Ocean Machine by The Black Lotus
                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                 Final version released 2005-04-10
        (Party version released at Beakpoint 2005, on 2005-03-27)
	

        This demo won the Amiga Demo competition at Breakpoint 2005.


                         -= Requirements =-

                     Run this demo on either:

            Real Amiga with 68060, 32+MB fastmem and AGA
                                or
           WinUAE 0.9.92 or newer on a PC with an 1+GHz CPU

               ... or watch the video version.


                         -= Perpetrators =-

                       Louie      -    Graphics
                       Tudor      -   Animation
                       Yolk/CNCD  -       Music
                       Kalms      - Programming
                       Rubberduck - Programming
                       Nichosen   -    Graphics


                             -= Story =-

	  Another year, another demo. Breakpoint 2005 is coming up.
	Tradition bids us to join the pilgrimage to the fertile soil of
	southern Germany, and participate in the ritual bigscreen battles.

          Our weapon of choice this year is a less industrial, more
        ambient/atmospheric audiovisual demonstration. Which of course
        is far from being finished when the time has come for us to begin
        our journey.

          Dear friends and and lethal competitors at once, they are all
        gathered in the hall. Working, toiling away; giving their machines
        a pounding in a sudden fit of rage.

          One by one their visualizations reach completion. A few are
        however losing momentum bit by bit; slowly grinding to a halt, at
        which point the creators turn to the bottle for consolation. Their
        creations will not reach the public eye this time -- perhaps never,
        if fate so decides.

          Our process takes place elsewhere: at the hotel room. Scurried
        away in our own corner of the world, isolated from the other
        pilgrims. Always absent, always late, always busy. Time is
        scarce, and there is yet lots to be done.

          We submit our bodies and minds to the process. Code is
        written, objects are modelled, scenes are synchronized to the
        audio. Parts are created from void -- at first rough sketches,
        then they become more polished and sleek by each iteration.

          After more than 30 hours, the process ends prematurely: a
        savage bug is lurking somewhere in the code, and it may at any
        moment lash out and stop the production dead in its tracks.
        There is no time for more process, so with this potential
        Achilles' heel buried within our production we join the other
        pilgrims in the hall and hope that the bug will give us peace
        for the duration of the video recording.

          And shortly afterward... the battle. It is a magnificent
        sight! Each production with its own style and theme, vying for
        the favour of the pilgrims. Local phalanxes cheer on their
        compatriots' attempts to take the crown.


          Despite rough corners and lack of complete process, our
        production comes out ahead. We return to our homeland with
        satisfaction and another story to tell.


          All does not end there, however; we let the process reach its
        completion within the confines of our own homes. This is the
        result: What you see is what could have been, what should have
        been. Now it plain is.


                            -= Changes =-

	Various changes have been done in the final version:

	* A very nasty crash bug has been removed (that one nearly
	  stopped us from participating in the compo at BP05).
	* Music synchronization has been fixed.
	* Palette fades during greetings part.
	* Dancing girl interpolation has been bugfixed (in the party
	  version, she would move jerkily if that scene ran in 3 frames).
	* The landscape part has been updated, as the original version
	  just looked too nasty.
	* Performance has been improved in some places.
	* Datafile is now crunched on-disk.


                             -= Thanks =-

        * Volker Barthelmann, Frank Wille and the gang for VBCC,
          VASM & VLINK. (www.compilers.de) Making a tailored set of
          cross-compiler/assembler/linkers from the source snapshots
          was surprisingly easy.
        * Hansoft (www.hansoft.se) for their project management tool.
          See the screenshot in the "bonus" directory for a section of
          our project plan.
        * Hotel Krone in Bingen for good service and friendly
          personnel, which happily fulfilled our sometimes odd requests
          without hesitation!
	* Vedder, for doing some betatesting of the final version
          on his machine.



                                                       Until next time,
                                                       Kalms/TBL