Archive for the 'Amiga' Category

02
Jun

Amiga Demos 102: Desert Dream

Who are the Demo Writers?

The typical demogroup consists of coders, musicians and graphics artists (sometimes referred to as graphicians). Some prominent scene figures (e.g. Laxity/Kefrens) perform multiple roles. Many legendary demogroups, like Razor 1911 and Fairlight, have roots in software piracy. In fact, the demo scene itself evolved out of the game piracy scene, where cracking groups tagged their releases with a short graphical “intro”. Some demo creators crossed over into game design, a pursuit naturally suited the hardware-intensive routines that make demos visually attractive. Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment, developers of Pinball Dreams for the Amiga and Battlefield 2 for the Xbox 360, was created by former members of Swedish demogroup The Silents.

The majority of demos for all computer platforms are produced in Northern and Eastern Europe. Finland, Sweden, Norway, the United Kingdom, Poland and Germany are the primary nations involved in the demo scene. Demo writers span a wide age range, owing mostly to the maturity of the scene. In the golden era of the early 1990’s, the typical demogroup consisted of young men in their late teens and early to mid 20’s. Programmers must also have a strong mathematical background and intricate knowledge of the computer hardware – assembly language is the preferred language to maximize performance while keeping the compiled code size small enough to fit in a boot block or on a floppy disk.
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30
May

Amiga Demos 101: State of the Art

What is a Demo?

A “demo” (short for demonstration) is a multimedia presentation designed to show off both the graphical capabilities of the computer and prowess of the programmer. The Commodore Amiga was a popular platform for demo creators due to its advanced (for the time) and standardized hardware (as opposed to a PC, which comes shipped with many possible hardware configurations).

Most demos consist of various 3D (vector) graphics, 2D “blitter” displays and still art. The 3D graphics were typically rendered in the Amiga’s low-resolution mode (320×256 for European PAL; 320×200 for NTSC machines) while stills could be in high resolution mode or even high resolution interlaced (640×512 PAL; 640×400 NTSC).
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