pouët.net

Book about the Atari demoscene

category: general [glöplog]
Hi there !

Like all of you here, well I think so, I'm a total freak when it comes to demos, esp Atari demos (even ECS Amiga now I have to confess doh!). I started a blog about Atari demos and am now working on a mirror blog translated to English at https://democyclopedia.wordpress.com/

Here and there I enjoy reading FREAX the Art Album and I know there have been 2 other books about demos but from what I can read at http://freax.intro.hu/about.html the chapter about Atari almost calls it a "minor scene" what is bullshit to me.

Any other (decent) book about Atari (and Amiga as a bonus) demoscene ?
I am interested in GFA Basic.
added on the 2015-11-08 10:58:32 by g0blinish g0blinish
Considered the idea once, realised it would be a shitload of work. ;-)
added on the 2015-11-08 21:02:51 by CiH CiH
Quote:
almost calls it a "minor scene" what is bullshit to me


It says "smaller scenes", for me this categorization sounds quite fair, given its size compared to the C64/Amiga/PC scenes.
added on the 2015-11-08 21:25:57 by Control Control
I'd love to see a history book focusing more on the smaller scenes.
added on the 2015-11-08 23:15:00 by Optimus Optimus
Quote:
It says "smaller scenes", for me this categorization sounds quite fair, given its size compared to the C64/Amiga/PC scenes.


To me the Atari scene is up to the Amiga scene. I'm not familiar enough with other platforms to make an opinion tho. This "smaller" scene as you call it has been around for 30 years now and has delivered hundreds of prods. Call the "TT" or "MegaSTe" or "Dreamcast" scenes, among other, smaller scenes but the Atari deserves more than that.

Anyway, even tho I love FREAX the Art Album, the very few pages dedicated to the Atari (8 pages on a 280 page book) show that the author don't care much about the Atari scene. Anyway... this is not giving any answer to my question...
The answer to your question is "no."
added on the 2015-11-09 09:31:16 by okkie okkie
Surely there are graphs about this? everyone love a graph on how the scene is dying/not dying/bigger/smaller/invaded by aliens etc

Personally i can't believe the Atari scene was anywhere near the size of the Amiga one, but then again it might be geography based. Here in the UK, in the pre-PC days, amongst who I knew there were 5 Amigas for every ST.

Quote:
I'd love to see a history book focusing more on the smaller scenes.

I guess it could be a collab between prominent people in each one?

I have both Freax Vol1, and the art album. What I'd like it a Freax Vol2, or t that covers from where Vol1 ends (approx 1998 IIRC) onwards.
added on the 2015-11-09 10:17:08 by Canopy Canopy
(and going by Pouet alone.. there are approx 230 pages of Atari prods, vs approx 610 of Amiga..)
added on the 2015-11-09 11:05:04 by Canopy Canopy
Quote:
(and going by Pouet alone.. there are approx 230 pages of Atari prods, vs approx 610 of Amiga..)


Oki my mistake then, didn't think they were so many Amiga demos (and I'm not entering the debate about accelerated machines because erm...)

So my question to you is : is the Atari scene well treated in vol2 or is it the matter or a couple of pages ?
Quote:
is the Atari scene well treated in vol2

I'm pretty sure there will never be a Freax vol.2
added on the 2015-11-09 17:15:56 by britelite britelite
maybe he meant vol1? i can't remember.. i'll be home from the office in approx 2 hours so i'll try to have a look. i'd assume its not. i've always assumed the ST scene is a smaller sister to the amiga scene, i have seen i mentioned that some 68k techniques did originate there.
added on the 2015-11-09 17:36:17 by Canopy Canopy
*it mentioned
added on the 2015-11-09 17:36:58 by Canopy Canopy
Seeing the enormous shitstorm the Freax vol. 1 thread is and the fact that Tomcat turned into an ultra right-wing racist shitbag doesn't bode well for the future of Freax vol. 2
added on the 2015-11-09 17:37:37 by okkie okkie
Quote:
I'm pretty sure there will never be a Freax vol.2


Oh I'm really late on that topic then, really thought that volume 2 had been released. This ends this topic I believe.

Anyway if you like Atari demos, have a look at my blog :
CiH and STS: There isn't... but we should do this. I dropped the idea when I heard that you (CIH) will do it ;) Lol... so we all may coop here.

STS: Smaller scene is indeed correct if you count the amount of sceners aswell as the amount of releases... Kestra has about 3-4 times as much as Fujiology has at the moment.
So one should be objective here. Saying the atari scene is or was a big as the amiga scene simply is not correct.
added on the 2015-11-09 19:05:53 by ltk_tscc ltk_tscc
re: vol1.. just for clarity. I had a quick look, and didn't really see any mention of Atari at all apart from a passing mention in the history of the Amiga part.
added on the 2015-11-10 10:15:52 by Canopy Canopy
okkie: it might be nice to just make an "open source" freax2 ourselves
added on the 2015-11-10 12:17:05 by farfar farfar
Quote:
it might be nice to just make an "open source" freax2 ourselves


that's what I'm trying to do with my blog even tho I'm not focusing on technical details because I'm no coder. I would love tho to see people from "outside" have a look at the wonders achieved on smaller systems like the Atari ST.

I know my work is far from academic, lacks accuracy but at least it is made with an awful lot of passion :)
I like that blog, to see all these lovely effects and records, hope to see more english translations of the future articles.
added on the 2015-11-10 17:17:09 by Optimus Optimus
@Optimus : thanks for the nice words ! I have +50 articles published on my French blog and a dozen already translated and ready to be published on my English blog. I think I will put my French blog on ice until all articles are translated to English then I will publish some more ;)
*thumbs up for page* :)

niche as it is, content curating is a good way to document and preserve the scene, and make it acecssible. at least if someone were to write another demoscene related book, they might learn something.

stuff looks so similar to amiga stuff. its just the amiga had the extra graphical capabilties via the copper and was pushed more as a gaming machine than the st, so ended up in more homes.
added on the 2015-11-12 09:56:01 by Canopy Canopy
Quote:
stuff looks so similar to amiga stuff. its just the amiga had the extra graphical capabilties via the copper and was pushed more as a gaming machine than the st, so ended up in more homes.


Well in the 90s the Amiga and the Atari waged a demo war (and turned most of us including I into silly demo hooligans I'm afraid). Atari people did their best to perform the same fx as Amiga people but without the same hardware.

These days I'm only interested in releases on small systems or 4Kb on PC, the rest is way beyong my defintion of a demo (no offense meant). I wish I could read a blog like mine but focused on Amiga. :)
Merci pour le blog, très sympa ! :-)
Attention beaucoup de courbes de lissajou (avec des sinus) se sont glissées dans le billet sur les splines. ..
added on the 2015-11-14 09:41:49 by baah baah
These were my initial thoughts from 2006.

Atari Scene History Outline type thing.

It's sort of chronological, but with chapters on special topics peppered through it.

There has been more 'history' since then. My thoughts for source material would be various diskmags, and some interviews, where possible, with key people.
added on the 2015-11-15 12:04:54 by CiH CiH

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