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                         (__)      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
