State of Atari demoscene in 2004/5
Pre-ramble..
I've decided to respond to one of the requested articles for Hugi, that is, the current whereabouts of the Atari scene in recent times. I can confidently supply a decent account, as I'm looking at it from an insiders viewpoint, being involved actively since 1990.
To start with, when I say "Atari", I'm referring to the 16/32 bit ST or TOS family (ST, STe, TT, Falcon etc.) The 8-Bit Atari has its own separate scene, which deserves its own story, and incidentally seems to be in pretty good health!
Yep, still not quite dead, sorry..
Well I'd firstly like to say that we're still here! Other platform-specific demoscenes have come and gone. For example, the Acorn RiscOS scene was very busy, I'd say as much as we were at its peak, but it went very flat after 1998. The majority of console based scene activity tends to be shorter lived (and has to overcome the totally unsympathetic web presence-nuking attitudes of certain console manufacturers!) But the frequently overlooked Atari ST family seems to keep on going as a living scene platform. We are only bettered by the likes of classic machines such as the Amiga, C64, and ZX Spectrum scenes.
A quick(ish) historical overview..
The Atari 16/32 bit scene started at around the same time, or shortly after the Amiga scene, back in the late eighties. I remember seeing the first demos around the later stages of 1986, or early 1987. This first scene was pretty homogenous, hardware wise, being concentrated around the ST. The demo scene was interchangeable with the cracking scene in the early days, a feature in common with the other early demoscenes.
The early scene was defined to a large extent by rivalry with the contemporary Amiga scene. Viewed objectively, the base ST was always going to be a hardware underdog, and it is also true that the Amiga people made most of the running with new demo and effect ideas. However, the sense of satisfaction produced, when someone on the ST reproduced an effect considered "impossible" by the local Amiga fan-club, was pretty damn hard to beat!
From about 1987 to 1993, this scene continued pretty much in the same way. People dropped out, and new people came in to replace them. The introduction of newer hardware such as the STe and the top-end TT hardly affected the stately progress of the scene.
The introduction of the Falcon in 1993, and the rumours about it going back a year or so before provoked a major break in that easygoing stability. The ST loyalists went rather quiet for a time, lots of people announced their intention to move onto the Falcon, and some did. Interestingly, the old scene veterans didn't make much of an impact on the new platform and retired quickly, their place being taken by a number of up and coming crews and individuals.
From 1993 to 1999, the Falcon part of the scene was dominant, whilst some ST demos were released, these were kept very much in the background. The state of Falcon demo making saw rapid progress from 1993 to 1995, and slowed a bit thereafter. Although some of the greatest code was still to come!
After a very lean period, glimmerings of a revival on the ST started to shine through in 1999, with several new landmark demos for it released that year. The ST was back, and we weren't going to be so careless as to let it go away again. Part of the reason for this revival of interest was the rapid growth of the emulator scene.
The ST and Falcon were able to share their moments of glory amicably, with both machines hitting new demo making heights. The latest change, from 2003 onwards, was the introduction of a third distinctive Atari demoscene platform, the '060 accelerated CT60 Falcon. This story is still very much in its early stages, and we look forward to its future unfolding...
Alone and proud..
Another question bursting from some of your lips is a good one. Why is the Atari scene running apart from the mainstream? It has been this way for a long time before now. This state of affairs has been in place since at least since the mid-nineties. It may even go back to the great oldschool ST versus Amiga rivalry of the early days. Apart from a general low rate of communication with day to day dealings, the most visible sign of this estrangement from the mainstream is best seen with the great easter coding parties.
The first major coming-together of the modern scenes at Symposium '96 was not judged a great success from the Atarian viewpoint. We tended to organise our own separate parallel parties thereafter. Atari and the mainstream did not come back together again until the Mekka Symposium 2002 party. This event only showed how much further apart the different scenes had drifted. How can we put this to you delicately without sounding too sarcastic? Oh bugger it, it's my article, and I can write it any way I like! Never has so much immaturity been concentrated in such a small place together! After that, we're back on the separate parties. No hard feelings guys, but it works out much better that way!
