democoders questionnarie
by elph/cpu

many of us have their own favourite speccy demos: forever, shit for brains, dogma, refresh... i can proceed with the names but everybody knows the first places of charts. each of us finds something special in every particular demo, trying to perceive the atmosphere created by authors of the work. these impressions become deeper if you have your own experience of being a creator. today i've decided to ask some questions to the people, devoted themselves to demomaking. honestly, this idea was taken by me from c64 zine attitude, where cactus/oxyron made a survey amongst the c64 democoders. i wanted to know the anwers on the same questions from speccy coders. so, this is a list of coders i could seize:

flying/digital reality
poisoned cyberjack/triebkraft
vivid/brainwave
sq/skrju
fyrex/mayhem
rom&fux/progress
d-art/fenomen
mad_rain/fenomen
gasman/h-prg

and here are the questions:
1. what effect and in what demo impressed you most of all?
2. what fx is the best of yours?
3. what is your favourite speccy demo?

and now read the answers, i think it is interesting not only for me.

1. what effect and in what demo impressed you most of all?

flying> shock megademo from ethanol software inc. (esi), the part with the moving chessboard. it is the most impressive effect i've ever seen for sure (considering only single effects). i remember that shock i had when i saw it for the first time. i stared at that chessboard for a long time. this shock became greater when i discovered the control keys... :)

cj> it's hard to say at once... many of demos impressed me much during different periods of time vibrations, illusion, trashe, condommed, power up, shit for brains, rage, spirius, refresh, insane, jam, napalm, dogma, tryptomine dreams, the loop - here are the most outstanding ones. the strongest emotions caused refresh, there was no 3d on spectrum before this demo... the most impressive effect, i think, texturemapping with phong from napalm. i couldn't believe that it is possible on spectrum. besides, my profi worked at 170% of speed in turbo mode, so it looked fine :) the techniques used in modern demos are more powerful now, but... it doesn't amaze me much :( so let's talk about the last centuries' effects.

vivid> to be honest, usually effect impress me up to the moment when i understand how it was done and make it better. so i have to see the code level higher than i've reached. for example, i had saw the mirror rotator in goa and refresh, then in tryptomine dream i made it in multicolour at fullscreen. then voxels from insane - i made the same in multicolour in 3 ints. phong from napalm i made the analogue in tryptomine dream. and then 3d i realized in multicolour in stellar contour.

mandelbrot fractal zooming in the old pc demo crystal dreams-2. i made the same in multicolour on spectrum. show me the effect made on spectrum and i will make it better. the thing that i want to make but i don't know how to realize it to work fast is 3d bump (remember the cube from refresh). it could be possible to make it with isometric surface if z80 had a higher productivity. i think it would be too slow even with flat shading, not only tmap.

sq> aha. as i understand, impressive in code? hm, honestly, i never thought of it, so i can't say anything about any single effect. i think the whole demo must impress, not the single effects, and if you like one effect and don't like another from the same demo - it is not right, perhaps. what i can remember just now, is tmap+phong from napalm -the effect with eye 'pulled' on a candy. visually, i like toruses very much, that's why i like gouraud mapped torus from refresh, phong mapped torus from voodoo and a torus from life forms. also i like zoomer from melange - looks lovely. recently released effects - a flower on a blank white screen from inbetween. if talking about non_chunks effects, i like multicolour by vivid, very beautiful. his doom from stellar contour is something outstanding! but with all my love to chunks, i think that it's time to make non-chunks demos. however, don't listen to me, do what you like! else, everybody will use white background and over a year it will bother everybody as it was with chunks :)

fyrex> i like many things equally, so it's hard to choose one,... perhaps, the most technically impressive are the multicolour effects from the latest brainwave demo, stellar contour, as i remember. i'm not a multicolour fan, but it looks funny there.

rom&fux> env from refresh.

d-art> sometimes ago i was wondered by voxel mars from over the top, i've never seen the most realistic effect on speccy.

mad_rain> the tunnel from yes1997. i've never seen something like that before. very interesting algorithm.

gasman> probably the voxel landscape from 3sc's insane (and later in higher state). usually, demo effects don't just get invented - they borrow ideas from earlier demos, expanding on them, slowly evolving and pushing the boundaries a bit further. (for example, the famous multicolour part in shock was just a development from a similar effect in nmi 3.) but this time, baze and astex brought us a completely new effect, with all the possible tricks and tweaks already in place. it zooms, it spins, it has suspension bridges... and yet, as far as i can remember, this was the first time i'd ever seen real, fast, solid 3d on the speccy.

it's been copied several times by differentcoders(myself included...) but never so well as the original. it's especially impressive when you remember that 1995-96 was a lull in the spectrum's life, with exodus being perhaps the only real innovators, and 3sc were still a new, relatively unknown group.

