			                  
			               
			              
			              
			              
			          
			      
			  

			    That's the spirit!

Huzzah, we're back with another QuickBasic DOS demo!  I figure, we can get attention
and place high in a compo this way, so why try harder. :)  Maybe I'm nostalgic, but
really I'm too lazy to learn to code anything newer.  If you're still wondering how
the hell this is doable in Basic, it's not hard.  First off, it's BasicPDS (aka
QuickBasic Extended), a little more advanced than the QBasic that came standard with
DOS with gorillas.bas and such.  Second, the linker allows use of object files from
any language, so in theory almost any library is possible to use.  I'm still using
BWSB (http://www.phatcode.net/downloads.php?id=170) for music, and some old libs
for moving memory blocks (screen buffer) and millisecond timing.

Since most people have widescreen monitors these days, I had the rather fun idea of
making the demo for widescreen with selectable aspect ratio.  So if you hook up a
DOS PC to a 16x9 display, you get full 320x200 widescreen glory. :)  On the select
screen, choose the number where the circle around it looks like a circle.  If you 
run it in a DOSBox window, select 2 (16x10) if aspect=false, or 1 (4x3) if aspect=
true.  As I didn't feel like stretching raster images smoothly, all the "artwork" 
in the demo is made up of solid circles and triangles.. except for one font, that is.
I'd intended to add more circle/triangle artwork, but eh.. enough for now.

In your hands is the final version, which should fix the following:
- Will actually work on a real DOS PC.  DOSBox apparently ignores integer overflow
  and divide by zero errors.
- Tweaked the music a bit.  I didn't change the song structure but you should hear
  the differences.
- Cleaned up the palette crap between fades.
- Sound setup will happen before it goes into VGA.
- Various little fixes you probably won't notice immediately.
- No hidden part.  Sorry, but I spent enough time on the Smackdown and ARF
  hidden parts. :)  (run "smack c64" and type "stargazer" at end screen, respectively)

This wasn't originally meant to be a two-part demo.  It just happened because I had to 
split it up or else the compiler would give a program memory overflow!  I have found
the limits of 1990 technology. :P  Thankfully a run statement plus an ini file linked
the two EXEs seamlessly.

The music is from 1995!  The S3M modules are "Chromatose" and "Dynamo", respectively, 
if you want to find the originals, but I've updated them a little bit for the demo.
I suppose I could upload the updates to scene.org or modland, someday.

Finally, I'll confess that this is probably the most "serious" DC5 release in our 15
year history.  Hey, we can't always be funny or arrogant, but DOS and DC5 seem to go
together well.  The "big balls" text is a tribute to Desert Dream, by the way.

Feel free to comment on this demo at Pouet.net, or PM me at demoscene.us, or shoot 
me an email at xprojected@yahoo.com.  After this and MindCandy 3 (www.mindcandydvd.com, 
plug plug), don't expect as much from me personally.  We'll try to keep DC5 alive 
somehow.. after all, arrogance is bliss.

- Phoenix, June 30th 2011