Eon by The Black Lotus from Revision 2019

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by LaBodilsen

about the Demo (EON)
it's one of the few demo's in recent years that, when I saw it the first time, made my say "okay this is really neat"..

I have to agree with this - the art and design's excellent, and it does a very good job of pushing the limits of the target platform. Well done to everyone involved!

While I'd love to see demos targetting higher-end systems, I'm not all that excited by demos that just turn the Amiga into a dumb framebuffer and lose any unique Amiga-ness in the process - you might as well just be running the demo on a PC in that case. Speaking of which, was I the only one who thought this year's PC demos were largely uninspiring?

[spiff]

That De Profundis music around 2 min mark though.. would have been my #1 vote if there was a separate category (and slide show ).

[Wrangler]

Originally Posted by th4t1guy

Looked like there were a bunch of easter eggs [no pun intended] in De Profundis, with a possible QR code, and the cipher text. Has anyone gone through it to figure them out and the meaning?

Yes - there are a few steps to go through though

[DanScott]

Originally Posted by Wrangler

Yes - there are a few steps to go through though

I have no idea about the steps or the solutions

[cry]

Fantastic demo, loved the music and enjoyed reading about the work Hoffman had to do to get the music to fit on disk/in memory:

- https://hoffman.home.blog/2019/04/27/eon/

[Mr-Z]

Originally Posted by robinsonb5

I have to agree with this - the art and design's excellent, and it does a very good job of pushing the limits of the target platform. Well done to everyone involved!

While I'd love to see demos targetting higher-end systems, I'm not all that excited by demos that just turn the Amiga into a dumb framebuffer and lose any unique Amiga-ness in the process - you might as well just be running the demo on a PC in that case. Speaking of which, was I the only one who thought this year's PC demos were largely uninspiring?

PC demo compo has been uninspiring for years now, the real battle there is in 4K and 64K compo.
We did our best trying to spice it up a little with our demo, some fast paced music (done by me) and some oldskool effect pushing, basically it was a test drive for our demo tool that turned out pretty nice, ended up in 8th place almost 7th, but we where happy with the result anyway.



The Amiga demo compo was great this year though enjoyed every minute of it

[Wachi]

Originally Posted by Kalms

The current version does not work correctly on all AGA/68020+ machines. We are fixing those bugs. We intend to publish a hard disk version of the demo as well.

That would be very good, Thank you very much for that great job

[Puggsy]

lol @ people saying this wasn't incredible, or that it's just "nice graphics", "looks like a slideshow"...
I am sure most of you fawned over State Of The Art back in the 90s and that's not at all better than this demo. I would actually say compared to this it's absolute garbage!
Also most if not all of the critics don't even know how to code

Big ups to the crew making this amazing demo!!!

[Paul_s]

Nice... still think 'Captured Dreams' is their best effort...

[ Show youtube player ]

Originally Posted by Alpha One

The 3D scenes are cool, also the textured rubber-cube. Otherwise the demo looks like a slideshow to me, moving backgrounds with some lightnings, rather boring in my opinion. Desert Dream is still my No. 1 on A500. :-)

Hmm Desert Dream has a magic all its own...

[darkwave]

Has a hard drive version been released yet? Would love to have this just a click away at all times!

[matburton]

Adding to darkwave's comment, it'd also be great if it could be made to tolerate slow disk swaps. Real disks are a bit more fiddly than virtual disks.

Also please don't read these comments as entitlement! They're comments of fanatical appreciation!

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by matburton

also please don't read these comments as entitlement! They're comments of fanatical appreciation!

+1!

[Photon]

Animation players are to a demo, what a cutscene is to a game. (Compare e.g. Another World.)

But gamers can tell that it's not gameplay, so there are no wows as if there was game code running. So why do Demosceners fall for it every time, and wow as if it's an effect?

They should be all the more experienced and call BS from the limits they enjoy producing and competing within... it's a strange contradiction.

Now, animation in demos is fine as we know, the problem is the so-called animation presented as effect.

That has been around since ~1991 on all platforms, but the A500 has been spared this taking advantage of lack of experience, except for a few groups. I know the Spectrum scene has strong feelings about it, but I've not seen any resistance in the C64 or Amiga scene.

