Pump by Iguana [web]
·P·U·M·P·
An Iguana production in 1995.
First place at the Euskal Party.
This is the real release version.
Legalese: {
Copyright (C) 1995 by the authors. All rights reserverd. This software
can be freely distributed by anybody in unmodified form.
(If you're so stupid as to sell this production, then you wouldn't give
a shit if we cared to forbid it)
NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. USE THIS SOFTWARE AT YOUR OWN
RISK.
(A really really small risk, may I add).
All brands, trademarks and registered names are property of their
respective holders.
(i.e. Whatever is owned by someone, we hereby reconize it as such)
This is pure fiction. Coincidence with real persons, names and
situations are purely coincidental.
(Shit happens...)
No animals were harmed during the production of this demo, except
ourselves.
(Yeah! Our eyes ached badly!)
}
Jare happily tapping at the keyboard:
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Foreword in spanish....
Antes que nada, debo decir que no me siento cómodo escribiendo
el fichero de información de una demo en castellano, así que limitaré su
contenido a lo estrictamente necesario. La razón es que me cabrea coger
un NFO de una demo y encontrarme con una ristra de palabras en idioma
desconocido, luego no voy a hacérselo yo a los demás. Para defender el
idioma ya está la R.A.E. de la Lengua. :-)
Hablaré básicamente sobre la Euskal, lo que sucedió allí, y poco
más, que son las tres de la mañana. Esta demo empezó a gestarse poco
después del Assembly'94; lógico, ya que un demoero aficionado nunca para,
siempre está probando cosillas o pensando ideas (tenerlas es otra cosa).
Varios efectillos fueron surgiendo, y pensamos que podríamos tener algo
listo para presentar en el Assembly'95. Ingenuos... por supuesto, ni de
coña: todos en el grupo teníamos otras cosas en que pensar.
Al fin, llegó el puente del Pilar y la esperada Euskal Party. Mi
placa madre con el 486DX2/66 y la SVGA ET4000/w32p VLB con un mega tenían
que viajar hasta allí para la competición (tal cual se especificó en las
normas), pero no me apetecía llevarme el equipo entero, y no pensaba que
hubiera necesidad de él. Por tanto, desmonté el equipo y listos. Apareció
por sorpresa un portátil bastante chulo disponible para llevarse, un P75
con 8 megas, CD x4 y pantalla color TFT de ésas, así que "por si acaso"
le metí una colección de fuentes que JCAB y yo hemos estado haciendo en
el último año y medio. Enganché también el Watcom C 10, y ese fue nuestro
equipaje.
Claro, las cosas nunca salen como esperas. Llegar allí, soltar los
bártulos y charlar con la gente, reunirnos todos los del grupo, mirarnos y
surge la presgunta: ¿Vamos a presentar algo? Tras vaciarnos los bolsillos,
vemos que ninguno hemos traído nada preparado para presentar como demo; lo
único, Noisy Man tal vez presentaría una música, y COI y Kronos sendos
gráficos. Si queríamos presentar una demo, había que coger los restos de
código, juntarlos y después hacer algo coherente con ellos (una cosa es
programar una rutina de polígonos ultrarápida, y otra muy diferente crear
una demo completa).
El caso es que nos picó el gusanillo, y... tras 28 horas
ininterrumpidas de Yann y mías, más n-mil horas de los demás, llegaba la
deadline para las demos de PC y ¡teníamos algo decente! Entre bromas sobre
el puesto en que podríamos quedar, se hizo el concurso y... ganamos.
¿Qué puedo decir sobre el concurso de PC? Está claro que no fue
precisamente un camino de rosas: la demo de GEN-X corrió muuuy lenta,
otras tuvieron problemas con el sonido, y alguna cascó irremisiblemente.
Y encima el grupo organizador gana con una demo muy corta y algo pobre.
Creo que nadie se plantea que pasaran cosas raras en la votación, pero
tampoco es algo que deje con muy buen sabor de boca.
Respecto a los problemas con el equipo, pues decir que fueron cosa
de la inexperiencia, y que todos hemos aprendido bastante para la próxima.
