pouët.net

LIBERATION by Force II

       24.12.1994 -*- Force II WHQ: Fox's den -*- Edited by Fox



Hi guys...

Thank you for downloading or copying the newest Force II production.
This text file should accompany the demo "LIBERATION", which we
created for the PARTY IV demo competition in Denmark. If you would
like to get further information about FORCE II, our members, our
policy, or our releases, please read on.


0. LEGAL STUFF...

We (FORCE II) are not responsible for any damage to your hardware
or software that may occur after running "LIBERATION" (even though 
this is VERY unlikely). This demonstration may be copied and spreaded
as much as you like, but it has to remain unchanged. The archive's
name should be "F2_LIB.ZIP", and it should contain the following files:
LIBERAT.EXE    [The program you have to run]
*.4C2          [Data files]
LIBERAT.DOC    [This text file]
FORCES2.EXE    [BBS addy]
FILE_ID.DIZ    [The file description]


I. CURRENT MEMBERLIST [alphabetical order]

- Ant           (*1974) (Coding, PR & Organization)
- Dandy         (*1976) (Music)
- Designer      (*1971) (Trading, PR & Organization, Utility Coding)
- D.E.L.        (*1977) (Moral support =))
- Falcon        (*1975) (GFX)
- Fox           (*1975) (Coding, GFX, Add. Music, Sysop, PR & Org., Texts)
- Intransient-
   Accomplished (*1972) (Music)
- Thor          (*1974) (Coding, GFX)

We are still searching for a competent bitmap artist to join us, especially
because we intend to program a professional game (probably an action-
adventure with a Doom-like GFX engine; the plot will be something having
to do with Animal Rights. HEY - ANY SOFTWARE COMPANIES LISTENING??).
If you are a graphician and feel good enough, please contact us 
- and enclose some of your work, for we would like to consider your 
abilities !  The nearer you live to our home cities, the better 
is your chance to be accepted!


II. OUR BBS FORCE:

Digital Forces BBS  (WHQ)  -*- Sysop: Fox           / +49-(0)7025-7067
Dark Illusion       (EHQ)  -*- Sysop: Kaos          / +49-(0)89-36102651
The PhoeniX Rising  (USHQ) -*- Sysop: PhoeniX       / +1-NEW-NUMBER!    
Point Break         (BHQ)  -*- Sysop: Lord Cyrix    / +32-(0)11-43-69-25
Universal Mind BBS  (IHQ)  -*- Sysop: Jim Morrison  / +39-434-33869
HD (M)BBS           (NHQ)  -*- Sysop: R0M           / +47-52729023
Supreme Court       (DHQ)  -*- Sysop: Steel         / +31-1650-51850
Creative Brains BBS (DIST) -*- Sysop: Nitus         / +49-(0)2352-23234
Farpoint Station    (DIST) -*- Sysop: Stingray      / +49-(0)4202-76145
Hard Drive Café     (DIST) -*- Sysop: Hard Drive    / +904-721-8831
WolfNet C.i.C.      (DIST) -*- Sysop: Teki Ninjo    / +49-FIND-OUT!

Sysops: Please call our HQ if you want to become a Force II distribution
site (note that no more Distros will be accepted in Germany!). Fill in
the application form enclosed with this demo, and upload it as PRIVATE
MAIL (written in capital letters because some people don't seem to know
what a PM is!).


