Hotshot 14 ch06 The Reviews

              THE REVIEWS





 +------------------------------------+

             PUBLIC SCANDAL
             PUBLIC SCANDAL
             --------------
 this is a new magazine from the new
 group conic . you might think this is
 just a lame mag, but no... check this
 review out and then fix the magazine!!
 ---
 first you enter the intro, which is
 quite nice and includes a original
 idea. you can first see some logos at
 the top changing. some lines under,
 there's a normal scroller. and there's
 the special effect.in the upper border
 a little ball comes up. bouncing down
 on a blue field and disappears like
 something falling into the water. real
 cool.

 after pressing space, you enter a nice
 screen with cool graphics. up on the
 top you'll find a public scandal logo.
 in the middle some text giving some
 info what chapter you're gonna read &
 how to choose it. down under there's a
 logo telling what chapter you're gonna
 read, it's some kinda icon thing, and
 there are some credits in the down
 border.

 after choosing a chapter it loads for
 about 7-8 seconds. the reading-screen
 looks like: the icon logo on the top,
 under there's the text screen with
 some rasterbars marking the top and
 bottom of the text area. for the diff-
 erent chapters there's a different
 text changer. a little effect but it's
 nice.

 the text (****):
 ----------------
 well, it's kool. you certainly don't
 horse around by writing some shit text
 and that means that you keep to the
 subject (quite strange, but read r'n r
 and you know what i mean). the editors
 of "public" are doing a fine job.

 the outfit (***+):
 ------------------
 yea, cool. much graphics, and i like
 that. what more to say ?

 complainments
 --------------
 the font (sucks!)
 the name of the chapters

 jewels:
 -------
 loads fast (really)
 nice grapihcs and musics





               VINEWS
               VINEWS
               ------
 well, it's actually a re-review and
 that is caused by the new outfit. it's
 the one from gamers guide, but since
 we haven't reviewed "gg" we decided to
 do it with vinews instead.
 ---
 first you enter the intro. a big piccy
 by thunder (where's he in the charts?)
 and in the down border a 2x1 scroller.
 a quite simple intro. boring music.

 when entering the mag, you'll be met
 by a logo waving at the top. you can
 stop it by pressing the left shiftkey.
 under that, you will find the text
 area. the only difference between "gg"
 and vinews is some of the rasters, and
 ofcourse the logo. the logo is a real
 cool one. on the left there's a guy
 pointing his finger, then the vinews
 logo and then ??antichrist?? anyway it
 is a pig. the tune you can hear is a
 mix between famous swedish songs (the
 national, idas song etc). great!

 this mag interruptloads so there is
 just one screen. the loading is quite
 fast and that's good (or can it depend
 on the length of the text?).

 the text (***-):
 ----------------
 well, if you compare with earlier
 issues of vinews, it have been im-
 proved a lot, but on the other hand
 it's not that much text if you compare
 with other mags. you need more.

 the outfit (***+):
 ------------------
 i like it, i truly do. i think it was
 a good idea to take the gamers guide
 outfit instead of using the earlier
 versions of vinews main-routine. it's
 also very easy to handle (joy steering
 etc). no problems here.

 complainments:
 --------------
 boring colours
 sometimes boring text

 jewels:
 -------
 antichrist portrait
 interrupt loader

 +------------------------------------+

     THE UN-NAMED DEMO BY CAMELOT
     THE UN-NAMED DEMO BY CAMELOT
     ----------------------------
 - the intro -

 some text is being displayed, and
 changed using a fld-routine. at one
 occasion, a picture shows up instead
 of the text.

 - part one -

 this part contains 111 bobs + a logo +
 a small textshower.
 first you see those 111 single color
 bobs moving around in a sinus, and
 that looks ok..
 after a while, the bad thing about
 this part appears. the bob routine
 starts to show a bob scroll, instead
 of just moving around the bobs in a
 sinus - and it looks rather ugly as
 the scroll is updated too slow (not
 each frame). when the scroll wraps,
 you see the sinus bobs again.

 - part two -

 this part contains a scroll, and a
 plasma field with some colors moving
 around (in some kind of circles, it
 looks like). it's rather big, but
 again: the part updates rather slow
 so it is flickering and gives an
 un-smooth impression.

 - part three -

 this part shows some bitmap graphics
 moving around in some cool movements,
 called "floffy" (=techtech+dypp).
 it also features a 1x1-scroll and a
 hireslogo. in between each "object",
 there's a pause where some calc's are
 made.
 this is also the only part in the demo
 that features some kind of design.

