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                              "ERGO BIBAMUS" by QUASIMODOS
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 system.... Atari 8bit, 32o kb, RGB

 size...... ATR-diskimage, 131 kb

 credits... Kroger (code)
            Glonisz (code)
            Raven (gfx)
            Morgoth (music)

 release... Lato Ludzikow 2oo1-party

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 Some  days after the  release of the  last issue  of UnderCover, I  was highly
 motivated to  write some  articles again.  But I  was not  sure what  to write
 about, so Moondog  helped me a bit by copying me the demo I will review on the
 following  pages.  The  production  I  speak  about  is  from  a  crew  called
 QUASIMODOS. They  come from  Poland  and  consist  of  five  members:  Glonisz
 (coder), KAC (coder),  Kroger (coder), Morgoth (musician)  and Raven (gfxman).
 Since the year  of  their  foundation,  1994, they  released a  lot of  demos,
 intros, games and tools. If  you  want to  know more about them,  please check
 out their homepage under

                       http://www.quasimodos.px.pl/

 ...before I start to go into  detail, I have to admit that  I did not test the
 production on the  original machine. The  demo needs 32o kilobytes  of RAM and
 this is  definately too  much for  my good  old 8oo  XE that  is resting  in a
 plastic bag one meter away  from the place I sit right  now. Anyway, there are
 some good emulators on "modern  machines not being compatible to Atari", and I
 testet the demo on maybe the best of  those emulators, ATARI 800 WIN Plus 3.0.
 This version was launched on March 26th, 2oo2 and can be leeched at

                   http://www.a800win.atari-area.prv.pl/

 After mounting the diskimage  with ATARI 800 WIN  and  starting the emulation,
 the screen fades  to black.  In  the  lower part  of the  screen we  are being
 informed about the name of  the demo,  ERGO BIBAMUS, and that we  are going to
 see a  "collection of  realtime effects"  coded from 1996  to 2oo1.   As  I am
 quite  sure that only very  few people  in the Atari  scene do have  the Latin
 proficiency certificate  (neither  have I!),  I had  to search  for  the right
 translation of  the demo's name. "Ergo bibamus!" means as  much us "Let's have
 a drink together!" and  has  its origin in  medievil drinking songs,  where it
 uses to be part  of the refrain.  (Okay, okay,  no more  imparting  of general
 education  in this text... :))

 So  only some seconds  later, some kind of main menu appears  on  the  screen.
 On the  top of  the  screen,  a  weird  three dimensional figure is  displayed
 in green  colors. It looks  like one of these impossible constructions by M.C.
 Escher, but  not as good  as his  works (of course!). Below this we can see  a
 QUASIMODOS-logo,  held  in three  blue colors. Nothing outstanding, but  nice
 to look at,  anyway. The most important thing on this screen is of course  the
 selector,  some plain  white  8x8 text, letting us choose between the Trackmo-
 part and the Endpart. We  choose the Trackmo-part and wait what's happening...

 Ahem.

 ...nothing happens, except  for  a  loader that  takes some  ages to be  done.
 Fortunately, the  emulator I am using  has an option allowing fast loading, so
 the job  is done within 3o seconds. The loader  itself comes  along with three
 yellow  linevector-digits that  turn  around and  counting  numbers down  from
 around   7oo  to  zero.    The screen  fades  black  again  and some  strange,
 newskoolish pokey-music begins  to  play. I  cannot  find any melody  in here,
 but maybe that's the intention of   its maker. After  all, this  music is hard
 and loud.  Some seconds after, the   screen turns to  white and a  b/w logo of
 the crew is  displayed. It has a very  low resolution,  must be 8o x somewhat.
 There are also  two black wings on the   top of the logo. The  picture is soon
 broken through by a cube,  also  held in   black and white. The  picture fades
 away and the cube rotates quite fast  on the  black  background. It seems like
 they used some gouraud-techniques  to fill the  surfaces, at least the cube is
 shaded. Nothing  spectacular though, as it was   shown in a lot  of other 8bit
 demos before.

 The cube  disappears and  a fullscreen-picture is displayed. Good in  painting
 technique,  not outstanding in  choice of motive. But form yourself an opinion
 by having a look at this:



 Next, the  picture scolls  down and  some design stuff  appears on top of  the
 screen. We can  see a white line, one  pixel wide, drawn from  the far left to
 the far right of the  screen. In  the upper left corner are  some green plants
 or  flowers. Very  nice  stuff, that is.  Design  rules! :)  But this is  only
 preparation for the  next effect,  a big  white  scroller  that  is  shown  in
 different  perspectives - they even change perspectives  while scrolling. Well
 done! If you don't get the image how  this looks like, just  remember Equinox'
 EAT MY BOLLOCKS demo from 1992. They  also  did a blue  scroller  that changed
 perspectives   there,  even  if  their  scroller  was  plus   distortion.  The
 following  effect seems  to  be some  special Polish  running gag.  QUASIMODOS
 again distort a  picture of a  crew member, showing  him when he was  a little
 kid  (maybe  you remember the BUMBLE BEE demo by  Syntax?). Additionally, they
 display a  cube over - or better: - within  the distored image which makes the
 effect different from the  others. Multilayer  effects  rule!

 Another  common effect  is coming up: toruzzz!!! This one  is held in b/w with
 flat surfaces and  it is not as  big as the  toruses in the amazing TOTAL DAZE
 demo by Tight, but  the crew claims  it to be  realtime. Soon  after, a little
 orange  sun  moves around  the torus  and lightens it  from  different angels.
 Finally, the  torus gets mapped  with a grey texture  and slows down a  lot...
 After  this  we can  see  scanned  pictures  of  the makers of the demo. Those
 pictures are displayed in an interlaced-modus  and they slowly morph into each
 other  (haven't  I seen  something like that  on XL before, maybe in a demo by
 Hungarian's number one Hard?!?).

 The demo  ends with  a huge grey  3D-world  with  houses,  a church  and other
 building. This effect  is damn slow,  it has some o.5 to 1  frame per  second,
 but  don't mind:  you can  speed it up by pressing the fast forward-key of the
 emulator. :)



 ENDPART. Once again the loader  with the  linevector-digits, but this time not
 as long as before the trackmo  part. The endpart uses a  resolution of 32ox2oo
 pixels. Some white  text  is  scrolled  from  the bottom  to the  top,  giving
 information about the  different effects and the  makers of  the demo.  In the
 background of this  scroller  we  can  see  a white  linevector-cube, not  too
 smooth,  but  using  hidden  line-algorithms.  All in  all,  this  serves  its
 purpose.  Unfortunately,  also  the  music of  this part  lacks of  melody and
 harmony.


 Final Words: It's great to  see that there are still some people on Atari 8bit
              "doing  things". You  can feel  and see  it: the  makers  of ERGO
              BIBAMUS took some time in designing this production. The  effects
              shown are  not really state of the art, but that's mainly because
              most of them were already coded back in 1996. The musics are crap
              IMHO. Anyway,  I really  like demos  on XL, esp. better ones than
              those  released  at EIL 2oo1 or  Unconventional  Party.  And ERGO
              BIBAMUS  is definately  better than most of the stuff released on
              ATari 8bit these days!!!

                                              mOdmate of CheckPoint, 19-o4-2oo2
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