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Batman Forever

Started by villain, 20:30, 20 March 11

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norecess

out of the closet ?!  :-\

trocoloco

I don't know how many times I've seen the demo, but the more I watch it,   the more i like it. I wonder what kind of games could  be done using   some of the demo's techniques?. Thanks to this demo it's been prooved that the CPC   was a sleeping beast and its unleashed at last.

norecess

#77
Quote I wonder what kind of games could  be done using   some of the demo's techniques?
With a CPC +, that would be possible : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuWiPmIDI-o&feature=player_detailpage#t=306s   (start the video at 5 minutes) : background would be like a demo-effect (made of horizontal lines) where sprites would be managed in hardware by Asic.

Batman & Robin is my second preferred game on the Genesis. Musics are made by Jesper Kyd.
My preferred game on the Genesis being of course Mega Turrican.

TFM

Coming back to topic...

Long demo... yes! Colorful demo... yes! Lot of good (PC made!?!) gfx... yes! Nice sounds... yes! Best demo... by far not.

In the late 80ies and early nineties I've already watched better demos (don't want to mention them here, because I don't want to forget one).

Yes, for people who are not even 10 years on the CPC this one looks like #1. But honestly I like Vanitys 'From Scratch' still more.

Most of the effects seem to use a similar technique like Filmemacher does, but not as advanced. So yes, 50 fps framerate and all that crap is no problem.

And what I really miss is any kind of hardware techniques :-X :-\

But still a very good production, with a lot of efforts. Good work & congrats!

p.s.: They got no idea about applications on CPC, hehehe  :P
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

MacDeath

#79
QuoteListen to it via a hifi-system, it sounds really strong and punchy.
Amstrad's AY can really have great Basses...

QuoteI wonder what kind of games could  be done using   some of the demo's techniques?
Games is completely different use of Machine...
The best thing would be a game with lot's of cinematics...

But games =/= pre calculate...(well, may depends...)

QuoteMy preferred game on the Genesis being of course Mega Turrican.
Earthworm Jim was great too IMO...

QuoteBest demo... by far not.
Perhaps Best 2000's demo is more accurate...

Optimus

#80
QuoteI've read the interview. Rino was talking about two different views or concepts of how to create a demo (x*y concept versus x*time concept)...


Yep, I wondered about the animation technique. Rhino's answer was a bit short on this and left us wonder. Personally, what I tried to understand from the mention of x*time concept is quite simpler. That you have this sequence of data as RLE: "pixels to fill - pixels to  skip - pixels to fill - pixels to skip" (skip 45 pixels (X) draw 100 pixels in sequecnce (time), skip 250 pixels (X) draw another bunch (time) where pixels could be bytes too of course), so you don't care about moving to next line on y, you see CPC vram as linear 1 dimension too. But maybe I am wrong. I am also wondering if fast filling with several PUSHs is used in this and also if there is delta packing, because the animation are still too fast for the size. I have to try displaying some big anims oneday.

Optimus

#81
QuoteIn the late 80ies and early nineties I've already watched better demos (don't want to mention them here, because I don't want to forget one).
Yes, for people who are not even 10 years on the CPC this one looks like #1. But honestly I like Vanitys 'From Scratch' still more.

Well, I don't think I can compare 80-90s demos at all with this one. Especially not concerning the presentation. Maybe you like different effects and tehcniques than I do in CPC demos, because I enjoyed the effects in this demo much more than in any other CPC demo before. What I like in this demo as in From Scratch too is that they are complete. Great presentation, trackmo style, overscan screens always, use of hardware and combination with software rendering where applicable for new original effects, this is quality in many aspects. We were used to either have a pure software rendering demo (which I love seeing though) with ugly graphics, coder oriented or a pure hardware CPC screen that got boring after the years. In these two demos we see hardware effects used in the right way, software effects combined, but taking the time to have quality screens and good presentation at every moment. From Scratch is more hardware oriented, but Batman Forever still uses some hardware techniques combined with soft-rendering, how else the fast fullscreen zoomers would be possible? Anyway, opinions are opinions, even though I find quite strange when you think that your run of the mill 80s-90s CPC demos were better than this masterpiece. You don't even need to be 10 years older on the CPC scene to understand that.

redbox

Quote from: TFM/FS on 23:59, 24 March 11
Long demo... yes! Colorful demo... yes! Lot of good (PC made!?!) gfx... yes! Nice sounds... yes! Best demo... by far not.

::)

Quote from: TFM/FS on 23:59, 24 March 11
In the late 80ies and early nineties I've already watched better demos (don't want to mention them here, because I don't want to forget one).

::)

Quote from: TFM/FS on 23:59, 24 March 11
Yes, for people who are not even 10 years on the CPC this one looks like #1. But honestly I like Vanitys 'From Scratch' still more.

::)

Quote from: TFM/FS on 23:59, 24 March 11
Most of the effects seem to use a similar technique like Filmemacher does, but not as advanced. So yes, 50 fps framerate and all that crap is no problem.

