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- XInsight - "KILLER"- THE DEMO -X__"Killer" was ranked second at The Party Seven. Seen from the technical point
- of view it was not inferior to "My Kingdom" by Scoopex and Haujobb. The fact
- that we deal only with the second winner must be associated with the
- voters' preference for 3D-landscapes instead of nicely animated, but rather
- two-dimensioned backgrounds. 3D objects weren't missing nevertheless.Like "My Kingdom" and "Elektroboy", "Killer" is a multiload demo consisting of
- different files in different directories. You get the whole thing started
- by executing the batch-file "Killer.exe" via Shell or Workbench.
- The demo itself requires at least 8 Megabytes of your Fast RAM, having an
- 030 in your machine isn't a bad thing either.__The demo begins with a credits part: Some kind of big "wheel" keeps
- turning, while in the inside the credits fade in and out; nice
- alpha-blended b/w pictures are also to be found in the center of the wheel,
- reminding me of the fifties. This and the following two scenes were
- technically performed via realtime calculated displacement map with
- environmentmap and flatshade (according to Case).__The credits go as follows: Code by Case, Sly and Hmd, graphics by Destop
- and Louie, music by Yolk and Legend.__What follows afterwards looks like a texture tunnel with a morphing
- env-object in the lower left corner of the screen. In front of all this the
- Killer-logo appears on screen, beautifully drawn and somehow similar to the
- logo of the Elektroboy-demo. Then some other envmapped blobs rotate in the
- middle while nice-drawn hands move in from the right and left screen
- corners, until they stop in front/behind the blobs.
- Now we see the first girl in a row of many others throughout the demo. Her
- head has been replaced by an old-fashioned typewriter while some gouraud
- flashing takes place in the background.__What we see next is a weird composition of images (including women again)
- with a vividly moving and blurring background, with vector bubbles flying
- around for example. Then a texturemapped object with light-rays going out
- from it blinds the observer's eye, directly followed by an effect similar
- to the second-last one, with a rotating cube on the screen this time.__Again some hands cover the screen, while a transparent polygon object
- appears and flares fly around. Then another morphing blob continuously
- changes shape on the left side of the screen, whereas on the right we find
- a girl again. The whole scene is backdropped with a tunnel effect similar
- to the one at the early beginning of the demo. Some flares are added as well.
- The following scene contains an environmentmapped spikeball on the left, in
- the background a tasty nude body, and a transparent object on the right,
- overshadowing another image of two humanoid bodies.__Afterwards the portrait of a Negro kept in blue colors fills the screen,
- A blue twirl takes place in the foreground, and again the flares are not
- missing. Then a disturbing noise and a colormix as if we had a dead TV
- channel in front of us wipes away the picture.
- Later a huge morphing object and the body of a woman are posed in a way
- which make you think there's some substance bursting out of her stomach.__Another twirl with flares follows, then a keyboard moves from above into
- the screen, while some blurring takes place in the background ("4th degree
- fractal delay with noice calculation" - I asked Case about it).
- In the end another picture is displayed, showing a clown-a-like picture,
- with flares coming out of the middle again.__Throughout the whole demo a pleasant ambient/jungle vibe accompanies all
- effects. The quality of the graphics is very good, the color palette contains
- a lot of metallic and also pastel colors, which creates in connection with
- the music a cool, moody atmosphere.__Although code, music and graphics are very good, there are no real
- innovations concerning the technical side of the demo. The only thing which
- can be called innovative is the style. Indeed this aspect struck me most
- when watching the demo. I've already seen other releases pointing at the
- same stylistic direction as "Killer" does, so maybe we have to do it with a
- new trend here, which is about to dominate the scene for a while.Xby Bytebreaker (c) Insomnia'98