Screen it! - Demo Reviews Part 2
Reviews written by KeyJ of Kakiarts and Duckers of Outracks
Screenshots taken by KeyJ
Sweet Home Under Synthetic Clouds by Cocoon [Direct3D]
KeyJ:
After over three years of hibernation, Cocoon came back onto the bigscreen with this truly magnificent demo. The music is very nice, the direction too, the graphics and especially the modelling are absolutely gorgeous (except maybe the little girl at the end, who is just too low-poly). The code, however, is a bit difficult to judge. On one hand, the quality of the 3D scenes is nearly perfect: The materials and shaders look very good, the postprocessing effects like bloom and depth-of-field blur have exactly the right intensity and the performance is OK. On the other hand, it's more or less only an animation player. I couldn't find any procedurally generated geometry except for some particle systems. The 2D vector overlays seem to be much more elaborate in this respect - they look very cool and definitely add to the experience. My only gripe with them is that they're not antialiased unless the FSAA or MSAA of the graphics card is in use.
Graphics: 4/6
Music: 4/6
Effects: 4/6
Concept: 3/6
Overall: 4/6
Duckers:
After a three-year break, we finally get our hands on some new material by the award-winning demogroup Cocoon. 'Sweet home..' is a newschool demo by all means, with what seems like a solid content-oriented engine displaying high quality 3d models with neat lighting. After watching a few times I get the impression that this is indeed a strong comeback, and that we can expect more from Cocoon in the years to come. They have the ingredients to reach the very top, but there are a few things that bother me with 'Sweet home..' which I need to point out:
1. The scenes are too static. There is not much happening. Few animations, no deformations, no progression.
2. The frequent use of 2D overlays is bothersome because of its lack of consistency and random feeling, and the lack of connection between the 2D and 3D elements.
3. All sync is done in the 2D, while the 3D is living its own life unaffected by the music. And the white flashes are just so 2003. I suspect here that the coder has made himself a nice timeline-oriented demo tool where he finds controlling 2D elements easier than doing deformations or interesting 3D effects. The coder should take more control of the 3D world he is displaying to bring it to life beyond simple linear transformations controllable by the artist. The coder needs to put his loving fingerprints more clearly visible on the production. If you can get this right in your next demo, you'll make me have to change my underwear for sure.
Graphics: 5/6
Music: 4/6
Effects: 1/6
Concept: 3/6
Overall: 3/6
Mercury by Brain Control [Direct3D]
KeyJ:
Brain Control is a very productive group, releasing roughly two 64k intros per year. This high output rate seems to be a problem, though - maybe it's just me, but I find their intros way too similar to each other in terms of graphics and music. That's a pity, because codewise, their 'Enigma' engine and 'Tunefish' synthesizer are certainly among the best out there. If you look behind the heavy and flickery postprocessing effects and forget about the overly hectic scenes, there's much beauty to discover: Nice dynamically generated and constantly morphing high-poly meshes with good lighting show what the engine is capable of. I particularly liked the cubes and octagons scene.
Graphics: 3/6
Music: 4/6
Effects: 3/6
Concept: 2/6
Overall: 2/6
Duckers:
'Mercury' is a pretty average technically executed 64k. It has an okayish synth and is able to display some okayish objects with glow. However, it's too slow, too flashy, too wavy, too blurry and erratic to be anything more than an experience of dizziness and nausea for me. Even with vsync on (or when watching the video) I get the feeling that the visuals are teared and blury, and the flashing and fast spinning camera movements completely out of sync make me literally sick, as in seasick. I'm sorry Brain Control, but this was an unpleasant experience.
Graphics: 1/6
Music: 2/6
Effects: 2/6
Concept: 1/6
Overall: 2/6
Route 1066 by UKScene Allstars [Direct3D]
KeyJ:
Even though this demo is done by different people (mostly), I can't help but compare it to the recent Fairlight/CNCD demos. The overall style is just too similar and there's also a high amount of effects reuse. But no, this isn't criticism - in fact, it's praise, because this is the first 'Fairlightish' demo that actually works for me, in the artistic/stylistic sense. According to the comments on Pouet, I'm all but alone with this feeling. So what does this demo have what "Media Error" and "Track One" don't? It's hard to describe, but one of the reasons certainly is that there are tons of (previously known) kick-ass effects put together nicely: There are growing cities, fluffy clouds and Smash's cool 2D fluid effect. But this is all topped off by the leaf effects: In one scene, hundreds of arrow-shaped 'leaves' fly from one tree to another. In the next scene, you see plants growing around concrete nicely, and in the next moment, all their leaves (thousands of them!) start to fly upwards. I don't remember having seen more geometry on screen in a demo before, let alone at a decent framerate. The effect itself isn't that complex, but having it look that good and running that fast really astonished me.
