Very interesting scroller..

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Welcome to the world of beautiful fractals! You shall now see some fast 2D and 3D Mandelbrots. Press SPACE to edit their parametres yourself (The editor is horrible, sorry! I had no time to make a better one). You can edit parametres when there is a text 'READY' in right of editing field. Use arrow keys to move the cursor and 0-9 and A-F to enter values in hexadecimal. The parametres are: x minimum & x maximum (Real), y minimum (Imaginary), max. iterations, dimensions (2 or 3) and color (Palette). The coordinates are fixed point numbers (3 bits for whole part and 13 bits for decimal part). Each parameter has it's own maximum & minimum value, the editor ignores too small or big values (Eg. If you press 4 in DIM., nothing happens). Press RETURN to draw. And when you are in editor press SPACE again to exit this demo. The 2D Mandelbrot's you are seeing are 16 colors. The basic pattern (Real: -4,4 Imag:-2.5,2.5 .32 iterations) takes only 2 seconds to draw (That's a new world record, I think!). This also the first ST-demo to feature 3D Mandelbrot mountains. The 3D Mandelbrots are slightly slower, and they use only 6 colors (If you don't like it, try writing yourself faster & better 3D Mandelbrot routines!). I use 16/32 bit fixed point arithmetic to calculate those Mandelbrots. The algorithm is somewhat similar to the one used in Schapfl.prg, but I have improved it a lot. Thanks must go to Christoph Zwerschke, author of Schnapfl.prg and to my friends (who gave few good tips with Mandelbrots): Ville Saari and Hannu Mallat. In this scrolling text I will tell you about following things: My visit to MegaLeif-Convention, How Mad Max and ES joined our group and about a new multigroup formation: ALA (Anti Lame Assosiation). So interesting stuff is coming up, keep reading! But first I will tell the credits for this demo (release date: 22th May 1992). This demo was quickly coded by me (The Eye). I had only 9 days to make it. I had made some Mandelbrot routines earlier, but I also had few very nasty exams in school (I am studying computer science in the Helsinki University of Technology). So I had very little time to make this screen and Mad Max and ES were also busy with making Warp II for Thalion software, so it was all up to me. All graphics are also done by me. And the music (from the game Enchanted Lands) of course is done by Mad Max. My disk was corrupted badly (I will never again use unlabeled disks as a source disk!), and all binary files, except one, related to this demo were destroyed beyond repair (After I found that I had a nervous breakdown!). Of course, I had back ups of most of the files, but the back ups were 60 km. away in home (I spend my weekends there, on weeks I am in my dorm room. It took me many hours to make those files again (and I also had to remove some graphics from this demo. What a pity!). There must be dozens of small bugs in this demo, I didn't have time to to debug it throughly. I hope you still like this screen, I could have made it better I had had more time (and if my disks had worked OK), but then you wouldn't probably get this demo ever. That's wrong with me, I am never satisfied with my code, so I keep on improving it, and never release anything (Well actually I have released 2 small demos before). I have been working on our megademo for 2 years (It's called the Braindead halfmegademo), hopefully I will finish it someday. Now back to stuff I promised to tell in this scrolling text. When I first heard of the MegaLeif-Convention (=MLC) in Sweden I tought "Nah, I will not go there. There is only going to be some Swedish lame groups. And I didn't know anybody to drive me there " (I don't have a driving license, and carrying my ST hardware in a bus was out of question). But luckily I told my friend Tomi Engdahl (he is a PC hacker, his computer name is 'Then') about this meeting in Sverige. He was also interested go there, and he had a car. So we packed our things and started heading for the boat (We live in southern Finland). The boat trip was very boring, but it was cheap. It cost only 2 Finnish Marks (FM) + 30 FM travel tax. That makes a total of 32 FM (about 4 British pounds). We found our way to Uppsala Fyriskolan easily, thanx to the good map we got. The place was a big surprise to us. 4 floors full of ST and PC hackers from all over the world (Well, there were only few PC hackers). I got a place for my ST right next to Nic (from Funvision) and Lem (from Next). I had some great time