III. FORCE II/RATSOFT HISTORY:

Ratsoft was formed in summer 1992 by Fox and Ant, originally just for fun
and not really with the aim of being a true demo-releasing group. Later
that year, as we saw great demos like Unreal or Cronologia, we got really
fascinated by those productions, and we decided to release a demo created by
ourselves - yet we did not know what it would be like, but the few routines 
we had got at that time did not let us do very spectacular things. You can 
see the results of these very first attempts to do something with the PC's 
graphics capabilities in The Sinus Demo and in Fox's Demo, which was 
released only one month later (anyway, it was based on nearly the same 
techniques as The Sinus Demo...).
Well, our routines developed, and in the meantime we had realized that
our group's name "Ratsoft" did definitely not sound very promising; we
always got frustrated when we saw in different BBS's around that no-one
downloaded the file with the nice description "The RatSoft Sinus Demo"...
so we finally decided to leave the rats in peace and to call our group
"Force II". I guess you will ask why we chose "Force II" !?  Well, it's
quite simple. For most of my suggestions concerning a new name for our
group were labelled as "too dark" or "too mystic" by Ant, and for I did
not like his suggestions either, we sought (and found) a simple, but
promising name. That's FORCE II - two because of two ( ;) ) reasons:
First, we were TWO people at that time - and second, because it was a
kind of second beginning after the chapter 'Ratsoft' had been closed.
Our first release under this new name was the Intro for the Digital
Forces BBS. It was our first step into the direction of coding demos
reaching really acceptable standards, though it can't be compared to the
things you see in demos that are released nowadays. Anyway, this intro
was spreaded much more intensively than our earlier productions (probably
because of the group's new name !??!?)...
The Digital Forces BBS as our WHQ enabled us to expand massively. We
actually met most of our current members by modem, visited each other,
and this way, things kept developing.


IV. IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON THIS DEMO:

LiBERATiON requires a 386 (or faster) system with GUS, and it won't look 
really good on anything much slower than a 486SX/25 with VLB, because most 
of the effects are really FULLSCREEN and therefore require a fast video board.
If your system doesn't meet these requirements, we suggest that you don't
run "LIBERATION". It will probably not be worth being watched under these
circumstances.
In addition to this, you need about 650'000 Bytes of free memory
(conventional+UMB). This should be easy to get if you are using a memory
manager like EMM386 or QEMM. And don't forget to run ULTRINIT before
executing the demo.
If there are too many bugs left in this version (which is due to the lack
of time very likely), we may release a bugfixed version in January 1995.
If you like this production, it would be great if you could send us a 
postcard or something like that...just to let us know where this thing 
has arrived. Of course you can also contact us if you want to swap demos, 
make friends, support Ant and me with Hardware, Software or money (we are 
both poor students ;) ), tell us how cool we are (hehe...), give us moral 
support (we always need that...all those fuckin' things that mankind 
inflicts on earth and its creatures sometimes really put us down),
or for any other sensible reason. Our addresses are:

Fox:
Dag Frommhold
Eichbergstraße 47
72639 Neuffen
Voice - 07025-4099
FAX   - 07025-7067
BBS   - 07025-7067 (see above)

Ant:
Frank Hunszinger
Weinbergstraße 8
72636 Frickenhausen-Linsenhofen
Voice - 07025-3694


V. LiBERATiON was betatested on:

- Falcon's 486DX2-66 VLB, 256k L2 Cache, ET-4000W32p 32Bit/1MB, 8MB RAM
- Fox's 486SLC2-66 VLB, 128k L2 Cache, CL5426 32Bit/1MB, 4MB RAM
- Ant's 486DX-33 VLB, 256k L2 Cache, ET4000W32i 32Bit/1MB, 4MB RAM
- dATa's 486DX-50 ISA, 256k Cache, ET-4000 16Bit/1MB, 8MB RAM
- Designer's 486DX2-50 VLB 128k L2 Cache, CL5428 32Bit/1MB, 8MB RAM
thanx to these people for the time you spent on watching and judging
our demo!


VI. Qualified and unqualified remarks during the 'process of creation':

- "Where is that damn Crêpes-shop that was here one hour ago ?"
  (Thor after waiting for the other members at the wrong station for
  about 1.5 hours)
- "I've got an ASM-Source... but compiled, it is a MOD-FILE!!!"
  (Ant talking about his playing routines)
- "Meine Labels sind AUSgerückt!"
  (Thor discussing programming styles with Fox and Ant)
- "Hmm...guess he can only upload after he has uploaded something..."
  (Fox taking a glance at his BBS)
- "DO UNTIL 1=2: PRINT "HALLO ! ";:LOOP"
  (A demo part by Ant we DIDN'T like to include)
- "Jeder vernünftige Mensch hat ein Telefon gefressen!"
  (Thor, originally intending to say "die TELEKOM"!)
- "PUSH AX...SHR EAX,16...PUSH AX...PUSH EAX!"
  (Fox's S-A-F-E way to store registers)
AND:
- Is it right that Ant never forgets to park his IDE Harddisk ? =)


VII. RATSOFT/FORCE II PRODUCTIONS:

So far, we have released the following productions:

