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"Delta" by LineOut
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system... Falcon, 4 MB RAM, RGB/VGA
credits.. code - earx of lineout/fun
gfx - havoc of lineout/fun
evl of dhs
msx - dforce of lineout/fun
earx of lineout/fun
frequent of ephidrena
laxical of the silents
release.. o1/o3
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LineOut?! Surely this label may have painted the one or other question mark into
the eyes of several readers, but the puzzle solves itself if you read through
the credits. LineOut is nothing other than the new label by Earx of Fun. He
decided to use this one to leave the unproductive and uncooperative Fun members
behind... and brings us his new full time Falcon demo under this label now...
"Delta" is build up of 3 different parts including a menu screen and you can
either chose a single part to watch or start a special part, but here you have
to watch the whole rest of the demo then. But before this, let's go step by step
with loading the demo.
After loading a little info screen appears for the screen settings and a detail
button. Maybe I am wrong but I couldn't find out really if I switched the detail
on or off as I didn't saw a big difference (or no?) in the demo then.
At first a pixeled LineOut logo appears on the screen, made by Havoc, followed
by a presents and a triangle line vector object, that gets delayed then and is
some kind of logo for the "Delta" demo. Anyway, it turns its rounds with the
feedback effect and then the menu screen appears, offering you to chose one of
the 3 demo parts or to leave the scenery. All this happens in complete silence.
Ok, let's browse through the demo...
...Part A...
I must say it right here, it seems as Pieter had cleaned up his harddisk here,
as he bombs us with a load of effects that were already seen before in many
other demos and often in better quality too. You get the most things to see here
that were released in the demos of the late nineties, tunnels, zooming and
disting textures, melt-o-vision effects, glasballs that are joining each other,
raytracing balls, water wave effects, sky and floor mappers, a flight over a
landscape and so on. Unfortunately those effects are combined with in parts very
ugly colours (yellow and pink...) and a tracker tune by DForce that sounds like
he would be 1o years old (the tune, not Dforce... ;)
Unfortunately I have to say that I watched this part of the demo just two times,
at first as I got the demo and then for this test. It offers no real "boah" fx
and looks a bit loveless smashed together... I have to say I was a bit disturbed
to see Pieter crawling out all those old thingies... The only better thing was
a lighsourced grey texture tunnel short before the end of this part.
...Part B...
But now Pieter shows that he can do much better... At first, with Part B the
music changes a lot into a real nasty industrial noise soundtrack.
Then he starts an orgy of environment mapped 3d stuff that shows off the last
steps he made in his coding skills. We can see some triangle vectors flying
around on the screen and then we are flying through them as they're building
some kind of tunnel. In the middle of the screen a gold coloured vector object
appears and when the triangles are vanished, some blue lightnings appearing to
the beat of the music around this vector object.
After some kind of waterdrops effect or something the grey lightsourced tunnel
from part A comes back, followed by two vector spirals that are moving into each
other. The next one is a real cool thing... you can see 4 env. mapped golden
vector rings on the screen in different size, that are moving together around
and turning around different axis' to move together in one direction at the end.
Check the screenshot below...
...not to forget that the movement is quite fast...
This already cool effect is followed by another one, showing a bigger bunch of
env mapped vector stars that are moving in a waveform over the screen.
After another landscape flight we can see 3 half env mapped balls that are
hollow and moving together timed to the music. This is a very abstract scenery.
But the following one brings the first real "wow" effect, as two env. mapped
vector cogwheels appearing on the screen, moving together. Then an axis is
stuck into one of them and on the other end of this axis two more cogwheels
appearing, all still in movement. This looks really good, a nice idea.
The next one looks a bit known to us and reminds slightly to the "Hmmm" demo by
Escape as it brings also a lined cube in environment mapping including a little
triangle vector inside, mapped as well. All moves quite smooth and is of very
reasonable size.
We go on with some strange caleidoscope effects and then the screen with the
four rings that was mentioned above appears in a similar form but using now
square vectors in the same way. Another strange vector object comes up and
zooms away then and as the screen turns black the music changes from the very
hard style into a more groovy one.
At first we see now some kind of feedback effect in a strange dither style and
the grey lightsourced tunnel appears again, followed by an animated strange
ring-a-like vector object. This one finally turns away and makes place for...
...Part C...
The music now changes into a more relaxed one and we start with a textured sea
star that is slightly animated and gives the impression to fall down onto the
ground of the ocean. As he found his place besided another one the whole scenery
gets darker and the bumpmapped.
At next we see some textured mussel shells in different styles, that are also
animated and swimming around on the screen. The best one is a big "ammonit",
you know those spiraled big things? At next we see some kind of animated
textured bubbles that are moving upwards and leave a bit the impression to see
a jellyfish from above without tentacles.
Following is a fractal plant that was shown in a similar way in "Terrorise Your
Soul" and is animated as well, building up quite impressive bushes. We go on
with another water wave effect that builds up another cogwheel in the end, sure
as little reminder to part B, followed by a very cool textured and lightsourced
metaballs effect.
Then we see some mapped vector stars that are surrounded by some partycle
effect, that flies around on the screen like a komet while the vector stars are
flying around him. This looks also very cool...
Arf... I should search a possibility to include animations here ;)
And we still haven't reached the end, as a pulsating purple/blue vector comes
up flying around together with a starfield. Looks also quite nice.
The music changes a bit and sounds like a hard breathing human while a big 3d
ifs fractale is build up in the background that moves around.
This is followed by another very strange vector stuff, also coloured in purple-
blue again and then animated mandelbrot stuff comes up, and again those strange
vector stuffs. Here I'm running out of words as the whole scenery is build with
animated, pulsating and moving texture mapped vectorstuff.
The screen turns black and the writing "all these worlds are yours" is printed
onto the screen, followed by some big dots galaxies in different forms, while
the greetings and credits appearing. A real nice end part as this quite long
trip is over now...
Final words... "Delta" leaves a quite mixed impression. I have to say that I
was a bit disturbed after I saw the first part, that looked more
like a step backwards, in the wrong direction, with the effects
and the whole style and music. Therefore the two other parts
bringing quite good effects onto the screen, very big vector
stuff that shows that Pieter is working hard to hold up the
contact to the top coder league. Some of the shown screens have
really a special flair and the musical score is a mess as it
hits my taste very well. Unfortunately the few design effects
aren't enough, those many black screens surely hadn't must be
and this is surely a big drawback for the whole demo as it
doesn't features many good transitions or design elements. Some
screens really create a special atmosphere, but the whole demo
itself looks a bit smashed together loveless. Sorry to say so...
___ratings______________________________________________________________________
visuals....... 6o % - some nice pixels, fonts and textures
audio......... 7o % - the first track lowers the score a lot!
effects....... 8o % - a big bunch of vector stuff with mappings and so on
design........ 5o % - some parts are cool, others look quite ugly (Part A)
originality... 65 % - the 1st part destroys the score again...
___Overall______65_%____________________________________________________________
If the first part wouldn't have been included the demo surely would have got
a better rating, for example I would have rated the musix from part B and C
with about 85 % at least... as well as design and originality had made a little
step higher, too. But... it isn't the fact and I have to rate the demo at once,
with all parts...
_.tSCc._________________________________________________________moondog_o2/2k3_
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UCM24