It's up to a few coders to stop cheating. Maybe. But why would they? It still works, so they win over less cynical coders.

[vulture]

@Photon

Have I missed something? Is there a section in eon presented as an effect while it's just an anim?

[Amigajay]

Who cares? Maybe a couple of demo coders, the other few hundred (or more) are in awe of what is an amazing demo, we couldn’t give a monkeys how its done, its made to impress and that’s what it achieved...

[vulture]

I would like to know tbh, I awed at Eon for the polygon stuff towards the end of the demo being real time, if Photon says they're not and it's just a pre-rendered anim, I'd like to know more about that.

[Antiriad_UK]

Demos are art. If it makes me feel something I don’t care how it’s done. You can judge demos on a scale from pure technical skill all the way to a cycling colour Dpaint image with a picture you like and some nice music. There’s room for all.

I suspect the polygon bit in Eon was precalced lines drawn in real-time. Even something like spinning a cube will use precalced lookup tables of sorts (screen height, sin/cos, line draw octants/minterms, etc) to be viable on a500. Where’s the line where you move from real-time to precalced?

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Antiriad_UK

Demos are art. If it makes me feel something I don’t care how it’s done. You can judge demos on a scale from pure technical skill all the way to a cycling colour Dpaint image with a picture you like and some nice music. There’s room for all.

I suspect the polygon bit in Eon was precalced lines drawn in real-time. Even something like spinning a cube will use precalced lookup tables of sorts (screen height, sin/cos, line draw octants/minterms, etc) to be viable on a500. Where’s the line where you move from real-time to precalced?

I agree completely! If you wanted realtime renderings you wouldn't be using a non-interactive demo on an ECS Amiga.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by vulture

@Photon

Have I missed something? Is there a section in eon presented as an effect while it's just an anim?

It's a movie. They wanted to tell a story. It's scripted dithered graphics, less impressive than a Tobias Richter PD animation from 30 years ago, and the audience agrees, waiting to see if the scenes become a story. Then the wows come with the woman face and the rest, thinking it's something impressive... - despite being forewarned by the rising car being so obvious it hurts. That's why it's strange.

The white prism and the rubber cube can be effects, but when everything else is either fake or trivial, it becomes irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Amigajay

Who cares? Maybe a couple of demo coders, the other few hundred (or more) are in awe of what is an amazing demo, we couldn’t give a monkeys how its done, its made to impress and that’s what it achieved...

Counter-question: who cares about animations? Well, this group does. And I think most of us laud a nice PD animation, see above. But you're incorrect about demos. Most A500 demo coders don't cheat, and so most demos don't have animation presented as effect. They write demos and release, just as musicians and artists compose and draw and release.

Let's see who cares about what.

• Competing Demoscene musicians care if music is ripped off in music compos, and organizers disqualify such entries.
• Competing Demoscene artists care if graphics is copied, and organizers disqualify entries without workstages.
• Competing Demoscene coders, by contrast, get this who cares attitude, and organizers allow animation presented as effect - despite the presence of a Wild compo (which is actually perfect for storytelling!) for animations, renders, movies, etc.

The decision to enter this production into the demo compo describes just this "ends justifies the means" that you cynically express. Why code 3D vectors, when you can export 2D lines? No risk of glitches or math precision issues to work out, because there's no need to rotate, sort, cull, or clip polygons because there's no 3D. The story and visuals can be created and perfected away from the platform, and then the platform is used to play it back.

[Amigajay]

Originally Posted by Photon

It's a movie. They wanted to tell a story. It's scripted dithered graphics, less impressive than a Tobias Richter PD animation from 30 years ago, and the audience agrees

I think you’ll find its the most lauded Amiga demo for many years, the high rating on Pouet and praise on FB/YT/Twitter are testament to the style and art of the demo as a whole, despite you trying to knock it for whatever reason.

Amiga coders be it in games, demos or whatever have been trying to impress people with tricks to fool the eyes or brain, just because its not really doing what its supposed to it doesn’t take away from the effect or you should be disappointed because its not really doing what you think its doing.

So unless it breaks a specific rule in a competition its time to get over it.