Commodore Amiga 500 Best Demo Effects

[@naviamiga]

I love what the unique design of the Amiga allowed in terms of effects. So creative.

[@Toffeemeister]

Agreed it was very innovative and flexible so was perfect for the demo scene. It was the first computer in the home with a GPU really.

[@GOIDA200]

@@Toffeemeister офигеть 8 лет

[@Cornz38]

My god, I remember almost all of these, Blitter objects (BOBs), lightsourced vectors, multiple bitplanes, copper effects.. The Amiga kicked arse.

[@Toffeemeister]

On the Amiga you can easily choose which horizontal line is displayed on each scan line by setting the modulo register with the Copper on each scan line. You can stretch a image vertically at 50fps with almost no CPU usage :0)

[@simone2059]

When experimenting back then was a thing, I miss all of this

[@kyorin6526]

Puts the original bouncing ball demo somewhat in the shade...

[@DEichenberg]

The pirate intros were always favorites of mine.

[@fixfaxerify]

Whoever made the last tune I think must have listened a lot to Kox Box Dragon Tales 🙂

[@sluggotg]

Hey folks, do you remember a demo featuring a cube that had the Juggler on one of the side in real time with an a500 with one meg of ram? I cant remember what that was called... it was such an impressive demo for the time!!!

[@Optimus6128]

Funny think, I was reading this yesterday and thinking "What is this demo? I know the Juggler demo but not the juggler running on a texture cube. And I've watched a lot of Amiga demos in the past but never found one with the Juggler running on a textured cube. It would take me long to find that, seems like a rare one." Today, random amiga demos came in the youtube feed, and one of them is the juggler on a cube demo! Thinking about crazy synchronicities!!! kzbin.info/www/bejne/mIvJcmqXrK55Z5I

[@SerBallister]

Blitter feedback effects kick ass

[@Toffeemeister]

+SerBallister Yes they do.

[@ImreVeres0]

Nice collection! From 'Extension' by 'Pigmy Projects' I also loved the caleidocube effect that I've never seen in any other demos (it's sad it didn't fit here). That effect was so unique (to me).

[@Isaac_Garcia_Peveri]

Music is from "Desert Dreams part II" remixed :)

[@PrzeszczepiX]

and second is title music from Stardust game, also remixed

[@treblesix]

You absolutely nailed it. Awesome dude!

[@Toffeemeister]

Thanks, appreciate that.

[@amanloop]

THE demo machine!

[@Toffeemeister]

It sure was! The zoomer in the first effect uses the Copper. The plasma at 2.45 is just colour cycling the other 3 plasmas (1.00, 2.57, 3.58) are realtime :0)

[@sperzieb00n]

i just watched some "lets play" series of some amiga titles, and when i see this i can only think holy sh*t! some of those demos almost look like early playstation1 graphics. xbox graphics on the same machine in 20 years?!

[@Thegamingking89]

Nice video man!

[@aceman0000099]

That music 😵

[@derduisburger5768]

Fantastic

[@Dragonslayer_06]

Track 1 : Desert Dream (PsychNerD Dream Remix) - amigaremix.com/files/2011/PsychNerD_-_Desert_Dream_PsychNerD_Dream_Remix.mp3

[@VanosTurbo]

I remember many of the effects from PC good old 486 DX.

[@Toffeemeister]

Exactly it's a 7mhz computer with 512k of ram of course effects used pre-calculated tables and masks. The Spaceballs dance sequences and the colour cycling plasma are the only effects I wouldn't classify as real-time.

[@jamezxh]

7.15 actually .

[@Toffeemeister]

102 refers to scroll register. I think plasma is a bad name for it. If you adjust scroll register using the Copper across a scan line you can shrink the image. You can see the effect several times in this video. In fact the zooming dog at the start uses it.

[@Examigan]

Are there any videos similar to this but updated for new PCs? (demos created with modern CPUs, etc.) I like how these are done and still miss my Amiga 2000.

[@desiv1]

I think what he means by "realtime" is that these demos are running on an Amiga 500 and that's what the demos look like as they run. No acceleration involved, even if some of the demos use some pre-generated data.

[@desiv1]

Well, I think the Plasma is real time, but I think it's more fancy copper tricks than fully calculated plasma. It was pretty impressive what you could pull off with the copper..

[@aleben6009]

Plasma was used on amiga 500

[@SerBallister]

ToffeMeister: "On the Amiga you can easily choose which horizontal line is displayed on each scan line by setting the modulo register with the Copper on each scan line. You can stretch a image vertically at 50fps with almost no CPU usage :0)" That would be BPLnDAT ? BPLnMOD was related display width, or how many bytes to skip to go down one line. Anyway my memory is fuzzy for these things now.. Seems like every other effect in this video is doing this trick :)

[@Toffeemeister]

+SerBallister You are correct about the usage of the BPLnMOD registers but if you get the Copper to load the mod registers with a different value each scanline you can control which line is displayed. For example if the screen is 40 bytes wide and you set the mod register to +80 it will skip displaying another 2 lines. Of course you could also use the Copper to modify the display pointer registers as well.

[@s_t_s4846]

Nice stuff, even tho I am an Atari lover I can easily admit that Amiga demos rock ! Do you also have a video about modern Amiga demos ?

[@Toffeemeister]

+st survivor I liked the ST myself but always found the Amiga way more interesting. Yeah I would like to-do another version of this montage video with modern day Amiga demos.

[@bangerbangerbro]

s_t_s Well the Amiga is the descendant of the Atari 8 bit family machines, which are descended from the 2600, so why wouldn't you like the Amiga? Or are you a newer age Atari guy?

