Mega-Ega
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│ 16-04-1994 │ The MEGA-EGA Demo │ by S-Cubed │
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This is S-Cubed's second demo for the EGA 286 PC. His first was so
bad he doesn't want me to talk about it. I mean it was seriously on the bad
side of bad... You should have seen it - there was no music, and only one
screen. It was quite fast I suppose, it did run at 50 frames a second on an
EGA 10MHz AT, and at 70 on a VGA 16MHz 386SX, but it was not nearly as good
as this demo. If you've seen GR8 by the Future Crew then S-Cubed's first demo
is in that league... unfortunately his other demos aren't quite as good as
their other demos, but hey - theirs don't run on an EGA 286. Hah!
Anyway, enough about S-Cubed's first demo, even if he did write it
only two weeks after getting his first PC. Well, it wasn't bad considering
actually, but it was all done with planes and multiple pages. If you work
out what it was actually doing then there is only one remotely difficult bit of
coding in the whole thing, although working out a font and logo in binary
numbers was a bit tedious - that's what took him most of the two weeks...
Oh and by the way, you know I said there wasn't any music in it, well what
you can do is run a MOD playing program that shells to DOS, and run his demo
with it playing some music in the background... cunning eh?
However, I'm sure you don't want to hear any more about S-Cubed's
first demo, even if it was quite laughable. He didn't even think of a name
for it, that's why I keep calling it just "S-Cubed's first demo". At least
this demo has a name. It's called:
┌─────────────┐
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│ 16-04-1994 │ The MEGA-EGA Demo │ by S-Cubed │
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and I'm sure you've noticed that it's much better than his first demo.
tHE fISH.
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Well, that was the intro to this text-file, and it was by tHE fISH.
I must say he seems to have spent more time talking about my first demo than
the MEGA-EGA demo, but never mind - it saved me having to write more of this
text, 'cos I'm exhausted after writing the long, long, long, long scrolltext
at the end of the MEGA-EGA demo.
This is the MEGA-EGA demo by S-Cubed. It hasn't won any annual demo
competitions, and it hasn't come 159th in Assumblo '97 or anything like that.
This demo not Shareware - it can be freely distributed as long as
this text-file is included with it. I would prefer to think of it as
Contactware (a concept introduced to me by my great pal FROG) That is, if
you like the demo, or even if you hate it please leave me (S-Cubed) a message
conveying this information. You can leave messages for S-Cubed on the
following BBSs. They are listed in order of log-on frequency, i.e. I log on
to Active Logic most often, then Pyrotechnix etc... So if you want to be
sure you contact me, try to choose a BBS that's as high up the list as
possible. If you are a Sysop of one of these boards then please don't be
offended if your board appears low down on the list. B-)
BBS Name Sysop Telephone No.(s)
Active Logic Steve Jones 0525 210151 (two nodes)
Pyrotechnix Malcolm Rowe 081 390 4701
Anon Jack Deth 0932 350729
Stateside Link Brian Willis 081 984 1522 / 081 984 9113
Sound & Vision Rob Barth 0932 252323
Flight Path Gary Smith 081 759 3332 / 081 759 6664
You can also leave me messages on the SBC-net.
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System Requirements for the MEGA-EGA demo:
■ 286 6MHz (the demo will run on slower machines, but it's not advisable. If
you want to hear the music as well, a 16MHz 286 is recommended. )
■ EGA graphics. Yeah, like that's really a problem for most people...
■ 517KB conventional memory. (No EMS or XMS support - if the program will load
it should run, but if it doesn't, or seems to
be much slower than you expect, try removing
expanded memory managers and such like... )
■ Soundblaster or DAC. OK so this isn't really a requirement, but the music
is worth listening to - not because it's good, but
because the whole demo is synchronised to it, and if
you can't hear the music, some bits of the demo will
seem totally pointless and slow.
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VGA/sVGA/SVGA Users please note:
As is explained many times throughout the demo, MEGA-EGA was written
for EGA machines (hence the name). The EGA refresh rate is 50Hz, while the
VGA refresh rate is 70Hz, even when it is in an EGA screen mode. This means
that the demo running on a VGA machine will run 40% faster than it does on my
EGA machine. However, the music speed is not affected by the graphics card,
which is fortunate because it would probably sound ridiculous if the tempo was
increased by 40%. Unfortunately this does mean that on a VGA machine, the
graphics will get ahead of the music, and the program will wait until the end
of that section of music. So sometimes, the demo just sits there doing
nothing, while you think "What's going on? S-Cubed must be a really crap
coder." Of course, on an EGA system, the graphics finish at almost exactly
the same time as the music reaches the end of a section. B-)
I have probably made it sound as if the demo will be unwatchable on a
VGA system, but this is not the case. In fact, the delay while the music
catches up is only really too long in two places. The worst is right after
the first section, just before the "swirly circles" start. The other is just
before the "landscape" scroller. There are other delays which I notice on a
VGA machine because: 1. I wrote the demo, and 2. I'm used to watching it
on my EGA machine, but they are not really a problem.
If you think the machine has crashed, then wait for 16 seconds. This
is the length of the longest delay in the demo, and if you have to wait for
longer, the machine probably has crashed. Of course, there are no delays if
the demo is run on an EGA machine. B-)
If the end-scrolly is too fast for you to read properly then there are
three things you can do:
1. Read it on an EGA system, where it will scroll at only 71.4% the speed.
2. Record it onto a video camera, and then advance it in freeze-frame mode.
3. Get a friend who can touch-type and read quickly to type it into another
computer so you can read it at your leisure.
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You may be used to Future Crew type demos, where the music is done
using DMA, and you can run it at 22kHz on a 386, and still (just about)
watch the demo at full speed. Well, I don't have a soundcard, so having
DMA sound in the MEGA-EGA demo is asking a bit much. I had to program the
soundblaster routine without actually having a soundblaster myself, and give
it to a friend to see if it worked. This means that the music is done on an
interrupt, and is hence takes much longer than you might expect.
Here are some recommended settings for various computers:
Processor Speed Music Freq. No. of Stars
286 6MHz None 200
286 16MHz 4kHz 400
286 20MHz 8kHz 400
386SX 16MHz 4kHz 400
386SX 25MHz 8kHz 400
386DX 33MHz 12kHz 800
386DX 40MHz 12kHz 1200
486DX 40MHz 16kHz 1600
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Well, there you go. Err, look, I've written rather a lot of text
in the scrolly at the end of the demo, and so don't have much to say here.
For further information about S-Cubed and his amazing life - read that
scrolltext. All there is left for me to say now is RUN THE DEMO.
B-) S-Cubed 16-04-1994.
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