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CD ROM Paradise Collection 4
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CD ROM Paradise Collection 4 1995 Nov.iso
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nadd_v10.zip
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DDB.DOC
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1994-10-30
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17KB
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344 lines
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D E M O D A T A B A S E
-----------------------------------------
---- written and (c)opyrighted by New Age ----
Version 1.0 (72 demos)
Contents of this documentation :
I - General informations
II - How to use NA-DDB ?
III - How did we test ?
IV - How did we rate ?
V - How to upgrade NA-DDB ?
VI - When to contact us
VII - Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
VIII - Thanks & greetings
IX - Personal messages
X - New Age informations
I - General informations
The demo scene is growing. About 3000 people came to the
Assembly '94 demo party. Every week about 5 demos/intros
are released. The 'New Age Demo Database' will give you
a short overview over all demos released so far (in this
version only 72 demos are included because we wanted to
see whether we get response). BTW: You won't find any
slideshows of commercial companies which introduce their
products in this database !
We know that most of the demos we tested aren't very new
but in further versions you'll find more up-to-date tests.
The credits: The program is written mainly by SideWinder
in BP7 with some assembly. The GUI was designed by The
Smilie and coded by Sidewinder. The database interface is
done by Sidewinder.
A 80386 or better processor is required. If there are many
users who still have an 80286 we will (perhaps) release a
special version.
II - How to use NA-DDB ?
To start NA-DDB simply unzip the archive 'NADD_V10.ZIP' on
your harddisk. Type DDB.EXE to start. You'll need a mouse
to run ! NA-DDB works in an Mode-X (320*240) which should
be supported by any kind of (VGA-) display adapter and
monitor. DDB.EXE needs only about 300 KBytes main mem to run.
'NA-DDB' is really easy to use. If you see the logo press
the right mouse button to reach the main menu, then you may
select 'Choose demo' for choosing one on a large list of
tested demos. Select 'Search' and enter a keyword and this
keyword will be searched in all available demo-tests. By
selecting 'Options' you can change the method of sorting
the demo-index or you can force to set a higher/lower refresh
rate. The 68hz mode doesn't work on some monitors. If this
happens better use the 60hz mode. When the demo datas are
shown on screen you can switch between the statistics,
description or picture of the demo by clicking on the button
at the right top. The 'Options' menu is not as big as we had
planned but in further versions we will enclose some more
options.
III - Warranty
The 'NADD' is provided as is without warranty of any kind.
We are not responsible for anything the NADD may cause (it
won't cause anything in true but we have to write this for
all those expect this passage in any documentation).
Feel free to distribute it without earning money for it,
put it on CDs, do whatever you want, but DON'T modify any
file of this package. The following files are included in
'NADD_V10.ZIP':
Name Size Date
DDB.DOC 17155 Bytes 10-30-94
DDB.EXE 40233 Bytes 10-30-94
FILE_ID.DIZ 758 Bytes 10-30-94
MAIN.DDB 1442839 Bytes 10-30-94
III - How did we test ?
All the demos were tested with the following equipment:
[1] 80486 DX/2 - 66 [2] 80486 DX/2 - 66
Gigabyte VL - Board J-Bond PCI - Board
8 MB RAM 8 MB RAM
Cirrus VL card 2 MB DRAM Spea Mirage P64 2 MB DRAM
SoundBlaster 16 ASP Soundblaster 2.0
Some demos we tested on
[3] 80386 DX - 25 [4] 80286 - 16
ISA Board ISA Board
2 MB RAM 1 MB RAM
512 KB VGA card 256 KB VGA card
to check the speed differences. We tried any configuration
of AUTOEXEC.BAT & CONFIG.SYS when there were problems with
a demo.
Sorry, but we are no members of the 'GUS family' yet. When
we have more money (we are only poor pupils) we will buy
a GUS (if anyone has a good offer please tell me) !
IV - How did we rate ?
The ratings are divided into four sections: graphics, sound,
coding and overall rating. The ratings reach from 1 % up to
100%, which means that the rating 1 % is the worst you can
get and the 100% is the best. Both will be only very rare in
our ratings !
The graphics rating shows you the quality of (realtime or pre-
calculated) pictures and handdrawn graphics. Also the other
visible things (like fonts...) depend in graphics. If a font
is only ripped from another demo the graphics rating won't be
high. The sound is all what you hear. As mentioned above we
only got SB & SB16, no GUS. So we can't give ratings for GUS-
only demos. The coding rating tells how the coder(s) of the
demogroup worked. Are there any new effects which were never
seen before or is it only a slideshow with some pictures or a
musicdisk-like demo without any graphics ? All these facts
depend in coding. The 'Overall rating' is not the average of
the other three ratings. Another fact has influence in this
point: the design. All these points are very subjective. They
are the opinions of the two demotesters of 'New Age'; they
won't be the opinions of all the demo-freaks. If your own
demo has bad ratings don't be angry about that !
V - How to upgrade NA-DDB ?
If there is response we will release some upgrade kits for
'NA-DDB'. But demo-testing isn't as easy as it looks (we
needed about 0.5 up to 6 hours per demo). So drop me a
message if you like our program (or if you don't :-/). The
upgrade kits will add some demos to the database, so that
it will grow and grow.
VI - When to contact us
We could not include any demo we wanted because it was very
difficult to capture the screenshots (and we dont't want to
include a demo without a nice piccy).
