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Classic Demos Revisited - Part 3 (Atari Falcon)
Sonolumineszenz by Avena
Everyone who saw Sono' for the first time remembers where they were.
I was at the Spring Atari Show at Birmingham, shortly after that fateful Easter of 1997. I was temporarily Falcon-less, having had my machine hospitalised due to a bodged Nemesis accelerator upgrade. Previously, I had not succeeded in booking the time off to make it for the Siliconvention Easter Party either, so to say that my spirits were lower than usual is a fair assessment.
So it was down to Felice and his working Falcon to give me my first viewing of the taut genius of Tat, that was jammed into every last corner of Sono'.
Of course I was amazed and totally convinced that we had finally seen the long awaited next great leap in Falcon demo coding. We watched it several times that weekend, along with the author and some famous friends who also turned up with the bug fixed 1.2 version. It made an interesting comparison with another 'media' production that was newly revealed at the same Atari show. This was the Atari Computing Magazine's Autodesk animation of an Atari logo made into a space station (A static version of which was their front cover.) This feast of frames took around 25 Megabytes, according to hazy memories.
Sono', which offered a longer and more diverse show, with a bonus soundtrack, fitted on a high density floppy disk! Even then, some people were not convinced that this was all down to hardcore DSP coding of realtime effects, and speculated that there was some kind of very powerful frame compression wizardry going on!
And that was my first and most memorable encounter with Sono'.
It was reviewed in Maggie 23 by the incomparable Mr Pink, and rightly hailed as the best demo on the Falcon (at that point in time.) There was also quite a bit said about its creation and first ever showing to a public audience at the Siliconvention '97 in that issue, again from Mr Pink, who did manage to make it to that party.
About the demo.,
Weee! Goes the opening blast of the soundtrack by Tommy. The haunting cry perfectly completes the looming moody sky and restless turbulent waves.
One of the (many) standout moments from this demo is found in the depths of Tat's code generated watery domain, as a shoal of texture mapped fish glide languidly past the screen. At this point, many hardened coders were throwing their keyboards in the bin in despair. This subsequently extends to contemporaries on rival and supposedly more powerful platforms, as a massive Dolphin grabs centre stage (screen) and gives a friendly onscreen wave.
Atari Falcon Aquarium Simulator!
The bar has been shoved to Olympian heights right from the opening seconds. This happily continues, with Tat managing to wrap his effects to Tommy's desolate and grandiose soundtrack to a degree not seen in any demo before.
A perfect example of such mastery can be seen in the next major set-piece, namely the dance of the manic twisting textured tree and the drunken Bumblebee with poor depth perception repeatedly crashing into the glass front screen thus cracking it. This excerpt from this demo is listed as the leading cause of death among Philips CM8833 RGB monitors.
Some people might say that Sono is a little short on 'graphics'. Well we do get little bit of static pixel goodness from Agent T depicting classic coder burnout, described by Mr Pink as "Fried of Avena being a little bit tired and possibly emotional."
Tired and unemotional!
Tat cracks on the pace with lots more 3D textured and shading squeezed out of the Falcon's DSP and lowly 16MHz cpu. Varied objects morph out of a flat plane as if trying to break free but not quite making it?
Then a different point of view from inside a texture mapped cube. Most people are well used to a commonplace 'outside', so it takes a little bit of different thinking to go inside of one.
Something described in a scant fashion as a 'twisty tunnel'. In fact one of the predecessor routines that should have gone into last year's uncompleted demo.
There seems to be a gauntlet being thrown down to other coders of that period, with the complexity and interest level caused by his 3D objects. No more boring and staid cubes and donuts. Instead a range of flying heads and spiny things predominate. Yes these are cliches themselves by now, but this was 1997, when newschool was really new. Only a favoured few were showing these on higher spec platforms. Tat was one of the first to bring this to Atari systems.
Tat then pushes the Falcon as hard as its bare metal can scream, with the biggest head yet, filling the screen as it goes.
The music senses the end is near, as a series of letters making the group name 'A v e n a' come charging at you.
Then the show is over, the curtain, consisting of an underwater bondage scene static image from Agent T, is lowered. The audience departs in a hushed fashion, well aware they have witnessed something very very special indeed.
End!
For a long time, we were awaiting the next step from the benchmark setting Fried Bits 3 releases in 1995. The state of the art for the following year hadn't built on that so much, a bunch of interesting 4ktro's notwithstanding. Tat had been working quietly as I saw a preview of routines intended for a 96ktro.
This was intended for, but not released at Symposium '96.Instead, he worked on these more and into a full demo, the end result for which I've written on here.
The preview had the stormy sea from the start of Sono' but with a differently more brightly coloured sky and the dolphin was thrown down a tunnel, rather than enjoying a triumphant swimmy centrepiece of its own. There was also a brilliant title sequence for a production called 'Useless' which was never used
Facing the facts!
So to try to sum it up in a short paragraph, Sono' was more than just a normal demo, you could describe this as a virtuoso 'performance' in 68K and DSP Minor by Tat.
Sono came at a key moment in Atari scene history. It nicely counteracted a seeping feeling of drift and loss of many of the Falcon scene's original players after 1995. It could not have been better timed.
It was not really bettered until Error in Line part 2 and the class of 2001's 'Hmm' demo. Mr Pink was so motivated by Sono', he went on to base a potted history of the Falcon demo scene up to that point on it, in yet another article in Maggie 23. I can't really disagree or add to his argument that "Design is giving the demo a heart, a soul, a rhythmic beat that carries the viewer through from start to end and leaves them with a smile on their face."
Sono is still awesome today, and can be enjoyed on its own merits, even without the weight of Atari scene history pressing down.
Things could have been even better after, with the follow-up that was planned (Binliner). But it was not to be, at least we got the preview screens for that.
Retro-Rating:- 92% - Sure, it has been bettered since, but head and shoulders above everything else for a long while, has a special place in our hearts!
CiH - Maggie, May 2015.