Ethereal Visions by Neural Image Syndicate
Ethereal Visions (C) 1995 - Neural Image Syndicate (NiS) - Documentation
Ethereal : 1. Heavenly, celestial, of the upper regions of space
2. Of unearthly refinement of substance, character or appearance
3. Light, airy or tenuous
The Ethereal Visions demo is a sight and sound extravaganza, featuring
Ethereal visual effects, combined with a great digital sound-track.
System Requirements:
A 386sx or better (486 recommended), preferably with a decent video card.
600k or more of both Conventional and EMS memory is necessary. You also need a
sound card if you want to hear the cool music by Myzer/Legion (can be one of the
following : Sound Blaster, Gravis UltraSound, Pro-Audio Spectrum or Windows
Sound Source).
Credits:
The main program code is all by me (Goblin/NiS), in Turbo Pascal, with a LOT of
inline assembly language, in fact, most is inline ASM. The music system used is
MiDAS Sound System Copyright (C) 1994 Petteri Kangaslampi and Jarno Paananen.
I also had some help from Zem who converted a routine from Pascal to optimized
assembly code (which I later altered and optimized ever so slightly more).
The graphics are also by me :), and the great music was composed and written
by Myzer, of the Australian demo group - Legion.
Thanks also go out to the Beta testers, especially Random of Xtatic and HB of
Reality (Australian groups) without whom, some bugs would not have been found.
History:
This started out from an idea I got from something Rodent/SMASH! was working on.
(By the way, SMASH! is another great Australian demo group, look out for them).
I was going to make it into a BBS advert for Mindflux BBS, but it started
getting a bit big, so I decided to make it into an intro. But, it kept on
growing, and although its like an intro length-wise, and it was intended to be
an intro, 400k of music helps to make it more like a demo sizewise.
So I guess this could be considered a 'Dentro' :)
Maybe you're wondering why I didn't get some smaller music ? Well, because I
heard Myzer's tune, and thought it fit Ethereal Visions perfectly, even if it
was a little large.
Documentation:
The following sections are to help you get Ethereal Visions up and running with a
a minimum of effort. Ethereal Visions should detect your sound card, but, if it
doesn't, or there is an error, try the command line options.
Command Line Options :
Usage : EV [options]
Options : -sx Force Sound Device x (1=GUS, 2=PAS 3=WSS 4=SB, 5=No Sound)
- GUS=Gravis UltraSound, PAS=Pro-Audio Spectrum
- WSS=Windows Sound Source, SB=Sound Blaster (All versions)
-pxxx Force I/O port xxx (hex) for Sound Device
-ix Force IRQ x for Sound Device
-mxxxxx Set mixing rate to xxxxx Hz
-t Disable ProTracker BPM tempos
-u Enable Surround Sound
-oxxx Force output mode (8=8-bit, 1=16-bit, s=stereo, m=mono)
Known bugs (in the MiDAS musicplayer):
- For PAS users, that have 8 bit PAS cards, you must force the output mode into
8 bit (command line option '-o8'), otherwise, a default of 16 bit is used.
- The settings for the Windows Sound Source must be set using the command-line.
Trouble Shooting :
If Ethereal Visions does not work, give it lots of base memory (600k or more)
and some EMS (600k or so is needed here as well). Use a driver like EMM386,
Qemm, etc, to get the required 600k of EMS memory, and remove all TSR programs
like MOUSE etc, that take up valuable base memory to get the 600k of base memory
Note: You can use the 'MEM' command in DOS to check the available memory.
If the demo runs slowly, try lowering the mixing rate with the '-m' switch.
However, lower mixing rates mean a degradation of music quality.
The normal mixing rate is 44000, and a rate of 22000 should still produce decent
quality music, and also make the demo run faster.
Note: Lowering the mixing rate should not have any effect on computers using GUS
music cards. If the demo runs slowly while playing music through a GUS, then
upgrade your computer :)
Also, check to see if you have all the necessary files.
Included files:
EV.EXE - Ethereal Visions executible file
EV.DAT - Ethereal Visions data file
EV.MUS - Ethereal Visions music file
README.1ST - Duh! ;)
FILE_ID.DIZ - The BBS file descriptor
Any other files are probably BBS adverts.
Neural Image Syndicate (NiS) information:
Neural Image Syndicate is an all Australian group, producing high quality art
in the form of mind-altering VGA and SVGA images in various assorted formats,
as well as wicked pre-calculated animations (FLI's etc), ANSi logos, and
realtime calculated (sound and graphics) demos.
If you have an interest in graphics, coding, ANSi, or music, and think
you can cut it in NiS then give Black Knights BBS a call on +61 (02) 773-6630,
or contact one of the NiS members via one of the methods shown below.
NiS Member list:
The current, active members of NiS (as of writing this) are:
Goblin - GFX/Coding/ANSi
Fist - GFX/Animations
Contacting NiS:
Contact BBS's :
Black Knights ≈ +61 (02) 773-6630 - Contact: Goblin, Fist
Mindflux ≈ +61 (02) 416-2513 - Contact: Goblin
Shadow Gate ≈ +61 (02) 545-3420
Line 2 ≈ +61 (02) 545-2810 - Contact: Goblin
Contact Nets :
Bloodnet (Australia only, demo oriented)
DGiNet (International, demo oriented)
Goblin / NiS'95
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