Ymgve at 20:18, 8 June 2010

2010-06-08T20:18:21Z

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* Demo reviews *
---------------------------------------
Welcome reader to the legal reviews of the Domination.
Here we examine either the latest releases or the yet
un-reviewed demos.
This edition we have recieved help from several known
profiles and as issues progress, we hope to establish
a stable and sound legal team that can cover this
chapter in all areas.
Tested for your pleasure this issue:

* 'Krestology' by Crest
* 'Nine' by Reflex.
* 'I love you' by Wrath Design.
* 'Bondage' by Crest.
* 'TP 6 music' by various artists.

The latter two are located in the second demo review
chapter and are performed by Metal/Vibrants/Cml.
Enjoy.
KRESTOLOGY 100 percent by CREST
-------------------------
The eagerly awaited new Crest demo has finally
arrived. Firstly a 90 percent version, followed soon
after by the complete and final version.

This graphics show/demo takes up an entire two sides,
each part featuring beautiful graphics in several
different formats.
The first picture is that of a mermaid which is in IFLI
format, some people may also notice that the fin of
the mermaid is in the lowerborder and is made up of
interlaced sprites!
The interlaced sprites are used in several pictures
throughout the demo, it certainly gives that extra
touch. For example, the side border graphics of the
two girls kissing is made up of a character set that
has been interlaced, the shoes of the nude girl laying
on her side in the turn disk part are made up of
interlaced sprites, because the shoes in this picture
extend into the left border of the fli format by three
characters.
Not everything is sprites however, for example in
one section there is featured a graphics slide show of
five super hires interlaced fli pictures (shifli) on the
left side of these pictures ants run up and down the
screen while the next picture is loading.
These are not sprites as wrongly stated by a certain
German lamer and speculated by several others.

To mention the loader system brings back some fond
memories of the demo. Some original ideas have been
incorporated to make loading time very pleasant,
amusing or just plain cool!
Basically the whole demo is a trackmo, meaning irq
loading of every part, a shift lock routine has been
included to pause parts also, but anyway getting back
to the loading system. The irq loader sometimes takes
a bit of time to load some of the big pictures into
memory, so Crest have included some on screen antics
to fill the space. One of these is the "pig" part, a pig
walks along the screen and before he exits through
the left side he bounces off and lands back where he
began, he then tries again and again and before long
he is bouncing and rotating through the air.
Other sections are birds flying across a desert
island or ants that run along the screen.
I've noticed some people have made comments on the
irq loader and it being slow, what must be understood
is the sheer size of graphics, music and coding
routines which must be loaded into memory.
For example, there is a conversion of one of Boris
Vallejo's pictures which is in IFLI in contrast to Hein
Holt's FLI version in the famous 'Dutch Breeze', but
even this is only around 80 percent of it's true size.
The main artist of the demo, Deekay, decides to take
it to it's full proportion with a 1 and a half screen IFLI
picture, with music and joystick control to alter the
up and down movement.
This brilliant picture takes up the ENTIRE memory of
the C64, so you can imagine why the irq loader may take
a little time. The loading routine also suites fine with
the music, going at the right pace so the viewer has
enough time to have a good listen to each tune.
The graphics by Deekay throughout the demo are of
top quality, something original i thought was the
Eaglesoft Inc. dedication part.
This is an intro of the famous cracking group and how
it may look today, a very beautiful IFLI picture of an
eagle about to take off and a female next to it
gesturing for it to do so.
Underneath this is a typical scroll text, this whole part
is something nice to see, differing from the
mainstream demos that are made solely for the big
screen.
Quite nice is the turn disk part which has a lady laying
on her side fully naked. This picture is very nice, but
what catches your attention is the eyes of the female,
they wink and when you turn the disk the lady smiles.

Another part that people may notice is the Crest logo
stretcher over the IFLI picture of the Unicorn running
across the bridge. This picture and routine looks
brilliant, Crossbow must have been really stretched
for memory as the logo that is being stretched uses
130 characters where its normally 256 characters.

The music throughout the demonstration is very
impressive, lately in the scene we have scene most
demos featuring hard techno soundtracks, Crest
prove that a jazzy melodic sound is much better in this
demo with contributions from Drax, Mitch + Dane and
even from the inactive Xayne, Msk and Deek.
There are 17 musics throughout the demo and all of
them can be listened to seperately in a Krestology
music file located in the"Kresology goody-bag" disk,
which will be discussed later on.

