01 апреля 2001

Демо

                   How Demos Are REALLY Made

                        By Enraba Burros

Hi there people!  Firstly, let me explain who  I am. You may not
have seen  me  about  on the scene  before  because  I am  but a  
'Scene Watcher'.  I watch the  Scene rather  than contribute  to
it  because  I have  a  lack  of  talent  and  not  muchtime  to 
develope one (well I do have a  talent, but it involves donkeys, 
and  this article isn't  about  that).  I  was born  in Portugal  
but  myparents moved us  to  England when  my father decided  to 
start anew life on farm. My father loves animals.  I do too. But
that'sbesides the point. 

I have been a 'Scene Watcher' for many years now. Almost as long
as the Scene has been alive. I have a huge demo collection on +D
(the  best!!) disks  and further  more backed  up on  tape  just
incase. So I know alot about the scene and it's dark secrets.

Now  let  me explain  what  this article  is  about. I  recently
visited #Z80 on Ircnet as it's talked about in some of Busysofts
more recent demos and in First Association. I went on and  found
a bunch of Slovaks chatting in Slovakian (funnily enough), which
kinda bored  me, but  I found  an interesting  chap on there who
went by the nick of 'Johny-X'. We chatted about some of the  old
time great demos, and how things  seem to be going down the  pan
nowadays.

Then we started discussing how some fx in the classic demo  'The
Lyra II' where done. Now the funny thing is Johny-X was  telling
me that coded the vector scrolly using a very advanced technique
which allowed them to plot  many lines very quickly. He  said it
took them several months to perfect it. Now I have evidence that
this isn't true. Let me explain to you the dark truth!

After seeing 'The Lyra II' quite a few years back now, I fell in
love with it. I just had to write to the talented people  behind
it! I decided it would be a good idea to write to the main coder
Kaz. At the time he  was a god to me.  So I quickly wrote him  a
letter  and said  basically I  wanna keep  in contact  with him
because I loved speccy and his demos ;)

A month or so later I received a letter from Poland. It was from
Kaz! Imagine how  excited I was.  I tore it  open and everything
else  in the  world paled  into insignificance.  His letter  was
brief but still very interesting. He  told me of how he was  and
the rest of ESI and their plans for the future. It was great the
legendary Kaz had written to me!

After this we  kept in regular  contact exchanging thoughts  and
ideas. I even started writing  to other members of ESI.  Namely,
Matt and Ziutek. They where both very friendly and always  wrote
back quite quickly.

All went well for several  months until I though about  coding a
demo myself.  I wrote  to Kaz  saying basically,  I wanna  code.
Imagine my surpise when Kaz wrote back saying It's very easy  to
code, just follow these instructions. Here are his instructions.

1. First you'll need the following tools...

   1 x Speccy
   1 x TV or Monitor
   Power Sockets and connecting leads for the above items
   1 x Z80 Assembler for the Speccy (Gens is good for this)
   5 x Candles
   Some matches
   1 x Young Virgin (preferably female)
   Lots of hallucinogenic drugs.

2. Take the 5 candles and place them in circle shape with  equal
   distance between them. This should form a pentagon shape.

3. Light the candles.

4. Place yourself in the center of the pentagram with the Speccy
   setup.

5. Make sure the Virgin is  naked and facing you. She should  be
   outside the pentagram.

6. Turn the Speccy on and load up the Assembler.

7. Take some (or all) of the hallucinogenic drugs.

8. Stare at the virgin until all the candles have burnt out.

9. Wake  up the  next day  with no  clothes on,  no candles,  no
   virgin present and a  fucking amazing effect coded  up on the
   Speccy.

10. Wonder what the fuck happened.

Now, I must say here that I do not condone the above practice or
the use of hallucinogenic drugs.
However  after  a  few  weeks  of  wondering  if  this technique
actually worked or not, I finally gave in to curiosity.

I had a Speccy and a TV already. Also I had Gens because Kaz had
sent me a copy (what a nice chap he is ;). I had 5 peach scented
candles which I borrowed from my Mum. I had some matches which I
often to torch small insects with. I didn't have a human  female
virgin, but there was a 2  year old donkey out in the  barn that
my Dad would often boast of it's unique virginal properties, and
how one  day he  would take  it's virginity.  I didn't quite get
what he  was going  on about,  but he  would often  refer to the
donkey as his 'little virgin angel'. So I kinda guessed this was
the virgin I would use. Mum would often pick mushrooms from  her
'Special field' which was behind the little virgin angels  barn.
Dad said that  she would often  disappear for days  due to their
hallucinogenic properties.

