eye catcher (the whammy bar bbs) by Surprise!Productions :: nfo

eye catcher (the whammy bar bbs) by Surprise!Productions [web]

ÜÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÜÛÛÛ ÜÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÜÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÜÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÛÛÛÜ ÜÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÜÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÛÛÛÜ
ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÜ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ
ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ßÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ßßß ÛÛÛÛ
ßÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛß ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛß Ü ßÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ
ÜÜÜÜ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÝ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÜÜÜÜ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ
ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ
ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ
ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÜ
ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛÛÛ
ßÛÛÛÛÛÛß ÞÛÛÛÛÛÛÝ ßÛÛÛ ßÛÛÛ ßÛÛÛ ßÛÛÛ ßÛÛÛÛÛÛß ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛß ßÛÛÛ

Ä´ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÄÄÄÄÄ PrOdUcTiOnS ÄÄ Ä Ä Ä Ä Ä Ä Ä

00 TABLE OF CONTENTS

00 TABLE OF CONTENTS
01 OPENING WORDS
02 ABOUT THIS DEMO/PROGRAMM/RELEASE
03 RELEASE CREDITS
04 DISTRIBUTION AND HANDLING OF OUR PRODUCTIONS
05 DEMOS/PROGRAMMS FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSE
06 CURRENT SURPRISE! PRODUCTIONS MEMBERLIST
07 TOO MANY MEMBERS?
08 RELEASE HISTORY
09 RELEASE FAKES
10 GREETINGS, MESSAGES AND THANKS
11 HOW TO CONTACT SURPRISE! PRODUCTIONS?
12 SURPRISE! PRODUCTIONS FAN-CLUB
13 OFFICIAL DISTRIBUTION SITE BBS LIST
14 HOW TO BECOME A SURPRISE! PRODUCTIONS MEMBER?
15 HOW TO BECOME A SURPRISE! DISTRIBUTION SITE?
16 FINAL WORDS

01 OPENING WORDS

We, the members of Surprise! Productions (S!P), are very glad
to welcome you to another production.

We hope you will like and enjoy it. Please honour our work, as
it is really a lot of "work" in every production.

02 ABOUT THIS DEMO/PROGRAMM/RELEASE

Typed by Erik

This demo requires at least a 80386SX processor, a VGA and a Gravis
Ultrasound for music. Tseng ET4000 / Vesa chipset support.

You should have at least 500k of free memory.

These files should be there:

EC.EXE ......................... The Demo itself
EC.NFO .......................... This Info file
FILE_ID.DIZ ........................ BBS ID-file
UNIVESA.ZIP ......... Vesa Driver for many VGA's

If the demo hangs (or has problems to start) start it with the '?'
option. You might also use the '/i' parameter to get the auto-detect
debug information.
There's a rich variety of command switches, it should be possible to
'configure' the demo for a big range of machines.

Humm, ti Dumm, here it is. The long awaited EyeCatcher demo for
our US-HQ The Whammy Bar.
Just to remind you of the features of this top-class board, here
are the specs:

ÛÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÜÛÛÛÛÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÜÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÜÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÜÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÛÛ ÛÛ
ÞÛÝ ÛÛÜÜÜÛÛ ÛÛÜÜÜÜÜ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛÜÜÜÛÛ ÛÛÜÜÜÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛÜ ÜÛÛ
ÞÛÝ ÛÛ ÛÛ ßÛÜÜÜÜÜ ßÛÛÛÛÛÛß ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÞÛÝ

ÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÜÛÛÛÛÛÜ ÛÛÛÛÛÛÜ
ÛÛÜÜÜÛß ÛÛÜÜÜÛÛ ÛÛÜÜÜÛß
ÛÛÜÜÜÛß ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ ÛÛ

+1708.941.7551 @ 28.8k
+1708.941.8658 @ 28.8k

ù Quantum Net WHQ / 7:708/0 ù SBC-Net Illinois Host / 13:555/0 ù
ù Federation Net Midwest Hub / 38:100/6 ù
ù Gravis Regional Support Node ù Surprise! Productions US HQ ù
ù Delusion and Radical Rhythms Dist Site ù Twilight Zone Dist Site ù
ù TRiBE Dist Site ù Xography Dist Site ù Access Denied Dist Site ù
ù Psychic Monks Dist Site ù KLF Dist Site ù SCS Dist Site ù
ù One of the largest music BBS's in the Midwest ù
ù Over 1 Gig On-Line ù No Ratios ever ù
ù Sysop: Guitar ù

Well, what else is to say about this demo? Not too much I think....
It's quite straightforward and not too inovative.
I just want to answer some often asked questions regarding this
demo (asked by the staff of my beta-test-slaves ;-)

"Where did you get that eye-animation?"

