SaboTagE by Paradox [web]
____
/___/
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____ _____ ______
>____> <____< <____/ <____< <____< <_____> >_____<
____ p a r a d o x
________ /___/ ____________ ________
/ ___/ ____ /_____ / / ___/
/____/ _____ / /__ _______ /_____/ _____ _____ /____/
_____ __/ // /_/ _/ ____ __/ /__/ /_____
___/ //______//______//______/ / / /______// __// /___
/_______/ S a b o T a g E /___/ /____/ /________/
S a b o T a g E
by Paradox 2016
The usual:
This demo is being released under "Creative Commons
4.0" license: You are free to share and to adapt
under the following terms:
( ) Attribution - You must give appropriate credit,
provide a link to the license and indicate if
changes were made. You may do so in any reason-
able manner, but not in any way that suggests
the licensor endorses you or your use.
( ) NonCommercial - You may not use the material for
commercial purposes
( ) ShareAlike - If you remix, transform, or build
upon the material, you must distribute your
contributions under the same license as the
original.
No member of Paradox can be held responsible for any
damage occuring to your STE, monitor, other involved
or non-involved hardware, physical or mental health
before, while or after watching this demo.
Prologue:
We promised on the SillyVenture 2014.
We (almost) delivered on STNICCC 2015.
We did what .tSCc. did and was very successful with:
Showing a preview on the party to be released later.
A lot later.
Anyhow, this is it. The final release version of
"SaboTagE" following the preview from the ST News
Internation Christmas Coding Conference STNICCC 2015.
Minimum Requirements:
- Atari STE
- 2 Megabytes of RAM (about 1.8MB needed)
- Double sided, double density disk drive
- Colour monitor or TV set
Also runs:
- From Harddisk (if available)
- On an Atari MegaSTE
- On an Atari Falcon030 both RGB and VGA
- On the Hatari Emulator
Does not run on:
- Atari ST or STf, Mega or MegaST
- Atari TT
- STEem Emulator
- SM124 or compatible monochrome monitor
Tested on:
- Atari MegaSTE, 4MB, TOS 2.06, from disk and harddisk
- Atari Falcon030, Nemesis, 14MB, TOS 4.04, VGA and RGB
- Hatari 1.7.0a on Mac OS X 10.6.8, set to 2MB STE mode
Does not require:
- Satandisk, Gigafile or other ultra-fast external disk
- 15MB on your harddisk
- 14 Megabytes of RAM
- MC68060
- Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 and Direct X 10.0
Credits per screen:
Intro-Screen:
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan and The Paranoid
Details: This is actually a "low-res" c2p effect
based on pure BLiTTER magic - every tile
is being calculated individually using a
double sinus function.
MPP-Displayer:
Code: RA, picture converter by Zerkman,
MPP-emulator for Falcon030 by The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan
Details: It took a long long time to finally get
this to run flicker-free on the STE along
with the music replayer in Timer D. On the
Falcon, an emulator simulates what the STE
displays (even though rather slowly).
Thanks to Zerkman for the helpful MPP-to-
BMP converter C-code.
Zooming In on Lucy:
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan, The Paranoid
Details: Sort of slow and only updates every second
line at a time, but it runs in regular
resolution along with a secondary effect.
Reflection in monitor:
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan
Details: Nothing special
5 Guys:
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan, The Paranoid
Details: BLiTTER induced blur. That's what SMUDGE-mode
was designed for. I guess.
Fire in the sky
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan
Details: An offset effect that can be combined easily
with a 1x1 fore- or background. Also known as
max2p.
Parallax-Scroller
Code: RA
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan
Details: BLiTTER-based parallax scrolling with BLiTTER-
based sprites and about 60% CPU time left...
Interlude Picture
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan
Details: None
Ominious Sphere
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan
Details: Presumed to be the last effect The Paranoid would
ever write on the STE and therefore internally
referred to as "last ever". Turned out it wasn't.
Anyhow, it's a BLiTTER-based feedback effect.
3D Drone
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan, The Paranoid
Details: A BLiTTER sprite of a texture-mapped animated 3D
object in regular resolution with background.
