Atari ST demos

[Puni/Void]

(...) but in demos where things are bouncing around the screen you instantly spot this limitation as the objects are bouncing around in a virtual box, rather than going right to the edge of the screen.

That's interesting. I wasn't aware of this fact.

The second is parallex scrolling, copper and blitter effects. The ST was nowhere near as capable of doing these, and some of these were not hardware supported out of the box. After watching so many Amiga demos you instantly notice the more limited palette of colours being used in most screens.

The Amiga was, and still is, a great machine for such effects. I guess the Atari coders had to work real hard to accomplish similar results then. Just like the coders on the Amiga have sweated in front of their keyboards to create 3D routines similar to those on the PC.

Lastly is sound. Until the STE that ST only had 3 channel mono sound, and it's sound chip was very similar to that found in older 8-bit systems like the Spectrum and BBC. For this reason it was never as good as replaying samples, compared to the Amiga that could be playing a 4 channel stereo sample based track. This does however mean the ST had some great chip tune musicians. The tunes might be higher pitched, with a very 8-bit days style to them, but the ST's chip tune capabilities were good and it allows some great chip tunes in demo productions.

I've was under the impression that the ST had pretty good sound, but I can see that I'm wrong. Amiga rulez.

For those of you who would like to see the production called Virtual Escape from Equinox, here's a link to a video recording on YouTube. Have fun!

[Harrison]

It is a common thing that many people think the ST had good sound because it was used a lot my musicians in recording studios. But that was only due to the built in midi ports, so they were only ever using the ST to control external MIDI instruments and that had nothing to do with the ST's built in internal audio capabilities.

The sound abilities of the ST are pretty much summed up by the Virtual Escape demo as it has some of the best ST chip tunes. So watch the video to hear what the ST could do.

However the ST could also play sound samples in a similar way to the Amiga. However it didn't have a dedicated custom chip to do this like the Amiga, so this had to use CPU time to achieve it. So often in ST games you had to choose to listen to the music track or the sound effects. Not sure how many sampled sound channels game coders managed to play together in a game though. Will have to look that one up.

In fact, until the updated STE, the ST's audio was inferior to the C64.

The next demo I'm trying to get working on the ST is Odd Stuff by Sector One. It is a much newer demo with some more advanced ane subtle effects, as seen in later Amiga demos. Plus the audio is a bit more interesting and developed compared to earlier chip tunes. You can see a video of it here.

[coze]

yeah, nice information Harrison I observed that Atari coders are more knowledged with 68k tricks cause they have to rely on 68k most of the time for doing their stuff. I'm also amused by the weird lingo ST people use. They call demos 'menus' and parts as 'screens'. very weird

[Harrison]

I hadn't heard of demos being referred to as menus. Are you sure that isn't just for certain demo types, like music disks or magazines? Both types would be menu driven.

[AvvA]

Hi amiga lovers

I only pass through this forum/topic by searching for an amiga demobase front-end (well, I come from the ST world and have the opposite though, I mean that I know ST scene and want to discover the amiga's one ^^), and as I've got the answers to previous questions, I'll tell you.

Screens - Perhaps because of the megademo concept that was quite popular in ST scene (cuddly, dark side of the spoon...), each demo in those megademo was called screens because they're independant programs that run in fullscreen, it seems that the name stays.

Menus - Demos refered as 'menus' are just what their name says : games' menu-disks.
The cracking crews often use a loading screen, or a multiple game-choice menu when relevant, and those menus were some littles demo-screens, this explain why they are included in demobases.

But, by extension and to explain better, a megademo contains multiples demos, each one is unique code that can run alone, i.e. cuddly demo propose to select individuals screens via a game-like interface (custodian's sprite), one door = one demo part = 1 screen. If you squeeze the custodian megademo selection interface (it's not possible, but imagine), you get a list of the differents part-demos (yeah, screens), this kind of list we usually call 'menus', this fact leads to call megademo interface : menu or demo-menu.

I hope it helps to understand the logic


place to start :
Also, don't know if you found it, but there is an excellent existing Atari ST DemoBase based on GameBase concept and made by Dave Haley :
DEMOBASE ST 2.83

Another older made by Brume : http://pacidemo.planet-d.net/

Or independant others : Equinox, Pompey Pirates, POV, ...

Have fun discovering the ST scene

[Teho]

Interesting information there AvvA, thanks for that.

The definition of "megademo" is similar in the amiga scene, though it usually means separate short parts shown in order with a loading part inbetween. I can't recall any with menus. There were several great ones, but the ones most remembered today is probably The Red Sector Megademo and Budbrain. Worth checking out.

[AvvA]

My pleasure

In ST demoscene all megademos weren't with game-like selection' menus, a lot were like you describe, without possibility to choose one or other demo, but displayed in order and separated by a loader.

When I first see Cuddly demo on ST I was amazed to see a game where doors leads to demos that somehow explode the games solded at this time, the guy told me it was inspired from an amiga megademo, I don't know if its true, but well... I assume that 'war' was constant at this time, and industrial espionnage in demo-scene was effective, atari inspiring amiga inspiring atari...etc, or vice-versa more likely


Anyway, thanks for your demos links, I tried to launch them but have issue with WinUAE... I have to search further to understand it then i'll be able to watch and listen to Amiga demos !

By the way, I know that's not a good way to ask, but is there any link to AMIGA DEMOBASE's front-end ?
I Found the topic here, but even with google i'm not able to put my hands on it...