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- <f1><c000> Development diary <f0>
- <f1><c000> of <link=pic22.scr>Falcon contribution</l> <f0>
- --------------------------------------------------------------------- - - -- --
-
- By ZWF/Cruor
-
-
- Before I beginn with the report, I want to state somethings first. Some parts
- of the text are written a long time after what was happening. Therefore you
- find a lack a detail in those, others will have more.
-
- The story starts in august 2002, when Peter gives his Falcon to Ralf, who has
- sold all his Atari stuff after the demise of our game "Painium Disaster".
- Suddenly Ralf finds his old love to Atari and its wonderful machines. He
- decides to start a collection of all Falcon software and later on a collection
- of all Atari-machines. While watching all the old and new stuff, the idea of a
- comeback rises within him. And secretly he starts planning on a new demo while
- relearning coding in 68000 assembler. Peter is included in the early works,
- for Ralf wants some 3D objects and Peter loves to do this kind of thing.
-
- After some weeks the demo is growing I get a e-mail from Ralf, asking if I
- would like to do some gfx for a falcon demo. Now I should tell the reader I
- was hoping to do this for a long time. I even had contact with no/escape for a
- short time, but back then things were not in favour for this. But in the early
- December of 2002, the time had come to return to the Atari-scene. We arranged a
- meeting and talked a lot about old days and new plans. Ralf gave me a list of
- gfx he needed for the demo and what the demo should be like.
-
- Then I went home and started working on some totally diffent pictures! Because
- I had planned some a year ago, and I wanted to do them. Some days later Ralf
- needed a gfx to test the intruduction part of the demo and I quickly did that
- stuff. Perhaps I should mention, that I do the atari things on one day a week
- over about four hours. Also I was infected by a desease: STE-Fever!! When
- Ralf told me how cheap these machines are on ebay, I just had to buy one. One
- result of that fever was the plan to do a complete STE archive, which would
- delay the falcon demo as well as many other things. These are some reasons for
- the situation one week before EIL 3 : Some gfx done, but almost none needed by
- the original plan! The 3D objects had some errors in the models, the code was
- far from being finished.
-
- On Friday the 11th of April, the planned 3D DSP part was skipped as Ralf did
- not have all the development information he needed to finish it in time. The
- "daymio" and the "10 years falcon" pictures were modelled and finished and
- "Falconland" pixeled. Now I had to do a texture for our tunnel and logo for
- the demo. But as I still had my normal work, I was not able to do much until
- thursday.
-
- 15 april :
- Ralf gave me the long awaited original of the thalion game "chambers of
- shaolin" this was a mistake so close to EIL3! I just had to play that great
- game several times!! With some experience in 3D, I could find the errors in the
- 3D model and it could be optimised. It should now work fine in ralfs engine.
- Peter has told us he is going on motorcycle trip for the next two days! A
- texturemap for the tunnel was done in 128x128 pixels but when we included it
- the details were too much and it flickered and looked awful. A lot of work for
- fun and nothing. Overviewing the demo so far, it lacks a design and several
- gfx are still needed. We also need some good ideas - fast!
-
- 16 april:
- It is now 11:30am and I get a call - the CPU 3D part works! This is a
- breakthrough for our demo. Suddenly I am not satisfyed with my rendered
- pictures "daymio" and "10 years falcon" so I improved them and now they are
- ready to be included. The sun is shining all day and I wonder if I had better
- gone on a trip like Peter did. But EIL is close and I still got to do the demo
- logo. Did I mention before that I hate logo painting??? Mostly because I am not
- talented in that art so it is really hard work for me, not fun! The master
- plan is to realize a concept I thought of when we first talked about the demo.
- To do so, I have to render it at home. The other picture will be pixeled and I
- plan to do them at Ralfs flat. Finally we decided what we need in Dresden and
- it turns out that Ralfs' car, a VW Lupo is far too small for all the people and
- stuff. So I have to go on my own *sniff*. Perhaps it is better this way, for
- the progress on the pictures is still very slow and this way I could finish
- them on friday.
