TinyDemo by Defence Force - A "Big Border" competition entry at Sommarhack 2017 demo party

Dbug's stuff

68000 atari border dbug defence-force fullscreen level 16 logo overlanders

description

This is my entry for the Big Border competition at the Sommarhack 2017 demo party (It did second place with 8 participants).

In 1990, the group Delta Force released their Syntax Terror demo.

Most of the content is of the highest quality, but of particular interest is a small masterpiece from Chaos Inc: The Big Border demo.

The Atari sceners had already mastered the art of reducing the size of borders on the screen, but actually expanding the borders was at the time totally unheard of.

As a tribute to the courage of our demoscene ancestor, Sommarhack organizers decided to give a shot at keeping the tradition, and asked participants to try to create the best possible demo using the original constraints:

Demo should fit inside 96*54 pixels centered on the ST-LOW screen
No rasterbars outside the 96*54 window
Should work on a 520 ST(f/m/fm) machine without expansions (can use auto folder or bootsector loader to save memory if needed)

This is my own take on the challenge.

Instead of simply respecting the original constraints, I expanded upon them, first by reimplementing the original record holder using only 48x27 pixels (a quarter of the size of the original 96x54 one!) and then by using the additional real estate to reimplement two of the most iconic fullscreen screens ever made: The Union Demo Fullscreen screen by Level 16, and the European Demos Big Screen screen from DIM of the Overlanders.

This has left me exhausted, but as soon as I got my stamina back, I'll try to see if I can squeeze even more clock cycles out of the Atari ST, and try to get even closer to the holly grail of the 2x1 pixels demo effect.

Hope you like it :)