PC World Komputer 1995 November/PCWK1195.iso/inne/demo/pureness/pureness.nfo

Text File | 1995-07-08 | 12KB | 294 lines

Enter the age of contemporary demos...
     demos with a mood...
        'Pureness' has a mood,
            and it'll set you in that mood when you watch it....



System requirements
===================

* i486DX (yes, 386 is too slow that I'd rather you not watch it)

* DOS in Real Mode (that is, remove EMM386,QEMM etc and boot with only HIMEM)

* 580Kb base RAM, 1024Kb XMS (extended memory)

* VGA (Local Bus or PCI Bus VGA is highly recommended)

* 3.3 megabytes of harddisk space

* Gravis UltraSound (512Kb) is required for music

* A peaceful mood.


Note:
 You should have these in PURENESS.ZIP:
 1.PURENESS.EXE  265862 bytes
 2.PURENESS.DAT 2815568 bytes
 3.NEVER   .S3M  230568 bytes
 4.WATERLOG.IC!       0 bytes
 5.PURENESS.NFO   12224 bytes
 6.WLOGIC  .NFO    2453 bytes

 If the the filesizes you have does not match here, you might want to run
 your virus scanner....




About 'Pureness'
================

    It all started about 10 months ago when I heard about 'The Scene 95'.
As I have been fascinated by demos I've seen from European countries (Unreal,
Crystal Dreams, Panic etc), I asked myself, 'Why not give it a try?' and a
friend supported that idea, and thus the decision was made.
    Many will think spending 10 months on such a impractical goal is
absurd, but I think it's worth every single minute of it. A personal challenge
is one of the reasons I made this demo.
    During the making of PURENESS, the Singapore demo scene was rather
stagnant, there were only 3 active groups, and some groups with a name but
no productions, and most modemmers didn't even know what a demo is. I think
it's about time we move on to learn to appreciate this special art of
visualizing a person's imagination by means of REALTIME computer graphics.
I emphasize the term 'realtime' becoz this is what demos are all about.
With little practice, most of us can use ready made animation softwares like
3D Studio and PhotoShop Premiere to create some impressive graphics, but demos
are different, the effects are produced at runtime, using state-of-the-art
coding skills to exploit the powers of the CPU, and so the quality of the
effect is directly dependent on the coder's mastery of his skill. Not to
be ignored is the design of that effect. As someone said before, 'A good
design can make a lousy routine look good, likewise, a poor design can make
a good routine look lousy.'
    In this attempt to make a demo that hopefully can symbolize what
Singaporeans are capable of in making demos, I've flunk my studies (awhile),
foregone social activities for a long while (too long...), and put aside many
other plans that I have. The entire demo has about 20,000+ lines of C and
Assembly codes. All of which are made from scratch. Of coz along the way, a
few generous individuals have kindly shared their knowledge with me, I really
appreciate that, you know who you are... Equally important are my friends that
shared those moments of blues with me, I can't thank you enough...



Credits for 'Pureness'
======================

.All the codes and concepts was by me (Rex Deathstar), except the sound system
 which was originally MIKMOD v2.03. (Thank you Jean!)

.All the graphics (title pages, sketches) was done by Agen.

.All the music was composed by Zane.




Some technical details of 'Pureness'
====================================


=STARGATE=
 The wormhole uses a 256x256 seamless texture to make it more
 detailed than most other wormholes you've seen before.

=TRANPARENT PLASMA=
 This plasma is just an extension of the common plasma by using a
 transparent bitmap acting as a backdrop.

=IMAGE WARP=
 This routine also uses a 256x256 seamless texture which was
 created by embossing a landscape heightfield.

=TEXTURE MAPPING=
 A simple textured cube using a 128x128 bitmap. Seems like transparency makes
 this otherwise common routine look unique.

=PHONG SHADING=
 The face has 550 vertices and 1039 facets, which was converted from a
 3DStudio mesh file.