Graphics: 4/6
Music: 4/6
Effects: 6/6
Concept: 4/6
Overall: 5/6
Duckers:
It's gray, it's cool, as far as British attitude goes, it's fresh and well coded. I don't ask much more of a demo. However, 'Route 1066' doesn't urge for tempo or drive and has its slow moments, but there is always something interesting to look at, so I don't get the chance to say it bored me. There are some funny ideas in here as well, I especially enjoyed the flying arrows behaving like birds. Gray city scenes with ambient occlusion and paper-cut people silhouettes though, I wonder where you got that idea.
Graphics: 3/6
Music: 3/6
Effects: 4/6
Concept: 4/6
Overall: 4/6
Revolver by PlayPsyCo [OpenGL]
KeyJ:
The releases of PlayPsyCo get more and more impressive every time, and 'Revolver' already conquered a special place in my heart because of its superb music and its nice and relaxed overall flow. The graphics also compare favorably to the big names like ASD, Fairlight and Farbrausch, and so does the code. In fact, some effects were taken more or less directly from other demos: The star ribbon from 'Dead Ringer' and the raster from 'Gamma' come to my mind, the overall design seems a bit inspired by 'Iconoclast' and I bet that I have already seen the greetings scene somewhere else, too. But none of these are rip-offs of the original effects, they rather seem to be respectful tributes. In general, 'Revolver' doesn't invent anything new, but uses and implements well-known effects and concepts in good quality and combines them with great direction. This is also true for the fisheye scenes at the end of the demo -- the quality of the effect doesn't hold water against the one in 'Media Error', but it's more than good enough and has its own kind of appeal.
Graphics: 4/6 Concept: 4/6
Music: 5/6 Overall: 5/6
Effects: 4/6
Concept: 4/6
Duckers:
A lot of nice stuff in there. Code, graphics and music are all in the top league. The PlayPsyCo guys are awesome at what they do. When they are not doing it together. My problem with that demo is, as with many other demos today, the lack of coordination and common chemistry between the elements of the demo. Sound, graphics and direction must link better in order for me to be sucked into it. May I suggest an overdoze analyzer-sync and erratic camera movements? ;) However, it's absolutely among the better demos released this year and worth watching. Several times.
Graphics: 4/6
Music: 4/6
Effects: 4/6
Concept: 2/6
Overall: 4/6
Fascination 2: Into The Neon Rain by Traction & Brainstorm [OpenGL]
KeyJ:
Traction are known for their very unique demo style based on line rendering, and this demo is no exception. In fact, the trip into the 80s is one of the greatest and most fitting examples for this rendering style. The demo doesn't have that many effects, but all of them are decently executed, with the possible exception of the road scene. The neon rain that gave this demo its name is (of course!) made of colourful lines and even has some rudimentary physics implemented in the first scene where it's shown. The second rain scene is actually a nice adaptation of one effect from Traction and Brainstorm's Breakpoint demo, 'Fairytale': In that demo, there were circles on the floor that built up slowly, and in 'Fascination 2', they are growing like waves when a raindrop falls.
Graphics: 3/6
Music: 3/6
Effects: 3/6
Concept: 4/6
Overall: 3/6
Duckers:
Traction and Brainstorm are both big names with a lot of good productions on their hands, but their latest Buenzli co-op doesn't feel like a an effort comparable to their names in terms of scale. Traction has made nice effects by simple means before, but the effects in 'Fascination 2' have several newbie-ish flaws and are overly simple. Happy colors helps a bit, but this wouldn't even pass as a mediocre 64k content-wise in my book. 80'ies references or not; there isn't really much to appreciate in this one. They do deserve some credit for the mood and the music, but at the end of the day, this kind of mood doesn't appeal to my sense of aesthetics.
Graphics: 1/6
Music: 2/6
Effects: 1/6
Concept: 3/6
Overall: 2/6
KeyJ of Kakiarts & Duckers of Outracks