Another STOS Demo Release - Octogenarian

[mrdalliard]

Hi all, hope you’re good.

Just to say that I’ve released another big-ish STOS demo. One year after released “Better Late Than Never”, I’ve put out “Octogenarian”. All screens are 100% STOS and I submitted it as an entry to SillyVenture 2024. It’s no ground-breaking production that’ll win prizes, but I did enjoy putting another big production together.

You can download at: https://dalliard.net/releases/octogenarian/

Cheers!

M.

[chicane]

I watched Octogenarian on the SV live stream last night. Fantastic work getting that level of performance out of STOS - well done!

[mrdalliard]

I watched Octogenarian on the SV live stream last night. Fantastic work getting that level of performance out of STOS - well done!

Awesome, thanks!

I was on the livestream too, biting my nails and reading the comments!

[mlynn1974]

This is a very fine demo. It looks magic with new music and custom made graphics. Very polished.
Is the loading screen medium res? The It's loading... message looks very fine pixels as if it's medium res.

[mrdalliard]

This is a very fine demo. It looks magic with new music and custom made graphics. Very polished.
Is the loading screen medium res? The It's loading... message looks very fine pixels as if it's medium res.

Thanks! (Although I can’t claim credit for the music, I got that from sndh.atari.org)

The whole thing is low-res. The loader is the only ASM, which I did partly by following the ASM tutorial that someone posted here on this site!

Thanks again.

M.

[chronicthehedgehog]

Cool demo. Really enjoyed watching it

[mrdalliard]

Cool demo. Really enjoyed watching it

Thanks!

[mikro]

Cool demo. Really enjoyed watching it

Let me guess, you weren't present on the party place, were you. ;-)

However cool the demo is, forcing the audience watching 25 minutes (!) of it with maybe 5-6 effects in total is just ... mean.

While I can appreciate its design and STOS code, this demo and "Relapse HD" (don't get me even started on this one) were definitely complete mood killers for the whole compo. Our demo went the last and at least a third of the people were already out of the hall or basically ignoring the compo altogether.

So please, for the next time, let someone else watch THE WHOLE DEMO for you and ask for an objective feedback.

[elliot]

The download button does not work for me.

[thomas3]

Cool demo. Really enjoyed watching it

Let me guess, you weren't present on the party place, were you.

However cool the demo is, forcing the audience watching 25 minutes (!) of it with maybe 5-6 effects in total is just ... mean.

While I can appreciate its design and STOS code, this demo and "Relapse HD" (don't get me even started on this one) were definitely complete mood killers for the whole compo. Our demo went the last and at least a third of the people were already out of the hall or basically ignoring the compo altogether.

So please, for the next time, let someone else watch THE WHOLE DEMO for you and ask for an objective feedback.

Dude, with respect, these are harsh comments given that this is the OP's first compo release.

In my opinion the organisers have control/responsibility for how long things are shown for, not the authors.

[mrdalliard]

The download button does not work for me.

Apologies. I originally tested the page on Safari, but can see that other browsers stop the download of a file with a .ST file extension.

(Address is: http://www.dalliard.net/downloads/oct.st)

I'll chuck a zip up later instead.

M.

[elliot]

The download button does not work for me.

I tried in Safari and it worked, i think Chrome was blocking it.

Good effort, I still have some to watch too.

[mrdalliard]

Cool demo. Really enjoyed watching it

Let me guess, you weren't present on the party place, were you.

However cool the demo is, forcing the audience watching 25 minutes (!) of it with maybe 5-6 effects in total is just ... mean.

While I can appreciate its design and STOS code, this demo and "Relapse HD" (don't get me even started on this one) were definitely complete mood killers for the whole compo. Our demo went the last and at least a third of the people were already out of the hall or basically ignoring the compo altogether.

So please, for the next time, let someone else watch THE WHOLE DEMO for you and ask for an objective feedback.

Dude, with respect, these are harsh comments given that this is the OP's first compo release.

In my opinion the organisers have control/responsibility for how long things are shown for, not the authors.

Hi,

I read the rules beforehand (as being a complete n00b at this I wanted to get it right). The rules stated that I had to upload a video along with the entry, no mention of how long the video was supposed to be.