2. what fx is the best of yours?

flying> it's hard to say... i ought to separate programming from the exterior beauty to answer the question. moreover, the last thing is the desert of our (me and arty) cooperation, cos the look of the effects from our demos was mainly arty's contribution.

however, i need to say, that usually i'm not pleased with the quality of my programming over the month since it has been done already (maybe somebody has the same feelings). and the code i reckon as the best code of myself usually is not in effects, but in the inner programm organization. so, i like jam in a way it's organized on the level of sources, and so the scenergy. if talking about the difficuilty of effects' code, i should mention my 512 bytes intro released at cafe'2002 with the most perfect code that i ever made. i can say it for sure, that it's the almost only work that is optimized in it's size :) visually (without noticing the code) i like very much: jumping crystall in 7th reality; polygonal heart illuminated by the lamp and morphings in the end of binary love; final animation in forever (though i don't like to discuss forever as the set of effects, it was planned and realized as a whole and so it must be taken as complete product); another crystall in cc'999 invitation dentro; animation with dancing arty and 'dotty medusa' in jam, and of course, i think, our best intro from doom pre-release (with dots, originally by quardax).

cj> the most powerful thing among _released_ effects is my 3d-engine (harm, pneuma). i don't like to boast, however, it is faster for about 30% than that, made by sair00s, in the same conditions, but it's capabilities are much lesser. for example, it has gourad-shading for 15 tacts against standart in 26. i can't pick out any single effect, because the modern techniques (chunks, 3d) are commonly based on an engine. the most powerful _unreleased_ stuff - the engine of the game called bomberman, which was being made by me and gd/4d. maybe someday it will be finished (???).

vivid> the first part of stellar contour - multicolour 'wolf-kind' engine. the main feature is multicolour and 16 fps. but alone coder gave an idea how to improve it up to 25 fps - to trace not every column of rays, but every second column and then to interpolate it.

sq> oops, i've made nothing by myself, i'm always stealing the effects :)) as people say :)) he-he. really, the best effect of mine is, of course, 3d from summermilk. by the way, i'll tell you a secret: actually, it's not slow, but fast enough. the reason why it is slowed down is the background - they are beind drawn too clumsy. mmm... does anybody understand what i mean?

fyrex> i have nothing of this kind :)

rom&fux> 3d engine (not released yet).

d-art> it's hard to say. i try do not make lame effects at all. when i'll finish oxygen - you'll see.

mad_rain> in livingstone 2 intro (as i remember the name of the game) with something dropping on a text. it's not too difficuilt, but looks funny.

gasman> the reflecting lake in losing victoria. it was originally inspired by the java applet that's used on loads of websites, but the idea of doing it on the spectrum was an instant leap of the imagination that i could only make by thinking about coding, design and graphics all at once. the same is probably true about the act of coding it and putting it in the demo everything was done by myself, working from one vision (including drawing the picture, which is usually my weak point...), so it probably turned out much better than if it had been a group effort. coding it was a big gamble - until the final bytes of code were there, i didn't know whether it would look realistic, or whether there would be enough processor time for it to work. luckily it did, and my weeks of coding and pixelling weren't wasted...

however, being fortunate enough to present this at assembly is what makes this truly memorable for me. the applause it got from a stadium full of thousands of sceners is something i'll never forget (even if the applause was started by antti, the other spectrum fan at the party ;-) )

3. what is your favourite speccy demo?

flying> certainly, shit 4 brainz by progress. there's nothing more astonishing that this demo. though, there are a lot of good speccy demos, which are amazing in different ways: one has really tough code (demos by rst7, exploder, sair00s, vivid), one has outstanding design (4d, e-mage and many others), one has the strongest psychological affection (as latest, the loop and summermilk). i don't forget shock megademo, echology and some others - the classics. but all this demos look weaker than s4b for me, which contains every element of a good demo. one can disagree, but it's my constant opinion since seeing this demo at enlight'97.

cj> condommed by e-mage - that's for sure!!! it was a real shock for me at that time - wonderful music, exellent design and, of course, code. actually, even then the effects seemed to be not so difficuilt - now i'm still convinced in this, although their beauty is not the way they were made, but in originality and a brilliant synchronization with music. technically, i like not the effects, i like the details multiloader (the first one working fine), it's fix for different machines (i hate 'pentagon only' !!!), and of course digital samples in music!!! unforgettable and incomparable thing!!!

now i know this demo by memory, though i watch it from time to time - just to relax and to remember those good old days :)

vivid> hard to say. the reason is that i have several favourite demos. it's, of course, placebo's demos - dogma, lifeforms and inbetween. sair00s's code at that time was the level that everybody had try to reach.

i like demos by exploder - power up, action, refresh. this demos have no pauses and almost ideal code.

sq> condommed. it is still astonishing. perhaps, somebody doesn't know, that kva was 15 when he made it with rum (and, btw, 14 when he made trashe :) but it's not the point. i think there are no such demos on spectrum, which had that fine combination of story, code and design. and the soundtrack, i think, is of the best tracks on speccy, moreover, i reckon music the main thing in demo.

fyrex> dogma. good effects, graphics, the story and so on. with comparison to shit for brains - even then it had poor effects, hackneyed theme, that was socially bored already. anamnesis looks fine too, but it's good to watch it for no more than 3 times.

rom&fux> condommed by e-mage

d-art> it's hard to choose only one demo. i've seen nothing good for years. from the old ones power up.

mad_rain> dies irae - classic, very beautiful and nice demo. something like this i long for nowadays.

gasman> shit 4 brains - probably the most influential zx demo ever. one of the first trackmos on the speccy, and certainly the one that inspired all trackmos after it... the second reality of the spectrum scene? i think so. even today, it's hard to find a demo which combines visuals and music quite so well as this one - that's certainly something i always try to achieve in my demos. putting together 5 minutes of fast-paced effects to match the soundtrack must have taken an immense amount of work.

the ending effects are, to me, one of the great moments of speccy history - the drums come to a stop, leaving behind an echoing melody as atmospheric as any tim follin composition, as we plunge into the whirlpool... truly breathtaking, especially on a party bigscreen.

"we think it's enough"... it certainly is.

elph> so, that's it. i think everybody noticed, that a best effect and a best demo are different conceptions, standing far away from each other even for those, who made the art out of code.