Nosotros mismos ya sufrimos los problemas de hardware en el Assembly'93
con la Inconexia, que no se pudo ni siquiera presentar, así que sabemos
lo que supone ver el objeto de tus desvelos fallando ante cientos de
personas. Al menos, que la gente sepa que nuestro acceso a la máquina de
la competición, deadlines, etc. fue exactamente el mismo que para todos
los demás. Sólo puedo añadir que los casques de las demos no tienen que
ser necesariamente problemas de hardware: por algo Nefron es "solo"
betatester en Iguana... Pero mientras más cosas raras evites (como tocar
registros de la VGA, usar Real Flat Mode o programar 100% ASM) menos
problemas tendrás. Triste o no, es la cruda realidad. En el ASM'95 las
normas eran muy estrictas con el sistema en que correrían las demos: SB
*y* GUS, EMM386, etc. y hubo acierto pleno: ninguna de las 15 demos dio
el menor problema! Y ten siempre presente que en un concurso la máquina
tendrá que estar enchufada a un convertidor RGB->PAL o algo así, y que
eso necesariamente va a interferir en el funcionamiento normal de la
VGA.
En lo que respecta a porqué la gente nos votó, pues puede ser por
varias razones: porque les gustó la demo, porque el nombre de Iguana tiene
algo de fuerza, porque todo el mundo pudo vernos programándola allí, porque
tenemos muchos amigos en la scene de PC y también en la de Amiga, y porque
enviábamos saludos a muchos grupos de ambos sectores. En fin, también hubo
gente que NO nos votó por parecerle un trabajo chapucero e indigno del
nombre, así que hay opiniones para todos los gustos.
Si la gente no está de acuerdo en que como grupo organizador también
compitamos, pues no volverá a ocurrir; yo mismo soy de esa opinión, pero lo
cierto es que durante el Party, con el ambientazo que había, ni se me pasó
por la cabeza. Nadie se mostró tampoco en contra, así que probablemente
todo esto es sólo paranoia de mi mente calenturienta.
En otro orden de cosas, corregir la histórica mentira que se
difundió en la Inconexia sobre la música: el tema central fue compuesto y
es propiedad de DJ/Batman Group (Amiga), y no del listo que lo consiguió
no-se-cómo y nos lo envió, ese tal 303 Acid Factory. Si el personaje en
cuestión tiene a bien defenderse, puede ponerse en contacto con nosotros.
En beneficio de la duda, su nombre real permanecerá tan secreto como en su
momento me lo pidió. Pero la vergüenza que pasé cuando los miembros de
Batman Group me pusieron al corriente fue tremenda. En fin, al menos creo
que la demo no les disgustó; supongo que bien está lo que bien acaba.
Finalmente, decir que si llegó a tus manos la versión de la demo
tal cual estaba para la competición, que no te pase ná. Serían 78 ficheros
o así, se ejecutaría con un P.BAT y la configuración estaría escondida
en el fichero PUMP.VTO, configurada para GUS en la 260h. Ni texto de
información, ni FILE_ID.DIZ, nada, un desastre que nunca debió salir a la
calle.
Nada más, hasta la próxima!
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OK, end of spanish messages.
This demonstration won the Euskal Party competition held in Tolosa,
Guipuzkoa, Basque Contry, Spain, Europe, World, Solar System, etc. Most of
the low-level code was already written prior to the Party, but the demo
itself was designed, composed, coded, linked, synchronized and polished at
the partyplace, during a period of 5 hours and another 28 hours of frantic
keyboard abuse. If you're looking for top-notch first-class worl-dominating
cool code, look elsewhere, but if you go ahead and run this we hope you
enjoy it as it is.
The name comes from the very simple fact that we had a very nice
music, a music with a beat that made this Pum-Pum-Pum background. Yann said
to honor it naming the demo "Pum", but I misunderstood him and typed "MD
PUMP". From there on. At least this is the first Iguana demo that hasn't
been given a name by the brother of a member. We breaking barriers again!
The DemoVT musicsystem, the polygon fillers, 3D object converters
and handlers, splines, VBL interrupt and keyboard code were all made before
the party. The bluish, clody, rotating, smokey effect, and the basic tunnel
generator (100 lines of C) were also written prior to the trip. The rest
was at the place. This means you'll find yourself thinking that the greet
fonts come from DeluxePaint, or why the credit logos, simple as they are,
range from 250 to nearly 800 polygons each, and also why nobody notices
that they're fully Gouraud-shaded, a waste. Everything made in a hurry, you
know.
This demo is obviously dedicated to JCAB, which went to Denmark
in September to work for the Scavenger videogames company. Keep the name
in mind because they're going to push real hard soon. They have some names
from the scene working for them, including people from Silents, Lemon,
Triton, Darkzone, Iguana (obviously) and some more.
