Assembly 4k intros reviewed
There has been some controversy about Assembly'99 4k intros. I think I have nothing to add to Adok's article concerning this issue, published in Hugi #17. I'm going to review the intros one by one, and also give my own chart. Computer used: Pentium 133 MHz, 16 MB RAM.
1. 3892pt. matriisi by mooze (english)
Bad one. Too fast. Too ugly. It does not make me laugh. Rather cry. I've seen a lot of 4k intros, and this is one of the worst. Download to see what the current Assembly standard is.
2. 2651pt. Orinoco by Digimind
First we see some trees at night, and then a river, neither of which
are top notch though. We look into the sun and see
an eagle. It's a pity that they haven't used the typical sun
effect, you know, with a ray, and when it is obstructed, everything
gets darker. An alien austronaut teleports itself above the river.
The effect of the
river is quite good. And then ... it ends. That's
all? There's nothing left? Not bad, but it's not a good 4k intro.
Download if you see too much X-files.
3. 1104pt. Rasia by yobi
This one uses a grey pal for all the effects, which makes it boring. We can see a voxel, and the title with fonts that are highly blurred. Then we see circles on the screen, but something happens to the sync and this is ugly. The voxel again, but this time, the mountains move around ... what the hell is that? The next effect is nothing worth seeing, mainly due to the grey pal. And the last part is the voxel again. At least we know that this intro has a voxel! All in all, not good enough for a third position. Download if ... do you like voxels?
4. 957pt. Radiant by Juippi/Tempo
This one went crazy under DOS, fortunately it ran under Windows. It has music, not bad but too loud for my taste. First we see some introduction with good-looking fonts. And then the title with radial blur. Then we see undefinable shapes which seem raytraced, the frame rate is very low, at about 0.5 fps. Suddenly we seemingly start to recognise something, there appear to be cubes, a lot of them. And they look ugly. Fortunately this section ends soon, but we have to see the radial blur again, and more text at the end. This 4k intro has music, which is good, but its effects are slow or not worth seeing (both, in the case of the shapes). Download if you don't plan to watch the screen, just listen to the music.
5. 875pt. Fileid.diz by the Lost Spaceman
Here we see three rows of messages, but they are too fast, and thus hard to read. I guess they're in Finnish anyway. We can see a face, and some lines which remind me of a medical engine. And a logo. The end. I wonder how this can rank 5th? Download if you understand Finnish.
6. 796pt. Pastel 4kb by vdg / Damage
We see a very colourful free directional plane, and a free directional tunnel. But it seems to have a problem synchronising with the vertical retrace or something similar. Four wired cubes appear on the screen, and some weird colours are in the background. And then again something like two tunnels (?) and the free directional planes with the cubes (recycled?) and some lens. Nothing really special at all. If you've never seen free directional effects before, download it.
7. 766pt. The Answer by hiteck
Ok, this has storyline. Someone seeks the answer. Travelling ... Someone? It's only a deformed raytraced ball jumping around. And the other ball forgot the answer (did you think that balls have a good memory?) and it finishes. The way the text is shown is good. Download if you usually talk to your balls.
8. 757pt. Nature by Itchi / THP
This one starts with a bump mapping and water, which look good. Then this image moves to the bottom and a plasma (a real-time recursion generated one) appears, followed by the title. Instead of using fonts the text seems to be drawn (realtime too). Both the title and the bump-water fade, and the plasma appears (again?!) and fades. And it ends. I wonder if he did it in C, otherwise I can't understand why there aren't more effects. (Just have a look at my 4k intro Garbled.) Download only if you are Itchi's grandmother.
9. 456pt. Wand of Wishing by SounDemoN
I got a headache with this one. In the info-file the author says that he doesn't like Adlib, but hell, the sounds which come from my speakers are even worse. We see some plasmas, which are not exactly good. And some very weird 3d which rather seems like random points, and a kind of spiral with colorcycling, and more of this random weird 3d, and then the torture ends. Download to know why it ended up 9th.
10. 367pt. Save World by Juce
In the centre of the screen we see a low frame rate effect, which reminds of a fire. It becomes stronger and stronger, and then some words appear on the screen which are not English, and this even has some buzz! And it ends. This is another "Nothing else?" 4k intro. Do yourself a favour, don't download it.
11. 361pt. Invalider by Dodge / M.E.
This one really hurt my eyes, there's random points and the title, with lines and two stick men. I don't know how long it lasts, or if it has anything else to offer. I just pressed <Esc>. Believe me, you'll do the same. I don't understand how someone can vote for this crap. Did you notice that intros are becoming worse? I don't know what's expected of me now. I'd better call the police so they can arrest such a coder or at least kill this intro. Download to check whether it is really uploaded or not.
12. 358pt. Phygo by Viznut/pwp
This one simply goes too fast, it has some Adlib music which sounds good, but it's too fast, we can't read the messages, and the effects, which btw look good, are too fast to be enjoyed. Hey man, do you know what "synchronisation" means? Next time try it, and maybe you'll rank higher. (Note that you ranked lower than two s**tty intros.) Download if you have a slow PC.
Personal chart:
1. Pastel 4kb by vdg / Damage 2. Phygo by Viznut/pwp 3. Radiant by Juippi/Tempo & Dazed prod. 4. Nature by Itchi / THP 5. Orinoco by Digimind 6. Wand of Wishing by SounDemoN 7. The Answer by hiteck 8. Fileid.diz by the Lost Spaceman of Refinition 9. Rasia by yobi 10. Matriisi by mooze (english final) 11. Save World by Juce 12. Invalider by Dodge / Mystic Etanat