Interlude Picture
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan
Details: None
Interlude Animation
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan
Details: None
Alpha layer 3D fan
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan, The Paranoid
Details: Have you also seen "Supernatural" by "Evolution"
on the Falcon and have you also asked yourself
why the fan in the 3D room doesn't move?
We repaired it. On the STE. Not on 68060.
3D STE
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: The Paranoid
Details: Z-shaded and texture mapped. On STE. 'nuff said.
Neon Cubes
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Zweckform, The Paranoid
Details: No, it's not just a bitplane effect. Count the
number of colours and the cubes that can overlap
freely and with the background. Not to mention the
semi-transparency of the cubes.
Subpixel Rendering
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Zweckform, The Paranoid
Details: In "maikever", Earx showed real-time anti-aliasing
on the ST on a wireframe object for the first time.
We thought this was so impressive that we decided
to do a sub-pixel texture mapper on the STE.
Z-Buffer:
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Zweckform, The Paranoid
Details: In "Sure Trip 2" DefJam showed off displaying
z-buffered gouraud-shaded 3D objects. We were so
impressed that we decided to do it with depth-
shaded, texture mapped 3D objects.
Reflection in monitor
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan
Details: None
Gaussian Blur BLiTTER Greetings
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: The Paranoid
Details: Using a 7x7 Gaussian Blur Matrix generated in the
spreadsheet application of OpenOffice. That's what
modern computers are good for. Serving STE demos.
Final Effect
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: The Paranoid and Dan
Details: One of the oldest effects in the demo, by the way.
The BLiTTER generates the lightflare in max2p.
QR-Code
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: The Paranoid (+ "Barcode Generator" on Android)
Details: Be quick and scan it before it transforms
Endpart:
Code: The Paranoid
Music: 505
Graphics: Dan
Details: Designed together by 505 and Dan. Converted from
PNG to STE native 4 plane format by RA.
The oh-so-famous Paradox demo release FAQ:
? Why do i have to watch the intro screen for 11 minutes?
! You don't have to. Press space to enter the main part.
? It stutters when loading from floppy disk. Why?
! We have arranged the loading so that loading from disk
should not affect the demo in any visible way. However,
on badly fragmented disks, this might still occur.
Please copy all files to an empty disk to make sure the
files are not fragmented.
? Why does it stop somewhere and exit to the desktop?
! You seem to lack some files. On a file-not-found error,
it simply terminates. Please make sure to have all files
in the "DATA"-directory to run this demo.
? I have checked but all files are there. It still crashes
after loading something. Why?
! All data on the disk is ICE-packed. If a file is corrupt,
it is likely that the demo freezes or crashes when
trying to depack the data. Please download the demo anew
and try again.
? What's so STE-specific about this demo?
! A lot. The BLiTTER is being used in most of the effects
shown in the demo. All graphics by Dan use the extended
palette of the STE wisely and so do the screens donated
by Zweckform. Hardware scrolling is used in three parts
and the trusty YM2149 is being supported by an STE-DMA-
channel most of the time.
? I am trying to watch the demo on my video beamer but i
only see greyscales. Why?
! Just as any other Paradox demo, the demo requires 60Hz
PAL display. From our visits at the famous SillyVenture
parties we know that some video beamers do not decode
colours correctly when being switched to 60Hz.
Please use a video beamer capable of PAL60.
? All of this can be done on a 1MB STf, too!
! Most probably not. First of all, the STf lacks the
BLiTTER, the palette, the hardware scrolling and the
DMA-channels being used in this demo. Then, the demo
has to load a lot of data in advance because there are
only a couple of seconds in the demo where there is
time to load at all. Getting all this down to 1MB while
running memory intense effects such as the max2p or the
depth shaded texture mappers is close to impossible.
? Haven't i read on Wikipedia that you're all irrelevant?
! Yes, we remember. The so-called "expert on the matter"
who declared us irrelevant is now back to worship the
fire - or something - and wasn't so happy about being
reminded of that event.
? This demo looks like a lot of time was spend on the
graphics, the music and the code. Where can i read more
details about how this demo evolved?
! Just read on.
Statements on the graphics by Dan:
Info on the graphics in SaboTagE
The production of SaboTagE took us about 3 years.