My entry was submitted one week before the deadline and I'm not precious about it. I had no idea how the proceedings worked. If it was too long, they could've edited it down or asked me to resubmit.

M.

[thomas3]

Mark, don't feel bad. You're completely right in what you say. And in my experience, if you submit a truncated demo video to Sillyventure then they'll just re-record it fully (which is obviously their choice, because it's their party after all).

There were lots of long demos shown as well as yours. It was great to see your work, and great that you took the brave step to submit. I hope you do more in the future!

[fiveofive]

The demo was awesome to see during the compo and I wish I could code stuff like that. Congrats and huge thanks for releasing this at SV! It had a great oldschool vibe but not just like the usual "remaking oldschool approaches" but rather felt original and authentic to me. I really hope to see more contribs from you!

mikro:
I couldnt agree less. As far as I understand everything went according to the rules - and as such the presentation during the compos and making of compo rules is not a matter of the people who submit. Of course I understand your disappointment regarding your own demo to some degree (although in my perception it kicked so much also during the event and was well received, so congrats on that too), but neither your demo nor the compo framework are what this thread is about. I also wish you would show more respect for newcomers to the scene which may not so familiar with particular scene habits and put your frustration in a constructive debate on the compo rules instead - directed to the right people (SV compo crew I guess). They mentioned explicitly they are open for suggestions.

[mikro]

Just to clarify, I absolutely don't want to throw this solely on @mrdalliard, as you say, he hasn't broken any rules and yes, the organisers did screw up there massively (and yes, I did raise my concerns immediately after the competitions -- I was told that they did not anticipate to have so many over-length demos in the compo and there will be a limit in the future).

Also perhaps it didn't get through my complains about its length, I also liked the ideas there and for a STOS demo the effects and design were very fantastic, without any irony intended.

But dude, 25 minutes. Come on. Even you couldn't have watched the demo more than a couple of times and I wonder who will ever have. So my (perhaps too harshly worded) comment was only meant as a reminder that there are living human beings in the hall and if everyone took an attitude "I don't care, it wasn't in the rules", there wouldn't be any competitions left to watch or we would get a 10 page document of what you can and can't do in a demo.

[CiH]

Mikro,

I was there and felt I'd hallucinated some of the longer parts of the compo's. I'm still in Gdansk, in tourist mode until Wednesday evening. I'll need to rewatch some entries when things have settled down, to get a grip on reality.

On the plus side, your demo was definitely appreciated. Finished the party off nicely.

SV seems to be following the Revision 'save the best to last' rule.

(Edit) Also didn't intend to overlook or disrespect Mr Dalliard/Vlad's demo. You should continue to make more stuffs.

[fiveofive]

Mikro, good move talking to the organizers!

I read the rules beforehand (as being a complete n00b at this I wanted to get it right). The rules stated that I had to upload a video along with the entry, no mention of how long the video was supposed to be.

My entry was submitted one week before the deadline and I'm not precious about it. I had no idea how the proceedings worked. If it was too long, they could've edited it down or asked me to resubmit.

I think you did very right here and the proceedings are actually unclear (see Tom's comment on his video being re-recorded last year).

[viking272]

Just to say that I’ve released another big-ish STOS demo.

Great work, amazing effort. Wish I'd given STOS more than a few hours 3 decades ago

[mrdalliard]

Mikro, good move talking to the organizers!

I read the rules beforehand (as being a complete n00b at this I wanted to get it right). The rules stated that I had to upload a video along with the entry, no mention of how long the video was supposed to be.

My entry was submitted one week before the deadline and I'm not precious about it. I had no idea how the proceedings worked. If it was too long, they could've edited it down or asked me to resubmit.

I think you did very right here and the proceedings are actually unclear (see Tom's comment on his video being re-recorded last year).

I scrutinised the rules beforehand a lot. As an aside, I did check with the organiser before submitting as one of the screens had what could be construed as "political content" - and they said it was fine because it didn't mock particular politicians.

My entry (timings on the live-stream), was 14:54, not 25:00. Jeez, even I wouldn't subject myself to that.

