Revision 2013 / CPC Demo " Still Rising " by Vanity

[trocoloco]

well, after reading Hicks' last comments on  Pouet website I'm gonna eat my own words as I totally hated his arrogant attitude on the message... Still Rising is a very good demo 2nd at Revision but even so it will always be a second to BF cos it  just cant compite with the B E S T CPC demo E V E R ... period

[Devilmarkus]

well, after reading Hicks' last comments on  Pouet website I'm gonna eat my own words as I totally hated his arrogant attitude on the message...

True: Perhaps Still Rising is technically better.
True: Who cares, when the "better" effects look more bad than the non-better effects in BF?
True: Anyone has his own opinion. And mine is: BF is ages better than Still Rising. Perhaps not in the technical aspect but in inspiration, visual aspect and so on.
True: Still Rising is a good prod. but is not compareable to BF or other demos. BF is telling a story. Still Rising is telling a list of "mine effects are better than in BF".

Edit: Pussytracks load better with a Loader.

[fano]

Do not be so childish and do not judge a demo on the code attitude, taunting is usual for demomakers.to be honnest i didn't have time to watch enough this new demo to make my own opinion but it is technical impressive.actually saying bf is better is just a question of personnal feeling.

[trocoloco]

Do not be so childish and do not judge a demo on the code attitude, taunting is usual for demomakers.to be honnest i didn't have time to watch enough this new demo to make my own opinion but it is technical impressive.actually saying bf is better is just a question of personnal feeling.

Ok, if that is childish I'll explain u what I see..  Even Rhino congratulated them for the demo at pouet instead of saying something like "oh well not good enough" or "mine still better" and some bulshit like that. Even so Hicks still goes on about how better is technically to BF and blablabla .. and personally, I have not seen a single nice comment about BF demo coming from Hicks..

Come on , I can understand demomakers tauntings and he made a point with the Vanity demo, and yet he keeps going on and on with all the rant... after 2 years? can someone tell me what kind of attitude is that? ...

[Devilmarkus]

As I wrote: Anyone has his opinion and mine is: blablablabla

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Scene wangst aside, the demo is very good, technically and graphically. Those aren't easy effects to do on a CPC. I'd put it above the Amiga demo because of that.
Horrible unreadable fonts though.

[fano]

For me The problem is not here.i can perfectly understand your feeling about hicks attitude.you can say hicks is an asshole because he acts like this.i'd see no problem to this because he's old enough to reply to this and assume what he said.But, reading some messages here it seems : i do not agree with hicks so his work and beb and usid work is shit.the remark was not only for your message.aftet that was my personnal feeling...
If you want to say "hicks i didn't like your attitude, you are an asshole" (warning he may like that) send him a pm or post it at pushnpop.
Btw nothing personnal but i'd prefer to post about things i didn't like...

[robcfg]

I think Still Rising is a nice demo, and I loved the twisters. But for me it's nowhere near Batman Forever.

[Marq]

Come on , I can understand demomakers tauntings and he made a point with the Vanity demo, and yet he keeps going on and on with all the rant... after 2 years? can someone tell me what kind of attitude is that? ...

Well, it's pretty much the normal demoscene attitude, which is not to be taken 100% seriously

[trocoloco]

For me The problem is not here.i can perfectly understand your feeling about hicks attitude.you can say hicks is an asshole because he acts like this.i'd see no problem to this because he's old enough to reply to this and assume what he said.But, reading some messages here it seems : i do not agree with hicks so his work and beb and usid work is shit.the remark was not only for your message.aftet that was my personnal feeling...
If you want to say "hicks i didn't like your attitude, you are an asshole" (warning he may like that) send him a pm or post it at pushnpop.
Btw nothing personnal but i'd prefer to post about things i didn't like...

Of course I'm saying I dont like his attitude but I'm not saying he is an asshole (why should I anyway?).. and again, just in case u didn't read all my comments, I think that the demo and his work is great, so don't put words I didn't say in my mouth.

I don't have acc at pushnpop (never needed to open one) and I wont bother to tell him that I don't like the way he behaves (he's old enough to know what he does), he can read it here if he wants, I'm just sick of  the bulshit and stupid arguments between BF and SR instead of congratulating for the greak work and achievements they have reached for the CPC...

CPC is a small scene and doest it have to be divided too? I dont see the point

[Hicks]

Hi everybody... I just discover these 3 pages of feedback, so I have not be able to answer before.

