Kiulu by Pontus
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f e a t u r i n g
S a f f r o n / T B L
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Plutonium '99 Demo Compo Winner
FINAL VERSION
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Where, when and why?
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Complied during Plutonium '99 Party held at Loviisa in Finland. Weather was
beautiful, sun was shining and there we sat inside a black hall and coded
and did some graphics. Our primary goal was, of course, to win the demo
compo. The competition was tough and although Kiulu 'crashed' when it was
shown on screen, it won. Why, I don't know. Why we even did the demo, I
don't know that either.
Who did it? Who to blame?
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I, TexMex, coded most of the demo. 3D landscape and pinch-like-effect in
the credits part were coded by NeonGoon. NeonGoon also made the scene for
his 3D engine.
I tried to optimize some of the code with the Mighty MMX instructions,
but I don't know if that has anything to do with the speed of the demo.. :)
Oh, and PTC and MIDAS were abused too!-)
Saffron/TBL did all the graphics. No more cheap scans or clipart used, just
beautiful hand-drawn graphics. Too bad nice gfx can't help when the code
and design sucks.
Kokki did the soundtrack while we coded. I had terrible time matching the
song with the demo... perhaps it would be wiser to do the song first and
then make a demo that fits nicely with the song... too late, now X)
The Kiulu was designed (what? Is there such thing?) all the members of
Pontus present at Plutonium '99. You should have seen our killer story
board!
What does it need to work?
Why doesn't it work?!?
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Kiulu needs 320x240x32bit video mode, 16bit and some memory (64mb will do
fine, 32mb not tested). Aww... and the embarrassing part. Once again
Pontus defines a new multimedia standard for demoscene:
233 Mhz MMX required, 366 Mhz MMX recommended. Sadly but true.
Despite all the rumors Kiulu should work under both pure DOS and Win9x.
The versions "released" at the party never worked under DOS, but after
hours and hours of debugging and inspecting the code it finally ran
smoothly under DOS (**).
Then video issues. Okay. First, if you don't see anything, try using
emulation mode (-e). For example, some of the Matrox cards aren't capable
of showing lowres modes (320x240 in Kiulu)(**). The demo either crashes,
shows carbage on screen or uses 640x480 or similar and a match box in the
middle of the screen. Parameter -e should do the trick. It emulates 320x240
by setting 640x480 mode and streching when drawing to screen. I think most
of the cards are capable of showing 640x480 mode...
If you have problems with 32 bit color depth, try using 16 and 8 bit modes
instead (8 bit mode is really worth seeing, looks kind of funny :)
Use -8 for 8 bit and -16 for 16 bit output.
Also, you could try using -d for dithering (16 bit looks much better when
dithered). -nd forces no dithering.
In case you experience occasional flickering on screen, try using -w
parameter to force wait retrace... slows things pretty much. Use only
if you really must. Highly NOT recommended.
Problems with audio? No problemo! Use -m for the magical Midas
configuration screen (no, no, not the blue screen of death!)
and help yourself.
Oh, and F12 takes screenshots during the demo! SHOT.TGA is saved...
And ESC quits when ever you want.
(*) The reason for out-of-sync effect in earlier version was a weird MIDAS
bug (or at least I think it is a bug, could be a feature too :)
Whole the demo was coded timer set to 70Hz under Win98, but under DOS
despite of setting timer to 70Hz it ran only 60Hz. It took pretty long for
me to understand this :) So I recalculated all the keyframes to 60Hz and
set the timer to 60Hz. It worked perfectly (yeah right). Well at least you
should be able to watch it from the beginning to the end.
(**) Matrox cards can however use lowres modes, at least with UniVBE or
Scitech Display Doctor. But the only way I got 320x240 mode working on
Millenium II using PTC was to use emulation... too bad. With UniVBE loaded,
it simply showed white screen or crashed.
Where to send junkmail?
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Ew... Try these addresses... some body should reply sooner or later
(later, that is). And don't forget to visit the Official Pontus Homepages!
Pontus www.oldhouse.sgic.net/users/pontus
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Burana jussi_paivinen@fimug.fi
TexMex texmex@iobox.fi
NeonGoon vtzn@hotmail.com
Kokki fluga@dlc.fi
Tipi timo.t.aalto@mbnet.fi (He's in the army, now)
Special Guest Star :)
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Saffron/TBL saffron@jerware.org
Is there still something?
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Yes. For you ignorants who don't know what a kiulu is... well it is a kind
of wooden bucket used in sauna (you know sauna, do you? Awww it doesn't
matter actually...)
After hours of thinking and processing kiulu was the best we had. I guess
it has a some kind of exotic value...
And always remember to pay attention when Pontus has something to say.
The truth is with Pontus.
21.7.99 TexMex / Pontus 3Lite Multimedia
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