Which brings me to the theme of the scene and the commercial stuff.
Why are there so little games written by demo people? On the PC we have
Zone66 by Tran, Jazz JackRabbit by Arjan Brusse (Ultraforce), Prototype by
Erik Pojar (S!P) and hardly anything else. Not a track record by any means.
Still, many people at parties tell you that they're working on this or that
game, but then nothing comes out.
I think most people don't realize the difference between a game
and a demo: in a demo you control exactly what you want to show, and also
you are not obligued to give the user a 'standard' amount of fun or
complexity. In games it's somehow the reverse, because you must make
everything react to what the player wants, and also you have to give him
enough fun to compensate for the price he pays. Roughly, the hard and
boring part of making a game starts at the point where the demo code would
end. There are other factors, of course, like deadlines and preferred
launch dates, marketing campaigns, competition, etc. but they're not so
relevant as the main reasons.
I feel many of the coders that started their game projects never
went on after the demo phase, because of the obvious production problems
(quantity of graphics, quantity of sound effects, storyline, stages/maps,
etc.), but mainly because of the boredom that surrounds the rest of the
game coding work. Also, at the usual age of a democoder you don't need
the money or think of starting your professional career, are busy with
studies, and what you want is basically study, investigate and learn.
Games is a business, whereas demos are a hobby. Nobody is free from the
problem, think for example that FC submitted a demo of a pinball game
to Epic, but in the end the Epic Pinball game was written by somebody
else.
A fair chance of mixing democoding and moneymaking lies in demos
for commercial houses: FC have been successful in making presentations
for Waite Group and SSI, and Legend Design included and advertisement of
the ASM'94 CD-ROM in their Party'94 Report; Pehu and most of the Assembly
Organizing view this as a real future. Other field could be the development
of low-level specific libraries and engines like the VTAL Sound System by
JCAB or the DSMI by Otto Chrons, but to my knowledge this has never gone
further than the sound library area.
A new host of games from scene people are coming: Triton will show
some brilliant stuff with their dungeon game for Scavenger (somebody said
that "ID's Quake routines are almost as good as Triton's"), and I myself
hope that you will have quite some hours of thrill with my racing game from
IV Team and Noriaworks. People from Realtech are working with Ubi Soft in
France, and Funcom has got Skaven/FC on their list; Psychic Link seem to
have good relations with Bullfrog, and Gore/FC has started his own company.
The game industry is growing, and talents are needed to remove the
boredom and money from all those thousands of people that would otherwise
buy lame multimedia CD-ROMs. Democoders that think they would enjoy a
professional career in an exciting business have the chance, but only if
they understand that it's not democoding but games design and programming.
It's not the only chance, of course, there's always the millons of COBOL
lines to maintain, or the zillion Access records to sort, but it's one
growing way of earning a future.
One last thought: First Win'95 *real* demo out, hands up? I would
like to see a Windows demo compo at some party soon... :)
Enough mental masturbation for today.
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The credits:
Packaging: Yann
DemoVT: JCAB
Setup program: Jare; some bits by OLS, Captain Bit and Yann
PMODE/W: Tran & Daredevil
WCGSL library: JCAB and Jare
VBL based on code by PSI/FC
Keyboard handler based on code by Patch/Avalanche
General ideas and info from books and articles by
Mark Feldman, Michael Abrash, Tran, and more
Music: Noisy Man
Intro sequence: Idea and code by Jare
Logos by Kronos
Tunnel credits: Idea and code by Jare. The texture bitmap too! :)
3D models by Iñaki (yet another party member)
"Party Coding
rules" Thing: Idea and code by Captain Bit
Graphics by Kronos
EnvMapping: Idea and code by Yann
Models by some 3DStudio developer O:-)
Blurred smoke: Idea by Lemon & Scavenger O:-)
Code by Jare
Dragon pic: Picture by COI
Idea and code by Yann
Magic pic: Picture by Kronos
Greetings: Idea, code, compressor and logos by Yann
Support team:
Quality assurance and sleep avoidance by Raquel.
Technical support and driving by Parasite.
Encouragement by so many people I can't tell who, but I heard you
lurking behind my seat. :)
Surprised voice by Nefron and JCAB on the phone, back from the trip:
"WHAT?? You told me you had no demo for Euskal!!". :)
Most of the code is written in the C language and compiled with the
Watcom C/C++ 10.0a compiler. ASM was used for the polygon fillers, keyboard
and VBL handlers, the scanline loop of the blurred smoke and perhaps a
couple bits more. DemoVT and the setup program are in TurboPascal 6.0.
