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'Ocean Machine'
by TBL
-= Perpetrators =-
Louie - Graphics
Tudor - Animation
Yolk/CNCD - Music
Kalms - Programming
Rubberduck - Programming
Nichosen - Graphics
And ported to Atari Falcon 060 by Mikro who is very cool :-)
It's been promised for a while, we've been waiting patiently, when not distracted with other things going on that sap my time and energy over the last few weeks, and now we've been rewarded, again....
Almost as soon as the dust of excitement had cleared from the arrival of Silkcut on the CT60, Mikro told an eagerly waiting scene that he was working on a port of the next groundbreaking modern Amiga demo from The Black Lotus, namely the warmly regarded 'Ocean Machine'. So it seemed this year was going to be a much better year for CT60 demos than the previous one, even if it was material 'borrowed' from another platform. The waiting turned out to be a bit longer, due to various distractions on the part of Mikro, but eventually, as September darkened into autumn, a finished port of Ocean Machine bursts out into the open to a fanfare and much hoarse ragged cheering from the multitudes.
Ocean Machine was the winner of the Breakpoint 2005 Amiga demo competition. It also appeared in distinguished company in the 2005 Scene.org awards, nominated in several categories, and actually winning the best graphics and soundtrack. Now it is our turn to experience this awesome release.
Before we go on, Mikro does advise us that this had been mostly ready to go since May/June, apart from one last bug, and other distractions which got in the way until now. Also it is recommended to run this on an RGB screen, or a VGA which can handle 50hz, which rules out most flatscreens. No such problem here, as I have one of the old CRT screens, and it is even possible to cheat and watch the specially created video footage taken from a CT60 Falcon by Evl, if you're feeling really lazy.
And so to the show....
The opening shots are very familiar, namely an identical series of loading screens as seen in the Silkcut demo. The last of these fades to black and a heavy splattering drum sound starts, with a rolling gold solid plasma onscreen, like a stuttering sunrise. A face slowly forms out of the goldenness getting brighter and more distinct, then her eyes open as the music opens up... A fancy scrawl over this makes up the demo title 'Ocean Machine'.
For our first major set-piece, we take a trip to the neighbourhood in which Salvador Dali grew up in, a mad, abstract cityscape with blocks twisting and suspended in a brooding evening sky. This is a jaw-dropper of a scene and undoubtedly played a big part in its success at Breakpoint. A more considered retrospective viewing can pick out the more fake looking background bits painted onto the sky, but look away for a moment, forget that and the screen is still great. The music grows lyrics, as someone, apparently a sister of a girlfriend was recorded singing in French. This adds greatly to the relaxed and ambient style of the demo, as the intention was to get away from the more 'industrial' presentation of parts of Silkcut and other TBL demos.
Something more 'pure' code follows, a semi-abstract organic tree cluster, or alien jungle 'thing' tumbles down the screen. This is the first demonstration of TBL's new chunky 3D voxel engine which will get quite a bit more airtime as the rest of the demo goes on.
Now we have one of the defining set-pieces of the demo, the beautifully animated balletic ninja lady dancing around with ribbons in a golden hall part! There isn't a lot else to say, so we'll let the screenshot do the talking.
I guess you enjoyed that! I certainly did.
The next scene is more multilayered and needs a bit of effort to pick out the distinctive parts. At the bottom is a greyed-out reprise of the Silkcut mountains, but these are merely acting as a background to the TBL 'Decepticon' logo surrounded by fragments of polygons in an exploded view with the camera spinning around it, and some other graffiti scrawl in the screen.
We're back in the chunky voxel land, this time a darkened forest, a clearing lit from the centre by some blue stones. Various camera angles are shown, until we pull back a bit more and head into the next clearing, which has a single gold/red coloured stone lighting up the area surrounding it. For anyone determined not to like this demo so much, criticising the chunky voxel world was their main weapon of attack, but here on the Falcon, it works well enough.
A complete change of mood follows, who said that TBL productions were carefully themed with all the parts closely linked to each other, eh? Where a crisp, clean and greyshaded world of cubes is next. We get a spinaround this screen, the cubes are showing a smudgy shadow. Then a procession of black cubes and their shadows glide in underneath the suspended and waiting to collapse forever archway made by the grey cubes. This screen is understated, blissful, and one of those close to pure 'art' moments that are rare on the demoscene.
Greets are next up, the crew names are flashed up on hexagonal tiles, whilst we're within a greeny hexagonal construction. So this could be construed as living in a greetings hive! Following rapidly on from that, the credits are next. These are a relatively lo-fi and low impact series of screens, to get the feeling that the end of the demo is near. The music is slowly tailing off as well.
But there is one last hardcore goodie left for the endpart, as the 3D voxel engine does its thing once again with a beautifully realised tree which the camera is spinning around once again, stood against the skyline in the dying evening light. And so it fades to black, and we've come to the end of another classic TBL demo experience.
So another classic from the Black Lotus, with parts that remind me of the overall style of Silkcut, but several differences as well. The mid-section dancing lady with ribbons is back, and better animated than ever, the overall style of disconnected set-pieces but brilliantly presented, reminds me of Silkcut as well. However, the soundtrack and general thematic elements were deliberately intended to promote a non-industrial, ambient, and mellow demo in Ocean Machine, and that succeeds brilliantly as well.
We've got all the hard work back in 2005 of the Black Lotus team in making it to a party deadline at Breakpoint, and subsequently making it work properly afterwards. Of course we have Mikro to thank for being super-active in porting this demo, along with Silkcut to the Falcon '060, which really seems to lap these up. I'm hopeful of a trilogy to complete this porting cycle sometime, with 'Starstruck' coming to the Falcon.
Other misc issues..
The side issues that I covered in the Silkcut review tend to apply here as well, so I won't go over the same ground twice. Instead, I'd like to note that for this year, so far at least, these two ports of the cream of Amiga '060 demos are both heartening and worrying at the same time.
The heartening news is that Silkcut was not a random lucky one-off. The Falcon '060 is more than capable of decently hosting productions of TBL quality, and in some respects, appear to do a better job of running it than the original target hardware. I'm hopeful for the full trilogy including Starstruck at some point, and wonder if any other famous Amiga '060 productions could be ported over? (By someone else perhaps, Mikro has done enough for us here!)
The worrying part is that these two ports represent the sole higher end demo activity on the Falcon this year (so far). The tendency for other Atarians who might be tempted to dabble in '060 level productions to be overawed by the quality bar set by TBL is still very much present, I feel. I gather that some original code is coming from Mikro, but I remember at least one concern expressed that some people would think that it would be too directly 'inspired' by Kalm's work. The issue seems to be a chronic and crippling lack of self-confidence, if we're fearing anticipated negative feedback (which comes down to a few minor league trolling idiots, for gruds sake!)
I'd like to see a few new productions from people other than the 'usual suspects' for a change, now how long is it since we got those CT60's? But I guess the usual reasons for lack of time and the background white noise busyness of life sapping motivation have got to count against as well. There may also be a reasonable question to ask "Where next?" for the Amiga scene as well, which might impact on what we're doing too?
But enough for now, just enjoy the moment!
Ratings:
Coolness:- 99% - Yep, still is!
TBL Ruleage:- 99% - They still do!
Mikro Portage:- 99% - He did it again!
Amiga vs Atari:- 0% - Still smiling!
CiH for Alive Mag, Oct '08 - Resurrected from Cyclone obscurity by Mag 2012.