It's taken from an Austrian TV-commercial for - believe it or not -
an anti tick serum.

"Who's that girl on the cube? Your girlfriend?"

No. I don't know who she is, I guess I got the picture from a
PD-library.

"Why does the music fade out too early?"

Well, Fred has composed the song that way, and I didn't want to
restart the music for ten secs, just to fade it out again...

Most of this demo was coded in two weeks, around easter of 1994.
Of course I could also do this common zooming & rotating of the
maps for the cube, whoever does a mapping routine really knows how
fucking easy it is.. I just didn't do it.
About the texture routine: It's optimized. And I mean it.
Of course, I know it's really dangerous to stick out your head in
such a manner, but as far as I know (from tests, and by watching
other demos) it's the fastest of it's kind.
It is a general texture mapper for 256 colors, no perspective.
Bitmaps can be up to 256x256 pixels, clipping is implemented.
It uses 8 bits for the fractional parts. It uses 4.25 instructions
per pixel (4 instructions per pixel, then a stosd for 4 pixels)
And last but not least, it's been a topic of several letters be-
tween me and Stone / Dust. In the end (after even eliminating the
pipeline stalls of the CPU) we both agreed, that it's quite 'good'.

This demo uses two mcga-pages for pageflipping, so it looks best on
a super vga. Without super vga, it simply doesn't flip. That speeds
some routines up a bit, but it looks far more awful (especially on
slow machines)
To get access to the two pages you need either:
ù a ET4000 chipset
ù a Vesa BIOS
or
ù a Vesa driver for your VGA
Well, I can't do anything about the first two, but I included a
public domain vesa driver (Univesa) for a big variety of cards.

This demo has been tested on a big range of machines with 80486 and
80386 CPU's. It always worked. We couldn't test it on a Pentium, so
if it doesn't wotk, just buy me a Pentium, and we'll fix that!
Sometimes it doesn't work on Trident VGA's (8800 and 8900 series)
but hey, whoever has a Trident should be used to having troubles :)

O.K. for those who don't know it:
Rick Dangerous has stopped to exist. I don't use this handle any-
more. Now I call myself simply by my real name which is Erik Pojar,
so whenever you see Erik/S!P it's that good old Rick Dangerous dude

Howevery I'm also a little bit shizophrenic: I really ran into this
chart (in some diskmag) with two different rankings for Erik of S!P
and Rick Dangerous of S!P..... Oh man, why do you publish diskmags?
To document how uninformed you are about the scene?

03 RELEASE CREDITS

The Credits for EyeCatcher:

Code .................................. Erik
Music ................................. Fred
Graphics .............................. Erik
Design ................................ Erik
Beta-Testing ........................ Guitar
Beta-Testing .................. Stone / Dust
Beta-Testing ................. Beasty / ACid
Beta-Testing ................. Ironman / ???

IRC-shock support by Yaka / Xography
Yaka: "Hey, I liked the preview of your new demo!"
Erik: "??? Oh my god! The preview got spread.. ARGH!!!"
Yaka: "Calm down, I just saw it at our Xography/Dust/KLF meeting...
Stone showed it to me..."
Erik: "Phew, and I was afraid it really got spread...."
(Erik feels a *great relieve*)

Erik wants to thank all the gfx-artists who promised to do GFX
for this demo, but kept him hanging on in the end.
So I had to do it myself... I ended up using fractals and Corel
draw fonts... Big deal, eh?

04 DISTRIBUTION AND HANDLING OF OUR PRODUCTIONS

All our demos/programms, except the ones which we made for
different companies, are freeware.

This means that you can copy and distribute them freely as long
as you make no modifications to them. Also, you must not charge
any money for copying/spreading them.

If you are a PD/shareware/freeware distributor, make sure to
contact us to get a written permission to include our productions
in your collection/library.

