Black Lotus, The/Reviews
Total Brain Collapse - TBC (ECS File)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Oooooh my god, boring! This is a horror example of how *NOT* to make a demo. It's got a few, ugly effects, a soundtrack that I won't even mention and 'effects' like a hidden-line vector! Jeeeesus, filled vectors was the norm in f*cking 1990, people! Unadvanced, unexciting, unworthy. Avoid!
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0. -- Note: KillAGA.
Phucker (1994, .08, ECS File)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Thorougly unexciting - as usual for the early TBL demos. The more of these I watch, the more astonished I am that these guys actually made "Glow" and "Captured Dreams" later! The version reviewed is the release version, the compo version had several bugs.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Que? (1995, 08.10, AGA HD Multifile Demo)
Review by Glenn Lunder
This is actually rather good, much thanks to the two dynamic cooperation tunes from two old favorites. Very very OK. Will run on unexpanded A1200's, but fastmem and accelerators are useful.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Mindprobe fixed (1995, 27.12, AGA ?MB HD Multifile, 3 disks)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Another not-too-cool older TBL release. This one hints at what "Tint" will be, but does not quite make it. The whole demo is presented in that annoying 'every-other-pixel-is-black' mode, and if you ask me, that is a major drawback. It just doesn't look as good as solid effects! The most innovative effect here is a little hard to describe, but I'll try. It's a magnified picture by Rodney in the background, and on top of that there's two vectorcubes, spinning and space-cutting each other.
One is an RGB-vector, and the other is texturemapped with a small portion of the mentioned picture. As the picture is magnified, it's larger than the screen, and the whole thing moves as the vectorcubes travel around on it. Very very nice. The picture is "Climber" by Rodney, which came 2nd in the graphics competition at The Party. Too bad the rest of the demo is not equally exciting.
Azazel's module was made in two hours, during The Party! This is also very likely his first released module for TBL; he was in DCS two months earlier. Though it'll work fine on an 020-14, at least an 030-28 with 2mb fast is recommended.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Spectral (1996, .02, AGA HD Multifile, 2 disks)
Review by Glenn Lunder
This is not half bad! Though it has some mysterious palette choices, and the design is sometimes...well, enough about that... this is one of TBL's better productions. There's the usual shading and stuff - and the usual Azazel music :( Not much to say, really - an above-average release from TBL.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Gizmo (1996, 05.04, 4k Intro)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Seems to disagree with my machine, once just showed the opening logo and froze on a black screen, another time it got as far as popping a nicely-coloured torus on the screen before freezing.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0 -- Note: See review.
EQ-4k (1996, 05.04, 4k Intro)
Review by Glenn Lunder
This nice 4k'er opens with some red-on-black quasi-plasma stuff, which then turns into a tunnel of sorts. We travel into the tunnel, which has 'The Black Lotus' written on the walls, before coming to the coolest effect in the intro, a 'sea' of sorts of gradient blue-on-black. Then the tunnel routine is repeated with the same blue-on-black palette and it's over. Be advised that the version reviewed is v1.1, and the file-id.diz file claims it's 'fixed', without specifying further.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Tint (1996, 05.04, AGA 4MB HD Multifile)
Review by Glenn Lunder
A little slow to get started this, but when the second piece of music kicks in, it takes off in a big way. Ah yes, the music. I can't help thinking that with some other musician, this could have been a well and truly GREAT production. As it stands, the first tune stinks big-time, and the second ranges from lousy to great in what is a truly bizarre mixture. It seems Azazel can't decide between techno and more traditional demo music, and as a result he tries to mix the two with varied results. The code here smells more of good ideas than truly advanced routines, but is overall quite acceptable. So to sum up: The first part sucks, the rest is quite good. Worth noting is that the compopictures from the artists above are all included. Danny's '18bit truecolor' picture seems to be an elaboration on Lemon.thoughts, which won a clipart competition in EuroChart (I think) some time ago. An OK production with GREAT graphics.
Recommended 030-28 or above.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Mind The Carrot 2 (1996, 26.05, 64k Intro)
Review by Glenn Lunder
This is one of the nicer intros I've seen! It all opens with a cool logo-picture by Louie, which is followed by several objects and effects, the first of which is a shaded carrot! Placed in demo/aga on Aminet, but the system tester says 'no hardware requirement'.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Glow (1996, 26.05, AGA 4MB HD Multifile, 3 disks)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Oh yes. This is the first truly outstanding TBL production I have witnessed, and what a demo it is! Since last time they've obviously gotten some design help from their newest members. While some of their earlier productions have looked a little weird, this one looks just smashing! The demo opens with an animation of a spaceship leaving a space station, to great accompanying strings music. After that, we're treated to the usual rendered objects and stuff, with one very important difference: These are cool, advanced routines that look GOOD. Even their rather untraditional palette choices now look smashing! What can I say? TINT only HINTed at things to come! Recommended! Runs on standard A1200's with enough mem, but recommends 030-28 or above.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Darkside (1996, 16.06, AGA ?MB File)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Darkside signalled a drastic departure for TBL. Gone was the flashy techno, to be replaced with a tune by Lizard that's closer to a film soundtrack than anything else. A lot of people were skeptical when Darkside was released, but in my eyes this is one of their better demos. It opens with some dots morphing to form the names of the producers. This could have been done a lot better, the routine now looks downright ugly! The titlepicture by Facet is one of his most surrealistic pictures ever! The next picture is a raytraced one by Tudor, of a hand stretching out of a monitor to touch the A1200 beyond...very good! Another good routine here is the travel down spinning tunnel with the white light in the centre... This looks like a precursor to the tunnel at the end of the zoomer in the later TBL demo "Captured Dreams" [03/97]!
