LOSING MARBLES
-= LOSING MARBLES =- Musicdisk presented Posadas Party 2024 Credits - Music: Cueder - Design & GFX: GOD - Bytes: Zener Use mouse to select the track. Use ESC key to quit, Space key to play a random song. Requirements -Amiga AGA -AHI -Decent CPU, tested in 030 -Free CHIP > 1.7MB -Some Fast RAM, tried with 8MB Tooltypes: -USEWINDOW: To open the musicdisk in a Workbench window. -FROMDISK: To force replay from disk instead of memory, use it if your HD transfer rate is high. With less than 12MB of free fast ram this flag will be already active -DISPLAYOFFSETX and DISPLAYOFFSEY: activage them if there are any issues with the screen positioning. I have seen this with Indivision V3. If you hear sound from only one Amiga channel it is probably due to AHI settings. Now, some words from Cueder: I remember ever being interested in music, since I was a child. I used to hum invented melodies non-stop, a habit that has followed me into adulthood. Regardless of my skills for it, with or without talent, I always liked creating sounds, imagining rhythms, melodies, and thinking about how they would sound outside of my mind. Undoubtedly life is very curious, you never know what it has in store for you, only when the events have passed you have enough perspective to know how they have developed and why. Over time, we get to better know ourselves, we have a global view of the decisions we have made, whether they were right or wrong, and most importantly, we accept their consequences. That's the thing about time; it's finite and makes us appreciate what we've lived through. The tracks compiled here represent just that, a journey that began several decades ago with the shared will to shape various projects. Projects that in the end would end up being forgotten for different reasons, no matter the time invested or the shared enthusiasm. These are not mere discards or the object of great frustrations, the music presented in this format is the sound representation of a shared journey that didn't reach its destination but that it was exciting and fun while it lasted. In the end, it doesn't matter why it was't completed, why it didn't come together with its images to be projected at an event. What matters is that by putting them in this compilation, this music disk, at long last it will be heard and make you all participants in that journey, fullfiling in that way the object of its creation, to be heard and seen. That's why it shares the space being complemented with the graphic design and the backgrounds that appear in it, associated to a large extent with the music for more than twenty years and forever linked in the demoscene. I think it's a good ending after all, maybe that was its true fate. Like every collaborative project, this one stands thanks to the will of two people who had the audacity to think about it, without whom I would not be writing these lines today and this music disk would not exist. So I owe them that and my eternal gratitude for having made it a reality. These people are God and Zener. God. With his creative madness fills personal challenges as self-imposed forms of punishment that only he understands, and to the evidence I'll refer: a hundred graphics per track. Does anyone get it? Well, that's how he is. Do you remember the great variety of cigarette packs and the Zippo lighters collection that appear in the demo Smoke-Bomb? That's God, these had to be cigarette packs he would find lying on the street while walking; as you can see, "the matterâ" or the genius, depending on how you look at it from afar. Zener. A guy that is charming, kind, courteous, who never complains and who has solutions for everything. Moreover, he has shown to be resourceful to the point of surprising us. With someone like that it's a pleasure to collaborate on any project. My gratitude to him is twofold since he had the patience to rummage through my old AMIGA diskettes and save some modules. I also have to give thanks to people who collaborated on this project unknowingly: Drareg. He helped me at a time when I didn't think I would make music again, reignited again my interest in the demoscene and provided me with a couple of computers on which I could start working on future ideas. Skid. Rescued musical material from twenty years ago, including unfinished modules. Psirius aka JPM. Our conversations are always motivating, I'm glad to have reconnected. Evelred. For giving me the opportunity to participate in the Game, and whose experience was so enriching. His kindness and friendliness have always been praiseworthy. Debvgger for his work as translator. Special greetings to: JosSs, Nuku Nuku, MAT!, Estrayk, and the entire Amiga Wave team, Fireboy, Ham, and the rest of friends from the #demoescena channel on Telegram. I hope I haven't forgotten anyone and that you enjoy the work. Thank you for everything, see you in the cyberspace. CUEDER GOD at the keyboard: We started the musikdisk 4 years ago, right when the COVID lockdown began. Although I wanted something simple, as always, I went on complicating it but anyway there was no rush for releasing it. We wanted the project to be as anonymous as possible. We went back and forth with the name and in the end we settled on "Losing marbles" because it's an expression that means you're getting old and losing your mind. Similarly, the