Grid by Nature - Fantastic 40KB intro

[Puni/Void]

While I was uploading content for the main site, I stumbled upon an intro called Grid by Nature. It was released at the Mekka Symposium 1999 party and won the intro competition.

I had a look at it, and I didn't remember it as THAT good. It contains several routines in HAM8 mode, awesome 3D scenes and cool music. The samples for the music is actually generated through programming. Quite impressive!

The intro is available for download in the Demo Section. It should also be visible on the main site as one of the newest additions. It should work perfectly via WinUAE, just remember to put the amount of fast-ram to 8MB.

Have you seen Grid by Nature, and if so, what is your impression of it?

[Harrison]

I will watch this later tonight and then post what I thought of it. Looking forward to seeing how good it is.

[LowercaseE]

Sounds pretty cool, I'll check it out when I get home from work. Thanks for the heads up!

[Harrison]

I've just watched this intro and its really good. Especially when you stop and think this is only in 40k and this 3D is being generated in an Amiga, a system panned at the time for not being able to shift 3D texture mapped images due to it's Amiga's planar graphics method of display.

The music is great too, and I would never have guessed it was completely computer generated without any samples and just audio routines. Just goes to show what can be done if you know how.

Good Amiga demos just show how lazy a lot of system coders are these days. Imagine if coders today squeezed as much out of current machines per kilobyte as they did back in the Amiga days. The end results would be even more amazing than anything we are seeing on next gen machines.

I've jut written a little review for this demo on the main site too. Will you be adding any proper reviews to some of the demos soon PG?

Any 4K intros you can recommend for me to watch next?

[Puni/Void]

It was great that you enjoyed Grid by Nature. It is a great into for sure, and quite impressive when it comes to the 3D scenes and that everything is generated through code.

I will for sure start adding reviews to the Demo Section, but during the last weeks I've been focusing on adding productions instead. There are well over 300 prods available now, so I guess some reviews should be in order. Will see what I can do. Hope you will add some more reviews as well.

I have many productions to recommend. I will add a few this evening I think. I will add a 64KB by Push Entertainment called Humus 2 and some other stuff. Push Entertainment really pushes the Amiga to its limits, with amazing 3D scenes. I have shown the prods by this group to friends that mostly uses PC, and their jaws literally drops to the ground. Anyway, will add some good prods tonight (especially 4KB's as you asked for) and then post info about them on the forum, so you can easily find them.

I couldn't agree more about coders on modern systems. Like you say, if they had used every resource available, programmed in Assembler, they could have made some stunning stuff.

[Harrison]

Cool. I look forward to seeing the demos.

Another thing about the Amiga conpared to more recent systems is that coders hung on to the system a long time after it was supercided by better technology and continued to squeeze everything they could from the system, making it do things no one thought possible. Todays systems are disgarded as soon as the next best thing comes along. I personally think they would still be a lot of life in the last generation of consoles, but now all three next gen consoles are released developers are already abandoning the last generation. It's mad considering the size of the userbase, especially for the PS2, when compared to the Next Gen systems, although the number of Wiis sold to date is quite impressive.

[Puni/Void]

I've now uploaded two 4KB intros by Push Entertainment to the main site. The intros are called Humus and Humus 2. The first mentioned won the Assembly 2000 combined 4KB competition. The second mentioned won the Assembly 2001 combined 4KB competition. Both are worth a look, so please have a look. Anyway, some of these prods can be a bit tricky, so here is a few links to videos of them at Google video:

Humus

Humus 2

Dolphin's Dream 64KB

Dolphin's Dream links to Aminet

Mental Demo

Mental is from Scene.org

These should all be well worth seeing. Have fun! There are of course a ton of other top notch 4KB's, 64KB's and demos. Will have to do some thinking and post some more links soon.

[Harrison]

I've just watched Humas and have to say it is quite amazing for a 4k Amiga intro. Some of the effects are brilliant. Especially the 3D water droplet part.

Oh, and I ran them via emulation rather than watched the videos as I always think any Amiga production looks and sounds 100 times better when running itself and not just a video of it playing. I got them to work quite easily using WinUAE settings for KS3.1, WB3.1, 2MB chip + 8MB fast, 68040 CPU.

[Demon Cleaner]

I've just watched Humas and have to say it is quite amazing for a 4k Amiga intro. Some of the effects are brilliant. Especially the 3D water droplet part.

I totally agree with you, but nonetheless I don't like this kind of demos, you know, I'm the retro man

[Harrison]

So you would prefer something old school pushing the original A500 unexpanded hardware to the limit?