 This part is not really a faked phong as many might think, it is instead an
 improved method of angle interpolation which detects highlights that fall in
 the middle of a polygon by differencing the reflection vectors.

=PHONG TEXTURE=
 The torus has 256 vertices and 512 facets.
 The texture used to map this torus is the same one as in IMAGE WARP.

 While trying to make it transparent, I did not use the standard 16 colors by
 16 shades method but a phong-intensity and texture matrix lookup, thus making
 it much slower than it could be, but I think the effect was worth it.

=PHONG MOTION BLUR=
 The Venus (Goddess of Love) statue has 712 vertices and 1396 facets.

 This motion blur technique came to me in my dreams, it can do 256 levels of
 motion blur with 4 pixels in 5 instructions with edge detection, thus
 eliminating redundant calculations.

=FLUID DYNAMICS=
 True fluid simulation using real fluid dynamics equations.

 A special thanks to ARM/Iguana for providing the equations.

 Arturos, it seems to do standing waves and interference by itself! :)

=FLIGHT OF FREEDOM=
 This sky-mapping and ocean-mapping uses ray-casting technique.

 Depth shading was not implemented but instead reflection mapping was used
 in the ocean-mapping. You'll need to look closely to see the clouds being
 reflected on the ocean.





            WaterLogic greets:

    MysTiCal      Mode XIX      Pandemonium      PowerSurge
    Renegade    Access Denied     Admire         Anarchy PC
    Avalanche      Cascada       Capacala         Complex
    Darkzone        Dust         Epical           Extreme
      EMF        Future Crew     Gollum           Iguana
     Impact        Infiny        Jeskola!       Legend Design
    Majic 12       Nooon          Orange           Prime
      Renaissance  Surprise! Prods.    Tran           Triton
    Valhalla      Xography

              And all others out there!

A special note to RENEGADE:
 I am utterly disgusted by the way you guys rip other people's routines and
 hope to fool the unsuspecting people. It is simply a shameless act.





Rex Deathstar says 'Hi' to (no particular order):

    Ken, BaoXiong, Jacqueline, Christine, XiangLin, Cathy, Emileen,
    Yap Sieh Roy, Kevin Ng, Kerry Ho, Brandon Shen, Kor Kian Wei,
    Vincent Wei, Tan Thor Jian, Ng Cheng Kiang, Alvin Tan, Simon Yap,
    Gerry Tan, Ng Pei Sin, Nicholas Chan, Ang Pet Chean, Chris Wong,
    Eric Scorpio, Choo TianWei, Vieve Low, Chew Teck Siong, Richard Chai.

    ARM/Iguana, JCAB/Iguana, JARE/Iguana, Tim Clarke (Stoned Cat),
    Stefan Pettersson, Loot/Triton, Jmagic/Complex, Reward/Complex,
    HADES, John Smith/Advanced Gravis, Jean Paul Mikkers/MikMod

    And too many others that I forgetfully left out...









        About the demo party 'The Scene 95'...

This is the first demo party Singapore ever had, and the first one I ever
attended. It wasn't quite as what I had expected, but nonetheless, it was fun.

12.35PM:
I arrived at the party place, Seaview Hotel with 2 friends, Emileen and YewJin.
It was rainly heavily. We sat in the lobby while waiting for the organisers
to arrive. I was testing my demo on YewJin's laptop and Emileen was reading a
book when part of the organising team arrived with PCs, monitors and MIDI
equipment.


1.50PM:
I continued testing the demo while they went to the party room to setup the
hardware, which took much longer than expected. Party goers started coming
in and the organisers were still fiddling with the compo PC. Eventually, the
PC was fixed and we ran a crash beta-test of all the demo entries. The display
was a 256-color LCD projector which I think really messed up the colors.


