Partytrap
was released at Light and Phenomena easterparty in 1992 held in
Alingsas, Sweden. Coding in this demo was done by Gremlin, Sam and Tnt.
The demo finished second in the demo competition.
The
demo starts with an introduction to this first ever palindromical demo
on C-64, if you don't understand just read the name of the demo backwards.
The introduction features only a simple text flasher on top of
3-dimesional starfield. Starfield is based on stars containing three
freedom degrees and moving in a box. In case you are having hard time
figuring out what it looks like you can watch below to see an imitation of
the routine if your browser has java support. The original routine and
the java version was programmed by Gremlin. The introduction music was
composed by Page of Death Sector (at that time).
The original routine on c-64 includes 170 dots running
in every frame, but only one color dots are supported in contrast to
java version where the color is specified by the z-coordinate position.
The original
routine uses a fast projection table methods combined with a fast plotter
designed specifically for this routine. Screen clearance uses unrolled
loops and plot drawing is accomplished with zeropage loop - a loop which
projects two stars on a step. Of course the drawing and projecting a
single plot has to be optimized carefully in respect to both memory and
opcode cycles. In case you didn't know the branch operations on C-64 can
branch at most to 128 bytes apart of the branching point. In this routine
a single star handling takes 63 bytes and the braching command 2 bytes
which means that if the drawing of one star would take one more byte then
the looping speed would fall dramatically.
The
second part features two logos saying 'Beyond' and 'Force'. The other
is on the upper part of the screen and the other on the lower part of the
screen. The routine in this part is that both logos are flexing
horizontally and there is a backgroung pattern behind them (like a
parallax effect with lower level staying still). Additionally there's a
dycp (different y char positioning) text with 16x8 pixels font in the
middle of the screen. The routine moves naturally in every frame. Both
routines were coded by Sam and the logos are also drawn by Sam.
The
third part, which was programmed by TNT, shows another star routine.
Accidentally this is the latest real "serious" work published by TNT of
Beyond Force on C-64. However his loader's have been used after that in
our demos and he did code a flexer for our meeting demo released in
february 1997. Well the star routine is really a lot different from the
one in the introduction. In essence, the stars are departing from the
centre on an arc of a circle and moving out of the screen. The interesting
point is that the centre of the circle is moving and it creates with some
parametres an illusion of a star tunnel that is changing all the time. The
music in this part was composed by Mixer of Origo.
The
fourth part includes a dot scroller with 892 dots plotted in every
frame. There are a few different curves that are changing after a small
period of scroll text. The first one is a 3d-style of scroller moving from
upper right corner and from far away and moving towards the lower left
corner and coming closer. The second one is like a sinusoidal
circlescroller on xz-plane projected with perspective. The dots themselves
are not moving, the only thing that is checked is that whether to draw
them or not. The whole screen is used for the scroll area. The coding
itself is not that complicated. The main job is to calculate new code to
handle new curves as all the code lies as an unrolled loop in memory and
there is only room for code for one curve at a time. The font in the
scroll and coding was done by Gremlin. The logo lying in the lower border
which is actually constructed from a font was drawn by someone in Actual
Trading Generation. Great music in this part was composed by Zardax of
Origo Dreamline.
The
part after dot scroller features a metamorphoses routine. There eight
pictures morphosizing on screen. The pictures are on two rows and they lie
in the upper part of the screen. Each of the have their own set of three
colours so all the pictures are in bitmap. There's no real clue in the
coding section the frames of the morphoses are precalculated and only
animated with changing speeds and a bit occasionally. The part's purpose
is really only to look good. There is also a big scroller in the lower
part of the screen. The coding in this part was done by Gremlin. Music was
composed by Moz(ic)art.
The
last part of the demo includes a star ball rotating around all three
axises. The starball includes a bit under 400 dots and they lie on surface
of the ball. There's no hidden dots, the ball is transparent and when the
dots are on the back they are colored a bit darker. Every fourth dot is
precalculated and the other are mirrored from them. This makes it possible
to have this many precalculated curves for the dots. The plotting itself
is specially made for this routine. It is designed so that it draws 4 dots
at once so the mirroring process is integrated into the drawing process.
The part also features a 8x8 pixels font scroller and a logo drawn by Max
of Beyond Force. Coding is done by Gremlin.
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