tracks are unreleased gems that I truly believe could come to light without any pretense, just to get them out there since some are over 30 years old and we are also of a certain age. The programs I used are Photoshop 2021, Photomosh-Pro, and Leonardo; and then GRAFX for pixel retouchs. Photomosh is a prodigious web tool dedicated to glitches in real-time. The website is www.photomosh.com, I bought it at the time and they have updated me twice for free. I love pressing the little button and seeing things coming out. Leonardo fascinated me from day one as the AI program, easy, apparently free, and it hasn't stopped growing. I prefer it over others for its simplicity. Who knows where it will end up. 800 backgrounds: I took the plunge and proposed making 100 random backgrounds for each track. It seemed like indulging in big dick swinging and then while designing them, I clearly saw it was a bad idea Explanation: You can design a very beautiful background, but then making a clone of that image can be a mess. Then now imagine 20, imagine 50, imagine 100!!! A very tough experience. The backgrounds should have a similar tone, similar patterns, and all the images should look like sisters. Still the problem is that everything you do will impact the rest of the images. So any step taken you will pay for it with hours of work. You don't like the palette, you want to change from green to brown, you then have to do it in the remaining 99 images. You have to think about the base design so it is easy to recycle and also that doesn't repeat. At first, it was exhausting because it's hard to find source material, but then I saw that with Photomosh and especially with Leonardo, I could generate my own source material to later retouch it and especially add a lot of glitches. In truth AI helped in generating material to work with. I intended the backgrounds to have the same palette to be able to blend one with another. But it was impossible, in the end each background is 200 colors with its own palette. The rest are for the menu and the scroll. This way, the transition has to be a quick fade out to black and fade in back to the image. Each background had to be reduced to 200 colors and then retouch the palette so that the 1st color was transparent black. 800 backgrounds passed through GRAFX2 there were errors, for sure. Is it a simple background or does it have protagonism? For months and still to this day I've been pondering whether the images should be protagonists or just limit them to mere backgrounds. The answer is clear; in having a menu on top, the priority is that the menu is clearly visible and readable and the backgrounds are secondary; however, sometimes they gain protagonism. Comments by tracks: 01. POLYCHROME: This track was supposed to be for a demo, I had gigabytes of stuff started and generated, but I didn't want to use it and went back to the original nature photos I took with a digital camera from the Jurassic and passed them through an abstract filter in Leonardo, latter I applied glitch textures that I generated from Photomosh. I particularly like that saturated image tone and the contrast with the white glitch. DOG EAT DOG: This track was meant to be for the 2nd part of the demo. If in the 1st part I used vegetables, in the 2nd I wanted to use animals. At first I had good source material, but later I was missing many images to reach the total amount and decided to generate backgrounds with AI and then glitch them. The effect aimed to make the backgrounds hard to recognize. There are identifiable things but you have to make an effort to really see what they are. I prefer to leave everything suggested rather than very concrete. There are animals, there is fauna lots of bio! UNKNOWN ELEMENT: Right now I do not remember which program I generated it with, I'm always trying out AI programs, some very simple and free. In 2 years I've seen their progress and how they have been perfected in time and quality. I generated a very simple logo but couldn't get it clean, it came out badly and I saw that material was interesting. The color reduction mistreats the design, but even so, I like the result. CAFE ROYALE: All images are from a trip to New York and a few from Barcelona at night. Lots of sticker close-ups, neon signs, and posters in buildings. Later they passed through Leonardo's abstract/vector filter. I forced color palettes, blurs, etc. The idea was to lose the origin of the photo but keep something attractive and impactful. These backgrounds break one from another but the result is powerful. VENENO NIGHT CLUB: Here I clearly use very organic kaleidoscope-like textures. There's no connection at all with the musical track. Could have been used in any other track. This is just filling for the sake of filling. I don't like even the color! BRAHAM: The track clearly inspires something Hindu, I love Bollywood and wanted to dive into with the images. Clearly, the background is generated from AI, but then there's a lot of collage work. Besides finding a font with those arabesques and putting letter by letter leaving strategic spots like the eyes or faces. In fact, I'm convinced there was no need to cover so much of the background. THE SPIRIT OF KALARIPAYATTU: Here there were several attempts to use silhouettes of dancers from martial arts. But in the end, I ended up using