So I had it made.  I had all the ingredients  for coding up  the 
lastest  and  greatest  code ever seen  on  Speccy.   So  I  set
about  setting  everything up,  following Kaz's instructions  to 
the letter.  The donkey  and  the  peach scented  candles gave a 
strangly  intresting  odour to  my  bedroom,  so it made me even 
more confident.

The candles where  lit, Gens was  running and the  virgin Donkey
was naked. Well, as naked as a Donkey can get. So it was time to
take those mushrooms that my Mum was so fond of.

I waited for about 10 minutes staring at the Donkey. The  peachy
-donkey smell started to get me thinking very strange  thoughts.
Some of which I wouldn't even dream of. After some more  minutes
passed (I can't say how long as time disappeared - it no  longer
existed), I found myself  staring at the Donkey  with passionate
eyes. What was happening to me? Next, blue grass started growing
around me. It started chanting 'EAT ME. EAT ME.' So I pulled it.
It was very strange tasting. Almost peachy. But this didn't stop
me.

After  some  time munching  on  peach flavoured  blue  grass, my
attention turned to the Speccy. God, I'd forgotten all about it!
I was sposed  to be coding,  not eating grass!  I started typing
stuff into Gens. It made no  sense to me, but I didn't  care. It
felt  right.  I  was  typing like  there  was  no  tomorrow. The
frequency of my typing was so great that I couldn't even see  my
hands moving  as it  was such  a blur.  The blur  put me  into a
trance like state, in which I can't remember much of.

The  next thing  I can  remember is  waking up  with some  peach
candle stuck between my teeth. The Speccy was still in Gens with
lots of text on the screen. The donkey was still there too.  The
candles had gone.  I was half  naked! What had  happened? Had it
only  half worked?  I saved  off the  code onto  tape and  then
returned into Gens to assemble the code.

It took several hours for the  code to compile, so while it  was
compiling I took the  donkey back to the  shed. As I pushed  the
Donkey back to the shed, I noticed it was missing some hair from
around it's  backside. I  thought nothing  of it  and return the
Donkey back to it's shed.

When I returned  back to my  room, my father  was there. He  was
enraged that  I has  taken his  'little virgin  angel' from it's
shed. He asked questioned me about what I had been doing and how
he'd  kill  me  if  it  ever  happened  again.  I  wasn't really
listening to him. All I was  bothered about was if the code  had
compiled ok or not.

After several minutes of a bollocking from my father, I returned
to  the Speccy.  The code  had finally  finished assembling!  NO
ERRORS! This was amazing! I saved the code to tape and reset  my
Speccy. I did a low clear, I think it was something like  24499,
and then loaded the code up. It took several minutes to load  it
back in. I typed  in Randomize Usr 24500.  I was STUNNED! I  had
coded  a  Glenz  Vector  cube  with  textured  sides!  This  was
amazing!! It ran in about 20 frames but it had worked! I put the
slowness down to it being my  first time with a donkey. Oops,  I
mean I  had used  a Donkey,  not a  human female,  and it was my
first attempt at coding.

I  decided it  was time  to write  a huge  thank you  to Kaz.  I
detailed  my  experience  very clearly  so  he  could understand
exactly what  I done.  I also  told him  of how  a human  female
virgin  was unavailable  at the  time and  so I  used a   donkey
instead. I posted it as quickly as I could.

Days past.  Months passed.  I sent  Kaz several more letters. No
reply.  I finally  decided to write to  Mat to find out what had 
gone wrong.  I got reply from   Mat calling  me  sick and how  I 
should never contact them ever again. This left me  confused and
quite upset. I didn't understand what I had done to upset them. 
So I decided never to code again and I never released my code as
I assumed  it was  bad and it may set thewhole world against me.

So, the moral of this story? It's simple.

Never  listen  to Polish  people.  You'll only  end  up shagging
Donkeys and taking drugs!

Signed

Enraba Burros