If you are a PD/shareware/freeware distributor, who includes
our productions without written permission you agree in paying
the producer of the programm USD ($) 100.000,--

In general, all commertial utilization of our demos without our
written permission is strictly forbidden. This includes selling
disks (or any other electronic media) containing our demos or
programms. By acting against this you agree in paying the
producer of the programm USD ($) 100.000,--

05 DEMOS/PROGRAMMS FOR COMMERCIAL PURPOSE

If you think our demos/programms are interesting and would like
us to make one for you, be welcome to contact us.

When contacting us, include a short explanation of the kind of
demo you are interested in. This would help us to evaluate the
size of the project.

Kindly include, for example, the following information:

o what kind of demo effects would you be interested in

o are you interrested in full graphic design (pictures, logos...)

o if the demo should have sound, which soundcard should be
supported (Adlib/Soundblaster/Gravis Ultrasound) and which
kind of music should be played

o how long should the demo run (in minutes approximately)

o where will the demo be shown and when would you like to
recieve it (when should it be finnished)

o how much you would be willing to pay for the demo

o are you interested in any other tool/programm from us

We would like to point out that our demos are no animations.
Which means, that nearly everything you see on the screen is
being real-time calculated. The speed of the movement is usually
dependant to the speed of the processor and the speed of the
VGA-card.

You should also know that we do not make demos for MicroSoft
Windows due to its limitations from an assembly language
programmers point of view.

To contact us write to management address listed in point 11 in
this file.

06 CURRENT SURPRISE! PRODUCTIONS MEMBERLIST

AUSTRALIA
~~~~~~~~~
Saint Sinner Musician

AUSTRIA
~~~~~~~
Antibyte Coder, Management Adviser
Burning Chrome Coder, Musician
Corwin Graphix
Erik Pojar Coder, Management Assistance
J.O.E. Graphix, Musician
Luke Coder, GFX
Thomas Obermayr SysOp of "Deep Thought"
Maestro Graphix
Peci Coder
ReeBoK Management, PR, GFX
Slowhand SysOp "Polymorph Lights", Tool-coder
Spike Hardware, Driver, Coder
The Faker Coder

CANADA
~~~~~~
Bigboy Courier

CHILE
~~~~~
Death Adder Tool-coder

DENMARK
~~~~~~~
Firefly PR, GFX

FINLAND
~~~~~~~
O'Neill Courier, PR
Outcast Courier
Whiplash Musician, GFX

FRANCE
~~~~~~
Elwood Management Assistance France
Fred Musician
Kid Graphix
Patriot Courier

POLAND
~~~~~~
Jasper Coder
Marqs Coder
Saracen Renderer
Tees Graphix
Unreal Coder, Management Assistance Poland

