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                   "Moving Into Darkness" by Dead Hackers Society
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system... ST, STe, Falcon, 1 MB RAM, RGB/VGA

credits.. code - evl of dhs
                 gizmo of dhs
          gfx  - c-rem of mjj prod
          msx  - 5o5 of checkpoint

release.. Error In Line 2k3, took 2nd place at ST demo competition

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We had to wait quite long for  DHS' new ST demo if we don't count  their nice ST
intros that appeared for different purposes over the past years, but in fact the
"Moving Into  Darkness" is  their  first "fulltime" ST demo  since "Sweety". DHS
avoided it, again, to bring  us some disk-image  thing, but  a normal filed demo
that runs on any ST or Falcon machine.

The demo  starts with a black screen and a  very soft chip  tune that reminds me
hard to Rings of Medusa at the first moment, but then the usual sid voices start
to  come in  as well as  the first  effects. In the  background you can see some
strange  circling texture  effect and in front  the credits  are faded in with a
blinking white screen and fading away  slowly. As I don't know right how to name
the effect, just take a look at this one...



Euh... this looks a bit static now...

At next  there is a  logo shown  saying "darkness" while  in the background some
bones or  something are  displayed... urg. And  in such  dark mood we go on, the
next  screen offers  us some  pixeled Alien head in red colours on the left side
while on the right side a big environment mapped vector star turns its rounds.
Since this one has a lower resolution, a  part of the  screen with the Alien got
this lower resolution as well. This looks  at first a bit  strange but allows it
to move with parts of the vector over the Alien grafix.

At next we get some bumpmapper in blue green  colour that looks a bit different,
as the lightsource is static  while the texture  scrolls to  the left. The thing
stops and again some environment mapped vectors are coming in. This  time we see
5 objects, one big in the  middle and the 4 others  spreaded  around  it. Also a
nice screen, esp. when the background with the bumpmap starts to move again.

And we get even more environment mapping, this time we see 5 mapped  vector bars
on the  screen moving in a wave  form. Not  that  bad but  the first versions of
this effect are  much better. Therefore the next one looks cool, it  seems to be
some texture  mapped room with a column  in the middle  while  the whole room is
moving around its axis (the column). To imagine this one, take this  screenshot:



Apart from the environment mappers the best effect in the demo!

We go on  with another  environment mapped  vector  object, this  time some long
vector bar that stucks into another cube. This  one  moves  around in front of a
window-a-like  grafic and  finally zooms  away into  the picture. After  a while
some  enlighting  beams  coming  out of  the center  of the  picture and  with a
loading picture the first part is over.

With some text the second part is  introduced, that also offers a new music, and
we get an a  bit similar effect  as  the one mentioned  above with  the textured
room  thingie, but  this one is a bit  smaller and  apart  from the rotation  it
seems to feature  some whirl effect  as well... arf... dunno how to say... looks
not bad, but I like  the other one much more. It changes its  colours and we get
a strange  grey/white picture with a quite big  environment mapped vector object
onto the screen. Good one...

The  next thing  is a picture  of an ork  or  something  and a few greetings are
scrolling  over the  screen. After  that a texture  in  quite low resolution  is
build up on the screen and a  transparent environment mapped  DHS vector logo is
moving around on the screen. Again a nice effect! And somehow  this was the last
one as we then can  take a look at a  picture that shows  some  strange wound or
something  together with  the  saying "68000" inside... This one  fades  to dark
blue and we get the end scroller with some credits and informations.

Last but not least we get  a nice pixeled logo  by C-Rem again  that is the best
grafic in the demo  at all. Well done mate. To see  a few more screenshots, take
the link below...

-> some more screenshots <-

Final words ... "Moving Into Darkness" is a nice little demo with  good technics
                and  nice  artwork, as well  as good  music. The environment map
                stuff is well  done and quite big and fast as well  as the other
                effects  are nice  looking too. But  the demo  suffers under the
                same problem  as "Hallucinations" by the Reservoir Gods, here we
                have to  see over all  only a  few effects but in many different
                shapes. One or two  environment  mappers are  fine and cool, but
                to build a whole around this routines  is a bit too much. But in
                comparison to the Reservoir Gods the DHS gang  matched it to add
                different  view points onto  this effect that makes  it not that
                boring and so they were able to avoid it to rode  the quite good
                effects completely  to death. I just  wish they  will  have more
                time next time to include a  bit alternation  as the  DHS coders
                belong without any doubt to the nowadays ST top coders.

___ratings______________________________________________________________________

visuals.......  75 % - nice grafix and logos
audio.........  85 % - very cool chip tunes by the master himself... 5o5
effects.......  8o % - mainly environment mappers, bump maps, texture stuff
design........  75 % - not that straight but some nice screens, dark styling
originality...  7o % - take care to rode good effects not to death!

___Overall______77_%____________________________________________________________

A nice little demo with cool effects, but as said above, a bit  more alternation
would have done wonders here...

_.tSCc.__________________________________________________________moondog_o5/2k3_