Stellar/Reviews

Review by Glenn Lunder
This intro opens with a picture by Gator of an eagle. It's in blue and black, and not terribly good. The intro itself is just a bunch of spinning vectorcubes on the background with a 1-bitplane text writer on top. On the left-hand side of the screen there's an OK Stellar logo.

tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. -- Note: KillAGA.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Nothing too exciting here, just an intropic and some vectors to write contact adresses and messages on top of. The left-hand logo is nice, though.

tested A2000/000-7 /1mb chip, 2mb fast/2.04. A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. Note: Intropic has graphical errors, but works fine.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Release was at least before The Party '93, since text in the intro says 'Sources for sale! Support Anis to TP93' - or words to that effect ;)

tested A500 /000-7 /½mb chip, ½mb fast/2.04. A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Calling this a mag is a bit on the fresh side, it's just a big picture (formed like the front page of a newspaper) you can scroll around on with your mouse. Not scene-related either, but quite funny.

tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. -- Note: KillAGA.

Review by Glenn Lunder
2nd Hallucination is a design-fixed version of Hallucination. The release-date is pure speculation =) tested A1200/020-14/2mb chip/3.0. A1200/030-502mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. -- Note: KillAGA.

Review by Glenn Lunder
The opening of this small demo/dentro is quite impressive - it's an animation, where we travel around a mountain top, and some terrain. It's very impressive, and I'm still not sure if it's actual footage or if it was rendered... There's only one other real 'routine' in the demo, a good zoomrotator with stretching and smoothing (?) Anyway, it looks real nice, and the picture doesn't appear blocky at all. Hmm... Made to announce the upcoming 'Eurochart #25' by Static Bytes (eventually release 05/'94). Why on earth such an intro was made by Stellar and Genocide, I don't have the faintest idea :)

tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
This one opens with a Stellar logo of acceptable quality by Frankie. Then it gets off to a flying start with a great flight over a voxel landscape to the opening part of Strobo's tune - which is incidentally the best part. Then a Mindflow logo appears (which could have been MUCH better). From there it goes through good renditions of some of the more popular effects of the time - fullscreen rot-zoomer with stretching, texturemapped cube, Doom routine, realtime 2x2 (I think) zooming fractal and so on. A quite good demo, and an essential addition to anyone's demo collection. I seem to remember it demands some fastmem.

tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
I always liked this for its originality. There had never been anything quite like it before, it was something brand new at the time... What makes Darkroom special is the mood of the thing; that dark, mystic feeling that it evokes...and Strobo's industrial soundtrack is a very important part of that. Not to be missed. It is worth noting, though, that on a machine as fast as mine, it looses some of its value because the effects move TOO quickly. Therefore, best viewed on an A500 ;)

tested A500 /000-7 /½mb chip, ½mb fast/2.04. A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Stellar presents the world's first HAM8 3D-Terrain (or to use the correct term: voxelspace), in a nicely designed intro that finished too low in the competition, in my opinion. It looks dead great too, though the resolution could perhaps be a little better. It's perhaps best viewed a few feet from the screen. On the other hand, this is an intro that runs on a vanilla, no-fastmem A1200, so resources are limited. Though essentially a one-effect intro, this 33k masterpiece still manages to impress me when I first saw it. The terrain movements are calculated randomly, and thus the intro is different each time it is run. Pressing right mouse button even enables the user to control the movements, proving this is a true real-time experience. Any help in locating the elusive 'hidden part' mentioned withing would be most greatly appreciated...

They say in the text inside the intro, 'Thanks to Jarno Paananen for The Player 6.1A', but the module included was made with the previous version; The Player 6.0A. The music is dead cool, btw =)

tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
A fixed version was released later, under the name "Toilet" [07/'95].

tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
"Toilet" is a pretty dead demo, that almost completely fails to create any sense of pace or excitement, despite competent coding. It seems most of their objects use some kind of dithering method to make the blocky renders appear smoother than they are. It's mildly successful, and does make f.ex. the opening logo appear more smooth. It kinda looks like gouraud with smoothing =) Other objects appear to be phong-shaded, which was certainly advanced for its time. The demo uses specifically optimized versions of its code for 020/030 and 040 machines. Dune/Orange is normally active on the pc demo scene.

