Xtreme by Belgian Archimedes Software Society [web] & Arm's Tech [web]
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A DEMO FROM THE X-TEAM
ARM's Tech - BASS - Eddie xxx - Excelsior ¹
PRODUCED BY
BASS
Welcome to the Xtreme demo ! This is probably the very first Acorn demo made
by several foreign demo crews together. It features several exciting
techniques never shown in the Acorn demo scene until now.
Have fun with this demo and may this be the beginning of a new era in the
Acorn demo making.
Interesting bits
----------------
- Every demo part can be skipped by pressing the <Esc> key. In some rare
cases when the responce on the <Esc> key is not immediate, have just a
little bit of patience.
- Pressing <Ctrl><Esc> will stop the demo completely.
System requirements
-------------------
Xtreme will run on many Archimedes and RiscPC machines however not all demo
parts will work on the low end machines. Some demo parts will (most of the
time silently) be skipped when the necessary hardware (e.g. VIDC20 or free
memory) isn't available. If you want to see every demo part in its full
glory, run the demo on a RiscPC without StrongARM and with 1 MByte VRAM
and with loaders enabled !
RISC OS 3.1
Xtreme needs at least RISC OS 3.1 as we used a couple of RISC OS 3.1 features
which made our lives easier. If you don't have RISC OS 3.1 (or higher) and
would like to run Xtreme, then the only option is to upgrade your OS. We're
Xtremely sorry for this.
Necessary free memory
We also recommend you have at least 1.7 MByte RAM *free* (ie. the sum of the
'Next' and 'Free' slot in the Task Manager window). When there is less
memory free, you'll risk to miss the best bits.
RiscPC
The RiscPC has a nice feature for defining (new) screenmodes. For the Xtreme
demo we need the following three mode resolutions : 320x256, 640x256, 640x480
and 640x512.
Previous versions of Xtreme (pre v1.03) required 100 Hz screen refresh
rates of these resolutions but because not every monitor or RiscPC model is
able to meet this condition (e.g. A7000), we now take the highest screen
refresh available.
When these mode resolutions are not available on your system, then you will
be asked if we may add three mode definitions to your current mode definition
file. Please take note that our mode definitions have a 100 Hz screen
refresh and that your monitory may possibly not accept it !!! So ignore this
question when you're running on an A7000 machine. Change the mode definitions
with programs like !NewModes or !ModeRPC to meet the requirements of your monitor
(if you can't have 100 Hz screenmodes).
Why "Xtreme" ?
--------------
...because it took Xtremely long to finish it
...because it is Xtremely long
...because there are Xtremely many X's in Eddie's name
...because there are Xtremely many rotation routines used
...because we have Xtremely many routines and idea's left unused :-(
...because "Xperience" was already been used
...because we've made Xtreme many versions of Xtreme (this is already the fourth...)
...and because its first name, "EuroDemo", sounds so dull
Conditions of use/distribution
------------------------------
This program may be freely copied on condition that all files are included
and are *UNALTERED*. No charge may be imposed except for a *SMALL* amount
for media and copying. Please bear in mind we wrote this during our
spare time and do not gain anything on it !!!
We give ART explicit permission to use this demo on their StrongARM CDROM.
If you're going to place this demo on a CD, we would like a couple for each
demo group for free. You can contact us, see the Web pages on
http://sidonie.imag.fr/AcornDemos/
On this Web site you will be able to find the latest version of Xtreme.
Please try to get the latest version before mass distribution (especially
when you want to place Xtreme on a CDROM).
Versions
--------
v1.02 : 1st public version (BETA)
v1.03 : - Now we're no longer so pedantic about having 100 Hz screens on a
Risc PC machine. We now take this highest frequency available
(which made it impossible to run Xtreme on machines like A7000 !
... well we hope so ... we're unable to test it, sorry).
However, screen refresh of 100 Hz does give the best results.
- 'Loaders' are now optional as some people don't really like them,
ah well...
- 'Loaders' do not longer suffer from short hang-ups, I hope.
- Pressing <Ctrl><Esc> after the 'Rings' part did leave the music
playing, oops...
v1.04 : - Fix for the Vlietinck bug which made the demo unusuable on pre
RiscPC machines. We apologize for any inconvienance caused.
v1.05 : - StrongARM aware. Some parts are skipped on a StrongARM machine
(those we're sure they can't be run on a StrongARM).
If you see a flashing cursor top-left of the screen, don't blame us. We
simply do a VDU 23,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 but modules like LineEdit (otherwise
a damn fine piece of software) seem to bugger this...
¹ Unfortunately Armaxess canceled their Xtreme participation just before the
deadline. We're Xtremely sorry :-< not to be able to include their demo
parts as their work is always of outstanding quality. Let's hope that the
things they've written for Xtreme demo so far don't get lost and find their
way in another demo production.
And finally...
--------------
Remember we made this demo for fun and during our precious sparetime. If you
have constructive comments then we would like to hear them. Also, we (BASS)
are interested to make commercial demo's for Acorn products.
(c) 1994-1996 X-Team[ back to the prod ]