Starting in 2011 from the very first rough script over long
terms of silence and a very busy period in 2015, the goal was
to finish a demo with a solid storyline and never-seen-on-STE-
effects by the end of 2015. The Paranoid und myself started
putting together the storyline around some rough drafts of
impressive STE-Effekts. A solid storyline or a consistent
design had not exacly been one of Paradox strenghts in the
past. Powerpoint and wunderlist did not do the trick to get
the whole thing moving. With a bunch of metaplan-cards on the
floor of my place we finished the script and set the deadline
for december 2015. With the following text i will give you an
insights into making this production.
Welcome to the Intro-Screen: The intro-effect is called:
leather-tiles. Have a close look! This piece of code must
have pushed The Paranoid close to madness, because the idea
for this screen is totally graphics-designer based. I had no
idea about coding this. It takes basically no advantages of
the common code-memory-restrictions-stuff. The leather-tiles
are far off the standard-size and were done in various
versions of brightness. The shiny gold logo is a mixture of
handwriting with a tablet in Photoshop with heavy usage of
the addons and full redo in NeoChromeMaster. The idea for
the transparent font is based on the movie: The call.
All pictures in the demo are based on rough pencil sketches.
-> MPP-Picture <-
The next screen shows Lucy and Cookie sitting in front of
the cybernetics laptop: This picture was one of the early
pieces done for the SaboTagE Demo. The wobbling Paradox logo
in the window is meant to give a brief hint of how the demo
will evolve. The instruction for the coder was: "Irgendetwas
mit Licht", which roughly translates into "Something with
light". So The Paranoid came up with this wobbly crazy
zoomer. None of us had ever visually told a story, so conider
this a firstie. The next screen was our idea to push the
story forward
Lucy and Cookie as a reflection in the laptop screen: The
picture had to be repainted dozends of times. The first one
was simply ugly, the face barely recognizeable. I still needed
more practice in painting faces and anatomy. The second version
turned out better, i added Cookie as Lucy's sidekick, but did
not stick to the right palette. If you take a close look at the
font you will recognize its transparency. Therefore The
Paranoid forced me to move the whole thing down to 8 colors.
If i was ever close to smashing my pc, it was then. In the last
version i added the rim of the screen, still fuming.
Next screen is: The shady five guys. The picture was finished
on the outline-party in 2011 in the Netherlands, originally not
considered for SaboTagE in the first place. The Paranoid helped
with the halo for the guys. The guys symbolize a rogue force,
not willing to let cybernetics take over the conrol. The sign
at the left bottom reads: "find the one they can not control".
The inscription of the sign was done by The paranoid. Lucy
heads for the cybernetics building to see what was happening.
The Screen is called "Fire in the sky". That one was a lot of
back and forth. The code for the screen originates to the
early versions of "Superstar Tennis" by Paradox, a game planned
that never materialized based on a perspective engine by RA.
Piecing together the palette was tough with all the mixing and
overlaying. Even though the pic might look simple, the whole
tool-chain was necessary to finish it. Painted in Grafx2, STE
color-correction in NeoChromeMaster.
Cybernetics building damaged: Another full handmade 320*200
pixel-screen , done in Grafx2. The text-Displayer on top was
added to enhance the story telling.
Last Ever: It's my last picture for SaboTagE. Practicing
sketching and anatomy led to the final version of this screen.
The Helicopter-Screen: Graphics for this 4-color background
screen is inspired by the artist kuvshinov-ilya, i follow on
tumblr. Figuring out a fitting perspective for the flying path
of the helicpoter was a huge challenge. In the end i figured
out the perspective in Blender 3D and did a 3 color version
of it based on the sketch. The Paranoid did the textures for
the helicopter.
Impossible: While the foreground is hand-painted, the inside
of the building, that is revealed by the spot is done in
Blender 3D. Lighting a pushing the contrast was done in
Photoshop and putting it all together was done in Grafx2,
which became my favorite tool in the production.
Underground and Entrance: With these pictures i settled my
current workflow. First: Sketch with pen and paper, Scan it
using the iphone, Photoshop for scaling and contrast, Grafx2
for shading and finally NeoChromeMaster for finishing the
STE-palette.