My first feeling is: what a bunch of very discouraging and unfair reactions... A lot of you takes the thing really wrong. As I just said on shoutbox, people really need to go to party, meet people and stop to take each word soooo seriously. The more agressive people here are the people who never meet me and never go to parties... what a coincidence! And the curious thing is that everybody applaused Rhino's attack towards the C64 and CPC scene, and the one towards Vanity... Funny no?

@Trocoloco: you wrote that I've never say nice words about BF. I made an interview of the whole BF team for Push'n'Pop some times after the release, you can find it here: Push'n'Pop | Amstrad CPC Demoscene | Batman Forever team. It's the best homage for their awesome work. You can also look my spontaneous reaction on Pouet about the demo: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=56761.

I was expecting much more kindness/goodwill from you guys. It's obvious that the "attack" toward BF are here just to stimulate Rhino to do another demo (exactly like their words towards Vanity are in this sense). And seeing a new Rhino demo will be a nice thing, isn't it?

[trocoloco]

Hicks, ok man congratulations for your interview at pushnpop, so now all you've done is say good stuff about BF and his precalculated techniques and blablabla, yeah ok man whatever u say I dont buy it. In any case if u say that it's was all for the pose and for the laugh, well, good on ya, happy to know it

[ralferoo]

Just to add my oar into the discussion. I chatted quite a bit with Hicks at the party and certainly in real life he didn't come across as at all arrogant. I think that yes there might have been an element of hyping up the demo a bit too much, which as several people have pointed out meant that people already had high expectations before they saw it and so if it didn't live up to those expectations, they'd perceive it as less good than if nothing had been said about it before they saw it.

That said, starting the demo with "track loaders are for pussies" immediately puts people on the defensive. Yes, it is impressive that all that demo fitted into 65KB, but on the other hand track loaders are what pushed Amiga demos back in the day from smallish demos into mega demos and later into very cohesive long demos, often with no obvious loading times at all. Personally, I think track loaders are probably a better direction to go - and the trick is actually have something interesting happening on screen during loading, which is something the CPC scene is still missing really.

But going back to this demo, it was technically very good. It looked nice, and lots of people including me were very impressed by the colours. The effects were good, the artwork was good and the soundtrack was really nicely coupled to the flow of the demo. Over all, it was a very nice demo to watch. There were a couple of odd things, like the choice of such a tiny font at the end, but it was still a very good demo.

I think there was enough there to keep the audience engaged, and don't forget most of these people are used to C64 and Amiga demos. I'm pretty sure most people watching wouldn't have actually noticed the improvements over previous CPC demos because quite simply, they don't really know what the CPC is capable of. Whilst this can work in favour of the CPC scene by doing stuff that's hard on the C64, it can also be a negative because if we just ape effects that are easy on the C64 then nobody is impressed by it.

And finally, returning to the taunting between groups... personally, I don't like it - I prefer to just compliment the good stuff I see and ignore the stuff I don't like, but actually again looking at the history of the Amiga demoscene (which is all I'm familiar with really), it's clear that this kind of stuff does spur people on to create ever better and better demos, if they're thick skinned enough to not take the criticism personally but instead use it as motivation to improve the next time. But there's always the risk of overstepping the line and properly offending someone to the extent where they stop bothering any more. Hopefully that doesn't happen as both Hicks and Rhino have proved that they can create great demos and it'd be a shame to not see any more from either of them in the future.

[Devilmarkus]

We need a dictionary: Demoscene -> Nerd, Nerd -> Demoscene

[ralferoo]

Also, I just wanted to add that it seems that people at the demo parties themselves are much more tolerant of fellow demomakers and other platforms than people observing the scene from outside. Even on the shoutbox here on cpcwiki, people were on the whole pretty quick to criticise anything and everything in the demos on the stream, but the atmosphere inside the hall was very different. People there respect the first time demos because they remember their own first demos, they respect other platforms because they know the difficulties they have worked around the limitations of their own favourite platform. And even if it's just another text scroller with a few bobs and copper bars, they just swig some more beer and wait for the next one.

Yes, there's always shouts of "Amiiiiiiga" or whatever, but really there's never any actual real platform rivalry other than in jest. At the end of the day, most people code on whatever their parents happened to buy when they were younger, not because it was actually "the best" (whatever that means).

[MaV]

Well, the shoutbox comments are another thing altogether. We sit in front of a screen and vent our frustration at not being able to attend the party, that's all.

This should not be taken as serious as it looks ("crap demo", "I'm bored", "yawn", "seen it all", etc.)

