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The Maggie Scene Niews round-up type thing!
So we ask what is happening for 2015 and thereabouts? What has happened? What rumours can we conjure up as to what might happen next?! Read more here!
Summertime is not so Silly now!
One thing that needs confirming but is potentially the biggest news for next year, will be a date in July 2016 for a revival of the Sillyventure Party. Bearing in mind how wildly successful previous editions were, this would be very welcome indeed!
Dead Hackers Society are definitely not lost at sea!
Our favourite Swedes are back to their very best form with a brand new Sommerhack 2015 release, which smashes many true colour boundaries on a 4MB STE (with a sufficiently fast hard disk.) Their new demo, 'Sea of Colour' is perhaps the ultimate cheering summery demo, with outstanding effects throughout, and at least a couple of set pieces that we'd want as screensavers running forever on my STE. There were other cool releases at Sommerhack 2015, and we'll tell their stories as well. In the meantime, read the full review in this edition of Maggie.
Cybernetics are reborn!
A surprising release from a long-lost French group at Sommerhack. They were last active in the early nineties, but have sprung back to life with a gripping sound to light type style demo on the STE. It originally used an STE with two floppy drives, but has been tamed by GGN to play nicely with hard disk equipped STE's.
Orion is surprised to have enjoyed himself!
Orion has been active on various platforms lately. He had 'Unexpected Fun' making a new demo for the CT60 Falcon for the Sillyventure 2014 party, his second on that platform. But just lately, he's been concentrating his Atari coding urges on to a multi-format game which includes the Jaguar console, with his CD ROM game 'Alice's Mom's Rescue'. This is a good old school platform game, with some nice touches. This has had a release on Jag CD-ROM and a limited release on cartridge.
It looks like he may have finalised any further involvement with the Falcon side of things for now though, as something that looked a lot like his CT60 was on sale on Ebay recently :-(
However, he's not given up on the ST side of things completely, as a GEM compatible version of his puzzle game ' Yopaz IceStar' is released, for only $4.00. This will run on anything from ST High res mono, ST Low res and upwards to 16/32 Bit Truecolour mode.
*Update!* - In a further series of shock moves, Orion has branched out to porting some of his hits to the somewhat underrepresented Firebee Atari Compatible. He's ported the adventure games 'Elansar' and 'Philia', and most recently, 'Alice's Mom's Rescue' as well. There's even a CT60 version of the last game, through the miracle of Hatari emulation and helpful third party testers.
Truly, Orion is a one man game making powerhouse this year!
Cloudy with a chance of further demos on the Jaguar?
In Spring 2015, we enjoyed an early taste of what can be expected from the forthcoming Atari Jaguar homebrew coding revolution. A joint production from many of the good and great of the Jaguar scene was released at Outline 2015. 'Cloudy with a chance of Metaballs' features SH3's early exploring of the possibilities of Raptor Basic Plus on the Jag with a nicely done demo. Is there more to come?
Doug Little runs simulation of Milky Way Galaxy on standard Atari Falcon. Whole Universe may be possible on CT60 Falcon? (Crashes on Amiga, Universe ends!)
After storming to success with his much more developed 'Badmood' Beta at the end of 2014, Doug has been mostly investigating how to get a madly optimised Quake 2 graphics engine running on a standard Atari Falcon. From the Youtube videos and beta version so far appearing, he appears to be succeeding brilliantly. He will be investigating new projects, as well as seeing how far he can push this one. You can find out more about the life and times of the man in our exclusive interview.
This is Doug's actual work station at home!
More recently, he seems to be quietly adding to the Badmood code, and I'm sure he's got something in mind for the Quake engine and has been doing some interesting experiments with fast ray-tracing.
Paradox, keeping it real(time)!
A new STE demo 'SaboTagE' was hinted at, in a short intro shown at the Sillyventure 2014 party last December. A further life sign was seen at Outline 2015, with RA showing off some more developed high resolution true colour picture displayer routines. I was informed that this demo already had a year's work put into it, and still had a lot more to go. Will this be the ultimate STE demo of all time? We can only wait and see and hope!
On a possibly related note, both Paranoid and RA are down to attend the STNICCC 25th anniversary.
tSCc have got Worms!