That said, there is a little cross-pollination with other scenes. We inherited some very good people from the Acorn scene, (hi Exocet!) and there are obscure Atari sections of some well-known mainstream crews which may be more or less active. (Ephidrena springs to mind for one.) Not to mention that the majority of Atari sceners do now own a PeeCee in some shape or form, and can keep up with the movements of the mainstream demo scene in a casual relaxed manner. If we're inclined to admire another scene for their creativity, it would be the best parts of the '060 Amiga scene of recent years, we just can't get enough Black Lotus!
We are generally a friendly scene, and we are pleased to help out when new people come along, which they still do occasionally.
There are some unusual or possibly unique features of the Atari ST scene. We have been historically less hardware expansionist than the rest. The base ST is still considered as a viable demo platform, where comparable Amiga's have mostly been accelerated wildly, or hidden in a cupboard and forgotten. There is more of a puritan hardcore approach to coding, where massive hardware boosting is frowned upon.
I might add that with the Falcon part of the scene, this ethos has been eroded in the last year or so, with the first MC68060 accelerator, the CT60 being adopted widely.
Party on dude, these are the places we have been to..
Here's a quick and by no means comprehensive list of the major parties that have featured a strong Atariscene content since the mid-nineties.
680x0 Convention - 1993 (Germany) The first party where the Falcon '030 featured in any sizeable numbers. Releases there showed the scene's inexperience with the new machine, but there was promise for the future.
Fried Bits 1 - 1993 (Germany again) The first in this three year running party sequence.
Fried Bits 2 - 1994 (Germany) We started to see the first really large productions for the Falcon here. In fact you were looking at the first massive megademos being released here.
Aggressive Party - 1995 (Finland) New year activity for the Falcon from the Scandinavian part of the scene, Falcon thrives in multi-format shocker!
Fried Bits 3 - 1995 (Germany) This is considered to be the peak time for the 'early' Falcon scene. There were a huge number of high quality productions, which were only exceeded in scope by the much later Error in Line parties. People would talk about this party in hushed whispers for years afterwards.
Symposium '96 (Germany) The first combined party with the modern Amiga and PeeCee scenes. The crowded and unrelaxed ambience was less enjoyed than normal. There was a corresponding drop in the quality and number of releases, apart from the new 4k category which came out with some little stunners.
Siliconvention - 1997 (Germany) We returned to familiar haunts, at the previous Fried Bits location in Bremen. This combined Atari and Acorn scene party pulled off a couple of real stunners for both machines, and a whole array of niceness coming in just behind.
Orneta - 1998 (Poland) This successful Polish party saw the effective birth of the Polish ST/Falcon scene.
Error in Line 1 - 1999 (Germany) Atari people headed east, to Dresden for this one. Here we saw a massive revival of the ST, whose fine efforts even managed to overshadow the best that the Falcon had to offer that year.
Sillyventure - 2000 (Poland) A very enjoyable party, slightly more for the friendship vibe than the releases, which were treading water technically since the last couple of years.
STNICCC 10th anniversary - 2000 (Netherlands) This one was an anomoly in the 'new' scene, as it was a 10th anniversary celebration of a very famous part of the 'old' scene. The ST News International Christmas Coding Convention (STNICCC) did manage to produce some nice ST and Falcon demos, the final edition of the legendary decade-running "Maggie" diskmag and more.
Error in Line 2 - 2001 (German) The second edition of the Error in Line party was where the Falcon struck back! We saw several major releases, including some which used heavy cpu acceleration (50mhz '030 at this point.) The winner was a sublime effort which needed nothing more than a standard Falcon with DSP. Things were getting pushed close to the limits now.
Mekka Symp' - 2002 (Germany) Less of a party, and more of a regret. Nothing much happened from an Atarian point of view, apart from a renewed determination not to do this sort of thing again!
Error in Line 3 - 2003 (Germany) And we're back to Dresden for the third edition of the fondly loved Error in Line party. The ST re-emerged for more limit smashing larks, and the Falcon held its own nicely too.
Outline Party - 2004 (Netherlands) It was the Dutchies turn to organise the great Easter Atari crusade. This was slightly smaller than previous parties, but reasonably productive, with first life signs from the CT60 camp. Like all the recent Atari parties, it had a happy and friendly vibe.
Outline '05 - At time of writing, a second visit to the Dutch barn glories of Outline seems to be on the cards for this Easter.