SWITZERLAND
~~~~~~~~~~~
Blackbird Coder
Chicken Management Swiss, Coder, SysOp "The Lycaeum"
Joop Coder
Karreng Coder, Management Assistance Swiss
MahlZahn Renderer, GFX
Necromancer Coder
Nosferatu Musician
Silent Mode Musician
Zarek Coder
Zwerk Zwack Coder

07 TOO MANY MEMBERS?

In a world where distances are getting closer day by day, where
nationalism and rasism have to be stopped, we think it is very
important to have people with different nationality, color and
religion together in one group.

Because this is a great way to learn from each other, to learn
about other cultures and to learn to accept them.

We have to learn that we are not white or black, moslem or jew,
Austrian, German, Dane or whatever. Because we are all humans!
And that's the only thing that counts.

So respect each other, have an open mind for all new things you
don't know yet and you will live happier...

We see ourselves as first successfull demo-group, which got the
attribute "international". We want to show, that friendship is
possible all over the world. There can't be borders to stop us.

So share your talents, complement one anothers talents and learn
to accept each other and a better world could become one step
closer.

08 RELEASE HISTORY

LATERNA.ZIP Laterna Magica by Surprise! Productions
A Slideshow. The Wonderful Art of J.O.E.

COPPER.ZIP Copper by Surprise! Productions
A Demo. Erik shows what a standard PC can do.

HIGHLAND.EXE Highlander BBS Advertisment by Surprise! Productions
An Intro. for the S!P AHQ (out & offline)

D&P.ZIP Drums & Pipes by Surprise! Productions
A Musicselector. J.O.E.'s first musics.

UNLPOWER.ZIP Unleased Power by Surprise! Productions
A Demo. S!P Denmark shows its talent.

STARDRM.ZIP Stardream by Surprise! Productions
A Dentro for our Demo "The Good, the Bad & the Ugly"

SADT.ZIP Surprise! Adlib Tracker V1.1
A Musiceditor. "Finally our own replayer!", Erik.

S!P-BBS.ZIP Killroy BBS Intro by Surprise! Productions
A Intro. for our new DKHQ.

GBUFINAL.ZIP The Good, the Bad & the Ugly by Surprise! Productions
A Demo. This is the ONLY final version!
2nd Place on The Party 3 Demo compo!

D&P_GUS.ZIP Drums & Pipes supports now the Gravis Ultra Sound.
A Musicselector.

HARDFOLK.ZIP Hardfolk.mod by Trap/Bonzai/Surprise! Productions
2nd Place on The Party 3 Music compo!

S!POINT.EXE Pointbreak BBS Advertisment by Surprise! Productions
An Intro. for the S!P EuroHQ

S!P_I2R.ZIP IFF to RAW converter by Surprise! Productions
A Tool. Graphic-Converter incl. ASM-source

S!P_ID.ZIP Includer Daemon by Surprise! Productions
A Tool. Includes ASCII-text into .mod-files.

09 RELEASE FAKES

GBU.ZIP The unfinished version of The Good, the Bad &
the Ugly-Demo. Released by the Amiga-Organisers
of The Party 1993. Be sure you get the final
version of this demo including the "GBU.NFO" info-
file.

SADT13.ZIP The Surprise! Adlib Tracker V2.0 beta, which was
supposed to be only avail for S!P-members, because
of bugs and beta-testing.
Be sure you get the real SADT 2.0 without those
horrible bugs.

10 GREETINGS, MESSAGES & THANKS

Erik greets:

Antibyte, Arjan Brusee, Barti, B-Man, Burning Chrome, Charp, Chicken,
ChuckB, Daryl, Darkness, Drax, Erik Stridell, Firefly, Fred, Gore,
Guitar, Green Jester, Hellraiser, JCH, J.O.E, JCAB, Kapsu, Luke,
Mahlzahn, Marc Helwig, MartialArtist, Mirage, Moleql, O'Neill, Peci,
Red Devil, Rich Geldreich, Robban, Sigfrid, Silent Mode, Slowhand,
Spike, Stone, The Faker, Timo, Tobe, Uli, White Shadow, Wildfire,
Xerox, Yaka, Zwerg Zwack, Zax

Watch out for our next demo!
Working title: 'Cyprian Ukwende & Khashdrahr Miasma'

11 HOW TO CONTACT SURPRISE! PRODUCTIONS?

To be in contact with the Surprise! Management use following
possible ways:

By Mail: ReeBoK (Management, PR)
Severin-Stephan Kittl
Hollergasse 27/19
A-1150 Vienna
Austria
Europe

Erik Pojar (Coder)
Siegfriedgasse 55
A-1210 Vienna
Austria
Europe

Phone (voice): +43-1-8924204 (ReeBoK)

+43-1-2154457 (Erik Pojar)

Fax: +43-1-2704723 (Luke/ReeBoK)

FidoNet: 2:310/64.15 (ReeBoK)

2:310/64.16 (Erik Pojar)

CDN: 94:57/104 (ReeBoK)

DGI: 68:430/1.1 (ReeBoK)

InterNet: smarton@email.tuwien.ac.at (Erik Pojar, Antibyte)

IRC: channel #coders

BBS: Polymorph Lights (Surprise! World HQ BBS)
(Slowhand)
+43-1-4951874 (multinode ringdown)

You can also contact the producers of this production:

Erik Pojar
Siegfriedgasse 55
1210 Wien
Austria

Phone / Fax: +43 1 2154457
Email: smarton@email.tuwien.ac.at
Fido: 2:310/64.16