Some of us get completely pissed after a few bottles of wine and behave in a way you would not expect from them at all. (Are you sober yet, tasty?)

I know how a real party feels different from the stream at home.

[arnoldemu]

I also found the scroll font unreadable.

The picture that mixed mode 1 and mode 0 was done so well I missed that the modes were mixed so cleverly. Now I see it as a screenshot on the wiki front page, I can see how it seamlessly joins together.

I too didn't fully appreciate some of the differences that made it technically better than BF.

But, taking that into account, I still thought it was a good demo. The graphics, presentation and sound were well done.

Looking forward to the next Vanity demo.

[MacDeath]

Reack load are for pussies who want to compete effectively against Amiga500 or 1040STe (or 4096STe) or those 8bit systems whose graphics take half RAM space (Speccy, C64/C128...).


To have it in 65K is great, but I don't think all the guys who code on PC can really appreciate this as a mean to vote for it.
A good Amiga demo uses lots of RAM compaired to this.


An AmstradCPC would actually need 256K to be an "half atari 520ST".
So Trackload/multiload is a way to fill the demo with more samples, fullscreen graphics and so on between those awesome code effects.


The twister were nice, really loved the ditherings, but I think most of them could be done in Mode1 on a PLUS, perhaps even in mode2 with good use of Hardsprites...(multiplex+raster).
And the 4K palette would enable to get tid of those ditherings too.
On the other hand, those ditherings are nice because they give some texture.

I also found the scroll font unreadable.

That's why scroll texts are always boring IMO.
those who zoom the whole screen would need to be actually subtitled... just use a 8 pixel line so the same text is displayed in "readable mode" somewhere.
Or use something else than Letters... Asteroid field? Spaceships?


Concerning the "arrogant douche" attitude... well, it's Demoscene banter.
But are you sure the newscene is aware of this old tradition?
I like it anyway.

another subjet :
Crowd pleaser (C64 #3 compo)

HITMEN 2013 CROWD PLEASER (C64)
It could get many screens done on CPC in Mode1 as well instead of those "big pixels".
I'm talking about those logo/title screens of course. but not only.
Not sure the physical engine (squares and rectangle falling) could be done that well on CPC though... could they?


The part around 1:55 could certainly look betterly in mode1 without the vertical border (upper and bootom parts of the screen).


Indeed I can easily understand why Vanity beat them.
The chiptune wasn't that impressive too, i mean, isn't Sid supposed to be best thing ever? well, depends on the guy who compose for it.


The part at 1:30 is somewhat messy.
They try to make illusion there is no bottom/top border but... not sure it works well.


Part at 2:13 is also a bit messy but good looking.
It this just a simple attribute character trick?
Don't think it takes so many talent to get this done on a C64... even a MSX1 could do it I guess.

We need a dictionary: Demoscene -> Nerd, Nerd -> Demoscene

C64 : mainstream and somewhat lazy.
Amiga : mainstream but more lazy ones.
Atari ST : not as good as Amiga, abuse RAM expansions.
Spectrum : colourclashfags, abuse 1bpp and attributes.
MSX1 : considered a speccy in europe. what? it has sprites?
Amstrad CPC : oh, see MSX1 definition...wait what? it's not an Atari ST ?
Amstrad PLUS : "it is not a CPC so we hate it"

[trocoloco]

We need a dictionary: Demoscene -> Nerd, Nerd -> Demoscene

looks like, cos not every1 can be as cool right? 

[Devilmarkus]

I am cooler than you! (Ok you are right! I should raise my room temperature)

[Snake_Plissken]

There is people who only speak,there is people who don't speak and do things on CPC.

[McKlain]

The chiptune wasn't that impressive too, i mean, isn't Sid supposed to be best thing ever? well, depends on the guy who compose for it.

So true...



Oxyron - Natural Wonders - Real C64, 8580 SID


Oxyron - Coma Light 13 (2012) C64


BOOZE DESIGN 2008 EDGE OF DISGRACE (C64)

[TotO]

Since Batman Forever and now Still Rising... (who's next?) C64 demo realy not make me dream.

[TFM]

There is people who only speak,there is people who don't speak and do things on CPC.

Yes, that's what the Italian guy told at the beginning of Boondock Saints II.

And I agree with that!

[Gryzor]

I dislike in-scene fighting as much as the next guy, but I don't think the reaction here was so bad, was it?


I think the two main elements were:
-wow, really nice
-...BF.


And the second element was a bit inappropriate.