This quick and dirty account of past party glory leaves out a whole slew of smaller parties, There are a number of French parties, such as Gigafun '96 and others, which have been missed out too. My account tends to be biased towards those events which I had some personal connection with...
The many different flavours of Atariscene..
The Atari scene isn't a single monolithic entity, it consists of several layers:
1. The emerging accelerated Falcon scene (Mainly CT60 '060).
2. The long established unexpanded stock Falcon '030 scene.
3. The new school with old school overtones ST scene.
4. The nostalgia loving emulator scene.
5. The music-mad YM-Rockerz.
6. Teh Fakers and some oldskool strangeness.
Here are their stories in a little more detail...
There are the Falcon CT60 sceners. These are the most enthusiastic in terms of spending serious money on their hobby. Are terms like 'elite' appropriate here? These are Falcon '030 sceners who opted to make themselves a Falcon '060! This is a relatively new part of the scene. We've only had these for the last 12-18 months. This is the part of the scene where something really new should happen in the future, and they are more active generally. So far there have been a few nice intros, but no killer demo just yet. TBL can safely let out that breath they've been holding. But it is surely only a matter of time before we start to see them? Some of the new demos will probably be very Amiga-like.
We then meet the Falcon '030 sceners. They are defiantly proud of their non-accelerated machines and disparage any form of acceleration as "selling out". The major selling point of the Falcon '030 was the Motorola DSP 56001 chip, a device which transformed an otherwise standard machine into something much more interesting. Among other talents, the DSP could realtime-calculate fast or complex 3D, or if the coder was really good, a decent combination of both. The DSP has been previously assessed as giving a 16mhz stock 68030 Falcon the equivalent 3D processing grunt to a 50mhz '030 accelerated Amiga 1200.
These tend to be less active than the CT60 adopters, and they have suffered depletion of their ranks to the CT60 user base. Interestingly, some people are coding for both the CT60 and still coming up with some mad DSP exploits for the base machine too. In my view, a good DSP-based demo can still compete reasonably well with early CT60 productions.
ST sceners? Yes there are still some out there. Even a basic ST can run a reasonable version of the more interesting enviro-mapping routines seen on the bigger machines. You just have to make allowances for a degree of chunkiness! The last wave of really 'big' demos for the ST hit in 2003, where the humble STFM was taken to new heights. There has been continuing interest in this platform since, and there are some people who think that the ST can be taken still further. There is particular interest from the current French scene, who have kicked out some very nice looking demos in recent times.
Digression time! What is with these different models, the STFM and STe? Yes there are some hardware differences. Both have the same 8mhz 68000 cpu, but the STe had a newer generation of custom hardware to try to compete better with the Amiga 500. There was an ok'ish blitter, a palette of 4096 colours against 512, and Stereo DMA sample sound replay hardware as well as the cheap and nasty Yamaha YM2149 soundchip. The STe can easily handle protracker modfile music up to 50khz, there are even some replayers which can manage 8 channels at 50khz. Graphically recent screen-bending exploits have given up to 19,200 colours onscreen, on a 640 x 400 resolution. Yes, this was for a static slideshow, but hey, who said HAM mode? (Atari only ever managed to give the poor ST a 640 x 400 mono mode!) I feel the STe has been generally rather under-exploited for demos hardware-wise, compared with the somewhat more thoroughly milked dry STFM.
Ever since the explosive popularity of the Wintel platform, there has been the growth of a band of emulator fans. There have been several good attempts at emulating the ST series on (W)intel hardware and other platforms too. The current coders choice is 'STeem', which uniquely offers STe emulation. The UK-based games coding group Reservoir Gods tend to be highly mobile with a combination of this and laptops, great for those moments of airport lounge related waiting around ennui. The majority of emulator users tend to be less active on the scene, and are mainly there for a combination of moral support and nostalgia. But amazingly, there have been some all-new productions made with these emulators. It goes to show that old coders should never say "never again"!
There is even a higher-end emulation project called "Aranym", which offers partial Falcon '030 emulation. This is really aimed at becoming a high-end generic Atari TOS clone running as close to the max that the host machine can do. Aranym was useful to some coders as a testbed for their more intensive 3D code, whilst they were awaiting delivery of their CT60's.