But if you have captured nice screens of a demo please send
them to us. We will include them in the next upgrade version
and you will get this version first ! Here is a list of demos
we need pictures from: o Amnesia
o Crystal Dream II
o Holistic
o Optic Nerve
o Yo
The format must be LBM, PCX or GIF, and you can send us one
or four pictures per demo.
If you have written a good demo which you would like to send
us, just do it ! We will rate it and include it in further
versions.
Bug reports, corrections of our texts and additional demo-
related informations of all kind are also (very) welcome.
VII - Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Question: Why has demo X a lower rating than demo Y ?
Answer: Hey, the ratings are our own subjective opinions ! You
sure like a demo which we don't and we like demos which you
don't. And you can't compare ratings of demos with ratings of
intros ! Intros must be optimized for size and they can't have
as much effects as demos have !
Question: 72 demos are not very much ! Why didn't you include
more tests ?
Answer: We wanted to fill exactly one 1.44" disk with our first
'NADD' version and because of the size of the pictures this
limit was reached after 72 demos !
Question: How did you capture all these nice screenshots ?
Answer: The screenshots were taken with SideWinder's useful
SWCATCH tool. We had to modify some screenshots if they were
in wrong size. We connected three or four of them together
sometimes to show more than one effect of the demo.
Question: Your English is cruel ! Why don't you engage a trans-
lator ?
Answer: The problem is, that we did not find anyone who wants to
translate all these boring demo-texts :>. By the way: We have no
modem, no courier, no board, no distribution site ! We would have
to swap all the texts by snail mail !
Question: I have too much money. What does happen when I would
send you some cash ?
Answer: If we get enough money our first investment is a GUS
(what else?). Then we would re-rate all the demos which have
no sound ratings yet. And we would buy a modem, so that we can
swap our productions much faster. And we would buy some Ferraris,
houses, islands...
VIII - Thanks and greetings
Ok, it's time for some thanks and greetings:
Big thanks go to:
Dan Wright (Pallbearer) for the great DEMOS.TXT demo-list and
for keeping the best demo-site in the whole InterNet alive !
Group greetings:
Avalanche, Cascada (Demo + VR section), Dust, Electromotive Force,
Epical, Future Crew, Iguana, Majic 12, Prime, Sonic PC, Suprise!,
Tran, Triton, Xography and all the other demogroups which keep
us working on NADD
Messages:
Recently we heard about a group which is named 'NEW AGE', too.
These were really bad news ! But we are going to keep our name
because we did not see any demo of the other 'NEW AGE' group
and we like the name. Contact us if you have problems with
this fact ;-)
IX - Personal messages
SideWinder (Coder's note)
The NADD is my biggest project until now. Libraries were coded
in early 1994 but the whole program was written during summer-
holidays (August, September 1994). Then another hard work began:
The work on SWCATCH. It catches most X-modes and EGA and it
works with at least all demos.
Now something about me: I'm new in the coding-business. So I had
to learn coding from nothing. It was a hard work the last three
years and so I would like to greet some people without their
sources I wouldn't be able to write such a program. BTW: I have
no contact to other (experienced) coders. So I can only learn
something new from your released sources. Although no sources
were used directly - they gave me new ideas and new (tricky)
ways of doing something. OK. I would like to greet
Michael Abrash - for the fast ModeX-Stuff
VT/Iguana - for publishing a lot of useful sources
Mark Morley - for the gif-decoder Dgif
VLA - for the GREAT programming docs and examples
The Smilie (Tester's note)
Ok. The hard work of testing is over, time to summarize. Testing
demos is not as easy as testing games or other software. Often
they need special configurations or they hang up and you don't
know why. Other problems were to take time from demos which are
running about 45 minutes and then restarting ! Capturing screen-
shots was another problem but it was mentioned above so that I
don't want to repeat it again. BTW: I coded the NADD editor,
a 'quick hack' done in TVision. Finally some personal greetings:
Zodiak /Cascada - for being the best musician on PC
Erik /S!P - for being the best coder on slower PCs
J.O.E. /S!P - wanna join us ;) ?
IX - New Age informations
┌───────────────────┐
┌──────────────────┤ N E W A G E ├────────────────┐
│ │
│ Members: │
│ │
│ SideWinder - Main Coder │
│ The Smilie - Grafix, Additional Coding, Organization │
│ ????????? - Sound │
│───────────────────────────────────────────────────────│
│ │
│ If you are a good musician, coder or gfx artist, │
│ please contact us, yes we need exactly YOU ! │
│ It would be great if you live in Germany and you │
│ had access to Internet. │
│ │
┌──────┘───────────────────────────────────────────────────────└────────┐
│ │
│ Snail mail: │
│ ┌────┐ (SideWinder) (The Smilie) │
│ │____│ Stefan Weisse Matthias Krueger │
│ │ └┘ │ Wildbahn 17 Delmenhorster Strasse 16 │
│ │ │ D-15745 Wildau D-15738 Zeuthen │
│ └────┘ Germany Germany │
│ │
│ ()----() Telephone: │
│ / \ +49 (0)3375/501517 +49 (0)33762/70188 │
│ / \ │
│ /------\ │
│ │
│ ≈ INTERNET ≈ E-Mail: │
│ MKRUEGER@IFH.DE │
│ │
│ We have no full time Internet access and so the │
│ mail address is only readed about once a month │
│ So don't hope to get an answer quickly ;-] │
│ Sorry, we have no board or distribution site yet. │
│ │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
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