Vortex, the TextMode Demo!

System Requirements

A good 486dx or above...(so I didn't optimize, flame me :P )
GUS or Sound Blaster anything
speakers

nothin much...just mail us if you encounter any problems
btw, configurations in VORTEX.CFG are initially for a fast 486.

TEXT BELOW THIS LINE WAS WRITTEN BY QUARK, tear/cut if necessary :>

WHO ARE INVOLVED??

Alias     |   Real Name                 |  What they do?

Genma1/4  |   Nicky Bay Ai Meng         |  Coder, Organiser
Quark     |   Christopher Tay Meng Keat |  Coder
Lord Ming |   Wee Soon Ming             |  Musician

ps : we have no group name yet, may come up with one soon, keep on
a lookout! (this group was formed one week before TSC96)

HOW DO YOU CONTACT US

You can try looking for us around BBS like C'Zest or Developer's Site.
That's where we usually hang around. Or you can contact via internet
E-MAIL . The address is mengkeat@pacific.net.sg .Feel free to flood the
mail box.

If you are looking for the music for our demo, look around in BBSes
for a file called DMUSIC.ARJ. Lord Ming apparantly released his music
before telling us?!?! (dun bother to try to rip, you can't :P )

HOW WE GOT OURSELVES INTO THIS?

It all started during one of the boring and monotonous school days. We
downloaded a few demos and in one of the demos, we saw a text mode demo.
We were quite impressed with it and tried to do simple tricks in text mode.
Then Genma1/4 wrote a textmode moving plasma! That really convinced
me that text mode demos are really not bad. And so, both of us started
experimenting around in text mode. We did a little bit of this and that
during our free time like during lunch hours or breaks. In no time, we
managed to come up with a few stuff. Genma1/4 had asked around the potential
of a text mode demo and we recived rather encouraging remarks :) Someone
even suggested trying for a demo competition like the Scene '96. After some
consideration, we thought we should give it a try.

As we were very occupied with school work, we had no time to write the music
Genma1/4 went around asking for available musicians, and finally recruited
the help of a relatively new composer, Wee Soon Ming, aka Lord Ming. After
just 2 weeks of work, we had a working demo!

Our Release:

Well, for now, our only release is the text mode demo Vortex. The reason
why Vortex was written in text mode is because a lot of people did not see
the potential that text mode could have and often think that some graphics
like plasma or 3D stuffs can actually be displayed in text mode. We hope
that vortex can change people's impression of that.

Up till now, our demo group is very new and Vortex is the only demo that we
wrote so far. We are thinking of future releases but Genma1/4 and I are
having our A level exams this year. School work tends to get heavy and might
slow down lots of things.

signed,
Christopher Tay
aka Quark

TEXT BELOW THIS LINE WAS WRITTEN BY Genma1/4, tear/cut if necessary :>

First of all, I wanna say thanx to the guys at Dev Site for encouraging
me to join The Scene 96. Vortex was actually meant to be just another
demo to be released at a later date, but when we decided to go for
TSC96, it gave us the pressure we needed to complete the demo.

Vortex is our very first demo, hope u enjoy it!

Though most credits were put under me, Genma1/4, design was by the
team, and fine tuning and testing were by me.

Some Technical Details of VORTEX

!! Opening !!
Simple 3d rotation, with letters smashing to screen then
bursting into bits and pieces

!! Plasma  !!
Real time calculated moving plasma (got me seasick)

!! Pixel Spray !!
Pixels spray from moving seed at bottom of screen to form
a face, an ansi by Acid.

!! Glenz !!
Simple magnifying ball bouncing around using lookup tables

!! Compress/Stretch !!
Stretching and compressing different parts of the face

!! Point Warp !!
VERY simple one-point warp, looks like pulling the nose around the
screen...:)

!! 4-Point Warp !!
Same as above, but using 4 moving points

!! Whirl !!
Rather cheapo routine...rotation of pixels at different speeds.

!! Flying Wobble !!
Face wobbling away from screen, to be wacked by a fireball

!! Fire Routines !!
Just plotting pixels one point above randomly with decay.