There is a new category of soundchip musicians which have lately emerged from the shadows. We have seen attempts by many people over the years to get the best out of the rather poor Yamaha YM2149 soundchip supplied with the ST. The baseline spec for the YM goes along the lines of three square-wave sound channels, a bit of white noise, and err, that's it! This lame hardware can also be found in the later STe series, and even the Falcon '030. There were many people, starting from the Rob Hubbard plundering Jochen Hippel (Mad Max), going through many soundchip composers, all attempting to get the best from it, and each adding their own distinctive methods to a rich heritage.
Just lately, there seems to have been a distinct growth of this activity into its own strong musical sub-culture! Apart from people contributing tunes to conventional demos and games, there are also music disks, effectively 'albums' of YM music from the likes of the "YM-RockerZ", and even more ambitious productions and mixes made into downloadable audio-streams. Add to that the development of several new soundchip trackers, new multi-channel techniques and the continuing story of SID-sound synthesis extracting fresh blood from the YM. There are even some new people who started out as musicians, and only recently got into Atari coding for the YM. This is probably an insanely healthy part of the scene! (There is also another 'Yamaha scene' on the ZX Spectrum 128, which has a bastard cousin of the ST soundchip, but to go into detail is perhaps a digression too far..)
Finally, we come to the part of the Atariscene which defies an easy description. This consists of various fake demo makers, and some weird oldschool ST intro screens. The original fake demo scene was a mid-to late nineties phenomonen, but the impetus faded at the turn of the new century. A revival started in 2003, and has picked up more participants since. There is also the strange case of "The Beasts", a Spanish crew, who code like it is 1987, and have peppered the ST with a large number of strange little retro styled intros which look fake, but probably aren't. These seem to have a higher profile with the general scene at large, (pouet.net etc) than they have with the rest of the Atari scene.
Top People..
And who are the people that make the Atari scene what it is? Who might be the creme de la code?
For the CT60, the current names to watch for demo coding tend to be Swedish, these are, The Dead Hackers Society, Evolution, and the Atari division of Ephidrena. There are also a few interesting hardware and software projects for the CT60 going on, courtesy of the Atari wing of Nature. Nothing really major has emerged as yet, although the standards of what we've seen so far is encouraging. There is more to come, and we're looking at around Easter! There are other crews and coders with a CT60, but we may have to wait a bit longer for those to catch up.
The standard Falcon still has its supporters. Great work has been done in the recent past by crews such as Escape, who are lucky enough to have two skilled DSP coders, NO and Charon. Then Lineout have released some killer Falcon DSP demos, thanks to coder Earx, and there is more to come. The Sirius Cybernetics Corp (tSCc) have had a great demo "Beams" waiting for a couple of years for release! Very recently, we saw a neat intro with DSP coded misting effects from a coder called Mikro. At the beginning of the new year, some of the laziest Swedes out there, from a group called NoCrew managed to kick out some of the fastest (50 fps) 3D code ever for a standard machine, in an intro which had been waiting for its moment for some years before! Many of these coders have an interest in the CT60 too.
There are the Reservoir Gods, who are multi-Atari, working on anything from the ST through to the Falcon and CT60. They predominantly write games, but have also produced demos, and are also working on things like music trackers too. They have the potential to be one of the most productive groups, and have a distinguished past track record. They are suffering heavily from a shitty life/scene balance, where there is no time at the moment for anything scene related!
The not so humble ST has its champions. The current arsekickers are Dresden based crew Checkpoint. Fellow Germans Paradox are preparing their opus on the STe. There has been a large input from the very long established French group Dune and other parts of the French scene like MJJ Productions, Sector One, and more. Even some Falcon crews like Dead Hackers like to go back to their roots on the ST from time to time.
There are such creatures as Atari graphists. Top of that tree is an ex-Acorn dude called Exocet. With others like C-Rem and Edo, a distinctive "French" school, closely resembling that on other parts of the scene has evolved. Other non-french names include Sh3, Timbral, and Havoc, each with their own distinctive style. There are others, whom I've disgracefully not mentioned.
