Demo Review: Intronomicon 4k intro by Sausages Of Damned              2000/05/19
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                 mrh/icb

'Intronomicon' has been released already in late 1997. But as it is a rather
unknown intro and because there was no new issue of Coder's Revenge for the
last 2 years, we review it now. 'Intronomicon' is the debut-release of a group
new to the scene called Sausages Of Damned. For a debut it is a fairly good
production - yes, it is a state-of-the-art demo!

Too bad for Archimedes users, but Intronomicon runs on RiscPC only. But for
this the requirements aren't too high: 2 MB RAM, 0 MB VRAM and a normal ARM610
should be enough.

Intronomicon starts off with a credits text packed into a squeezy rotzoom
effect. It blurs out and leads to the next - a full screen lightshaded bump
map again viewing a bluring logo of the group's name.

Next is an effect which has not been seen in many demos before: A visualisation
of the life-algorithm. But it gets better when the whole life-plain becomes a
light shaded bumpmap! This looks really amazing. Your fantasy lets you think
of ants covered by some sort of slime. (maybe I have seen too much bad movies?)

The following effect are some light-shaded zooming circles. This looks rather
cool but somehow it reminds me of a similar effect from the demo 'Era' by TXP.
Next is a ride through a static tunnel. The colours in this part are funny and
form a counterpole to the blue-violet in the rest of the demo.

The rotzoomer from the beginning of the intro is shown again - this time it
runs with motion-blur - and Intronomicon finishes with a greetings screen.
(Thanks for greeting us! ;)

An interesting thing about Intronomicon is that it looks different everytime
you run it. This is because it uses memory crap data to initialize its effects.
So do not wonder if you see parts of your Desktop inside this intro. :)

A real bunch of good effects have been packed into 4k. No graphics and no music,
but it is a brilliant piece of coding. Even smooth transition effects between
the different parts have been included! Congratulations to Marmor/S.o.D.! Too
bad that this 4k intro did not enter a competition like CodeCraft. I'm sure
it would have won. So here are the ratings for an intro which can be considered
to be the best 4k intro on acorn so far:

   .
   | -^deMo RaTing^-       . -^facts^-                 -^credits^-
 __!_______________________!_________________________.________________ __ _
   |                       |                         |
   | CoDing  - oooooooo..  | name     : Intronomicon | code: Marmor/S.o.D.
   | gRaphIx - ..........  | group    : Sausages of Damned
   | mUSix   - ..........  | category : 4k intro     |
   | deZiGn  - ooooooo...  | discspace: 4k
   | oVeRaLL - oooooooo..  | system   : ARM610/2MB/RO3.6
   |


Download:  MARMOR.zip (4k)