!! Wave Interference !!
2 waves moving around, interfering with one another

!! 3d cubes !!
Room drops down, and 4 cubes come bouncing in one at a time, with
shadows on the walls of the wall. First was a normal wireframe,
second was with motion blur, next was a texture mapped cube, and last
was a plasma cube. Each surface of the cube is actually different parts
of the plasma.

!! Fractal "Morph" !!
Just one fractal where we changed the parameters...:P

THE SCENE 96

Quark didn't attend this gathering, as he had a band performance at
Sentosa...only Lord Ming and I were there, and only I survived thru
the whole thing :>

The Scene 96 - The Actual Day!

I arrived early, about 10:00am in fact. Thought of making changes
to Vortex to suit the speed of the competition system, the P166.
Too bad I was only allowed to work on a P133, but it was enough for
me to filter out some buggies. The timing for Vortex went haywire.
I even had to borrow a tracker to change a bit of the music to suit
the demo(with my musician of coz). We went on until 1:30pm...
Well, all we could do was to estimate the demo speed on the P166
by adding delays here and there, sought of defeating a programmer's
optimization efforts. (!) So, we submitted our entry in my disk, together
with some of my beta test versions. I had no group name, I told them.
"Yeah, no name later u win then I go up and take, can??" the guys at
the main system told me to at least give them a name...so I just gave
my alias.(with all due respect to my group members :)

2:30pm. The crowd trickled in...Roy gave a short and rather blur opening
speech (yeah, the scene 1995!), and The Scene 1996 Shootout was officially
started! (finally) The organizers distributed the voting forms and the
audience sat down to enjoy the Music Compositions category. It went off
on a rather jerky start...the crowd didn't seem entertained, as if they
had come just to see the demos. Between each category was a break for
the audience to decide on their votes...whlie they showed some nice
animations.

5:00pm (yeah time flies) Time for the demo compo! The crowd eventually
livened up, as the demo entries were about to be shown. The demos came
on in alphabetical order of the group/coders. First to come on was
Revelation by ArchAngels. Rather religiously inclined, donned rather
monotone hellish red colors throughout. The voxel landscape with lightning
was impressive, but kinda long...Next was Vortex, by you know who...
Everything went smoothly (whew) and most effects looked better than
expected on the projector screen. The demo ended with a heartwarming
applause. :) Then was Breathe In the Lights by ModeXiX. Interesting
stuff, breathe in, breathe in....and breathe out! Then was either
Hype by Inner Option or Varis by SDF.(forgot) Varis ended on a surprising
note...Runtime Error at XXXX:XXXX!? But it seems that it was designed
to be a surprise ending...(who knows?). Last was Devotion by Waterlogic.
Stunning display of real time phong shading on the water and the 24-bit
color thingy really brought down the crowd...sure winner :)
After a short break, the gfx category came on. Rather boring...presentation
of the works could be better improved...

6:00pm My musician left (had to report to camp...NS!!) The organisers
counted the votes busily, double checking and triple checking...
Then, Roy came up to announce the results. A new talent, Seventh Sky
swiped the top 2 places in the music composition category, leaving
Ng Pei Sin wit a 3rd. Cheng Kiang won the transcribes category with
St Elmo's Fire, and Morbid got the tops for gfx section. Finally,
they announced the results for the demo compo...Vortex was first announced.
Really surprised me...didn't think I could even get 5th!? Anyway, Varis
came second and Devotion, the surewinner got 1st (again)

Everything was quickly over, some modemmers came up to me to chat,
and soon everyone was leaving....I took my prize and lugged it
home...:) Didn't even tell my parents I took part in a competition...
even got scolded for anyhow "buying" things home...:( Anyway, all
was explained and everything went fine...:>

Hey, if u didn't witness The Scene 96, make sure u turn up for
The Scene 97! Singapore's Demo Scene needs more support and acknowledgement.
And this needs the help of all...well, see ya in TSC97!
byeby...adios amigos...sayonara...may the demo force be with u...amen

greetz to all of u all out there (dun even know what demo groups there
are in Singapore...gee...have to ask around)

signed,
Nicky Bay
aka Genma1/4