2.30PM:
Half on hour into the actual starting time, the demo compo finally started,
first to appear was 'Shades of Gray' by Mode XIX, there were some fast 3D
pixels and alot of plasma. Kevin Ng made a cool joke statement 'No phong, but
there's gouraud' and a blue gouraud cube came on. Then came 'Raven' by
Renegade, the music was FC-like, and on the second part, I saw a 3D texture
wave that looked just like what Jare/Iguana has released source codes for,
and that was a real turn-off. The second last part was introduced by these
words, 'The next part is gonna kill you...', which turned out to be a virtual
world. It did kill me by the slowness and long-windedness of this part, which
was reused in their previous demo 'CLASSIKA'. Then it was my demo 'Pureness's
turn to take stage. Everything ran fine, but the colors were marred by the
lousy LCD projector. After 10 minutes, when the last part, ray-casting, came
on, I thought it was a perfect run, then the screen started fading off 2 bars
before the music ends, which was very disappointing. It might have something
to do with the bus speed of the demo PC. Next came 'Rush' by Mode XIX (yeah,
2 entries! ;). Well, everything was a rush, and I really couldn't recall
anything except some inteference circles and the part where a tweaked-mode
fooled the LCD projector and nothing showed on the screen. The final entry
was 'Enchantment' by MysTiCal. There were some lengthy parts but I liked the
part where a jigsaw puzzle was assembled at runtime, which turned out to be
a cool picture of a landscape rendered in VistaPro and the group's logo on it.

Taking into account that the demo scene here is in it's infancy, I guess that
the demo compo was a good start. Hopefully more groups will join in and we can
really get the scene rolling.



3.30PM:
The music compo starts. I don't recall the order of the songs played, but
I know there were 7 entries, 3 of which were fast techno beats. I especially
liked 'Never' by Zane, which was the song I used in my demo entry 'Pureness'.
It was not those songs that capture you at once, but after awhile of
listening, it sinks into you and you start to like it. 'Misty Hearts' by Ng
PeiSin was a cool contemporary piece which was very pleasant to the ears.
'Body Language' by Zane (yeah, 2 entries and one arrangement by Zane! ;)
was a little funky and very sexy tune. 'Ecstasy' by DataLunch (heh, this coder
for Mode XIX knows music too! :) was 'ecstatic' as the same repeating bass
patterns really creeps up your spine! The 2 remaining tunes were techno
songs by Renegade, the beats are cool, but there weren't recognizable melody,
making them another of those disco songs. 'Pureness' by Martin Chen was
originally made for my demo, but I felt it was too 'flowery' and did not
fit well with the demo. It was arranged by Zane (again? :) and lengthened to
about 8 minutes (for the demo). Although I liked the piano melody, it felt
long-winded.


4.30PM:
The organisers were busy collecting votes and the judges were making their
decisions. The crowd went for a tea-break and I went around meeting new
friends. The live MIDI band performance was unfortunately cancelled due to
some technical problems, and there were no interest in the network DOOM compo
so it was cancelled as well. The demo group leaders were somehow invited by
the organisers to give a small talk to the audience, which I think Kevin Ng
of Mode XIX gleefully accepted. When it was my turn, I didn't say much as I
was too tired (trying to complete the demo in time), but one thing I had
wanted to say, and said, was to thank my parents for all they have given me.


5.30PM:
It's time to announce the results. Tension builds up as Roy of MysTiCal went
up with the results. For the music compo, 'Never' by Zane came in first,
'Misty Hearts' by Ng Peisin was second and 'Pureness' by Martin Chen and Zane
finished third. I was surprised the audience liked 'Never' so much after
only hearing twice. As for the demo compo, 'Pureness' by WaterLogic got
first place, 'Raven' by Renegade was second, and 'Shades of gray' by Mode XIX
came in third. It was a wish come true for me as this 10 month effort paid off
and I can have a long-overdue rest. I thank all who voted for 'Pureness' and
the organisers and sponsors for making the demo party a reality.

    See ya in 'The Scene 96'!




Signed,
Rex Deathstar/WaterLogic