,------. ' ,--. || .--. ' ,---. ,---. ,-'' '-. ,---. || '--' | |/.-. : ||.-. | '-. .-' ||'.- | || | --' \\ --. ||'-' ' || | ''-' ' `--' `----' || |-' `--' `---' `--' ,---. ,--. ,--. // O \ || |-. ,--. ,--. ,---. ,--,--,--. ,--,--. || | || .-. | ||.-. ' \\ ' / (( .-' || | ' ,-. | || | || | | | ||`-' | \\ ' .-' `) || || || | \\'-' | || | `--' `--' `---' .-' / `----' `--`--`--' `--`--' `--' `---' .___.. .__ . .___ . | |_ _ [__) _ _. _|. , _ _ [__ *| _ | [ )(/, | \(/,(_](_] \/\/ (/,(/, | ||(/, * * ---=======xxXXXXXXX OOO##OOO XXXXXXXxx=======--- Otherwise known as 'The bit of this demo that's the most entertaining part of the whole thing... . . .. | | _ || |/\|(/,|| . . . Here we are again, was it really 2016 long ago, that we last made one of these excruciating ASCII creations? I guess it was. I think we were sort of knocking things on the head at that time too, as we had reached the perceived limits of what was possible with the limited tools to hand. Apart from the odd mischievious knock-off production from 2017, which was a missed release from 2016, we've been as inactive as a brain cell in a politician. __. (__ _ .__)(_) . . . What has changed now? It was a long hot summertime, a few crucial days of which were spent at the 2023 Sillyventure Summer Edition. A great time was had by all, much refreshing juice, both of alcohol and non-alcohol natures was drunk, much perspiration was sweated out of our bodies. No writings of a diskmag or realtime text nature were attempted. Apart from playying with assorted games and demos with my emulated Atari's of various types, a rogue thought kept on nudging in. The notion was of prodding around inside the defunct carcasses of source and graphics from previous ASCII projects to see what could be pulled out for a cheap and easy Winter Edition entry. Sure enough there were several graphical 'things' that had not made it to the final cut of previous releases. There was even the odd 'thing' which was due a deserved reappearance. A little playing around soon had a handful of test screens running. It was as if we'd never been away? A further incentive came from the competition viewings. Apart from the very welcome innovation of split compo blocks and running these to a strict timescale, there was something of an issue with many entries being submitted by that universal but lesser talented coder 'Phil Space'. If they can get away with it, why not us?! .__ . . [__) _. _.;_/ |_ _ ._ _ _ [__)(_](_.| \ [ )(_)[ | )(/, It was too easy to let matters slide, as is often the case. The post party enthusiasm vanishes in a hot blast of 'real life' matters. This time was different. Seizing the trusty laptop, with emulated Hatari, we carried on making stuff over the following days and weeks. Old stuff was repurposed, borrowed stuff, well, borrowed. Ignored screens had their day in the sunlight. We even started to have ideas for new things to try, so gradually, 'Pepto Abysmal' took shape. There were parts that were started and put to one side even. This demo was going to have a lot more Boris Johnson in it then it did. That may reappear in a separate specially themed future production. Well here it is, different in some respects, but still clutching tightly to its ASCII heritage. It is sitting even more in the uneasy middle ground between legitimate and fake productions than before. Not as obviously aimed for 'chepe larfs' as some earlier ASCII prods by another group. It may end up in the legitimate category and hopefully massacred by a flood of vastly better made productions. .___. . .. . | _ _.|_ ._ * _. _.|| . __._ _ _.;_/*._ _ | (/,(_.[ )[ )|(_.(_]||\_| _) [_)(/,(_]| \|[ )(_] ._| | ._| It's aimed at a 16 MHz platform with STE palette and STE sound as an ideal fit. The Falcon 030 running as plainly as possible fits quite nicely. It was developed entirely on Hatari, with some real hardware testing and runs nicely. It's all ascii, no bitmaps. Start in ST-Medium resolution for a clean exit to the desktop. Sonically speaking, we have pushed a leaky boat out a bit more than usual with sample files instead of rancid beeps from the YM-side. The tunes are old modfiles, stolen from CiH's cupboard of forgotten memories, back when CiH had pretensions of becoming a scene musician, back in 1991 or thereabouts. These have their own separate text file to explain in the 'extras' folder. We may have found a display bug in our displayer to leverage off. Also some screens may not enjoy the 'Prancing Dancing Tree' in its glory. The older and more rebust the screen, the happier it will be with rapid low to medium resolution and back again switching. Hatari is okay though. Running at 16 MHz stock is ideal, running on faster hardware will be briefly amusing. Running at 8 MHz, not at all amusing. . . . , . | | __ _ _| -+- _ _ | __ |__|_) (/,(_] | (_)(_)|_) * Mac TextEdit for pretty much all the preliminary creation, on the fly script and picture editing and this readme text of course. Everest (Atari) for finessing and checking the ASCII stuff. Audacity sound editor (Mac) for recording and converting soundtracks, and also a shout-out to VLC Player for playing the original modiles for Audacity to be able to record them as a sample stream. Hatari, for creating and running inside a simulated atari Falcon. This was done with both Falcon TOS and EmuTOS. It's actually quite hard to reproduce a real hardware authentic run time with Hatari, at least for this MacOS version. The run time is very tight, just about perfect in Hatari and a little slower on real hardware. Falcon 030, the Desktopper years edition, for testing and things. We did manage to find and grab a couple of new things from online, which were painfully hand-converted from the original GIF to authentic textual text. The font creating website, patorjk.com is still there and is still extremely helpful. .___.. . .__ , , ._._ | |_ *._. _| [__) _.._.-+- . __-+-. .|,|, | [ )|[ (_] | (_][ | \_| _) | (_|| | ._| Apart from one or two screens, where the artist has signed their name, we've really not got a clue where much of the extra material has come from this time, sorry about that. .__. . . , , _ [__]._ _| . ,|_ _.-+- ._ _ \./-+-' ) | |[ )(_] \/\/ [ )(_] | [ )(/,/'\ | ; There are the raw materials for something with Boris Johnson in it. This will be more of a slide-show/animation concept rather than a pure ASCII orgy, so somewhat unlike this production. After that, who knows? But then again, we weren't really expecting to make this comeback! \__/ |==| |__| |''| |--| P i s s a l o t _.+ +._ |..| /\,) /\ + +._ : `-._.' ; /\. G a g a r i n e | "*--| _.' ; . | \ | . | ::.., .::.. .::;; . | `. ; '| . .: ;;;;; ;;; ::;; ;: : | ' /| ., : .::.: ; :: :: : :''::'';; :' ':::; |\ ' | \ | .:;;;' '::: ':' | `. | ' "Goodnight from me, and him!" C ! H - 19.11.2023.