'Silkcut'

By The Black Lotus..

Ported to Falcon by Mikro..

And mine's the face with the stupid grin plastered all over it! I've just been watching it for the third time in a row!

(You might remember this bit from gwEm's interview with Kalms, hosted on dhs.nu)

gwEm: "Now, I saved the most important question for last. There have been many rumours flying about of a proper TBL production on Falcon060. Even stories of a conversion of 'Silk Cut', apparently it shouldn't be much work. I guess all the Atari world want to know what truth there is in these stories?"

Kalms: "I inquired a bit to see whether it would be feasible. It's not impossible, but it seems that the amount of spare time I'm devoting to demos is all gobbled up by the making of new Amiga demos. And there's no reason to expect that to change either..."

That was then, this is now(ish.)

I seem to remember, an Alive issue or two ago, that one of the things that we might be seeing over the next year, would be some ports of demos from other systems. I was specifically thinking of the Amiga AGA '060 series, which has managed to attract a distinguished line of quality demos which hold up well even in these Peecee dominated days.

More recently, some odd speculation turned up on the Dead Hackers BBS, about demo porting to the CT60, not only talking about the possibilities, but in one or two cases, actually stating things had been *done*, but the end results hadn't been released to an eagerly waiting public as the prod concerned was not considered to be of good enough quality overall! That contributor considered that it would be worth spending months to port something in the calibre of 'Silkcut', but not the other thing he had done. More interestingly, the recent activities of this person are intimately connected with the fact that I'm writing this review now!

In like Mikro?

Mikro turned up at the Outline '08 party, setting up his huge towered CT60 by the door, I captured a movie clip of him giving gwEm a guided tour around his system, the obviously proud owner. At the time we were aware he was working on something, something that was going to be made for the CT60. It also became apparent fairly early on, that he was not going to get anything done in time for the competitions, as the task was greater than the time left to complete it. (There was also talk of a 4ktro which involved a collaboration with some other Eastern Europeans, but that did not come off as yet either.)

We left Outline with the feeling that there was still some more to come, that the crashing wave of cause, effect, and releases hadn't quite finished rushing in, and sure enough, before Paradox got their party demo finished, Mikro reappeared with a port of the mighty Silkcut demo, by demo demigods Black Lotus! From a narrow and selfish view, if this had appeared in the wild compo against 'Special Wee-Wee', we'd have been shot full of even more holes as the losing entry than we were in the main competition!

The Amiga original was released to massive acclaim and first place at the Breakpoint '04 party, the original creator credits follow, kudos for all your hard work guys.

        Graphics by Louie & Bohman & Tudor & Nichosen
        Coding by Kalms & Rubberduck
        Music by Blaizer

Now Kalms is a special case, as he has been sort of on the edges of the Falcon '060 scene, observing things for a while. At one point he was thinking of doing a Silkcut port himself, but "other things got in the way". Still he was happy to have Mikro do the 'dirty work'.

So what does it look like?

I could do this as a SoLo2 parody, oh hell why not! Loading logos, sepia coloured halls and passageways and glowing clock with only one hand, big train leaving the sepia station, fade to white, spiky thing that doinks the screen, shouty bloke barely able to support unfeasibly big hat, woman spinning around in bowl of soup with ribbons, mountains! mountains with invading polygon aliens, circular tunnel thing, greyscaled greets and group logos, green transparent polys, end-bit with more mountains and 'Silkcut'. Did I miss anything? Well, apart from some sort of critical appreciation of a more heightened demo experience than normal, nothing really?

Guess I'd better be a bit more descriptive here....

On starting up, you immediately get the feeling that you are about to enter something really special, when the music starts. The soundtrack from Blaizer is a major reason for the appeal of this demo, perhaps even more so than most recent demos I've seen. It does not merely compliment or add to the atmosphere, but it is a major driver for it. So down the hallways we go, with the opening credits, into a Grand Central Station styled labyrinth, on to the platform, where the train is just leaving.

You've missed the train, too late, as you crash into white, and are confronted with a collection of polygons, bundled into a ball, and smashing themselves eagerly against the screen. Then cut to the TBL take on Daniel Day Lewis in 'Gangs of New York' roaring a challenge from his golden pulpit against an abstract cyberspace backdrop. This is one of the standout moments in the demo, and you sense that Silkcut will go beyond anything ordinary.

After the beast, then some beauty, with the TBL's first take on the theme of dancing females and trailing ribbons, as she spins around in a bowl of light. Pure artistry, nicely understated, in contrast to the all-out action of most of the rest of the demo.

Next we are viewing the single sequence which stuck in most people's memories long after the first party viewing, and the bit which got coders scratching their heads wondering "how did they carry that off?" This is, of course, the famous mountain sequence, where the viewer is looking straight down at a damn fine rendering of a snowy mountain scape, some of the best live demo graphics ever seen anywhere, this viewpoint sweeps around majestically until something prompts the camera to look up, where the polygonal alien spaceships lie in wait!

We're straight into something more conventional, but fast-paced, which is a forever looping tunnel, but one which is very well done. Immediately following, we are getting a nice little screenful of plasma style effects and golden shooting stars, not anything owing to the 3-D dominance of the rest of the demo, but a nice change of pace for a minute nevertheless.

