It's that time of the year again by New Beat [web]
--- New Beat ---------------------------------------------------------------
it's that time of the year again
------------------------------------------------------------------- 2020 ---
Oh no! Sommarhack 2020 in its traditional form is cancelled and we don't
get to to hang out with all of our favorite Atari buddies! So sad!
Thankfully, the competitions are still on! So here we go...
another New Beat release finished in time!
IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ!
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--- AVOID SCSI ON 4 MB MACHINES ---
If you only have 4 MB of ST-RAM, run this demo from an IDE device (see
known issues for more information)!
--- VGA ONLY ---
This demo uses the standard VGA video mode (640x480x8bit at 60Hz) and
won't work on any RGB monitor or TV.
--- DO NOT USE HATARI ---
Please, do not run this demo in Hatari! Hatari doesn't properly emulate
the standard VGA mode of the Falcon030 and will force the vertical
refresh rate to 50Hz, resulting in the demo running too slow for the
music.
Use real hardware or watch the youtube video!
A note on accelerated computers:
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This demo was created and designed for standard Falcon030 computers. It
requires a 68030 CPU and must not be loaded into FAST-RAM. It'll work
on CT6x equipped computers if run in 030 mode.
Known issues:
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- Sometimes the MP2 player refuses to start. If the music isn't playing
by the time the title of the demo appears on the screen, please press
space and restart the demo.
- If your Falcon030 has only 4 MB of ST-RAM, the MP2 will be streamed
from disk. If the streaming is done from a SCSI device, such as the
CosmosEx, it'll cause loss of synchronization with the music and poor
performance.
Why? SCSI on the Falcon030 uses DMA for the transfer of data and the
DMA is stealing bus-cycles from the CPU during MP2 streaming. During
some sequences in the demo, when the VBL interrupt consumes nearly all
available CPU time, and the DMA starts using the bus when returning
from the VBL interrupt, it won't release the bus in time for the next
VBL interrupt. To avoid this problem, run the demo from an IDE device
or better yet, show your Falcon030 some love and upgrade it to 14 MB!
Some facts about this demo:
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- This demo requires about 3 MB of free ST-RAM.
- All parts of the demo run at a resolution of 640*480 in 8 bitplanes.
- This demo was originally meant to feature just one single effect,
the Sommarhack logo with the waves.
- The New Beat logo is drawn by Axm. I received a rather simple first
draft of it some 25+ years ago. Shortly after that I lost touch with
Axm, and no more work was done on the logo. I really liked the draft
though, so I kept it during all these years. A while ago I noticed
that somebody with the nick Axm had given JOY (our previous
Sommarhack demo) a thumb's-up at Pouet. I sent him the 25+ year old
draft of the logo to see if he would be interested in finishing it.
He was! It was worth waiting for!
- The music, "Fakebit Love" is from the album "Fakebit World" by
Malmen: https://malmenmusic.bandcamp.com/album/fakebit-world
- This year we actually asked the author of the music for permission to
use it in our demo.
- The demo uses the MP2 player by NoCrew.
- About 4.7 MB of disk space is used. The MP2 with its 3.5 minutes at a
bit-rate of 160kBit/s (49,170Hz) accounts for almost 90% (4.1 MB) of
those 4.7 MB.
- The DSP is only used for playing the music.
- The work on this demo started in February 2020 and was completed
4 months later, in June 2020.
- The demo was primarily developed on a PC with Sublime Text (text
editor) and vasm (cross-assembler).
- During development, testing and execution of code was performed on real
hardware using a CosmosEx.
- No animals were harmed in the making of this demo.
We had a lot of fun creating this demo, and if you enjoyed watching it,
please let us know one way or another (preferably by giving the demo a
thumbs-up at http://www.pouet.net). It'll help us stay motivated, or if
nothing else, make us happy!
Before signing off we'd like to send a special thank you to Evil/DHS for
managing to keep Sommarhack alive and organizing a special version of it
this year despite the circumstances. Sommarhack keeps New Beat going!
Stay safe, and as always, stay Atari!
--------------------------------- CREDITS ----------------------------------
Code & Design:
.................Daniel/New Beat
Graphics:
.............................Axm
.................Anders/New Beat
.................Daniel/New Beat
Fakebit Love (music):
..........................Malmen
MP2 player:
.........NoRing & NoBrain/NoCrew
MP2 player DFD replay patch:
......................Ray/.tSCc.
ARJ Packer:
.................Mr Ni!/TOS-Crew
Sentry Packer:
....................Eagle/Sentry
---------------------------------------------------- http://nb.atari.org ---
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