I like "Darkside". It's an unusual demo, in that it manages to create a gothic atmosphere and still throw in a few good effects. The music deserves a special mention; it's a highly original tune. The release version apparently had some bugs, but a fixed version was later to be put up on the TBL website. On my 4mb fast system, I couldn't run this demo because I didn't have enough memory. This may have been due to the fact that I map my Kickstart to fast ram, but I can't be sure... It DOES require some fast, I'm just not sure how much :)
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0 -- Note: See review!
A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.0.
Tractorbeam (1996, 16.06, AGA 40k Intro)
Review by Glenn Lunder
WOW! I've just been blown away by an amazing piece of 40k intro. This small file oozes professionalism from every pore. The effects are good and plentiful, much more than I'd expect to see in a 40k intro these days. There are so many '1-effect-intros' out there. This one opens with some envmapped objects, which isn't all that unusual these days :) Next we travel down a rather cool yellow/green tunnel... which suddenly has the objects from before in the middle! It's like Offa's saying 'maybe you can do that too...and this...but can you do them TOGETHER!?'. Next there's a texturemapped sube spaceut with some envampped objects, before it ends with what can only be described as motionblurred fireflies. Not bad at all, TBL...
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Captured Dreams (1997, 29.03, AGA HD Multifile)
Review by Glenn Lunder
The show opens with a texturemapped tunnel, with credits texture-mapped onto squares flying around. A 'CD' logo is next, then we zoom into the middle of the picture. At first it looks like a normal zoomer, but it quickly becomes evident that there's layers and layers of fantastic gfx before we hit the bottom! There, it smoothly integrates into some lights flashing out at us in time with the music before the entire zoom process is reversed. Only this time, we zoom back a little more than where we started, and it becomes evident that we're in a room with several different 'tv-boxes' hovering in the air. They all have changing pictures on them, and we travel around until we settle on a picture of the side of a skyscraper. This is now the main focal point, and soon a beautiful dolphin comes swimming/flying by, reflected onto the windows of the skyscraper. It's all very 'Beyond the Mind's Eye'. We see the dolphin from three different angles before we move on. Next is an amazing, big dinosaur object (T-Rex?), sneering at us. This object is made up of MANY polygons! Next we're treated to Danny and Louie's coop picture "Angelic Particles" (also winner of the TG97 graphics competition) before we move on to another showstopping effect... We're suddenly underwater, with calm music and a soothing atmosphere. Next is another texturemapped tunnel, this time with a moving lighstource. It goes on with some butterflies flying around ancient architecture, before the show is rounded off with not-too-good picture by Rodney.
CD has to be one of the best demos ever released, period. It seems TBL has got most of their design problems out of the way, and this demo sure kicks ass! One thing I especially noticed and liked, was the way the music changed to the MOOD of the demo. For the faster, frantic parts there was techno-style stuff, while underwater we were treated to a beautiful pan-pipe mood tune. Great!
Swedish musician FNDR (Jonas Hedeback) was not a fulltime member. The demo requires at least 4mb fast, and a 030-50 processor. However, the system checker searches for 020+, so in theory it is possible to run on inferior hardware...
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Imitation None (1998, 11.04, AGA 40k Intro)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Who would have guessed - TBL are back with a small 40k sign of life! Unfortunately, this one's a no-starter due to one very important factor: Speed. You're obviously gonna need a FAST machine to get this baby to roll acceptably. So the keyword would be: Beautiful but agonizingly slow. If you've got a fast machine, please do. Otherwise, don't bother. Nice to look at, tho' ;)
FNDR (Jonas Hedeback) and Spite (Erique Hemming) were not fulltime members.
tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.
Rain (1999, 28.12, AGA File)
Review by Glenn Lunder
Just one word: "WOW". This demo is testament to the demopower of TBL, a group of almost unheard of talent. "Rain" was their first demo in a while, with only the intro "Imitation None" [04/98] released at TG98 since their amazing "Captured Dreams" [04/97] - demo of the year in 1997. Even if I stay by my claim that "CD" is the best amiga demo ever, "Rain" comes close to topping it. The only reason why Haujobb's "Mnemonics" [04/99] is demo of the year this year and not this one, is that Haujobb made a demo I could actually run on my machine =)
The demo is fluent, with great art direction (credited to Louie) and design elements. Every single screen is well thought out, with a great sense of the overall design, and the music fits perfectly to the cyberpunk-y feel of the demo. There are effects in this demo that have never even been done on the amiga, and effects that I simply do not have words to describe. There is the most amazing phong shading, some voxels towards the end, and... well, just lots and lots of greatness! =D "Rain" is an almost perfect demo, with all the elements coming together seamlessly. This is the kind of demo you show to your friends to get them interested in the demoscene. Just amazing.
This review was only made possible by our contributor SoLO, who generously sent me a cd with the demo as an mpg file. The mpg was grabbed from an a1200 equipped with a 50mhz 68060 processor. The demo itself is not runnable at all on my machine, 50mhz 030 =( Probably requires a shitload of memory, too. A rough guess would be 16mb.
Carebear (Erik Lyden) is probably NOT a fulltime member of the group. He is, in case you didn't know, a musician with top finnish pc demo group Orange. Neither FNDR (Jonas Hedeback), FTHR (Antti Jaderholm) or Spite (Erique Hemming) are fulltime members. The final screen in the demo, before the end credits, features a picture and the text "yeah, that's the downside". The picture is grabbed from Luc Besson's fabulous film "Leon". We wholeheartedly recommend it =)