::)

Quote from: TFM/FS on 23:59, 24 March 11
And what I really miss is any kind of hardware techniques :-X :-\

::)

Quote from: TFM/FS on 23:59, 24 March 11
p.s.: They got no idea about applications on CPC, hehehe  :P

::)



'Nuff said.

Devilmarkus

Quote from: TFM/FS on 23:59, 24 March 11
Coming back to topic...
blablablablabla (shortened by Devilmarkus)

Cool! Next CPC demo will be released soon by TFM! I am happy and cannot wait to see it! ;)
But it must be a non-FutureOS demo! On a normal 128k CPC!
When you put your ear on a hot stove, you can smell how stupid you are ...

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spybro

Quote from: Devilmarkus on 13:07, 25 March 11
  Cool! Next CPC demo will be released soon by TFM! I am happy and cannot wait to see it!   
  But it must be a non-FutureOS demo! On a normal 128k CPC! 
 

  I second that!

trocoloco

#85
Well I'm not an expert myself about demos and all the technical part of them, but hey, since I got my first CPC back in 1986 I think I've seen enough demos to know that this is the BEST one (and hopefully just for now) for our beloved Amstrad.

If there are demos as good as this one please people let me know because I would love to watch them too.

HAL6128

Quote from: Optimus on 11:26, 25 March 11

Yep, I wondered about the animation technique. Rhino's answer was a bit short on this and left us wonder. Personally, what I tried to understand from the mention of x*time concept is quite simpler. That you have this sequence of data as RLE: "pixels to fill - pixels to  skip - pixels to fill - pixels to skip" (skip 45 pixels (X) draw 100 pixels in sequecnce (time), skip 250 pixels (X) draw another bunch (time) where pixels could be bytes too of course), so you don't care about moving to next line on y, you see CPC vram as linear 1 dimension too. But maybe I am wrong. I am also wondering if fast filling with several PUSHs is used in this and also if there is delta packing, because the animation are still too fast for the size. I have to try displaying some big anims oneday.

Yes. Excactly! That's was what have in my mind but couldn't explain. It's like an mp3 encoding and I hope I'm right. E.g. you have a 8-channel (or instruments) sound / music. Your ear is not able to hear 8 different channels seperatly. It hears a combined overtone wave of all channels/instruments. And - what I sketchy know about mp3 encoding is - that the mp3 encoding calculates this overtone wave in digital form - ...it simulate what your ear want's to hear.
So transferring this to graphics or digits in the CPC-RAM is the same as above mentioned. That what you want to change become changed and the is rest still untouched. A good technique or searching process for graphical pattern (in combining with the monitor / clock synchronisation) could speed up even biggest presentations and decrease needed RAM??
Hey, that's just theoretical blabla. Rhino could answer that. Could be interessting.

How about TFM's routines of "Filmemacher". Full screen movies with up to 50 fps! It needs also very fast calculating routines or technique. The same as in the demo? Different ones? Who knows?
...proudly supported Schnapps Demo, Pentomino and NQ-Music-Disc with GFX

Rhino

Well, I see that there is some technical debate here :)

First of all, I does not understand very well the debates about the software/hardware usage on demos. For example, I never hear this distinction on Amiga, and the Amiga hardware is very powerfull. Anyway, I think the best philosophy is always to use all the capabilities at your disposal to achieve your goal. But using hardware or software is not a value in itself in my opinion, and, in any case, It depends of each effect if hardware is or not need to get better performance.

I like thinking about demomaking like something similar to do magic. Logically, there is always a trick and doing tricks on programming is commonly used to gain free cpu cycles for all the programming kinds (demos, games, tools...). I think the merit is not to know how to do a trick, the merit is inventing it. I think I could explain here (step by step) like each effect works, but then, the magic is lost.

Anyway, I must say that dots, spotlights and hires texts are the only "software" effects, for the rest, CPC hardware is strongly involved. And about how 3d objects are filled, I was inspired on how the Amiga blitter fill vectors but using the CRTC instead. In this way, we can say that z80 only draw the object borders and CRTC do the rest.

Rhino.

Sykobee (Briggsy)

#88
Yeah, when you look at the animations, there is a lot of the image that remains the same frame to frame. The difference per frame is what gets drawn. Didn't the Amiga do this for its Anim format - I forget?


So packing with a format like:


Frame 1: Assume all colour 0.
Next Frame - a list of instructions as in:
either Skip X pixels (how the routine runs quickly)
or Draw Y pixels in Colour C (simple method, mostly PUSHes and INCs with edge cases)

e.g., with drawing instructions encoded in bytes: MSB is 0 - skip (up to 128 pixels), MSB is 1, draw up to 32 pixels in one of four colours (or 16 pixels in 4 colours, 4 preset dithers). It might make sense to encode the colour change as a separate instruction, and maybe to have a render following byte directly as an instruction - it would require some experimentation.


This doesn't give as good a compression as the animation demo using delta-packing recently however. But for animations where the per-frame difference is low it's quick.

