Your Sinclair


No More Intelligence Demo

Categories: Review: Software
Author: Jon Pillar
Publisher: Dynamite Dynasty
Machine: Spectrum 48K/128K

 
Published in Your Sinclair #81

No More Intelligence Demo

Dead interesting, these demos. Basically, they show the evolution of a programmer's coding talents (or something). NMI 1 is a three-part demo dedicated to the humble scrolly. Sine-wave scrollies, colour bars, seventeen scrollies on-screen at once, wobbling lines dancing around pulsing logos... it's reasonable stuff, but the standard Speccy font and horrible selection screen give away its age. Pretty damn devastating for a first attempt, though.

Jumping ahead a few months, NMI 2 is a different kettle of fish. Part One has a gigantic fluidly-moving vector graphic, which cunningly fiddles about with interrupts to produce a screen 768 pixels high. Part Two has twenty-five simultaneous and very fast scrollies along with a thunking music track, while Part Three is patently impossible. There's just too much colour on the screen. It can't be done. Evidently Dynamite Dynastie has programmed a routine which ignores the Speccy hardware and manipulates your brain's perception of reality instead. No, really.

Jumping ahead a few more months, we come to the spankily splendiferous NMI 3 - No Panic. It's a megademo (lots of mini-demos linked together) of about thirteen parts, with some amazingly good parts, some fairly good parts and some quite interesting bits. Luckily, there are far more amazingly good parts than near-misses. The megademo encompasses just about every form of effect known to the coding fraternity, with a few gags thrown in for good measure. (My fave bit is the menu on one of the graphics demos - it tells you to press certain keys to get an effect, and when you press them the screen clears to reveal the word 'effect.' Ha ha! Oh, please yourselves.) Super stuff.

Jon Pillar

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