One thing which we have in abundance is musicians. There are almost too many soundchip composers, people like gWem and Stu, who are seeking to stretch the boundaries into some kind of recording and performance related madness. This is before we get onto the 'traditional' soundchip composers, where people like Tao, Dma-Sc, MSG, Damo, and 505 to name five off the top of my head, are leaving their mark. Some of these people are also modfile musicians, then you can add people like Nemo, Timbral, and 505 (again!) who are wizards at the Falcon DSP powered softsynth 'Ace'.
The semi-active scene consists of quite a lot of people. There are almost too many to list, if you include the many old-scene people who have discovered emulation, the sleeping crews etc. At the moment we are waiting to hear from the likes of Cream, T.O.Y.S, and several others. Famous Finnish group Aggression seems to be battling inherent laziness to re-emerge? Then there is the case of the fairly silent Mystic Bytes and other missing Polish people? There are nasty long quiet patches where people go away for long periods, then come back again. We are all crippled by real life to some extent, but that is for a later rant.We also do get some old famous people who reappear after many years absence with something entirely new.
Demos that made us go "Oooo!"
We're being very tough here, paring things right down to those few demos which we feel made a real difference to the expectations of the Atari scene in the last few years, and why.
My favourite demo party for the Falcon was the Error in Line event from 2001. This gave us three groundbreakers, all at the one party. Firstly, up on the floor is 'Don't Break the Oath'. This was a heavyweight release from the Dead Hackers Society (DHS), and this differed radically from previous demos by asking for a cpu booster to take on a major part of the load. The effects were high quality and 3D based, and it had a soundtrack to die for and used MP2 audio streaming.
At the same party, we had the elusive T.O.Y.S release 'Wait'. This was less processor heavy, but used similar audio streaming techniques, and did a pretty good imitation of contemporary PeeCee and Amiga demos.
But the winner that year was the 'Hmmm' demo, to say it was the ultimate triumph of DSP based demos is probably correct! In terms of artistry, coding skill, and overall jawdroppingness, 'Hmmm' won it all. And don't forget, this was all perfectly plausible on a standard 16mhz Falcon! We had the DSP coding wizards of Escape to thank!
The Hmmm demo was so good, we had to wait for the 2003 follow-up from the *other* DSP coder of Escape to get busy. The enigmatically named '_' or 'Underscore' demo was shorter than the epic 10-15 minute sweep of Hmmm. It wasn't such a revolution, being more of a "hmmm v1.5", but it had some sublime moments, especially the Atari 'Bee in space' screen!
Also in 2003, was a new demo from the Sirius Cybernetics corp called 'Beams'. This was a music video style production on a standard Falcon '030, again featuring MP2 audio replay, and it's own song. It was shown at Error in line 2003 and we are still waiting for it to get out into the wild!
Any ST-based arsekickers in recent times tend to be either French or German in origin. I'm going back to 2001 for the likes of 'Odd Stuff', the ultimate (at the time) French "design" demo for the ST by a combined force of Frenchies from different groups. Then Dune hit back with 'Illusion', a demo which had been "missing in action" since 1993, which turned up ten years later! It had aged quite well. The German crew Checkpoint struck back in 2003 with 'Posh', which included several tributes to some famous early Falcon demos, and did a pretty good job of Falcon impersonating on a standard STFM! Even Falcon coders such as the Dead Hackers Society were tempted back onto the ST with their interpretation of environment mapping 3D in the demo 'Darkness'. And last year saw the revenge of the Frenchies once more, with a production called 'Fantasia'.
As with any other demoscene, there is a hell of a lot of work in Progress. There is always an undercurrent of rumour on that stuff which is still keenly awaited. Well there's a production called "Heftig" from ace German coders 'Cream', promised for the last few years on the ST, which promises a new direction for ST demos. We are still awaiting the Evolution CT60 demo, for which we saw a wickedly good preview last Easter. Then there is the 'Beams' demo from 2003. I also remember spotting early work in progress for the Aggression 15th anniversary demo last year. These are the best known projects, there are more still out there.
Atariscene has global fans, or, around the world in 80k's..
How does the Atari scene stack up on a region by region basis?
Scandinavia: Always a strong area for demoscene related activities in general. There is a strong Swedish presence, especially for the higher end, and small pockets of things maybe happening in Norway and Finland.
Germany: Quite a strong and well-mixed scene. Has given us some of the best base Falcon DSP stuff, and ST 'new-school' code.