Gryzor

I really can't remember any early-day demos being better than this. And to be frank, it'd be unfair to compare them. Batman has so much more advanced aesthetics and polish than anything I remember seeing.

Maybe, TFM, you could give some examples? I'm really curious.

Now, who's for a demo gallery with YT vids on the wiki? :)

norecess

#90
Come on guys : Batman Forever IS, from a general point of view, the best demo ever done for the CPC.


Still, it does not have some features others demonstrated so well, in mind : real-time 3D and the likes. So it's basically a subset of great things but there are still other demos that worth to be enjoyed.

Devilmarkus

Quote from: Gryzor on 18:52, 25 March 11
Now, who's for a demo gallery with YT vids on the wiki? :)

I
When you put your ear on a hot stove, you can smell how stupid you are ...

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cpc4eva

Quote from: Gryzor on 18:52, 25 March 11
I really can't remember any early-day demos being better than this. And to be frank, it'd be unfair to compare them. Batman has so much more advanced aesthetics and polish than anything I remember seeing.

Maybe, TFM, you could give some examples? I'm really curious.

Now, who's for a demo gallery with YT vids on the wiki? :)


we don't already have one ?


Quote from: Devilmarkus on 19:18, 25 March 11
I


I 2nd the motion.....




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJosZfm560Q&feature=player_detailpage#t=103s


dont know if above link works but im keen to learn about the music and FX especially the tune starting at 1min 39sec on the youtube video.


is it original ? has it been pulled / sampled from anywhere ?


the reason i ask cause it blows me away - so crisp and authentic too good for cpc's 3 channel AY chip (that i can remember hearing) and reminds me a little bit not a whole lot of something sci fi - ish ?


as for the debate - its been a hellava long time since any of us have been blown away by watching cpc demos - i cant recall a cpc demo having such a massive impact on the cpc'ers as this one.


I did like alot of cpc demo's from 80s, 90s and 00s - THE DEMO was a standout and was impressed with LOGON system and Longshot's cpc demo work in general.  I did enjoy the cpc demo's you could interact with by pressing a key to do a screen scroll etc etc etc


BUT the BATMAN FOREVER cpc group have done such an amazingly stunning magnifico stupendus wonderous job with this demo its got to be the best cpc demo  :-\

TomEtJerry

Hi,

Well, I think about Face Hugger Megademo :-). When this piece of code has been spreaded, it was incredible and so different from the common cpc demos. The only real lake of this demo was graphics (ok, one part was ugly too :-) ).

T&J/GPA



HAL6128

Oh, I think almost every demo deserves to be a considered! From my point of view all coders, graphic artists or musiscian so far are inventors or "digitizer" of their imaginations and ideas.
There are lots of good demos available. But comparing demos on subjective impressions may often lead to different meanings. So, good performance indicators may help for a good competition? (e.g. speed of real-time calculations, fast algorithm, number of calculated dots at once, number of used techniques (flipping, overscan, disc loader, crtc use, even extensions, music samples). There has to be a good jury out of a coder, musician, designer or just ask representive number of people how the demo is and the highest number wins, a simple poll as it is on pouet.net?
...proudly supported Schnapps Demo, Pentomino and NQ-Music-Disc with GFX

TFM

Quote from: Gryzor on 18:52, 25 March 11
I really can't remember any early-day demos being better than this. And to be frank, it'd be unfair to compare them. Batman has so much more advanced aesthetics and polish than anything I remember seeing.

Maybe, TFM, you could give some examples? I'm really curious.

Now, who's for a demo gallery with YT vids on the wiki? :)

So look, watching demos is like watching movies. It depends on your personal taste and like Rhino mentioned before on your 'philosophy' in this things.
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

khisanth

Just fired this up on my 6128 with the HxC floppy emulator and it looks even better on a TV with SCART connection.

Next step is to hook it up to the 42" plasma downstairs and see if I can get the audio going through my 5.1 amp, that should look and sound damn awesome.

8)

TFM

Quote from: Devilmarkus on 13:07, 25 March 11
Cool! Next CPC demo will be released soon by TFM! I am happy and cannot wait to see it! ;)
But it must be a non-FutureOS demo! On a normal 128k CPC!

Before you see me moving to an inferior OS you rather go blind  8) 

Further I like to create programs, that can be used. Demos are nice to be watched, but watching is all you can do with them. Even if they have the best effects, you never can use them for something else (a sensefull prog. f.e.). I prefer to use this kind of effects in games or even apps. That makes more sense for me. But this is again personal taste. I did one single real 'demo' and CPCAI bought it (after the release of my article about CPC Plus), so they got the rights - and I stay to contracts written with(out) blood  ;)  But I have seriously no plans to do any kind of demo in future.

@Redpoint:  ::) 8) 8) 8) :laugh:
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

ssg

@tfm: demos are utilities too. their function is to inspire.

TFM

Quote from: ssg on 22:28, 27 March 11
@tfm: demos are utilities too. their function is to inspire.

In an spiritual way you're right for sure ;D
TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

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