in MLC. I met wonderful people, swapped software, watched some laser disc movies, attented the lame demo competition and the graphics competition. (I would also have attented the blib-blob compo, but I didn't finish my music in time.) But there was also some lame idiots in that party too, not to mention a Finnish group (actually a formation of groups) who had a sign hanging on their room's door saying: "Brainwash Company keep the fuck out of here!". Luckily I had my baseball bat with me! I was mostly wearing ordinary clothes there but I also wore our school's black data-guild suit (with the texts:'The Eye' and 'Brainwash Company'). I also wore my Klu Klux Klan suit for a short while (It's a costume party suit, not a real one. I am not a member of KKK, and I am not a rasist!), but Kasper (one of the MLC organizers) didn't understand my humor and told me to take it off. The shit thing was that we had to leave MLC too early (we were there only 3 days), because we had made boat reservations (with a cabin). End of MLC stuff. It was the 5th of May 1992 and afternoon. I was in our university's computer lab room (Called Niksula) testing my compressor program (Bcpack 2.00, UNIX version). I also had IRC (=Internet Relay Chat) in one of my windows (multitasking is great!), but it was iconified, so I didn't care any attention to it. Then I clicked on it, to see what's happening in IRC (IRC is multiuser program. With it people can communicate with each other in real time). There were some private messages from a guy called Mad Max. He was wondering if I'm dead or something because I hadn't answered him. I quickly wrote a reply to him and joined the same channel where he was currently in. I quickly found out that he was really the Maestro himself (Mad Max alias Jochen Hippel). Soon ES (alias Erik Simon) also joined us. Mad Max and ES told me that they had got trouble with the rest of TEX (I had already heard about that from NewMode). I suggested them to join my group (The Brainwash Co.) They thought a while and then said:"Yes, we will join your crew!". Boy, was I surprised! Then ES asked me a question about M68000 assembly code, to be sure that I really can code. The question was: "Which instruction is faster MOVE.W D0,-(A0) or MOVE.W D0,(A0)+ ?" The correct answer was of course the latter one (MOVE.W D0,(A0)+), but ES didn't believe me in the first place. He claimed that Bittner had told him the both of them are as fast. I invited Kasper (from Electra) to decide our argument. He is coder too, so he knew that latter one was faster. I was correct! I made a deal with ES and Mad Max that I will quickly make a demo, which will tell that they have moved to The Brainwash Co. That demo is the demo you are watching right now. Soon after Mad Max and ES had joined our group, the a big rumour spreaded over the ST-demo scene folk in IRC. It was hard to convince people that they had really joined our crew. (People said:"April fools day was month ago", "What! I have never heard of your group. Have you released any demos?" etc.). But the fact is true that Mad Max and ES are now members of The Brainwash Co. Other people were also interested to join us. Newmode from DeltaForce nearly joined us (but he refused because I was not going to give him any money). Kasper also told me that he was soon going to leave The Union, and he was thinking of a Union 2 or something like that. First I was not so interested about the idea, but after few hours talk we formed it. It is called the Anti Lame Association (Briefly ALA). Currently (17th May 1992) ALA members are: -Electra- -The Brainwash Co.- -Brainless Institute- and -DeltaForce-. Other (good!) groups can also join ALA, just contact me or Kasper, and we will think about it. ALA as it's name says opposes lame demos and lame demo groups. We (ALA) will probably release a demo in the summer 1992. It will be a demo not to miss! I myself (The Eye) will also release my new packer (Bcpack), if it will be better than the newest IcePack (Yes Axe, I will beat your packers!). If you want to contact me, then you can write to: Petri Kuittinen, Timpurinkuja 1 C 39, SF-02600 Espoo, Finland. My electronic mail address is: eye@niksula.hut.fi (Internet andother major networks also) I am also often in IRC, my nick name there is of course:eye. If you are waiting for greetings then you are on wrongs tracks. Restart this demo and read the intro text displayer! It's time to end this scrolling text. Bye now! May bugs never inhabit your routines! Death to bad sectors! Cu! Restarting scrolling text.....