Crest certainly have proved that there is still a way of
making a demo in which you don't need to stand 10 feet
away from the screen to get the full visual effect.
They have gone against the mainstream in music,
graphics and coding to make probably the best ever
graphical demo on C64.
Pictures like the full screen in side borders "sunset",
which contains interlaced sprites to go into the side
borders, or the Underlay Fli picture in the final part,
incorporating a new graphical format and stretching
the C64's capabilities once again.

Additional to the demo is the "Krestology Good-Bag"
this is a seperate side with some extra things.
It contains the '38 track installer' so that you can
copy it with a regular copier and then install the extra
tracks later on.
'Krestology Music', contains all 17 music tracks that
are featured in the demo, all are executable without
loading. A 'Part Selector', which you can use to load
any part in the demo. 'Fli profi demopic' is a fli picture
by Crossbow!! It is quite nice, especially for a coder! 8)
'True Color-Trip', which is the executable Shifli picture
that won the X-96 graphics competition.
Crest also include their tools such as 'Super Hires Fli
Editor V1.0', 'Super Hires Interlace Fli Editor V1.0' and
'Underlay Fli Editor V1.0', which should keep all the
artists happy out there for quite some time.
The 'Crest Demo maker' is also located on the disk to
help people make their productions.

Also 'Crests Demo List' which contains all 39 Crest
demos with informations on when they were released
and what size they are.

Overall
-----
This has to be one of the best if not the best graphics
demos ever on C64. Deekay will certainly rise in the
charts with his brilliant contributions to this demo, and
it will be very hard to get much better than this.
Totally original C64 effects and great design by both
Crossbow and Deekay along with some very good music
give this demo a 98/100!
Coded by Crossbow of Crest
Graphics by Deekay, Gbf and Crossbow of Crest.
Musics by Drax, Mitch+Dane,Xayne,Msk and Deek of
Crest. Meet Crest is coming soon, thumbs up!!
Mr.Sex/Byterapers about Krestology:
"Krestology is nice and a graphically superior demo,
even though it doesn't have any wild effects".

Anonym/Padua about Krestology:
"Very nice graphics demo, also includes quite a bit of
nice coding. The Crest style is still alive. Keep your
thumb's up!"

Tyron/Hitmen about Krestology:
"Wanna see cool code? wanna listen to great tunes?
wanna see nice graphics? Go and watch "Krestology!"
The music itself is a good reason to watch the whole
demo. Ok, more or less it is a picture show that
surprises with cool FX while your watching, but I like
this release.
It gained 1st place at the X96 and it was the right
decision. Not much else to say, just enjoy it!"

NINE by Reflex
----------
A new REFLEX demo, thankfully this East German based
group never left the scene, but only got rid of their
arrogant main coder, Quiss.
Lets have a small examination of the winning demo entry
at THE PARTY 6 in Denmark.

Firstly, this demo is the ninth demo by Reflex, hence
the name.
Being two sides of a disk, it is probably their largest
production disk wise, besides their earlier released
'Mathematica'.
To begin with the demo starts with a nice music by
Jeff/Camelot/Hype, and the roman letters IX are
shown on the screen. Inside these roman letters is a
'lighting effect', which was first seen in the Byteraper
demo 'Follow the Sign 3'. I am not sure of it's technical
name, but do know that it is from the PC originally, still
it looks rather nice.
Not long after this we are presented with a full screen
IFLI picture painted by Earthquake. The picture looks
very nice, showing a mermaid girl swimming down the
screen with other figures blended in. Difficult to
explain, but quite typical of under rated Earthquake.

As usual with lots of demos lately we have some 4x4
effects and other routines which are more suited for
the big screen and remind you of the IBM.
Hard to ignore though, is the rather nice looking
3 dimensional rotating landscape, something that
should be advanced upon technically and visually by
other coders.
After this, another part well remembered is the 6 plane
chessboard zooming effect. This was done in one of
the earlier Reflex productions, but this time the
routine has been speeded up quite considerably.
Be warned however, this effect can leave you spinning
if your disorientated on cannabis or the like.. }

The next part that catches your attention is the 128
color animation of a skier. This animation shows in
several frames a man skiing down a slope.
This effect seems to the viewer to be ported down
from some other system, but regardless, it looks very
nice, but really only one of these "long distance"
effects.

The last picture is depicted from the game 'Primal Rage'
and is painted in IFLI by Warp 8.
It is of a gorilla opening it's jaws and looks very nice.

