Future 1999 by Pers' Wastaiset Produktiot [web]
FUTURE 1999 - A VIC-20 DEMO BY VIZNUT/PWP Originally to be released at Alternative Party 2008. Due to some organizational problems there, the release was postponed to Stream 2009 where it came 1st in the oldschool demo competition. The file future1999-vice21.d64 is a version optimized for the latest release of the VICE emulator (2.1). Should run straight with autoload, just make sure that all memory expansions are off and true drive emulation is on. A hardware-optimized is there as well, of course, but it won't be released until certain issues have been resolved. == TECHNOLOGY & STUFF == The technological innovation in the demo is the audio compression scheme (which is not utilized even close to its full potential). The codec uses raw waveforms but supports variable bitrates and looping to keep the binary bursts compact. As I was too lazy to compose a proper melody, I decided to go for the "soundscape" route instead. The algorithm that generates the harmonies is very simple, consisting of a couple of logical operations tied to a free-running counter. It's, by the way, my first attempt at a generative soundtrack in a demo. The animation streamer is the same as in The Next Level. All the visuals and cinematography were made in just five short evenings, and they had to be simplified even further from the original versions due to the loader schedule and memory constraints being too tight otherwise. The version included in this package is the emulator-optimized party version. Technically, this means two things: #0: The volume of the digital sound playback has been adjusted to the behavior of VICE 2.1, which results in too faint sounds on the real hardware. #1: In order to keep the flow smooth, the semaphore mechanism in the streamer has been disabled. This leads to loading problems with many real-world disk drives (virtual ones, i.e. 1541U, should manage the stream fine, however). The hardware-optimized version will be released once the flow issue has been properly resolved. I'm also hoping to include NTSC support in the final version (there are no raster tricks, so it's basically just a matter of screen position, like in TNL, of which I may also release an NTSC-compatible version). That's all for today. http://www.pelulamu.net/viznut/ http://www.pelulamu.net/pwp/
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