 - part four -

 first there is a screen with a logo
 and some text. when you press space,
 the real part begins. it is a full-
 screen text zoomer which is able to
 rotate the text in both x and y, and
 to move the "middlepoint" for the
 text in both x and y.
 however, one of the more crucial prob-
 lems to be solved when coding a zoomer
 has been avoided in this part with a
 kind of cheating.
 as you see while watching the part,
 it always moves very fast and unsmooth
 when the text gets bigger than a
 certain size in both x and y.
 when the area of the text gets to
 the x-size where each pixel is some
 bytes big, it just doubles that size
 for the next update of the zoomer, so
 it don't have to plot the x-positions
 anymore, just store the sprite defs
 like (0:no pixel in the font,$ff:a
 pixel in the font).
 so unlike real zoomers, this one
 can't zoom from the smallest to the
 biggest size with the same speed all
 the time. instead, when it gets to a
 certain size it is forced to move very
 fast. another example of "breaking a
 world record by making faked code".


 code by glasnost .................. 75

 graphics by vic, dan dare, glasnost,
 scooby/light, beast/??? ........... 60

 music: duck larock, moz(ic)art,
 boogaloo/hz + an unknown dude ..... 55

 quality ........................... 70

 overall ........................... 65


 comment:

 the quality of the code differs a lot
 in the different parts. the only part
 that i found really good was the
 "doublesinusfloffy" part. the other
 parts seems like some kind of attempts
 to gain world records or something.
 the graphics are average or below,
 except the cool hireslogo in the
 floffy part and the end-of-demo pic.
 some of the tunes in the demo are made
 by camelot's own musician, duck larock
 and his tunes sounds rather nice.
 three tunes in the demo were ripped.
 the tunes by moz(ic)art and boogaloo
 are good but very old, so everyone has
 heard them a lot by now.
 the tune in the intro by an unknown
 composer features very poor sounds,
 like it was ripped from a game from
 1986 or something..
 this demo don't feature any of glas-
 nost's best parts so far, but there
 are some aspects of it that we found
 to be cool.





         VISUAL DELIGHT BY FOCUS
         VISUAL DELIGHT BY FOCUS
         -----------------------
 focus won the demo competition at the
 silicon ltd-party with a preview of
 this, and now it's released. the demo
 consists of one intro, one credits
 file, one turndiscoverpart and 11 demo
 parts.

 - positive things about the demo -

 * all code,graphics and music in the
 demo is made by focus members.
 * the graphics in the demo are just
 extremely cool. this is probably the
 demo with the highest over-all
 graphics quality ever!(there have been
 other demos with just as good pictures
 but not as many - and not with the
 same high overall graphical quality
 all over the demo). nearly all the
 parts are very well-designed, too.
 * lots of long,weird scrolltexts by
 tdj.

 - negative things about the demo -

 * the coding in the demo is unoriginal
 and not very impressive in most parts.
 those parts include routines like:
 hardware scrollers, multiplexers, hard
 ware scrollers moving into the border
 (with or without sprites above), dycp-
 routines changing between two logos,
 a double sinus plotter with changable
 parameters and some sprites moving
 over the plots into the sideborder,
 more hardware scrollers..
 some of those parts are probably made
 to show the graphics in them (like
 the fucking cool graphics in the
 "head and hat" part!).
 there were 4 parts with a bit more
 original coding, and they are reviewed
 below.
 * the diskturbo didn't work on the
 reviewer's drive, so the parts had to
 be loaded seperately.

 - reviewpart#1: dragoncrunch -

 this part contains a hires picture +
 a flashing 1x1 scroll + a sprite
 effect called "sprite linecrunch". it
 shows some 3-colored graphics moving
 in the y-direction inside the sprites.
 ofcourse this has nothing to do with
 line crunching, it's made with copying
 graphics data to the sprites.

 - reviewpart#2: why not flip -

 this part contains a hires picture
 with two squares. in both those
 squares are the same spriterolscroller
 which is expanded in x and y.
 after a while, the scroller starts to
 shrink in the x-direction (it's not
 really rotating). you can change the
 speed of the shrinking from 0 to 2.
 it's possible to make this effect
 better than in this part: for example
 it would shrink more smooth if the
 sprites weren't expanded in the x
 direction.

 - reviewpart#3: last triumph -

 this part contains a hires logo, three
 hirescharscrollers (with lots of
 different colors), a 1x1 textshower
 and some "1991" sprites moving in the
 downborder.

 - reviewpart#4: vektorvektor -

 this part is coded by keysystem (his
 only part for this demo), and it's
 the coolest coded part in the demo.
 the main area of the screen switches
 between showing a focus hireslogo, and
 some animations of a "round" vector
 object (=not built up with straight
 lines) with hidden surfaces. there's
 also a fli-scroll with a fucking cool
 font by compyx, some "equalizerplots"
 and some more moving graphics.


 code by keysystem, x byte, compyx,
 the dark judge .................... 65

 graphics by die 2 (compyx and mirage),
 pdb, atomrock, x byte, vulcan,
 genius ............................ 93

 music by roel bosch,vincent voois...70

 quality ........................... 75

 overall ........................... 76

 +------------------------------------+

 that was all the reviews for this
 issue. remember: if you completely
 disagreed with what we wrote, don't
 complain - just accept the fact that
 you've got a different opinion than
 the experienced reviewers of the hot-
 shot staff.