                        Rel.  
Name                    Date   Filename      Type   
                                
The Sinus Demo          11/92  SINDEMO.ZIP   Intro  
Fox's Demo              12/92  FOXDEMO.ZIP   Intro 
DF Mini Intro v1.0      04/93  FORCES.EXE    BBS Addy
Digital Forces Intro    05/93  FORCES.ZIP    Intro
Sound Attack            01/94  ATTACK.ZIP    Music Disk
Airsky                  01/94  AIRSKY.ZIP    .ULT File
Fiction                 01/94  FICTION.ZIP   Demo   
Metal Banger            01/94  MET-BANG.ZIP  .ULT File
Treibjagd               01/94  JAGD.ZIP      German short story contra
                                             hunting
ASM-Menu                02/94  ASM-MENU.LHA  Assembler Menu for Amiga
U C 4 ME                02/94  UC4ME.ZIP     .MTM File
Ranxero                 02/94  RANXERO.ZIP   .ULT File
Amiga - PC - TextCon    02/94  APTCON22.ZIP  Amiga<>PC Text Converter
Intro Fox               04/94  IFOX100.ZIP   Intro Maker
Fight Hunting           05/94  FH.ZIP        .ULT File
Exotic Text Converter   05/94  ET-CON13.ZIP  Text Conversion Utility
Resolution 013          06/94  RES013.ZIP    .MOD File
Arctool 0.2beta         06/94  ATOOL02B.ZIP  Simple Archive Tool
SpaceD                  08/94  SPACED.ZIP    4K-Intro
PhoeniX Rising Addy     09/94  PHOENIX.ZIP   BBS-Addy
Digital Forces Addy II  12/94  FORCES2.ZIP   BBS-Addy
Liberation              12/94  F2_LIB.ZIP    Demo

(as well as some minor releases, e.g. a Benchmark, a little Stars-Intro,
SearchBBS)


VIII. Some remarks on the F0RCE ][ policy

You will probably already have recognized that, unlike most other demo groups
we know, we in Force II try to give our demo something that can be called a
"deeper sense". As most Force II members are interested in politics and other
important things beyond the demo and computer scene, this is only natural -
and as we think, speaking out against any form of injustice belongs to the
most basic and also to the most important things a human being can do in
order to improve the situation so many oppressed beings are in. We have
decided to point out our opinions on various forms of exploitation of living
creatures in our demos, and we can only say that we are puzzled by the fact
that we seem to be the only demo group that does this.
Of course, we do not only speak out against exploitation and destruction
in demos. Fox is also an author who is just about to get his second book
published. His first book, a hard-covered non-fiction title against hunting,
has been published in April 1994, and has so far received very good remarks
in different magazines. For German-speaking readers who may want to buy
this book: It is called "Das Anti-Jagdbuch - von der ethischen und ökologi-
schen Realität des edlen Waidwerks", it contains about 360 pages with photos
and lots of text :) and it is available for 32 DM at your local bookshop (tell
them to order it). In addition to this, Fox has written different articles
for various animal rights magazines.
If you want to contact us in order to discuss about anything we've just
mentioned, just call or BBS or write to the snail mail addresses you can
find in this text file. Because we are all very busy, letters we consider
to be less important may get answered later than letters which seem more
urgent to us.


IX. OUR WHQ BBS

...is the Digital Forces BBS, with Fox as its Sysop. At the moment,
we have got 1.0 GB of HD space directly accessible. Via Network, there
are further 500 MB on a different Harddisk ready for usage. In addition
to this, there is a CD-ROM drive connected to the BBS. All these
features give you a total amount of theoretically accessible data of
about 2.0 Gigabytes.
The Digital Forces BBS has got one of the greatest Demo bases in
Southern Germany. Currently, there are more than 250 Megabytes of Demos,
Intros and Music Disks ready for download, as well as many other files...
but you will surely realize that yourself if you'll dare a login !
JUST ENTER FOX'S DEN !
Tech specs: 2400-28.800 V.34, 8N1, 24h online, 386-40MHz/486-66MHz
            BBS-# +49-(0)7025-7067
Further lines will be added as soon as there is money for them :)!

signed by
Fox of Force II
24th December 1994, 18.44