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Initial impressions

 
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Shadow/Noice
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2003 5:59 am    Post subject: Initial impressions Reply with quote

When I first heard of the demodvd project many years ago, I was convinced it wasn't something I was going to buy.
Why pay to have a DVD of demos I already have on my computer?
Luckily I changed my mind after Gnilk/Noice got his copy and highly recommended it.
Now it is the second DVD in my collecion (the first being "The One" which was the price for second place 64k intro at Dreamhack02 Smile)

I must say that I'm very impressed with it. The whole production looks very professional in menus etc. (love the fact that the menus have different design on the oldschool/newschool side).
Also the little documentary about demos was very well done, perfect introduction for people who are not familiar with demos.
There was one minor technical detail that I'm sure people have already pointed out, but here goes anyway:
Trixter correctly pointed out that the 8 bit computers like the C64 didn't have FP instructions and no divide instruction.
Well, the C64 didn't have any multiply instruction either! And that's the one you use most when doing 3D calcs. (9 muls/2 divs for a standard 3d rotate/perspective calc.)
Also the lack of floating point didn't extend only to the 8 bit computers, 16 bit computers like the Amiga and Atari didn't have any FP either (unless you added an extra processor). Still doing 3d math with 16.16 fixed point was rather easy.
Minor details ofcourse, nothing that draws down the overall impression.

On to the technical (video-transfer) aspects. While I've only had time to watch a few demos on each side, I did notice some jerkiness in the movement of some parts of "Crystal Dream 2/Triton". The line vector, vectorscroller and texturemapped globe seemed very unsmooth, while other parts didn't seem suffer from this at all, but maybe it's me seeing things that aren't there...

And btw. I've seen many comments here that nly the oldschool side is worth watching and blabla. While I agree that the oldschool style has greater value (since it can be a hassle to get those demos running nowadays) I still really enjoy the newschool side aswell. Some demos look and sound damn good on my widescreen TV and stereo! I never thought much about this before but some demos actually are "widescreen-ready" (black borders top/bottom) like Experimental/Wipe etc. Looks very nice on a WS TV!

And one last thing - I liked the fact that on the commentary track for "Enlight the Surreal" it was pointed out that Noice was founded in 1989. We may not be world famous, but we have had atleast one demo release every single year since 1990, that's something that atleast I'm proud off, and the fact that there are some members (like Gnilk and Swoffa) who have been with the team since 1989 and are still active (along with newcomers like me who joined in 1991 Smile)
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Shadow/Noice
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2003 6:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Forgot to say that I ordered at geekstuff.no - very swift delivery (ordered on friday, got it tuesday). Highly recommended to other potential buyers in Sweden.
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dmw
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Joined: 30 Jan 2002
Posts: 211
Location: Oregon

PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2003 7:58 pm    Post subject: comments Reply with quote

Shadow/Noice wrote:
Forgot to say that I ordered at geekstuff.no - very swift delivery (ordered on friday, got it tuesday). Highly recommended to other potential buyers in Sweden.


Thanks for the comments. It is always good to hear both the bad and the good. How else can we make the product better.

I'm not sure if you realized this since your demo group has a demo on the DVD you were entitled to a $2 discount (not much but something). I'm not sure how many people are aware of this but I tried to send this to lead of ALL the demogroups who contributed--but that was back in November.


WHAT IF MY GROUP IS REPRESENTED ON THE DVD

Per our agreement your group will receive at least one free DVD per demo (shipping out the first week of December) and is entitled to a discount on the purchase price. However, you'll have to go through one of the following people to receive the discount:

dmw@fusecon.com www.mindcandydvd.com (located in the US)
maz@maz-sound.com www.mindcandy.de (located in Germany)


If you didn't get your discount (obviously not) then we can give you that discount on Volume 2.

-dan
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Shadow/Noice
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2003 11:16 pm    Post subject: Re: comments Reply with quote

dmw wrote:
I'm not sure if you realized this since your demo group has a demo on the DVD you were entitled to a $2 discount (not much but something).


Never heard of this actually. The DVD was well worth paying full price for anyway, so it's no big deal.

dmw wrote:
If you didn't get your discount (obviously not) then we can give you that discount on Volume 2.


Great, I most certainly will buy volume 2, so I'll try to remember that.
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Trixter
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2003 7:38 pm    Post subject: Re: Initial impressions Reply with quote

Shadow/Noice wrote:
On to the technical (video-transfer) aspects. While I've only had time to watch a few demos on each side, I did notice some jerkiness in the movement of some parts of "Crystal Dream 2/Triton". The line vector, vectorscroller and texturemapped globe seemed very unsmooth, while other parts didn't seem suffer from this at all, but maybe it's me seeing things that aren't there...


No, you're quite right -- I was unfortunately not able to patch all sections to run at 60Hz without problems, so some of the more difficult sections have jerky scrolling Sad Sorry about that!
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