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Pure Bollocks Issue 22_036
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D E M O * R E V I E W S
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"Mathematica"
(Aura)
Flowerman of the
Pure Bollocks Editorial Team
This demo, like the 'If Pigs could Fly' Demo, is another running-demo, this
time by Aura. It's made up of around 8 screens,all introduced from a nice text
screen which gives you some info on the coming screen. The intro loads up
quickly enough, and the credits/introduction part starts, with a nice module
playing in the background. After all this, there is nice pallette-switching
picture(different on the STE) It's quite impressive and very well done,
although it does seem a bit out of place, almost as if they've bolted it onto
the end of the intro as a space-filler. After this, you can sit back as it runs
through the 8 screens.
1) Keftales - The first screen is a simple large keftale. Keftales are a bit
hard to explain, but you might recognise them when you see them. This one
uses colour-cycling, and it really is pretty unexciting to watch.
2) Realtime Keftales - These keftales look a lot better than the first ones.
They're realtime(which makes them a little slow), and there's quite a lot
of them on the screen, all expanding and generally moving in strange
patterns.
3) Keftale Flight - These are probably the best keftales in the demo, and it's
mighty impressive as you zoom through the inside of a large keftale with
several smaller keftales making small disruptions around the screen. Once
again, it's a bit slow, but it's still very good.
4) Cubic-Cybernetic 4th Dimension - A bit of a fancy name for some more
keftales (you start to get pissed off with keftales at this point). They
move in very strange patterns and they merge in and out of the dark blue
background which makes them a little hard to see. Nice if you're into the
surrealistic!
5) 2d Realtime splines - Yes, it's splines again! They're virtually identical
to the one's in the Electra guest screen in the 'Punish your Machine Demo',
with 5 different settings to create the bendy lines.
6) IFS-Fractals - This is my favourite part of the whole demo. It's one of
those fiddle-about-with-the-parameters job which create nice fractal-type
patterns on the screen. There's lots for the parameter changing freaks,
with lots of things to change. The bottom half of the screen is overscan
which gives more room for the actual piccy. Good stuff!
7) BDC Guestscreen - According to BDC, this screen was done in 2 days, which
might explain the unoriginality of the shapes. It's another filled 3d demo,
with the usual cubes and pyramid shapes. The objects are extremely large,
but that's about all I can say about them. It would have been greatly
improved if the objects were a bit more original, even at the expense of
speed (3 vbl 3d still looks OK). It's well-coded and fast, but that's all.
8) End Screen - This is actually my second-favourite screen of the demo. The
credits slide down the screen, with some nice large bubble sprites floating
up the screen. The bubble-effect is very impressive and it looks as though
it would have taken some time to get them to move about so realistically.
There's some different music here as well, and the top/bottom borders are
gone too.
Overall:
I can't really fault this demo. It's not amazing but it's definitely not bad
either. It's well worth getting, even if the keftales get pretty boring after a
while. The graphics are well drawn, and the intro/end music is good, but like
the 'If Pigs could Fly' demo, the main music is the same throughout the whole
demo.
Rating: 70%
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