-
- 17 april:
- Rendering the picture is useless! The concept was too vague and not worked out
- properly so the picture project crashes down. Now I try to pixel something to
- solve the problem. After the decision I start with new power. Anyway the power
- does not last very long and I am demoralized by the result so far. Now I rest
- for this day and hope EIL will bring me back to work hard on this. Tomorrow
- noon our trip begins, my tension is rising.
-
- 18 april:
- The big day has arrived, EIL-trip is about to start! All things are packed and
- I drive to our meeting point in the north of Nāærnberg. During the trip we do
- two short stops and we get to the Tusculum, the convention area, without any
- troubles. The location is very cool and we quickly get our hardware inside to
- join the freaks. The first thing loaded into my STE ist chambers of shaolin.
- Peter plays "Return to genesis" and Ralf is eating a pig with some slices of
- bread. We obviously chose a corner with musicians nearby - this could turn out
- to be a fault! (They got bigger speaker than we have!)
-
- Its 19:00
- Now I got some food and some rest. EIL is getting crowded and I try to work on
- the picture again. After hours of work, the logo still sucks and it looks
- awful with the planned effect. I now take a break hoping a good solution will
- come up. Ralf managed to include some 3D objects at least.A group named
- "Paranoia" is sitting right behind us and quickly a discussion on STE is taking
- place. Still I want to do a special STE-demo one day.
-
- 19 april :
- About 3:00
- In the morning the guys of Paranoia help me finding what's wrong with the
- picture. Thanks go to Strange for thinking over the concept and style again and
- again AND for telling me what sucks in my work.
- 5:00
- First night without sleep but the logo improved. Ralf and Peter are sleeping
- since midnight. More and more hints from Strange/Paranoia lead to the final
- picture which is still not ace, but at least acceptable. The poor original
- concept hindered a good work. (I still hate doing logos, but I want to improve
- in the future)
- About 15:00
- After adding some nice 3D objects, Ralf is starting to put the demo together.
- The part with a submarine modelled by Peter is the nicest so far. To give it a
- little design, I do a little gfx for one of the corners. Also some colours for
- the gouraud-shading are needed and this is harder to do than I thought. It
- takes many tries, but in the end it looks good.
- Evening falls and I want to get in contact with several guys, so I walk through
- the EIL3 and meet a lot of nice and cool people. See a lot of stunning ST
- pictures and feel like back in 1991 some times. Still quite some guys like the
- STE and feel there should be a real great STE-Demo to show what the machine can
- do.
- We will see in the future if it becomes reality.
-
- 20.April
- 1:00
- Back with paranoia I am watching some great demos on the good old C64, it's
- amazing the little machine does not explode during that stuff! After that I go
- to sleep. Some time later I wake up - the music competition is taking place !!
- No more sleep for today.
- 14:00
- The deadline is getting closer and still some parts are not working yet. The 3D
- part sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. But we are willing to take part in
- the competition, because we missed two others in the past which was a big
- mistake. Finally Ralf managed to put something together and we record it for
- the competition, although it is not completed. We made the third place out of
- three...very impressive!
-
- Two weeks after the competition we released the final version, which is missing
- the submarine-part shown on the EIL3 because it is not willing to run anymore.
- When we look at our demo, we are glad, that we did one again. Also we were
- happy to participate in the compos although the results are not that good. Only
- the quality of our product is not satisfying, so we try to make a much better
- one. Believe it or not. Wait and see.
-
- In the end we want to thank Escape & their helpers for the great EIL3 and greet
- everybody we met there. It was inspiring and simply much fun!
-
-
- -- - --- -- -------------------------------------------------------------------
- CHOSNECK 4th appearance contact us:
- done by the dream survivors greymsb@poczta.fm
- ----------------------------------------------------------------- -- - --- ----
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