_ _ _ _ __ __ ( ) (__) ( ) \ / _ _ _ __ _ _ _ __)(__ _ _ _ ) O ( ( ) ( ) ( ) (__ __) ( _ _) / \ \ O / )( ) o ( )( ) >_ _ (_ _ _ _) ) ( (__) (_ _ _ _\ (__) (_ _ _ ) (__) Demo Group http://www.realtime.net/~dlinvill °±² ABOUT OPIATE DEMOGROUP ²±° Jun. 1st 1996 Opiate - " something which numbs the mind or senses" WHAT IS OPIATE? ============== We are Opiate. We are a demo group here in the USA, and in no way do we want our group to be associated with "opium"-the drug. We merely thought that the word "Opiate" was cool and that it accuratly described the type of stuff we and other demo groups puts out. What is a demo group? you may ask well.... To know what a demo group is, you must know what a demo is. A demo is a production with nice graphics effects and music. These effects are usualy being calculated while you are watching and that fact right there makes these effects so awesome. The coders(programmers) of demogroups can write a routine in just a few minutes, but can spend hours or days optimizing it so that it can be run at a reasonable speed on an average computer. These effects can range from text scrollers to 3 dimensional lightsourced texturmapped objects. Demos got started and are very big in Finland. This is mainly due to the fact that the Amiga computers were very big over there. The amiga has been called the first true multimedia computer and its capabilities led to many fine productions. Finally, once everybody figured out that IBM compatables could produce the same effects as the amiga, everybody started to code for the PC. Today, the demo scene is alive and is getting more competitive by the minute. Each year competitions are held in some location around the world which gather some of the finest young minds in the universe. These "gatherings" or "parties" usually last for three or four days and have a wide variety of competitions such as 4K intro, 64K intro, MegaDemo, 32 Track Music, Computer Drawn Artwork, and many others. Two of the biggest parties are called "The Party" and "Assembly". If you have never seen a demo before, then you need to go out and download one immediatly. If you visit the Opiate Homepage(see top for address), there is a link to the "Demo Web". Go there and check it out! Opiate consists of seven members at this point. They are: Jmx : Real Name: Jon Mayfield Position: Head Coder, Project Manager, Public Relations, Nice Guy Age: 18 - Freshman College Loc: Austin,TX Lothar : Real Name: Troy Walker Position: Coder, The Algorithm Guy Age: 18 - Freshman College Loc: Austin,TX Buzz : Real Name: Wayne Stuntz Position: Artist Age: 21 Loc: Austin,TX Tyr : Real Name: David Linville Position: Misc. Coding, Design Consultant Age: 18 - Freshman College Loc: Austin,TX Lethal : Real Name: Ryan Harris Position: Musician Age: 19 - Freshman/College Loc: Bel Air,Maryland CURRENT OPIATE PRODUCTIONS: ========================== -3D TETRIS: As of the time of this writing. It is a program that (1.1mb) we put together in about 3 weeks. During those three weeks, all of our members attended High School and I, Jmx, went to my job everyday after school. Since I was the main coder, I ended up getting about 5 hours of sleep per night and had little time to communicate with other group members. We wouldn't have chosen to make a Tetris game if it wasn't the requirement of a contest-belive me. I, personally, hate tetris and programming most of its 4300 lines of code was probably more fun than I will ever have playing it. Don't complain about this production and say that it is too slow. I know it is too slow, but we were working towards deadlines so too bad. By the way - the 4300 lines were in Turbo Pascal 7 with inline asm. -OpiTro : This is the first intro by Opiate ever. It was written (250kb) in two days. All code was by jmX and includes a tune by Lethal. It tells about Opiate and has many nice effects running simultaniously. -JukeBox : This is just a little player that comes with 3dtetris. It plays all of the songs from 3D Tetris and gives information such as: -Current note on each channel being played -Main mixing wave form -Order#/Pat#/Row# -Inst Names etc.. It was coded in about 2 hours by jmX (me) to aid in the process of selecting the order of the songs in the 3D Tetris game, but since it turned out to be kinda cool, it is now packaged with 3D Tetris 1.03 and higher. By the way, by pressing "S" in jukebox, you enter an OS shell and a cool little status bar remains resident - Check it. By the way...2gdm.exe must be in the current directory if you try to play s3m's,mtm's,mod's, or any other format. -PCX2Font : This piece of crap helped alot in the production of 3D (70kb) Tetris, and many other little things. An average output bitmapped font file is about 25K. It is usefull but not a really developed program. It does what we need it to do, and thats about it, but it's out there if you want it - and it comes with source code to load the font files and write in mode 13h with them. -Pill : Our First *DEMO*, presented at NAID '96. It was kinda (1.2mb) rushed at the last second, but what demo isn't? It includes some of BUZZ's nicest pics and moving music by LETHAL.....oh, and the code is ok too. :) FUTURE OPIATE PRODUCTIONS: ========================= We have a nifty game that will be started this this summer...so if you have any input, or just wanna know something about it, contact us. CONTACTS: ======== If you would like to help or be helped then E-mail: jmX@ix.netcom.com jmX / Coder We also send GREETS out to: Future Crew - For inspiring us to do what we do. (Good job on Second Reality - even though it is old stuff now, it is still THE demo.) IRC Crew - For being cool people to waste time with. Trixter - For helping us a little here and there. Denthor of Asphixia - For putting out the tuts that originally got me started programming in Pascal. Last Edited: 5-31-96 By:jmX Coder/Opiate