Venus Art/Reviews

Review by Glenn Lunder
Nothing special about this demo, the only standout part is the 'monitor' one. Here you see a virtual Amiga monitor on the left side, where someone loads an assembler, opens a file, runs it - and you're presented to some Goraud objects. Also, a lit candle lighting a face is seen in the same context, and that was very well executed. The music is nothing special, neither are the graphics. Average. Will run fine on unexpanded A1200's. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
This 4k intro involves several objects flying across a sky blue background. I'm still amazed at how they managed to store all those objects' coordinates in 4k! Another cool thing about this one is that it's actually quite system friendly - you can flip between screens while viewing it!! Outstanding, and only bettered by the winner intro "HazMix" this year. The text file mentions the intro 'should' work on unexpanded A1200's, but that 030 or better is recommended. It requires SetPatch. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
Nothing outstanding atmosphere-wise, though the effects are of an overall high quality. They present us with lots of envmapped objects here, as well as a tunnel effect similar to the one in Rebels' "Whammer Slammer" [12/94] demo, only a lot more colorful. Not bad. Not bad at all! They strongly recommend a 030 processor. As part of the archive for their final demo "Everything Dies", the complete source code for this intro was released. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
"Zero Gravity" deserved to win, from what I've seen from these competitions. While Floppy's "PapadeO" was good too, this has a lot more going on; a lot more substance. And, with an archive of 3.6mb, it should. The best of parts are towards the end, with the voxelspace landscape and the 'spaceships in space' parts. Also, the music is at its best there and at the very beginning. There are four fullscreen pictures in the demo, three by Neuromancer and one raytraced by Madbart. Other than that, there's not much new here, it's the usual shading and mapping. On a scale from 1 to 10, this is a strong 6. The demo requires 'some fast', and an 030 or better is strongly recommended. It also supports multitasking, so you can flip between screens with Amiga-M. 'Waiting for PowerPC'. So do I :) tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
After a few moments of precalculation, the intro opens with an object first splintering and then forming the words "Venus Art". An impressive twisting lava-textured object is next, then a fish in what is probably supposed to be an underwater setting. The intro jerks quite a bit sometimes, this is probably due to its multitasking capabilities... Not really sure what to call the next object, which is then relieved by a simplistic 3d scene with some dubious palette choices... Then the end text with credits flashes onto the screen while the scene keeps spinning in the background. The 3d effects on offer here are reasonable, but not amng the best I have seen, and the intro's power seems to be lessened by its multitasking capabilities... This intro was meant for 040 or 060 owners with graphics cards, and should probably be viewed in that setting in order to extract maximum appreciation.

With this intro, coders Noe and BJSebo announced their intention to make all their future demos and intros system friendly, multitasking and supporting the CyberGraphX system. The intro will work on any 020+ machine, but the authors recommend at least 030. They also write 8MB fast RAM as a requirement, but that it SHOULD work with 4MB... if anyone can test this for me, then please let me know! The enclosed text file announced that Juma was kicked for being lazy. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Glenn Lunder
This intro was originally planned for Symposium, which Venus Art eventually didn't attend. They therefore finished it for Intel Outside 4, where the amiga 4k competition was cancelled =( In light of this, they then decided to just release it at the party place and be done with it... The intro itself is nothing special really, just a series of (gouraud?) shaded objects in the usual Venus Art lack of palette sense... =( As usual with Venus Arts' productions, this intro multitasks. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Glenn Lunder
After a system check and a considerable precalc period, we are launched into an intro that shows some competent coding, as well as some EXTREMELY bad palette choices! Are you trying to make us sick, Venus Art!? Jeesus, those sickly greens were a little much... Anyway! =) My machine is clearly not the ideal configuration, this jerks a little too much to be very enjoyable under my configuration... The intro consists mostly of scenes and objects, with an abundance texture/bump/phong/envmaps applied to every surface...though they REALLY need to get a graphician in there and do some better textures! 3d scenes are not the best, they mostly look cliched. The coding here is clearly competent, but I do believe I've been spoilt on too many Antibyte/Scoopex intros lately, and hey... these guys are nowhere in THAT neighbourhood!

The intro requires at least 020 and 8MB of fast mem, but the producers recommend at least 040-40 or preferably a 060 processor for maximum pleasure. Please note that the version reviewed is the fixed version, with CGX support (unlike the party version). The intro supports multitasking. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.

Review by Glenn Lunder
"Everything Dies" is a beautiful demo. With this production, Venus Art announce their farewell to the scene - but they certainly decided to go out with a bang! This demo singlehandedly take on the task of bringing the Amiga demo scene to the next step of the evolution ladder by bringing the fourth dimension into the 3d demo. There's stuff here that's unbelievable, lifelike, and technically outstanding. Another thing that this demo does to push the limits is its support of the AHI and CyberGraphX standards for sound and video. This demo is a worthy tombstone on Venus Art's grave... DOWNLOAD IMMEDIATELY!

Though the demo worked fine on my machine, it was unbearably slow. In fact, I believe this is the most processor hungry demo I have ever had the opportunity to run. Don't get me wrong, this isn't all bad; it's the kind of demo that makes you want to go out and buy an accelerator :) The recommended minimum configuration is 040-40, eventhough it will run on anything from 020 up. Neuromancer and Madd's pictures were the same ones as the ones they competed in the graphics competition with. The Aminet archive also included the source code for their earlier intro "Oops!" [11/96] as a gift to the scene! tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.0.

Review by Glenn Lunder
I was unable to view this intro since it requires an FPU. tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1.