Scream #03 31 января 2003

hallowman speaking - впечатление комадорщика от спектрумовских демок.

__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 80'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 2 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. ]