Clearing out my demo backlog : Sommarhack 2025: "Small Atari party"
one of the "bigger" or maybe should say
one of the last real Atari parties has a winter edition too if im not mistaken
organised by Dead Hackers Society, which i'll link one lower
The night is almost moving to 2nd cycle, which is my life and how it works now but a short post won't hurt
I see steem bounced back to a whopping 8 cents (wasnt it at 6 ??) , OKAY THEN, to the MOON ! back to $2.4 ... and then to $7.6 !
$1 would be nice for starters
the one demo here stood out
I'm guessing despite the clear technical prowess of the 7 minute (thats a rarity today) demo the A.I. graphics ... (id say they look like something "the" a.i. would come up with ) might be the reason this one ended 6th and not higher
The ST , like most Atari machines was mostly a an american sales scam id say but as a boy we have fond memories of it because its what we had and it was the best friend in the bedroom after the c64 broke down , before female biped primates started to play a role in daily life.
I'd say one of the harder machines to program right, compared to the Amiga of the same generation it has like zero coprocessors, its like a zx spectrum in 16 bits ... of sorts, thats probably why most games ported to the ST series ... SUCK ASS ... no one bothered making real ports or put effort into writing optimized code for the specific hardware. Like Japanese console games ported to PC in the era before dark souls and tekken made it to the PC platform (having a deja vu here, did we write this already somewhere?)
You get nothing but the motorola and the YM chip, on top of the the "shifter" (=gpu) can under normal circumstances only draw about 60% of the screen in one frame, making 50fps somewhat harder than a c64 or amiga would be so whoever makes gud demo on an ST can probably be considered the superior coder to whoever shifts some copper (at the risk of sparking ancient nurture-nature wars and tribal executions)
AAAaaand, well i dont wanna get hung on a whole explanation, doing an ST(e) game is on the list but atm i can't say motivation or options are at the highest point and if we spend time programming its probably best spent on the 1% chance that we might get something to not be homeles 20 years from now
A few favourites ...
0bitplane seems to be popular in the later years (it means that you use only one so you have to shift a lot less data par cycle .. per frame more like to get more colourful stuff ... thats not how a PRO l33t scener would explain but we are none so if they feel like it they should , if they ever read, in the comments give a six page essay on what it exactly means in the current corporate garbage lingo, don't mind if you do, we wont be offended)
(n)0 PIXELS (n)0 REGRETS by Dead Hackers Society
https://demozoo.org/productions/352740/
Another one making extensive use of A.I. graphics but a fine demonstration of how an STe could be used as an Atari CD32 if it has a hard drive
The Coders' Guide To The Demoscene by Acid Team [web] & Jakub Husak
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=97611
the gimmick here is the high sample rate and audio quality streaming like you would have had on a psx or cd console, while having spare time for visuals as using the DMA stream has almost no overhead on the system
The Rise of Love by Hemoroids
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=93036
this is just a work of art and love for the machine and the better times
The Adventures of Retrobob Hero by pépé production
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=94395
"game"-style and storyboarded ... obviously directed, not just some series of fx smacked together ... subarashi des imo
Our favourite probably : (dont ask why, gouts et couleurs but it IS a special one since you need to run it on the VGA output of the mister fpga or it simply wont display right)
on the ST i cant say but a scaler probably might glitch a scanline or two at the top
FirST Love by Overlanders
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=89673
it really is a technical masterpiece here and if you happen to have a mister , try to run it and watch through the hdmi output, you'll see , probably think "this doesnt work" (but it does ... if you CAN, move to the vga output and you'll see)
that's because of the ultra fine syncing used here which probably means an upscaler sets the signal off , as we said upthere : ST is not for yiffing ...
you need to be a bit of a masochist or REALLY love programming
And one that might be forgotten in time :
Sea Of Colour by Dead Hackers Society
https://demozoo.org/productions/140822/
Showing off the STE's enhanced 4096 colour palette
16bit ... not sure which the format is really , as a boy we never got to programming the machine since we had zero manuals and only a few boxes of floppies with it
656 ??
hmmm
and there we go .. "making a quick post" its 45 minutes later ... almost time to cycle
i'm sure the world will be better tomorrow,
isn't it always ... since the 70s
just sleep it off and the world is better ?
sadly we dont really have an ST demo and the intro isnt presentable yet , the game we'd like to do is a turnbased strategy as civilization was what got us through those nasty years (we been wanting out of here since around then and always got dragged back)
the curse van drukkerland
Janes OnderGrond 2025
not just a doompatrol metafor
haaa, yes, well the latter were all made before THE a.i. replaced "even trying" so thats why you might get unfamiliar styles lol
look at the time ...
all part of the act , i mean
why WOULDNT we choose the easy way out and stay stuck here forever ?
what better place on the earth could we possible find ?
...
ye well, you wouldnt believe the fantasies triffids keep in their two-street wide world sometimes