demo. This is intended for the Falcon 030. It makes few concessions, requiring both a 14 megabyte upgrade and and RGB monitor. It is also incredibly fussy about accelerators, not liking to run with one of these activated. (A common feature with other Falcon productions from that part of the scene.) In some cases, it seems to decline to activate if there is a hint of an accelerator ever being near the host machine. (We're definitely not happy with a Centurbo 2 fitted regardless of it switching down.) However, this does leave a substantial portion of the remaining Atari Falcons still able to run it. We start, and the demo shows a certain attitude that it is not taking itself totally seriously with a parody of the commonly used options menu at start. We never did find the porno mode! A raucous and dirty soundtrack kicks off to set the mood. The effects we get include some very nice hardcore 3-D. A couple of the bigger and more complex spiky ball type objects bearing a very close resemblance to contemporary effects made by The Black Lotus on much higher specced hardware. And it runs at a reasonable pace with the help of DSP, avoiding the slideshow stuttering of some earlier attempts at complex 3-D made without using DSP code. This demo is possibly the most sincere attempt to make a cutting edge DSP based 3-D based demo since Sonoluminescenz at that time. We now know that we really saw the next generation burst forth triumphantly in 2001, but this was a pretty good step in that direction. The overall design is very colourful and wild. It seems that no part of the truecolor palette was left unmolested. But it seems to work somehow. Just as it is establishing itself, the demo ends too quickly. It was suggested there was supposed to be an expanded final version, but this got lost. At least it finished properly with a proper end screen rather than just stopping without warning. A final version with more effects and perhaps a slightly tidied up design could have been the killer demo to start the new millennium. But what we got was still definitely worthwhile. Retro-Rating:- 80% - An under-finished classic in the making. The Completely Unfinished - 'Hardcore' by Mind Design - CT2 Falcon We finally come to a most tragic failure to realise full potential.The completely uncompleted 'Hardcore' demo. This had been somewhat pre-announced as I recall, as the first major release for the then fairly new Centurbo 2 accelerator. There was even a preview of some effects in an earlier mini-release. It seems that perhaps they should have kept these back to add to the final demo? When trying to run, this demo is very particular in a late nineties sense about the hardware it needs. I think an accelerator wasn't strictly required, but it would be a very good idea. The real trickiness comes with screens. It demands a VGA monitor, which is unusual for Falcon demos at that time. It does not have a dual RGB option, unlike later demos. Upon further investigation, we find the demo really needs something made from cathode ray tubing and capable of displaying a 100 Hz signal. I doubt there is a contemporary flatscreen that can cope with it? So to run this properly, you are hoping for a very rare combination of a Centurbo 2 Falcon with a higher spec antique monitor! Fortunately, there are video captures and my smaller screen can sort of display the demo under protest and an RGB mode. We open with what I would consider to be a killer soundtrack from Viking. It is dramatic and powerful, shouting "Sit and and look! THIS IS A DEMO!" It is one of the first to be done in the then, new .MP2 format. The screens we do get are damn good. There is much greater emphasis on design and presentation. So you get relatively high resolution effects, you get complex morphing 3-D objects. There are some stunning transitions and transparency effects. We see some lovely still graphics as part of the screens. There are nice little touches such as the screen shaking to a percussive part of the soundtrack. There are about four and a half screens worth of effects in total. Just as the demo has got started and is casting off its cloak, getting ready to stride forth into history, it splutters to a halt. Deez and company really seem to have lost direction and motive power at that point. A final version was never forthcoming. My comment from the original Maggie review, that it could have done with being twice as long and twice as debugged, seems even more pertinent now. At least we didn't lose Deez from the Atari scene, as he did make further demos, culminating in a rather nice release for the CT60 series. Retro-Rating:- 70% - This could have been so much more! And so ends our look back at Sillyventure classic demos from back in the day. Are we going to get classics this year to set alongside fond memories of parties past? I certainly hope so! CiH - November 2014. Back to the Index.