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Saxonia Issue 03 Part 021
Ocean/GFB 4kintro review
By Rumrunner/VOID
l
Now, most people will know the group Gunnars Farvebio, it started early in
the nineties, if I'm not mistaken. First, it was more a jokegroup than a
serious one, and they made some demos which, if not for the effects,
certainly will be remembered for the ideas. Everybody knows how a real
megademo look, one part after another, usually some loaderpart inbetween.
GFB also used this setup, but included parts no other groups would dare to
do. What about for instance a diskmag in one of the parts?
Right, this group turned more serious as time went by, and they have
released some productions which have fine effects. Those who haven't seen
the Megademo$C/Gigademo1 should fetch this production and view it some
times. Just a word of warning though, this demo seems to run better without
anything started before it, not even setpatch. Remember that setpatch
patches the systemroutines, so there's no need to run this if the code
doesn't use the system.
Another production I like alot from GFB is the Megademo$D trailer, an intro
(in the correct sense, introducing something which in this case happens to
be a demo, that is) with among others excellent music, and a rotatorroutine
which looks fine on screen.
Just to mention it before I start the real review, GFB also is active on
both C64 and PC. Sadly I haven't seen any of the C64 productions such as
Brak, but I have seen some 256 byte intros on pc, and they have been far
above decent for that size. And it seems like MZ1453 (the coder) likes
Buck Rogers Scrollers (also known as StarWars-scrollers) very much.
Right, now onto the Ocean intro itself. The intro certainly fits it's name,
first after loading the file, typical nature-televisionprogramme music
comes from the speakers, then we see an underwaterworld, changing viewing-
angles all the time, running smoothly on my 40 mhz 040. The colours are
selected purposefully and gives a nice, relaxed atmosphere. This is
something that you could have used for screensaver if it didn't take over
the system (if you need the system intact when the blanker gets into
action, that is).
We see the bottom of the ocean and
If there's one thing I should comment negatively it's that sometimes the
intro for one reason or another starts with a messed-up screen, and this
doesn't correct itself, you have to start the intro over again, and then
hope it runs correctly. This isn't too big a bug really, as there's little
space to do initialisations on 4k, and I for have released some smaller
productions that doesn't set the view correctly if run from screenmodes
other than pal. Like said, I don't think that this is a big problem though.
All in all, I think that this is a decent intro which deserves some
comments after being released in 2001, that's two (almost three) years, and
I for one have not seen a comment on it before. But it can ofcourse have
happened that I have missed something.
Get the intro now if you haven't seen it.
