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 BurrosĀ