Funny enough, we were unable to optimize the intro sequence by coding it in
ASM, so we left in the C version. Good compiler or bad coders? Probably a
mixture.
Most of the sychronization was done on a portable Toshiba P75,
which turned out to have a refresh rate of 60Hz in MCGA 320x200x256 usual
mode, instead of the standard 70Hz, so later it had to be quickly hacked to
get the flashes and transitions right. Other problems solved at the party
include learning again how to use DemoVT (my last attempt was a year and
a half ago), compatibility problems (testing in a DOS window under Win95)
and corrections to the spline code. Not to mention finding our own tools,
which I had left back in Madrid (I didn't plan to do any coding, I didn't
plan to do any demo), like BGIF, GFV, etc.
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Greetings:
It's 1 hour later, much too late, and I will forget many people,
but that's life when writing greetlists; I will stick to persons that
were not at the Euskal:
JCAB, Avatar, Phil Carlisle, Ryan Cramer, Alpha, Pitbull, Nomad, Centauri,
Pehu, Walken, Peter Nilssen, Phil Shatz, ARM, Xanthome, Erik Pojar, Arjan
Brusse, Yaka, Sandman, Lord Cyrix, Execom, Patte, Stone, .MAX, CHC, Reset,
Red Devil, DeathStar, Edge, Trug, Abyss, Devastator, Zodiak, Leinad,
Darkness, Zteel, Killer Loop, Charlatan, Fear, Cyberdancer, Chicken,
$Volkraq, Fighting Bull, Karl, Barti!, Ulrik, C. Yvon, Mark Feldman, Tran,
Freston, Echeva, Pallbearer, Matrix, Saint, Soft One, Paradise.
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List of productions, memberlist and distro/HQ list deleted. Drop by
Blastersound (+34-58-293-583) or Deckard (+34-1-643-10-67) in Spain, or any
good BBS in most other countries, and you will find stuff from us. Note
that it's not that we don't want distrosites anymore, simply we do not feel
a list necessary: if you like our productions and have them in your site,
then you are distributing them, therefore you are a distribution site of
our productions. Your BBS won't be more or less popular by being here, so
who cares. As for HQ, WHQ, EHQ and whatever, nowadays most people leeches
the files from some FTP site. That I remember, we have made FIREDEMO, VTIRIS,
VTGLOBE, THE_COP, INCONEXIA, HEARTQUAKE, PARTY94 (report), EUINVTRO and this
thing. Sources released include INCO_SRC, YANNS3D, HQ_WATER, HQ_LAND,
3DSRDR. Finally, the DEMOVT musicsystem, and the GFV, DGIF & BGIF
utilities. The VangeliSTracker is not properly an Iguana production, as it's
JCAB's TurboPascal player on his own.
Oh, on the Internet you can find demo stuff in ftp.cdrom.com /pub/demos/
and in x2ftp.oulu.fi, somewhere under pub/msdos/programming I think.
There used to be a Web page somewhere but I don't remember; perhaps
http://highland.dit.upm.es:8000/ (or however you write these URLs)
The memberlist is another business. The basic Iguana memberlist includes
JCAB, Yann, Noisy Man, COI, Captain Bit, Mikel, Nefron and me. But there
are lots of friends around that I consider members of the group: Ryan
Cramer, Estrayk, ARM, Iñaki, Parasite... I don't like either keeping a
long list up-to-date or making separate lists, so I will better forget
about keeping it any way. All I want from somebody to be considered an
Iguana member is to be a friend, and to let me or any of the above review
his work before releasing it under the Iguana name. Anything else is just
hassle and uneeded elitism. So much for these so-called "closed" groups.
We just want to have fun while keeping the name "Iguana" to mean something,
and for me this is the best way to do it.
If you want to contact us, I guess that my account will do:
a880104@zipi.fi.upm.es
but don't worry if I don't answer, there's a limit in the number of hours
and disk space used in that acount. And, anyway, there are similar limits
imposed upon myself by human nature.
Another way will probably be travelling to the Party'95 in Denmark. I will
be visiting JCAB by Xmas, so naturally we will drop by The Party. I suppose
that other Iguanas will join the trip.
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Boy, long time since I last wrote this long textfiles. I'm nearly asleep now.
Cu sumwhere, sumtime!
Madrid, October 25th of 1995.
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