[mikro]

My entry (timings on the live-stream), was 14:54, not 25:00. Jeez, even I wouldn't subject myself to that. :lol:

My apologies. I looked at https://demozoo.org/productions/362489 where the video is about 25 minutes long but you are right, the SV stream was 10 minutes shorter.

I guess I was just really exhausted from the entry shown before yours but I'll rather refrain myself from commenting on that one. ;)

So in short, please do continue coding on Atari, your demo is very nice and yes, the organisers should have known better.

SV seems to be following the Revision 'save the best to last' rule.

Oh no, this I can throw solely on us, the creators. We delivered the entry not 5 minutes before midnight, not 5 after midnight but like 3 hours after midnight. ;) So naturally it ended up at the end of the stream.

I talked to AdamK and as a long time Forever party observer and now even a co-organiser, I could relate to the problem very much: it's the unsolvable dilemma "encourage whoever will make an attempt to create something" vs. "your visitors are gonna hate you and perhaps wont come to your party next year". In other words, whether to accept *any* entry vs. preselect only the good ones (or severally restrict them). As you could have guessed, Grey belongs to the former camp (as the Forever organisers do, by the way).

[CiH]

Mikro,

Unintentionally or not. It worked.

Finished the ST demo compo on a high.

[thomas3]

Here's a story.

I released a little intro at Sillyventure SE earlier in the year. There were three parts to it: an intro bit, the main effect with a lonnnnggg scrolltext, and an end part.

I had Evil make me a pro video for the compo (thanks Evil!) which showed the scrolltext part for exactly two iterations of the main effect before skipping on. The video was probably 2-2.5 minutes or so.

Imagine my surprise at the party when the orgs had chosen to rerecord the whole thing with the entire scrolltext - bringing the runtime up to something like eight minutes. Tbh it was really embarrassing. People on the stream were complaining about how "boring" it was (they were right) and I'm sure it landed like a sack of poo in the party too.

So this isn't about "restrictions" - I've done a bunch of releases and had made an explicit choice myself about what should be shown, but the orgs made a different choice.

My conclusion? Like a lot of modern parties, the orgs feel a pressure to show "wall to wall content" - I guess a feeling that the audience needs "entertaining" at all times. So it becomes an issue of quantity rather than quality. I wasn't at the parties so perhaps people are into this in the room. But I see no issues in not showing whole scrolltexts and not "maxing out" recordings, and showing shorter parts of demos as long as the demo itself enables it (e.g. space to skip). I think this would improve the experience hugely. But hey, their party, their choices

On the Relapse release - I'm surprised it wasn't DQed tbh; no disrespect to the makers. Whoever was typing as "Sillyventure" on the stream claimed it was previously unreleased when Lotek was asking how it was in the compo, so not sure what happened there.

[DarkLord]

I just ran this on my Mega STe. It has a few issues there.

This is TOS v2.06, so...

The loader program in the AUTO folder just quits back to the desktop and locks
the mouse up.

I moved the loader program to the main folder but it gave the same result.

I can launch and play the individual programs by themselves and they seem to play
fine like that. The ones I tried still locked the mouse up when done/exiting though.

But they looked really good. Thank you for releasing this, appreciated.

[mrdalliard]

I just ran this on my Mega STe. It has a few issues there.

This is TOS v2.06, so...

The loader program in the AUTO folder just quits back to the desktop and locks
the mouse up.

I moved the loader program to the main folder but it gave the same result.

I can launch and play the individual programs by themselves and they seem to play
fine like that. The ones I tried still locked the mouse up when done/exiting though.

But they looked really good. Thank you for releasing this, appreciated.

Hi, thanks for letting me know. It might not be a surprise that the loader didn't work. I originally tested it on TOS 1.02, 1.04 and 1.62, which seemed OK.

The mouse was a deliberate thing, which you wouldn't have noticed if the loader worked. I basically switched it off good and proper to ensure it didn't foul up things like rasters. It's just an unfortunate and unintended consequence. Sorry about that. I'll have a quick look and see if it's anything obvious with that TOS version that I can fix.

M.