Poppycock by Offbeat
Starnberg, Germany, 17th of June 1992 THE POPPYCOCK DEMO ------------------ As you might know there was an ST group called "Offbeat" some time ago. This group intended to create a mega-demo in 1989, namely "The Poppycock Demo". The four Offbeat-members Ray, Big Alec, i and Flix coded various screens for this demo, but after all the demo has never been finished due to a lack of motivation and because the first screens have been too old (and bad). The work on the Poppycock demo started right after Offbeat launched the "What Time Is It?"-Demo. The Poppycock demo would have been Offbeat's second demo, but Offbeat made the Illumination demos, the Offbeat Demo Collection, the Gigastars demo, the Musical Wonder - 1990, the Musical Wonder - 1991, the Duplicator and the Module Collection disks instead and stopped working on the Poppycock demo. After the Musical Wonder - 1991 has been released Offbeat ceased to exist and the members Ray, Big Alec and Flix joined the Delta Force (i left Offbeat earlier). Eventually the Poppycock demo has been forgotten. Some days ago Ray and Flix discovered the old Poppycock-screens on ancient source disks. This folder contains these screens. Please note that all screens have been coded in 1989 and early 1990. We did NOT know, how to do sync-scrolling, left and right borders and much more stuff. Some screens go back to the desktop after you press space (with the wrong colour palette and weird sounds), some don't. The screens only run on one meg STs and have been packed with Pack-Ice 2.40. Some screens, especially those using screen borders, won't run on all STs. The memory should be empty before running the screens (in order to avoid crap on the screen). So it'd be the best if you reset the machine after each screen. Switch to Lo-Res and 50 Hz before you run the screens. Many of the screens are playing sounds, that have been ripped using the Offbeat Sound Ripper (OSR). The Ripper applies a very strange system of recording the sounds. Have a look at the code! Remeber: None of the screens is finished! We decided to release the screens now because the ST seems to be dying. When we watched all the old screens today, we had some intense nostalgic feelings. The early ST days have been the best! These days are gone now. What now follows is a brief description of each screen: - PREVIEW.PRG (Preview): The preview of the Poppycock demo. Coding and graphix by Ray. Music by Mad Max. Even though the given release date gave us plenty of time, the demo's never been launched. - INTRO.PRG (Introduction): Coding, graphix and muzak by the allmighty Big Alec. It was supposed to be the intro-screen for the Poppycock demo - LOADER.PRG (Loader): Guess what! This is Ray's loading screen. Coding and graphix by Ray of Offbeat. Originally this screen featured an exclusive Big Alec loading tune, but it has been lost on one of Ray's disks. This version includes an OSR-ripped Mad Max tune. - ACTION.PRG (Absolutely Action): Not using sync-scrolling Flix scrolls the entire screen (not very impressive nowadays, huh?). Coding and graphix by Flix, musix by Mad Max. It was ripped using the OSR. There's a lot of calc-time left. - DELICIOU.PRG (loading OFFBEAT.MOD) (Delicious Demo): The first Offbeat screen featuring tracker-sound (using ST-CNX's routine). Coding and graphix by Flix, musix from the Amiga. There is plenty of processor-time left. - DIGI.PRG (Digi Remix '89): Ray's fabulous Digi Remix of the year 1989. Everything was done by Ray. A rather tasteful screen in terms of graphix design. - DREAM.PRG (Colour Dream): The Colour Dream by Ray (coding and graphix). The musix is an OSR-ripped Mad Max tune. This screen displays more than 22000 colours! - FUTURE.PRG (Incredible Future Screen): Another nice screen by Ray. Once again the sound has been ripped with the OSR. - SEXY.PRG (Sexy Scroller): This is i's only contribution, but it isn't bad in the least. NO sync-scrolling of course and note that the picture of the woman contains 16 colours (4 planes!). Coding and graphix by i. Muzak by David Whittaker. You gotta press space after the screen turns black. - SPRITE.PRG (Sprite Spread): Flix' cheating sprite-record. Coding, graphix by Flix and musix by Alec, the Big. - STARS.PRG (Stars and Sprites): Big Alec did the code, the graphix and the funky tune. Allthough this screen is rather old (Big Alec coded it when he was still in a group called Abacus Crew), it's very neat. - ULTRA.PRG (Ultra Scroller): This is Ray's raster scroller. Coding and graphix by Ray. The Muzak is an OSR-ripped Mad Max sound (sound fits better than music in this case). Ray coded the scroller long before any of those raster-based scrollers appeared on the ST (we swear it!). And now some screens, that are not contained in this folder: - MCD (Multi Colour Demo): It was quite similar to Ray's Colour Dream and is lost on Flix' disks. - Main Menu: Flix' main menu was one of the reasons why we stopped to code this demo. It would have been the third game-like menu (after Union and Cuddly) and was very impressive. It didn't use sync-scrolling, but the scrolling area (4 planes parallax!) was bigger than the one of the Cuddly demos. Contrasting to the main menus of the Union demo and the Cuddly demos, this one was very much game-orientated (you could shoot and it was pretty hard to reach several screens). Unfortunately Flix discovered that the menu will only run on two meg STs when the screen was allready finished. Bad luck! Ok, that's all. We'd some other screens in our minds, but didn't start to code them. Have fun with the Poppycock demo! Flix & Ray (Ex-members of the (un-)dead crew Offbeat, now members of the Delta Force)
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