Also on the disk is a bonus part by Zorc, which is only 6
blocks long, and a disk note with credits.
Speaking of this disk note, why do Reflex have such a
problem with Byterapers "pc suxxx byterapers too."
This may be completely irrellevant to the review, but
just something interesting I thought to mention.
Perhaps in the news section of this edition I will include
the Reflex and Byterapers views on these remarks,
but lets get back to the review.

Overall
-----
Graphically, this would be Reflex's best achievement to
date. All contributions, in particular Earthquake,
Aomeba and Warp 8, are very nice.
The demo didn't seem to be as impressive as some of
their earlier productions and I think they are showing
too much attention to the big screen, instead of
creating original C64 effects or improving existing
ones.
The 'Ski Animation' is quite impressive visually and I
believe this is the part that managed to get most of the
votes at The Party 6, especially from the PC users.

The demo is quite impressive even though not as good
as other Reflex demos. It recieves as 85/100.
Design by Felidae and Jim Jack.
Coding by Zorc, Adder and Felidae.
Graphics by Earthquake,Adder,Felidae,Aomeba,Warp 8.
Music exclusively by Jeff/Cml/Hype and Praiser.

Mr.Sex/Byterapers about Nine:
"Nine was quite okay, but not near the quality of the
other Reflex demos."

Anonym/Padua about Nine:
"A nice job - like most of the time. Even though I am not
really that much of a fan of the demos that are mainly
designed for the big screen.
But for those who like it.. also the people in Reflex seem
to invest quite a bit of thinking before they start
coding and I kinda like that."

Tyron/Hitmen about Nine:
"Reflex... Mathematica... TP'96... 4 x 4 stuff..." was what I
thought when I enjoyed the C64 demo competition at the
Party 6 in Denmark and it was Reflex to show their
demo. Reflex showed their qualities and abilities in
quite a lot of demos.
The period when demos like Mathematica and Oxyron's
Dawnfall came out impressed me a lot and I liked the

4 x 4 stuff.
But I think every period has it's end. Just take a look
at the music market. "Back to the roots" or just
stealing ideas from former times.
What I mean is where are demos like 'Red Storm' (Triad)
or 'Ice Cream Castle' (Crest)? or couldn't they just
show their abilities in using effects like in the old
demos?
4 x 4 is now at the time where nearly every demo crew
does it, or at least is trying to do it. The effects are
the same, just a few new looking 4 x 4 styles are used
and everybody doing new demos yet, it is copying the
demo before.

To come to an end, if there would not have been the
animated skiier, I for myself would think that the
Smash Design demo 'Triage' could have done the
first place."

I LOVE YOU by Wrath Design
-------------------
Well, this quite small one file production certainly
caught my attention more than a lot of multi file demos.
To begin with some music in Dmc starts by Ed.
He has really only started composing, but it still sounds
good and suits this demo fine.
After a while the picture of Ed himself painted by Joe
comes onto the right of the screen.
To the left of the screen quickly come the credits of
this small production.
After the credits flash on and off, the picture of Ed
goes away and so does the credit page. The credit
page is replaced with the picture of a girl, who is
blinking in a realistic manner and is looking up into the
blank screen where the picture of Ed was earlier.
Soon the blank screen is slowly feeled with these
spinning and zooming hearts. This effect is quite hard
to describe but the hearts seem to be zooming closer
and closer all the time before they zoom totally in and
then out of the screen.
Then the picture fades out and so does the strange
music.

Overall;
This demo certainly has a deeper meaning and may not
appeal to all sceners, however it certainly came to me
in a positive way.
The design was smooth and simple and damn good, more
productions like these instead of copying other demos
routines would do the scene much good.
83/100.

Code by Ed/Wrath Design
Graphics by Joe/Wrath Design
Music by Ed/Wrath Design.

Tyron/Hitmen about I love you:
"The first thing coming to my mind was:
"Hmm.. lets have a look, what this one filer could be!?!"
and right after I finished this thought the whole thing
was over. I was surprised by this quite strange sound
in addition to the pictures and the action, and I have to
admit, that it is nice.
I like it and I wish Wrath Design would bring some more
stuff to the survivers of the C64 scene!"

Well thats the end of Demo Reviews 1, load the second
chapters for some more observations and evaluation
by Metal/Vibrants.
If you wish to make any contributions, please contact
the editorial, we hope you enjoyed the reading!

Regards;
General Editor

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Domination 08 Demo Reviews - Revision history

Ymgve at 20:18, 8 June 2010