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Classic Demos Revisited - Atari ST for Maggie 25th
'Breath' and 'Sweety' from Error in Line '99
For this very special anniversary Maggie issue, I only thought it fair and reasonable to write a companion piece to my 'Classic demos revisited' article for Sonolumineszenz. This one is for the Atari ST series.
This one also picks up on an interesting period in Atari ST demo history. The ST side of things had experienced a long decline, sometimes considered terminal, in favour of the Atari Falcon and other higher end platforms.
The Error in Line party in 1999 was a major turning point in the ST's fortunes, with several earth shattering releases for the neglected platform rebooting it to immortality, which has happily continued to the present. But today, I'm not concentrating on 'Suretrip', a classic for any age which needs no reappraisal, or even the tasty and perfectly formed 'Rumpelkammer'. Instead I'm taking a fresh look at two releases, very similar to each other in a lot of ways, which went on to define quite a lot of how the Atari ST 'newschool' would look over the next few years.
These are 'Sweety' by the Dead Hackers Society and friends, and 'Breath' by Mystic Bytes and friends.
Both DHS and the Mystic Bytes had established themselves as keen supporters of the Falcon. These two demos were the first time they had to attempt to downscale to the older ST series. Both of these demos have additional help, apart from the core group members. Tao and ST Survivor make contributions to Breath, whilst Edo, DMA-SC and MC Laser (before he became Lotek Style.)
It is instructive to run the two demos back to back. Stylistically, they are very similar. Lots of warping textures and tunnels, the popular effects at that time are in there. There has been a reduction from the abundance of colours that the Falcon throws around.
The differences can be found in the detail. Breath tends to remove every other line from the display, to lessen the chunkiness of some of the effects. Sweety does not do this. A number of stock effects from the higher end machine get their day here, such as the neon vortex in Breath, and some creditable bump- mapping from the middle of Sweety. Both of these are aimed at a stock STFM, albeit Sweety would prefer a bit more memory and either emulates or supports a 4096 colour palette.
The music for both of these hurries the effects along. It is not a slow and gentle ride for either of the demos. The soundchip musicians, and the still graphic artists turn in some of their best performances. There is no real way of working out which one is 'better' than the other, which is perhaps the way it should be?
Even my personal preferences don't dictate a clear win for one party over the other. If I could remix these, it would be with the less blocky screen mode from Breath, but with those stunning still pictures from Sweety included.
So, CiH you're describing two nice but overshadowed demos, why are they getting the star treatment here and now?
Over and above Suretrip, which was a rare and not easily followed up epic, and Rumpelkammer, which was the final remnants of the oldschool spirit, Breath and Sweety represent the first of the new wave of ST demos for the 21st century.
They would have an influence on the future direction of the Atari demo scene. Now it was proven that Falcon style trackmo demos, with Falcon style effects were possible on the ST, we would see more in this vein, including Wildfire's 'Tut' demo next year, and 'Moving into Darkness', DHS's enhanced and accomplished grown up ST demo in 2003.
Even once the late nineties effects had grown stale, freshly motivated, other coders decided to investigate their old ST's further, with the results over the last ten or fifteen years that you're all familiar with! So that is why I decided to write a little bit about these two often overlooked classics.
Retro-Rated - 85% - For demos which were not limit breakers, these two were very influential on the future direction of the Atari scene.
CiH - Maggie, 05.15- Written under Outline Party numbness conditions, which hopefully excuses any errors with spelling, grammar, or basic use of facts.