Their main coder, Insane, has been working on a 'Worms' conversion for the Atari Falcon for release in 2015. This was shown at Outline 2015. This is based on the Apple Mac 68040 core, and will need an accelerated Falcon to work. Probably a CT60 or Afterburner. On the plus side, it has the approval of the original developers, Team 17! Way to go!
In other news, Lotek Style released his first edition of the collection for absolutely everything ever made on an Atari ST family member, under the title of 'Fujiology Archive v1.0' in January 2014. He hasn't stopped since then, with more feverish archiving activity still going on which will culminate in Fujiology 2.0 being released. Will he stop then? I doubt it!
Checkpoint are Beyond the Thunderdome!
These prolific people have been fairly busy in their different parts. LSL came back in February 2015 after a world smashing two disk epic called 'Thunderdome' with an STE only, hard disk streaming production called 'ATM' early in 2015. This recalls some of the best moments of famous dance and acid styled demos of the past. Also, Wietze/spkr has coded a neat invitro for the Sommerhack 2015 party.
Defjam breaking limits - An intimate portrait!
This was followed up with the 'Making of Thunderdome' demo, (or using the leftover bits) and a completely new production with mature styling and nicely done effects from SPKR called 'Pulse' shown at Sommerhack 2015. So these have been very busy people. What have they got for us next?
Anima in more shooty-death mayhem!
Anima, aka Percy of Light, has been playing with his Choren-Sha conversion to a standard Falcon. Now he's reworking as much code as possible to run on the super speedy bits of the Falcon, such as the DSP, to get it decently playable on the standard machine. A first beta of this was released in July. Has he succeeded? Well read the review to find out!
Ppera crams an orchestra in an STE!
Ppera, P Putnik and under other various guises has been reworking some classic games to make use of some of the extra features of the Atari STE hardware, with the possibilities offered by easily available bulk storage. Sometimes we have both of these things together. Such as a streaming full fat multi- megabyte sampled soundtrack, using the STE DMA sample replay for games like Xenon 2, Cannon Fodder, and the Great Giana Sisters (with other enhancements from Zamuel's STE rework on the last one.) He's also looking at reworking some other games for a fine hardware sideways scroll on games such as 'Hard and Heavy' and 'Jinks'.
It's 'Payback' time from Britelite!
After his CT60 Falcon demo in the form of an ironic invitro, released at SV2014. He's been relatively quiet on the Atari side of things this year. We have had the perfectly crafted 'Hammarsock' 4ktro for ST released at Sommerhack. He coded another higher end Amiga demo, 'Carbon Based' at Assembly this year. We wonder if there is any more news on other possible ports or productions?
Kalms in 'Rift' with the Amiga scene?
TBL/Kalms:- With Kalms undertaking the work himself, we now have all four of the Black Lotus's most recent and best Amiga 060 demos on the CT60 Falcon. Namely with 'Rift', the 2014 Revision party winner. We say a little bit more in this edition of Maggie about this latest addition to their impressive demo portfolio.
A New Beat from an old heart?
New Beat - After a long pause, we heard from them, as a completely revamped Ace 2.0 was released in summer 2014. This has a raft of new features to massively enhance it over the previous version. At this point, work may still be proceeding on the very long lost platform game 'Willies Adventures'. One day maybe it gets a release?
Nature Brothers getting themselves ready for the big screen?
Nature Brothers - We saw a SuperVidel enhanced shootemup at an Outline party some time ago. Maybe there's some movement on this? They will not be making any more SuperVidels. Any demand for further units may be met by Willy who is also creating the reworked CT60E, but nothing has been said recently.
STNICCC 25th Anniversary - You've 'Gouda' be there!
Rich Karsmakers:- Will be paying due homage to the remembrance of the old Atari scene from 1990 days past. The 'ST News International Christmas Coding Convention' (STNICCC) 25th Anniversary will take place on the 18th December to the 20th December 2015. This end of year event is expected to be the focal point for a large part of the combined efforts of the Atari scene, this 25th anniversary issue of Maggie included! Here are some stories that are linked to this upcoming event of the year.