[@Foebane72]

Great! Now how about the high-end A4000 stuff?

[@kinglonewolf104]

That's how you zoom regarding the width, but how do you do it heightwise? Do you use the copper to miss out lines or some other trick? (I'm a newbie to the demo scene... I have one demo on my channel I finished last year. Right now I'm making my first ASM programmed game)

[@robertobernardi518]

any info on first track? especially after 1:00

[@jimbotron70]

up to 02:30 it's a remixed version from Desert Dream soundtrack, after 02:30 it's from Stardust videogame title screen

[@AnthonyBall]

@Toffeemeister Hi, I'm sorry to message you on this thread. I saw you replied to a message on the CodingSecrets video - but I seem to be blocked from seeing what you wrote? Update: I saw this in one of my emails... "Fascinating interaction. This Amigas incredible flexiblity obviously gave it longetivity but also meant it took almost 5 years before we started really seeing the best from it. @Anthony Ball where id you get the idea from C64/Atari or just experimenting with the hardware. I alwasy wondered how people discovered the Amigas scroll register bitmap zoom." Basically from trial and error. But I used to have an 8-bit Atari and also did some 'tricks' with that. On the Amiga I also used an old Atari 800 trick to get extra colour range out of the Amiga palette - instead of 12 bit colour (4096 colours), it was an effective 15 bit colour (32768 colours). On Superhero I had a full screen 60hz zoom for the Psygnosis and Kage logos - that amazing code was figured out by Ray Norrish & Douglas Borai (the team behind the Superhero Music).

[@Toffeemeister]

Yes strange I can't see it either. KZbin seem to be having issues with comments recently. I will try and paraphrase:- "Fascinating exchange between you two. I always wondered how such discoveries were made. Looking back it looks like an iteration over the years of various discoveries. I was always fascinated by the register 102 zoom on the Amiga. Spamming scroll register by the Copper to shrink an image horizontally!" BTW I actually remember seeing Superhero screenshots in Amiga magazines. Game looked great, was it single playfield 5/6 bitplanes? Jon did a great job with Leander, very impressive game especially for his first release.

[@Toffeemeister]

"On Superhero I had a full screen 60hz zoom for the Psygnosis and Kage logos - that amazing code was figured out by Ray Norrish & Douglas Borai (the team behind the Superhero Music)." I would love to see this! Have a video or ADF file? Do you remember how it worked?

[@AnthonyBall]

@@Toffeemeister see my KZbin, one if the earliest videos. :) I still have the code, so can take a look for you at some time - just not at present. :)

[@AnthonyBall]

@@Toffeemeister 4 bit planes. Reuse of colour registers to get more colour. Sprites used for main character, etc. It had an 8 way barrel scroll, I think that was also an Amiga first, rather then just 2 screens high and refeeding - what a lot of games did at the time. The game also had a 32k palette.

[@Toffeemeister]

@@AnthonyBall found it! Vertical is easy with modulo. Looks like maybe take the previous bitmap and copy in 2 new vertical strips with the Blitter. Similar to Sanity World Of Commdore logo zoomer at the start of the demo.

[@vapourmile]

Excellent choice of effects, It isn't clear if you are a programmer or were actively involved with any of these groups? Do you have examples of you own code? Is the music also an Amiga track?

[@jammerc64]

Nothing from Hardwired? :(

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

Hey 1:55 is half the fx! nice vid though mate.

[@Godzilla7302]

Nice video! From what demo comes the second tune?

[@neglesaks]

It's from the Amiga game Stardust.

[@Godzilla7302]

@@neglesaks Thank you :D

[@Toffeemeister]

The KZbin encoder has sadly reduced the frame rate and resolution of the source video quite significantly :0( If you want the high quality original video please PM me.

[@mutechpak5089]

Toffeemeister I hope after 7 years, you are in good health and shape. I want HQ file.

[@Toffeemeister]

@@mutechpak5089 Thanks I'm doing well. Maybe I should try uploading again and see if it will give me 50hz now.

[@JB_inks]

@@Toffeemeister it should do

[@desiv1]

Which "we"? :-) Actually, apart from the video captured stuff, most of that looked real-time. The rotate and scale and a lot of the cube, plasma, and copper stuff was definitely real-time. What else wasn't?

[@AmstradExin]

Amigaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[@nonseans]

Actually, there are some non-realtime ones :P

[@YBM2007]

No wonder 90s dance music was so weird

[@nonseans]

All "we" who use language in the proper way. The non-realtime is rotating vector effect of SOTA.

[@ordinozone]

Très cool en effet ! Pour tous les fans francophones du Miga, je porte à votre connaissance, le e-zine AmiMag dispo ici: amimag.skyrock.com avec deux numéros de dispos déjà, plus la page Facebook: facebook.com/AmiMag.ezine A BIENTOT !!

[@nonseans]

Me and my friend, and my dog, and my spider, and my...

[@nonseans]

It may be, but it is not what we call 'realtime'.

[@CipherDiaz]

Loads of cool stuff, but seriously? The best of? Razor 1911 just never existed? The band? QTX intros?

[@mk1roxxor]

There are effects from Razor 1911 demos in this video! And QTX didn't have that many good intros anyway.

[@desiv1]

So a "proper way" is to refer to yourself as "we?". Hmmm... ;-) Royal?

[@em00k]

All these effects were better placed in their own respective demos. Taking them out of context breaks the flow and creativity that went into designing the whole feel of each demo. Plus the music was fucking awful. I saw a few demos where each part had been spliced, people would be better off watching the original work than this.