The demo opens with a zoom into a 3d Stellar logo, before it whisks away to one side just before we are supposed to 'hit' it. Next is a none-too-great raytraced 'Toilet' logo. Then a supposedly phongshaded object, roughly the shape of a star symbol, in shades of grey and silver. Several 'spring-like' objects appear on the screen next, coming in from one side and bouncing around the screen for a small while before disappearing again. Next is what looks *almost* like an envmap object, but I can't be sure on this one. This is followed by the credits and a few more lines of text before the show is ended with a really strange object, though perhaps the most advanced one in the entire demo.

Please note that this review refers to the 'final fixed version'. "Toilet" is actually a final-version of their previous demo "Human Excrement" [06/95], winner of the Abduction '95 competition. The original used a module made with The Player 6.1A, but since that version bugs on 040, it seems they reverted to The Player 6.0A for this one.

tested A1200/020-14/2mb chip/3.0. A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Glenn Lunder
It's the usual rendering stuff from Stellar, perhaps a little more entertaining than usual. The one thing that was a positive surprise was the music. It's a quite dynamic tune from Groo, perhaps a little Lizardking-y at times, but really good! The text file says it was never meant to be run on machines below 030-25 with fast.

tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Ok, but clearly a '2-day production' as it says at the end. It's the usual Stellar stuff, with texture-mapped/rendered shapes flying around, and not much else. Technically competent, but not too exciting. Groo's music is it's usual weird self, but still one of his better tunes.

tested A1200/030-50/2mb cip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Opens with an orange Galerie logo, then onto a fast but blocky voxel landscape with lens flares - probably a jazzed-up version of their routine for the 40k intro "Peverly Hills" [12/'94]. Next up are three shaded rings, and a large greyscale bumpmapped object. Then a tunnel appears with sparks of light lighting the walls as they fly around. This is the fastest effect (or so their system-tester tells me, 48fps :), and the one which looks best, to boot. Next up is a texturemapped and phong-shaded stone object, then a bump-tunnel. After that, a spinning cityscape appears, complete with more lens flares. Another tunnel effect follows, though one of the better ones in the demo, kind of caleidoscope-like'. Next up we have a yellowish bumpmapped landscape, which morphs its mountains up and down into the sky! A texturemapped and gouraud-shaded landscape ends the show, which reminded me a little of standing close to a mountain looking up, in the dark. If this last effect was developed a little further, it could have been great, but as it is now, it feels slightly unachived. However, a pretty good release that would probably have come higher in the competition if it had been longer. Even though no mention is made of it, Dune was likely NOT a member, and still just in Orange on the pc.

One large drawback to this demo is the fact that it's presented entirely in the 'ghosted' c2p mode, where every other pixel is blacked out. Supposedly, this improves rendering speeds, but visually it is no match for solid effects. The demo uses Jarno Paananen's PS3M for audio playback of the S3M file, and Ludde's c2p routine. Requires 4MB fastmem.

tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Well, it's Galerie with a couple of new pics, new music, a few new (and unusual!) textures, and without the original's last couple of effects. Lacks design, and doesn't have either a dynamic design or any real sense of identity. Just effects set to music. Oh, I nearly forgot - it now runs in a smaller window (drawback, but needs less processor power), and without the 'ghosted' effect (improvement!).

tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Having just watched "Lights" for the first time, I'm left in a state of awe. It hasn't got INCREDIBLY revolutionary code, but what there is looks so good it's totally forgiveable. It opens (after precalculating for a while) with an impressive tunnel effect while some words flash in the top left of the screen before stopping at the word Stellar. Then we're quickly on to a sort of wave/ripple routine, which isn't the best part of the intro. But Stellar saves the best for last, and finally presents us with a showstopping effect: Mapped and shaded coins fall down from the top of the screen, with little sparkles added when the light falls on them. At the top of the screen, the text 'I Had A Dream...' scrolls slowly from the right to the left. Then we're treated to the end logo; the text LIGHTS with a spotlight effect on it. All through this we're listening to one of Groo's coolest tunes in a long while. What makes "Lights" a winner is that little something undefinable... It's sort of the same quality that they achieved with "Darkroom" [08/'94] all those years ago. Highly recommended.

tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.