We're hearing from Bod (formerly of STAX) with his enhanced mix of R-Type for the Atari STE. This has made good progress, with most of the code and levels designed. He is intending to have this (more or less) ready for the STNICCC 25th anniversary party. At the very least, we will get an advanced preview, even if the full game isn't quite ready.
He also has mentioned that there is a demo entry planned under the Effect label, also for STNICCC, which is going well.
Considering Dbug/Next, he brought a fabulous Oric intro to the VIP Party earlier this year. We can speculate if something else is planned for STNICCC?
Then there's a message in the NoExtra STE demo at VIP, which says that they will 'see you at STNICCC'. Is this just the guys turning up at the party saying 'Hi!" or something more substantial?
A vaguer than usual one next from the laziest Swedish group 'T.O.Y.S'. Their coder, Peylow hinted at an STE demo intended for STNICCC? But that was some time ago.
Marc Bascoul of the Hemeroids has been teasing with random screenshots. I guess something is due for STNICCC from that direction?
Then there's the Maggie 25th Anniversary edition which is due to make some sort of appearance before being finalised and released. This will include a party report and the realtime article from STNICCC, that means me, oh dear!
Lamers - issue an all points bulletin. "Watch out for a demonic computer thief!"
Scene veterans if relative newcomers to the Atari ST side of things, 'Lamers' went to the Riverwash party. Whilst they were there, Satan stole their Atari. He did leave behind a nice if fairly short demo in exchange. We hope they got their Atari back. Also it is nice to see them keeping faith with the 16-bit platforms. A well made demo just a minute short of of being perfect. Assuming Sillyventure 2016 is to go ahead, what will we see from them next?
Hatari - Something ancient stirs itself awake!
With the release of the rather big update to the Atari emulator, Hatari 1.9. There is a small intro bundled with it. It's made by Mr Styckx and features 'Shadow of the Beast' graphics a lot.
Simoncam and friends - He's dishing out double trouble!
Thomas Ilg, aka 'Simoncam' has had a busy 2015. After completing and releasing 'Laserball 2015', including a limited boxed edition, he's only gone and found some old GFA Basic code and whipped that up into a racing game for the STE called 'Anarcho Ride'. This one plays a bit differently from most. The aim here is to pick up points with as many collisions as possible! Both of his games are reviewed in this 25th Anniversary Maggie special.
Your new daily commute!
Also with respect to the limited boxed edition of Laserball, with actual floppy disks and a proper box with artwork. I've got one!
Single Bit demo seeks like minded companions - Good sense of humour essential!
Coming from the rather mysterious 'Global Convention of Worldwide Demo Developers International, Inc' , some promising releases that escaped from a couple of parties that happened entirely in cyberspace, or someone's imagination? The aptly named '1 Bit demo competition' features a handful of releases from noted authors such as Xia, Masters of Electric City, the Atari Spice Boys, and even a revival of long lost masters Phalanx.
There are more restrictions than usual, two colours onscreen, the same two at all times and one channel music only. However, you can break any of these rules! Some interesting and not entirely serious releases have come from there, one or two of them almost inspired!
Post-Party STNICCC Update - MY BRAIN EXPLODED!!
8th January 2016 - It is entirely fair and reasonable to state that we had reasonable but modest expectations for this party, as the speculative pre-party notes above would suggest.
What we did not expect, was the onslaught of demos that actually made it out there, including some really massive smashers!
A quick count up reveals FIFTEEN demos and intros and a couple of game previews. The sole Falcon release came from Doug Little, and reveals a base Falcon has realtime raytracing and rendering skills. The clear winner was a genre-redefining killer for the STE from Oxygene. The likes of Checkpoint, Absence and Oxyron had to fight for attention. And did I mention the return of Cream?! Not Heftig, not this time anyway. Releases from Sync, Defence Force, Effect, Spice Boys, and tSCc all got in too. The game previews came courtesy of bod and his nearly finished R-Type for the STE (after he'd recovered from the party!) And Bonus finally getting a demo version of BeGEMed out,
There was almost too much to count, and some sort of post-Maggie consideration of these great demos will need to follow.
Scene News has been compiled and speculated on by CiH For Maggie 25th Anniversary, at various times in 2015..