Dim by Mellow Chips

Watched a few demos not long ago, and came accross a production called Dim by Mellow Chips. It was released at the Assembly party in Finland in 1996, where it got second place in the competition.

I remember that I was not a big fan of this demo when it was released. When I had a look now, I saw it with new eyes and I enjoyed it more than before. It certainly had a ton of different effects, and many of those were enjoyable to watch. The only thing which bugged me a bit was the music, which could have been better.

You can find the demo on Classicamiga.com via this link:

Dim by Mellow Chips

Have a look and please post what you thought about it. I think it's a very good demo, even if I didn't many years ago. ;)

I get an error:

xec.library
runme.exe failed returncode 20

It looks interesting from the screenshots. I will watch it properly tomorrow. :)

When I try to run this demo the Amiga crashes. It plays the count down audio and the ship takes off, it then switches to a view of a planet and then the emulator gurus.

What WinUAE settings did you use to get it to run?

I tried with several CPU configurations, but I always get the same error. Help us PG :)

Strange that you guys have problems getting the demo to run properly. Could be that it is the archive that's faulty. I'll try to run the one via the download link myself right now.

- Going to test -

Well, it's actually running fine in the background right now, so I guess it must be your configs. Here's mine:

CPU: 68020 + more compatible activated + fastest possible, but maintain chipset timing
Chipset: AGA
Kickstart: 3.0
Chipram: 2MB
Fastram: 8MB

Hope that helps. If you need more information concerning my configuration, please ask.

Great. Those settings have fixed it :thumbs:

I didn't have "more compatible" selected and I was using KS 3.1. I switched to KS3.0 and selected more compatible and it now runs perfectly. Other than that my settings were the same as you listed.

Good to hear that you made it work. How did you like it?

I'm going to upload a few more prods from Mellow Chips this weekend, as they have plenty of good stuff in their backlog. Later on, they've made demos for TRSI, among those is one called Rise which is truly excellent.

I thought it was really good. Especially how they used 3D in a different way to most 3D Amiga demos, actually doing something with it rather than just showing examples of 3D object manipulation and texture mapping.

And the ship travelling through the tunnel shows that it might have been possible to actually create such a game, rather than the overlaid pre-rendered method used in Microcosm.

I still get the same error message.

What setup are you using to run it DC? I just set WinUAE using the settings mentioned above, then placed a Workbench 3.0 ADF in the DF0: floppy drive, extracted the DIM demo files into a directory on the PC and made that directory an HD. I then booted the emulator via the WB ADF into Workbench, and then launched the demo exe file and it ran fine.

Ok, now it works, I did not set it up as HD, but try to run the exe immediately through WinUAE.

Great. Let us know what you thought of the demo. :)

The demo is Ok, as you probably know, I'm an old school fan, so I prefer demos done on the A500. This demo is just like many, I don't like the pixelated and washed out textures, it doesn't look good to me. Perhaps at the end, the camera flying through the futuristic 3D setting, but then again, it's ugly to watch.

What you say is true about the textures, but at the time when this demo was released texture mapping in most games looked like this, and looking at any PSOne game these days would show similar pixelated low resolution textures being used. It is very impressive for an Amiga though.

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It is very impressive for an Amiga though.

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That is totally true, but in my eyes, it doesn't make it better. Stick to what the Amiga can do best, and try to satisfy people in that way.

The problem is that demo groups never want to just code something that the hardware is good at. They always want to try and push it beyond the current limits of expectation.

So try to display 150 rotating vectors on a 500 ;)

Harrison wrote:

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The problem is that demo groups never want to just code something that the hardware is good at. They always want to try and push it beyond the current limits of expectation.

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Which is a good thing, as it boosts progress. Chances are a bit slim that we would have seen games based around texture-mapping on the Amiga if the coders had just stuck with what the Amiga was best at. Democrews did in some ways pave the way for titles like Alien Breed 3D 2, Breathless and Gloom. What couldn't be done was proved possible. :)

That is very true. I remember how excited the Amiga magazines got when they saw some of the first texture maze demos as it finally meant the possibility to make FPS style games was here.

Plus I think it would have had a big impact on the Lotus Turbo Challenge games as they were coded by magnetic Fields, who cut their teeth in the demo scene (if I remember rightly) and could possibly explain the use of subliminal messages in the title music.

Of course, they didn't work ;)