Phantasie
was released in the beginning of the new year 1989 though most of the coding
was done in 1988. The demo was coded by TNT and Solomon and it can well
be argued that these two coders are to a large part responsible for the
reputation beyond force has about programming and also to having own personal
style of creating hard coded and maybe no-so-well-designed demos. Anyway if
the demos released before this hadn't established beyond force as a legitimate
demogroup this one did it for good. This demo was in fact coded while
beyond force was in co-operation with Xades Society, but in the releasing
moment the co-operation had already ended. However there are some scrolltexts
in the demo that were written while the co-operation was still on. So all
viewer should ignore everything written about that coop.
The
introduction is a simple standard intro the demos had at the time including
a scroller, some text in the middle and a logo in the upper part of the screen.
The intro is the only part Solomon and TNT did not code. Instead, it was
coded by hazor. Music in the intro is by Markus Schneider.
The
demo itself starts with an upscroller coded by TNT. This is meant only for
some notes and also to play the brill music composed by Rob Hubbard. The
piece is from the fab game Skate or Die.
The
first real part is a one coded by TNT and it includes a normal scroller in
the lowest part of the screen (16x16 pixel font). Then there is a logo moving
in the middle of the screen. There's another scroller in the moving logo
so that the scroller moves with the logo (font 8x8pixels). In the upper part
of the screen there are three scrollers moving a bit sideways on a small
wave.
The
second part features a moving 1989 logo celebrating the new year. The logo
is not just some kind of a logo - it's three dimensional logo moving
sideways and was a nice idea from the part of Solomon who coded the part.
Under the moving logo there are some rasterbars and in the lowest part of
the screen there is an expaneded sprite scroller.
The
third part is also coded by Solomon and it contains the first really
impressive dxycp (different x and y character positioning) routine
including 24 characters and none of them are in sprites in contrast to
some people's routines that had eight sprites and only few characters.
The dxycp routine lies in the lower part of the screen and there is a
picture in the upper part of the screen. The classic music from Cybernoid
2 was composed by Maniacs of Noise. If your browser supports java then
you can view the dxycp effect right below this text.
The
fourth part includes a routine which Solomon calls the real dycp
scrolling. An idea which seems to be inspired from the previous part.
This is in essence the world's first dxycp scrolling with characters
leaving the screen and then entering the screen back if coordinates
put them back. It took a pretty long time after this for someone to
code a 'real dycp scroll' and when someone after this made it they
had made it a boring dxycp where the letters can't leave the screen.
It has to be admitted though that the scroller is not very smooth - a
property which Sam of Beyond Force has improved in his version of the
real dycp scrolling in the final part of Typical - the demo.
Next
part includes a blue electric potential field with pixelating shades.
The routine was coded by Solomon once again. There is a scroller
in the lower part of the screen. It has to be noted that Solomon
made better versions of this routine - one of which was released
in poor.
The
sixth part of the demo is a scroller with characters consisting of
small animated dots the whole scroll is pretty big as there is nothing
else in the screen while it is rolling. This part was coded by
Solomon too and it is just a simple part in between of the other
parts. The same kind of scroller was pretty popular those days and many
versions of it has been released. The font Solomon was using to costruct
the letters was drawn by Finnish Gold and the music was composed by
Johannes Bjerregaard.
The
seventh part of Phantasie is a picture flexer and it is the last part
coded by Solomon in this demo. The flexer flexes a big picture in
the whole screen's area. The flexer does not use any of the methods
the newer demos use, namely the famous D011 flexer methos, so when
judging the speed this has to be considered. Additionally there is
a scroller down in the border.
The
last part of Phantasie is a star routine coded by TNT. This routine
was in fact the fastest of its time. The stars are moving away from
the middle point of the screen on straight lines and the star
positions can also be rotated over z-axis. The stars flicker a bit,
but at the time that was pretty much assumable as almost no-one was
paying attention to things like double buffering or even triple buffering.
There is also a sprite scroller in the part that moves over the stars.
The legendary music from Delta was composed by the legendary Rob Hubbard.
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