Scream #03 31 января 2003

hallowman speaking - an impression komadorschika from Spectrum demos.

__spectrum demos from a c64 sceners point of view
__HOLL0WMAN/Fairlight


i'd like to start this article with pointing out one important
thing, i have only watched the demos in emulator and the reason
is simple, i dont own a spectrumand i dont know anyone around
here who does. hopefully the emulator isnt too inaccurate.

with that sorted out i should perhaps mention who i am. my
handle is hollowman and i'm a member of fairlight, i have
previously been a member of triad. i've been active on the c64
scene since 1995 as graphician and coder.

i recieved a bunch of demos from kq \ skrjuand sat down to have
a look. i really had no idea what to expect, what i heard about
spectrum machines is that they are small, have rubber keyboard
and dont have hardware sprites. so i figured i was perhaps gonna
see alot of vector stuff in single color. the first demo up was
condommed and i was rather pleasantly surprised, the theme of
the demo seemed a bit silly but the effects, the music and the
general look of the demo didnt quite look like anything i've
seen before, atleast not on c64.this was more similar to amiga
demos, with a nice lo-fi touch. a good start.

if you play older games on c64its hard to avoid games converted
from spectrum.i guess i'm not only one who have cursed the
crappy conversions, especially from codemasterslike dizzyor
slightly magic.they were slow, mostly ugly and didnt take
benefit of any of the c64'sadvantages. 'Spectrum gfx'was an
insult i remember from 1980's computer mags, so i was curious to
see what the graphicians has managed to squueze out of the
machine. as i understood the spectrumhas the same limitation as
c64hires bitmap mode with 2 colors per 8x8 square. and if that
is so i am pretty shocked by the quality of the pictures i've
seen in some of the demos for example inbetween / placebo. 
hardly anyone on c64 tries to do anything like that in hires, 
partly because there are few good hires-editors, partly because 
its damn hard work. so what mostly is seen is hires pictures 
only using two colors. what i really liked about these pictures 
is that they have both adapted a modern style from amiga and pc 
gfx, but they still got a very unique feel because of the 
spectrums colors. and it looks like alot of hard work has been 
put into them.


one thing that people has been arguing about on the c64scene is
the use of effects in lower resolutions, using 8x8 or 4x4
pixels. i dont see this as a problem if its done in a good way,
but most usually it isnt. a single chunky effect on screen, no
additional gfx to spice things up, thats pretty much how things
have looked so far. therefore i was really happy to see that in
many of the spectrumdemos the effects in lower resolutions had
bitmap gfx on top of it. that reminded me of amiga and pc demos
a few years ago that had lots of 2d effects but always some gfx
over parts of it. i was wondering how that was done on spectrum.
when i showed the demos at a small meeting at vodkas place,
trash / booze design told me that you could have two gfx layers 
on spectrum, chars in one, bitmap in the other. if that is so, i

can just say: lucky bastards:) this makes alot of nice stuff
possible. the 4x4 pixel mode on c64is done using multicolour
bitmap mode so you can mix bitmap picture and 4x4 effects but
not many have explored this.

during the last few years we have seen a few demos on c64 that
has been a bit different from the regular effect shows.
obviously this has reached the spectrumscene aswell, i saw that
focus great demo timewaster had been converted to speccy
recently. in the collection of demos i recieved the demo
summermilk did really stick out, it was quite different both in
graphical motives and effects. what i would have wished for
however was some more relaxed music. the text and the gfx builds
a very mellow atmosphere that is sadly not reflected in the
music, otherwise this would have been a really good demo to
chill out to.

to me, if a platform is interesting or not depends on if it has
any special features that stand out. although some like to make
demos on any platform just for the sake of it.

the spectrumhas its gfx modes and colors that are different
from other computers, this gives most spectrumdemos i've seen a
nice old computer feel, this mixed with new effects and design
provides an attractive style. i would like to have one of those
more advanced spectrums, but the odds of running into one of
those in sweden arent that good. anyhow, i really enjoyed
watching the demos and having my prejudices about spectrum blown
away, and i hope to see more speccyproductions in the future.

[Kq: the demos i've sent to HOLL0WMAN were: Condommed, Jam,
Dogma, Scenergy # 2promo, Tryptomine Dream, The Loop, Life 
Forms, Stellar Contour, hARM, loveMaker, Cheap Z80, demo21, 
Inbetween and summermilk. ]