A long and elaborate series of greets follows, with a large amount of hand- drawn logo's for each greeted crew scrolling left to right. A little nod to oldschool values, but thoroughly updated. (I still think the EKO System demo had the best greetings idea ever!)

There is some more 'pure demo' in the penultimate sequence, with stacks of transparent polygons arranged in a "New York City exploding upwards" style, where the camera takes us on a spinning tour of this alarming scene, then we're back to the mountains for the final word, with the 'Silkcut' title pasted firmly on the front of the screen, as the music subsides, reluctant to let go. And that is the end of nearly six minutes of demo fan heaven.

I hope you preferred this description of the demo, well it's my way, or the SoLo2 way!

I think I've found a way of summing up the general Black Lotus demo experience, the single word that fits nicely is "filmic". That is pertaining to anything movie-like. It seems that the recent TBL demos have that extra quality which lifts them from being a mere demo into something else.

I thought a bit more and remembered when I last felt this hyped up and drooling with anticipation was when I first saw the Star Wars 'Phantom Menace' trailer. The way that the trailer was edited together, fast-paced, with a juicy selection of the action and cgi bits, resembles this demo. The Phantom Menace trailer was a glorious five minutes "what might have been", badly let down by the subsequent stretching out of the concept and addition of some piss-poor acting and dialogue, not to mention Jar-Jar Binks.

Silk Cut can't really be said to be unified by any specific overarching theme, but it looks and plays like a damn fine movie trailer which is lucky enough not to have to suffer the indignity of being bodged into a full-length feature.

CT60 vs AGA?

You might expect the port to come out rather well, even in comparison with certain aspects of the original. Kalms referred to his target hardware, the Blizzard 1260 '060 booster, as 'low end'. The CT60 has a faster cpu, in some cases, quite a bit faster, and a better bus sub-system. Indeed Mikro had to make some adjustments, disabling the precalculated bits of the mountain scene, and slowing down the tunnel scene to a 'native' framerate of 16 fps.

On the other hand, the greetings section has been grayscaled to take into account the Falcon's 18-bit palette, against the original 24-bit palette. The audio was been reworked to an .mp2 soundtrack which goes down nicely through the DSP, saving a few percent more cpu time. In general, this bodes well for future attempts to port other famous Amiga AGA '060 prods to the CT60, as this port shows our systems are more than up to the job.

On viewing both the AGA and CT60 versions on Youtube, even with the latter based on Evil's 'basic' CT60 with 16mhz bus and 66mhz cpu, it is definitely smoother than the AGA version. Then again, this is with the "lowest" '060 Amiga booster, and not all of these were created equal, I guess?

Comparisons with Derealization?

Silkcut was the benchmark used when Atari demo makers first got hold of the CT60. To some extent, it may have had a suppressing effect on early releases for the CT60, with there being such a high standard to aim for? However, in the summer of 2006, an answer was given, in the form of the Dead Hackers first full-sized demo for the CT60, 'Derealization'.

You can certainly tell that Derealization was inspired by Silkcut, as it has its own take on the famous mountain scene, not a straight copy, but certainly a re-interpretation. Everything in that demo is trying to hit its own gold standard for excellence too. There are some differences as well, 'Dereal' has been designed around a specific over-arching theme (of mental collapse) and benefits from that approach, whereas Silkcut hasn't really got any central theme, it's a bunch of brilliant screens knitted together by that mighty soundtrack.

I'd get the impression there are two different temperaments behind the making of each demo, for Derealization, it is a careful, methodical planning process with artistic impulses certainly present, but these are kept under control to ensure a properly polished final production. For Silkcut, the artistry has been allowed to let rip, without any restraint, and this is coming ahead of any other considerations, as if the makers are screaming "Just bloody well do it!" at their code.

Is there a winner out of the two? Not really, the two are different enough to be taken on their own merits.

Is it 060 only?

Silkcut on the CT60, like the original, is properly an '060 demo. It can run on lower spec Atari's, but you might not quite get the same smoothness, he said with a classic piece of understatement. The Afterburner '040 was mentioned, and I had the perfect minimum spec system to try it on. My CT2, 68030 at 50mhz with 14mb of ST-ram, and 64mb of Fastram. Well yes it did run, the end result skipping along at 2-3 frames a second, so only really one to try if you have no other hardware to hand.

In a complete 'Suicide Barbie' moment, I even tried running it on MacAranym. It got as far as the loading screen before MacAranym died and pinged off into the outer darkness, screaming at me "No more!" unless I promised never to try that again. And that was on the 'good' EmuTOS setting. Trying this with Falcon TOS, I managed to freeze up the whole Mac, something which I've never ever done before in three years of Mac useage!

Conclusion?

Will there be more, yes it seems as Mikro is actively working on porting 'Ocean Machine', what TBL did after making Silkcut to the CT60, with a possible trilogy concluding with the mighty 'Starstruck'. If Mikro manages to pull these all off, then he will make a lot of Atarisceners very happy indeed. As it is, he's done a pretty damn good job already!

Ratings..

Coolness:- 99% - Fantasy into reality!

TBL Ruleage:- 99% - They do!

Mikro Portage:- 99% - Mikro rules here!

Amiga vs Atari:- 0% - Happily all gone now!

CiH, for Alive Mag, 31.5.08. - Re-animated for Mag 2012..

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