MIRACLE Productions'

HIGHER DESIRE

Miracle Prods. Information TextFile dated 10 August, 1995

File Contents:

1. Miracle Memberlist
2. Contacting Miracle
3. Hardware requirements
4. Comments about H.D.
5. Thank You

1. Miracle Memberlist

Handle           Real Name            Age        Occupation

ToadStool        Carles Cufí          18         Coder
John             Juan L. Abadia       21         Coder
Data             Marc Salmurri        18         Musician

2. Contacting Miracle

We don't have Internet access right now, but we probably will in
september.

Fax:    +34-3-7952811     (John)

Distro sites   Rendering in Progress BBS
+34-3-4902471

Pointbreak
32.11.43.69.25
6 nodes
28.8 v.34 , v.fc , v.34+
sysop lord cyrix / s!p

Fidonet:  3:343/108.53                (John)

Mail:   ToadStool/Miracle
Carles Cufí
Uruguai 4
08190 St. Cugat del V.
Barcelona
SPAIN

3. Hardware Requirements

The demo will NOT run without:

386 or higher processor
4 Mb of RAM (About 2500 Kb of free extended memory)
Register-compatible VGA card
About 500 Kb of free low memory
A memory manager (XMS/VCPI) loaded

However, it will look(sound) much better with:

Gravis UltraSound (512 Kb)
Math coprocessor
VESA-compatible Super VGA
VLB video card / 486+ processor

4. Comments abour H.D.

You might find some of the hardware requirements a bit weird, but as
always there's a reason for them:

- Math coprocessor: In the raytraced world, the 'alien view' effect
requires a very big look-up table. To avoid storing it on disk,
we decided that it was wiser to use the coprocessor, as almost
everybody has got a 486dx nowadays.
If no coprocessor is present, the world will run without the
effect.

- VESA Super VGA: As you might know, raytraced graphics' appeal
relays strongly on details, and those were almost completely
lost when rendering in register compatible resolutions.
Again, most people have a reasonably VESA compatible SVGA
these days, so there shouldn't be much trouble with this.
If no VESA interface is detected, the reflected cubes and
spheres image will be shown in 320x240 instead of 640x480.

This is our first demo both as a group as individually, because
none of us had ever been envolved on any release.

It has been coded entirely in 386 assembler and it runs under
my (ToadStool) Protected Mode Interface. We have tested it with
XMS, EMM86 and QEMM and it seems to run ok, however, there's
some risk of screwing up under VCPI systems.
If you experience timing problems (i.e. music and images get totally
desynchronized) try rebooting on a XMS system and run the demo
again.

While coding a demo you realize how extremely pathetic Real Mode
is as opposed to Protected Mode. If you are a PC coder and are
still coding in real mode, Wake Up! Use Tran's (or some other)
interface or code your own and forget about memory barriers and
prefix bytes.
Personally I haven't tested Flat Real Mode, though I have read
a bit about it in the Imphobia diskmagazine. It probably is quite nice,
but I don't really see the point in using it when there's Protected
Mode available.

The raytracer was coded quite a while ago by John and Kiwi, and
it really is cool, though when 3DStudio appeared PC raytracing
lost much of its original fun.
The Bézier-curve 3D object generator was also coded by John.

5. Thank You

Thanks to:

Kiwi     for coding the tracer, for keeping up such a cool BBS
and for the great CD-ROM.
Xim      for the great info and help.
Madchip  for letting us use his scanner.
DJ Dare  for the great samples.