505 on the keys:
So here it is - Sabotage. This demo has come quite a long
way. I remember emails circulating back in 2010, discussing
ideas on this prod. Dan created the storyline and then the
years just passed. A lot of code snippets and graphic
drafts were exchanged, mostly created by Paranoid and Dan,
then dumped again, modified and stored on dusty trusty hard
disks for years. In some cases the existing material was
used to built completely different demos from it (e.g the
Blue Period demo in 2011). And as often when a project
takes too long, the startup enthusiasm is blown out and it
gets really tough to catch up and complete everything. To
speak the truth, at times I didn't really believe that this
demo would ever be finished and lost interest in it myself.
Real life came across and the project was in rather
paralyzed state.
However, in 2014 Paranoid and Dan magically became super
active again, created a basic preview of the demo and
suggested the others to get their homework done after all.
Hats off to the two, working on the prod with such
constant force. The past months were just a good flow of
exchanging ideas, previews and collaborative fine-tuning,
which I really enjoyed and which also creates a perfect
surrounding for working on a soundtrack.
For the music, I used gwEms maxYMiser (2 MB version) in its
special STE 1-channel native sample frequency mode and one
timer for effects, as in most of the recent Paradox
productions. MaxYMiser is always good to come back to. This
tool has enriched the possibilities to create music for STE
demos so much, that I cannot thank you enough, gwEm!
Anyhow, seeing the finished demo now and realizing that we
were able to keep this project going for about 6 years and
actually completing it in the end - that is "the best part
of the creation" for me.
That said, see you next time - whenever ;)
505
A few words of raZen alias RA:
It was a very long and stony way but finally its done - the
release of SaboTagE! :-)
Due to some private circumstances i couldn't contribute so
much i wanted. Hence Paranoid had to code the demo almost on
his own - respect for this maximum output!
It was also awesome how much work Dan did for this demo in
graphics and design.
Thanks to 505 for his marvelous soundtracks - my personal
favourite is the one in the end part.
I was really pleasantly surprised that one member of the
first hour - Zweckform - was active again for SaboTagE.
Welcome back buddy!
There are some rumours that this will be the last
production of Paradox. Sadly it's true that Paranoid won't
do anymore for the STE or Atari at all. However this doesn't
automatically mean that Paradox is dead.
Paradox is still alive and i heard there could be something
in the pipeline - just don't expect it too early. ;-)
See you all!
Closing statement by The Paranoid:
So, finally it's done. The first thoughts about this demo
were being shared between Dan and me around 2010 and then,
nothing happened. In 2011 and 2012, a few ideas were being
spread but that's about it. Early 2013, we decided to engage
the demo, hoping to finish it that year and if not, then in
2014. We failed in 2014 as well, merely releasing the
little teaser and promised it for 2015.
We didn't manage to release it in 2015 either but at least
we managed to show a preview at the famous STNICCC 2015.
But this time, we wanted to do it right. So we took our
time in fine-tuning the demo for some more weeks, the weeks
turned into months but i, personally, think it was worth it.
Especially as it's going to be my last demo on the STE.
Without wanting to sound arrogant, i broke all the barriers
i was eager to break. Texture mapped 3D objects in full
resolution with background. Fully interpolative max2p-blobs
in full resolution. Texture mapped and depth shaded 3D
objects. Sub-pixel rendering. Depth shaded texture mapping
with Z-Buffering. Animated outdoor 3D scene with lighting.
And all that on an 8MHz STE with 2MB of RAM, running from a
double density disk drive.
I also think we helped a bit in making the STE more popular
in the little Atari scene. DHS, Live!, BlaBla, NoExtra,
and even Oxygene and Checkpoint did things for our beloved
STE - not to mention that for a while, Hatari was being
debugged against Paradox demos.
Having said that i am curious what other barriers other
people will break on the STE. Be sure i will be following
the little but wonderful Atari community.
But i will be out of the race.
Or in other words:
move.w #PARANOID,-(sp) ; Set value
move.w #76,-(sp) ; Function PTERM()
trap #1 ; Call GEMDOS
addq.l #4,sp ; clean up
SaboTagE
by Paradox 2016
Alive on a dead machine
that's Paradox!
[ back to the prod ]