France: Predominantly the Frenchies are the guardians of the ST 1 VBL oldschool heritage. They are quite active, and the CT60 also came from that land too :-)
Netherlands: A small but high quality Falcon scene lives here.
UK: Apart from some outstanding individuals, never a demoscene strongpoint. We do have some great games making people though (when time allows them), and much of the recent YM-music revival comes from here as well.
Poland: Historically much stronger for the 8-Bit Atari, but has given us some good ST and Falcon releases before. I'm not too sure what is going on there right now? Some activity, but not much.
Others: Slovenia in conjunction with the Poles, have given us some neat Falcon code recently. There is the odd interesting individual in Greece, also Spain.
Places in which there hasn't been much Atari scene. Countries like the USA do have a hardcore of 'serious' Atari enthusiasts, but never any demo coders. Australia did have a couple of people at one time, but not anymore. There were Czech and Hungarian Atarians, but these have disappeared over time? There were never many Russian Atarians in the first place?
Problems, problems, and time is ticking..
Our potential enemies we have in common with everyone else. This would not be Microsoft and their grasping techniques. The Atari scene has survived the overwhelming mainstream monopoly. We have been able to use the Internet and new developments in PeeCee emulation for our own ends, thus cleverly subverting the mainstream. In terms of numbers of people, and general levels of interest, we are stable and comfortable. I also don't miss the febrile atmosphere surrounding such discussions as "The scene is dying/not as good as it used to be." It seems we have got over that at last? Although I'm sure there is another pointless circular argument lying dormant, just waiting for the right trigger!
The major enemy can be considered as "real life" getting in the way. Demo scenedom tends to be more and more a part-time activity, with the time available being sharply cut-down by outside affairs, be it work or domestically related.
Girlfriends are great, apart from the fact that they act as a time-vacuum. I was effectively out of commission for the 98-99 season! These days, I'm in a more semi-detached relationship with the same female. Others have not been so lucky. There is the sad story of one Polish coder having his Falcon confiscated by his girlfriend! One or two of us are even married with children. It is amazing that there is any time at all for scene related activities when it gets that far!
Then there is the happy world of work, where some of us have found high-powered jobs commensurate with the talent levels. Unfortunately, these are also the jobs which demand more time than is reasonable! Some people that I know well started work at a large entertainment software concern. It was over a year before we heard from them again!
Increasing maturity brings in new problems. I'm building up to a special rant about people whose home improvement activities force them to take months off at a time! It seems that when Atari people "move house", they seem to take on a derelict shell which needs a couple of new walls, a roof, some floors, and replastering... Oh, and don't forget to paint it all!
A recent favourite excuse for non-activity has been "I'm moving house." Would that be "moving" by physically carrying it on a brick by brick basis, with the length of time this activity seems to take?! Still, it's better than the old canard "My hard drive with irreplaceable source code on it that I hadn't backed up, just crashed!"
It is kind of frustrating that some productions have been seen in an advanced preview state at parties, and we are still waiting for their release over a year later. I guess this is a problem with everyone else too? One or two have been stuck in development hell for a lot longer! Again, I'm sure this is an agony that we have in common with the rest of you..
Odd corners we haven't covered yet..
Diskzines, yes there are still some running, the Web hasn't killed us off yet! But we are suffering horribly with very extended lead times. I do speak from personal experience of the part of the scene in which I operate in. The overall quality tends to be much better than in years past. Current (semi)active titles include the 'Alive!' Diskmag, the 'Undercover Magascene', and 'Chosneck', a Polish production with a stunning Falcon-only front end.
Teh End! (Well almost..)
To conclude, the Atari scene is calm and stable, probably more so than most. From a surface viewpoint, it would seem to be generally quiet, but that disguises the greater activity level beneath. This scene is capable of bursts of inspired activity, and we should be around for a long time yet. If the rest of the world allows us the time, dammit!
Final final note, honest!!
This year, it is the 20th anniversary of the ST. Get your tribute demos ready....
Note about the author: CiH has been involved in an active role with the Atariscene since 1990. He was firstly a contributor to the Maggie Diskzine, then latterly the editor until its 10th anniversary in 2000. Currently, he is one of the co-editors of the 'Alive' diskzine, when time permits..