12 SURPRISE! PRODUCTIONS FAN-CLUB

As it is not possible for us to answer absolutly ever letter,
but you may still feel like writing us for some questions and
want to be sure about an answer, the Surprise! Productions
official fan-club is born.

If you choose this way to be in contact with us be sure to
include a stamped-addressed-envelope (SAE) (inside Austria) or
2 international-reply-coupons (IRC) (rest of the world) and write
to:

Official S!P Fan-Club
c/o Thomas Neuhofer
Hollergasse 27/18
A-1150 Vienna
Austria

If you will do the above standing, an answer is guaranteed!

Here you can also say things you don't like about S!P or tell us
your ideas what we could make better...

13 OFFICIAL DISTRIBUTION SITE BBS LIST

* "Polymorph Lights" (2 nodes rd) WHQ +43-1-4951874 (DST/ZyXEL)
"Pointbreak" (3 nodes rd) EHQ +32-1-1436925 (DST)
* "Deep Thought" AHQ +43-316-384842 (DST)
"Deep Thought" (ISDN node) AHQ +43-316-850235 (Euro ISDN)
"The Whammy Bar" (2 nodes rd) USHQ 708 941 7551 (DST)
* "The Lycaeum" (node 1) CHHQ +41-41762989 (DST)
"The Lycaeum" (node 2) CHHQ +41-41763289 (ZyXEL)
"Kilroy BBS" DKHQ +45-45833298 (ZyXEL)
"Genesis BBS" (4 nodes rd) BHQ +32-2-2453498
"A.C.E" (3 nodes rd) FHQ +33-1-45887548
"Side Effects BBS" IHQ +39-755724644
"Channel 0" (node 1) USDS 714 532 5950
"Channel 0" (node 2) USDS 714 532 5968
"Powergrid" USDS 813 481 6539
"The End of Time" USDS 803 855 0783 (V32bis)
"SouthWest Music" CANDS 519 734 2639
"Triplex" SFDS +358-0-5062277
"Methadone" SFDS +358-0-4208227
"Chaotic Vision" SFDS +358-4-2714528
"Megaverse" GRDS +30-61277089 (V32bis)
! "Dune II" HDS +36-62342793

* = SysOp is S!P member!
! = 15:00-07:00 CET weekdays only! 24 hours on weekends.

14 HOW TO BECOME A SURPRISE! PRODUCTIONS MEMBER?

You are a smart talented guy who want to share his ambitions
with us and work in a professional organised demo-group?

So just make sure that you copy some of your ownmade stuff
(graphix, musics, source-codes) on a/some disk/disks and send
it/them with a letter and the downstanding outfilled sheat to
ReeBoK of S!P (send ONLY by MAIL, FAX, FidoNet, CDN or DGI!).

Please notice that sending us your work and filling out the above
sheat means not that you are automatically a Surprise! member.
We will check your work and get back to you if we have a positive
answer.

15 HOW TO BECOME A SURPRISE! DISTRIBUTION SITE?

What we expect from you and your BBS:

o All ever released productions of S!P have to be online.

o You have to contact S!P at least once a month by calling
the Polimorph Lights BBS.

o Your BBS has to be absolutely Demo-oriented, you yourself have
to be very interested in demos and the PC demo-scene in
general.

o All S!P releases have to be free download for all users of
your bulletin board system.

In exchange you can expect:

o Your BBS (Name & Number) will be mentioned in every S!P release
in the distribution site BBS list of this file.

o You have the chance to get all S!P releases first hand, but only
if you are active yourself.

What we can't guarantee but what is likely happen, is that your
BBS will become more and more popular and its quality will
improve dramatically.

Please read the above rules carefully and think twice before sending
the following sheat to POLYMORPH LIGHTS BBS (S!P World HQ):

--------------------------------------------------------------------
| Handle: | Group: |
| | |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| Real Name: | Address: |
| | |
----------------------------------- |
| E-Mail: | |
| (IRC/InterNet) | |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| FidoNet: | Phone (Voice): |
| | |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| CDN: | Fax: |
| | |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| Other Net(s) (DGI, GDN, ...) |
| |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| BBS-Name: |
| |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| BBS-Numbers / Connected Modem / Speed |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| I am HQ / Distribution Site for following groups at the moment: |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Please notice that filling out the above sheat means not that you
are automatically a Surprise! Distribution Site.
We will check the sheat and get back to you if we have a positive
answer.

16 FINAL WORD

We hope you enjoy all our work and thank you for reading this
information file.

Signed: the Surprise! Productions crew & supporters!

[ back to the prod ]