textures of bones and skulls. I recycled them using halftone. This is what comes out when you don't know what to do anymore. You recycle what you have. Horrible color, I can't touch it anymore. COME WITH ME: I used some images of flower paintings, passed through a vector height filter that seemed like interesting landscapes to me. Then passed through Leonardo's vector filter and finally put some engine gaskets on top. Years ago I made a catalog of engine gaskets and always wanted to use them in Flyers or somewhere. You never know how you start and never know how can end up the project. I couldn't make another image, I wouldn't even know where to start. For the menu I wanted something very simple and minimal. There were several proposals and in the end, I chose the way of covering as little as possible. We had 5 or 6 very different versions. I wanted overscan to fill the screen. Zener provided me with the windowed version which is also cool. I made the scroll font, it could be more readable. I can see it, and it hurts to see it, but I'm too lazy to retouch it again. This concludes the text on the graphic part. Now that in 2024 there are no more coders left and it's increasingly difficult to make a demo (or any other prod) on Amiga, I think it's a good time to leave the demo scene and dedicate myself to something else creative, something that fulfills me, that does't harm anyone, and doesn't depend on others either. Four years ago I made a decalogue to keep in mind when making demos. As prior work to the BRUTAL-IS-M demo from Capsule. I leave it here because I find it interesting. To inspire or to ignore. GOD'S DECALOGUE WHEN MAKING DEMOS: > NO OBLIGATION OF ORDER: (title, greetings, credits... everything can be done or not done, precisely because it has always been done there's no need to repeat it. This is especially important to make it clear at the beginning. What is a demo? It's not a short film, it's not a movie, it's real-time digital art. We're not tied to anything, it can last as long as we want and include whatever content we want. It's what we want it to be. Precisely, if it has already been done, why repeat it. > FROM LESS TO MORE: Let's try to put the effects from less intensity to more. Like a striptease, the best for end. Similarly, I prefer to use all the effects for the demo. > LESS IS MORE: It's better a short demo that works than leaving boring parts. Above all, DO NOT BORE EVERYONE. Nor should we go hysterically. I'm not interested in making a Smoke Bomb 2 or a Plastic Toys 2. This demo is something new. Let's see what the music asks for. > A SENSE OF SHOWMANSHIP: The effects always at their maximum splendor and at highest brightness. No empty frames or waits. Always the best possible rotation of objects and finding interesting positions for the effects. No objects at the center of the screen with a black background. Everything is designed, with no design whims, and aesthetically pleasing. > MAINTAIN THE ABSTRACTION: What do all the effects have to do with together? What is the relationship between a rotozoom, a 3D world, and a table?... well, nothing! That's why there's no need to follow a concrete story or a meaningful text. Just find a line of work and fill it with effects. So you can add, remove, or change the order of things without affecting it. The demo is the sum of those effects. > SYNCHRONIZE WELL THE EFFECTS WITH THE MUSIC. It doesn't mean matching all the effects to the letter, but listening well to the track and "marrying" it, so everything seems natural and logical. Synchronizing well means giving value to the music and understanding that both things go hand in hand. > SACRIFICE GFX, CUT MUSCLE. Precisely very few graphicians would agree to show a gfx for just a few seconds. There's a lot of effort in generating good gfx. Surely we'll have to generate more than 100 gfx between stills, sprites, and textures. If the effect works, it will have been worth it to me. > QUALITY CONTROL: The demo starts at the Workbench icon, the load screen, the whole demo, the final credits, and ends at the high quality YouTube. Let's try to maintain the quality level in each and every one of these aspects. I really don't want to show my friends an out of sync YouTube with the effects accelerated. > FUN FOR ME: We have to work on something that's fun for us and is cool doing it, and that fun has to reach the person who watches the demo afterwards. If we are going to watch the demo 3000 times to synchronize a little thing at the end, it better is something we enjoy. Similarly, it's better to get into a friendly theme that generates joy. > LET'S NOT MAKE SAD THINGS!!! > NEW CONTRIBUTIONS = More work > RANDOM PARTS? It-s a possibility. Maybe object rotations or some part that doesn't matter much if it's A or B. > SECRET PART? A secret part allows people to talk about your demo long after it's over. It can be a little detail, it can be anything. > DOES IT CONNECT TO THE INTERNET? We could have a ping each time the demo is played. Make it search for new images or new elements. The demo changes each time it's played. It could actually be another category of demo. Minimum weight and let it find everything on the internet. :) Finally, I take the opportunity to greet several sceners: Manu Debvgger for the help with the translation and the movie sessions. Zener for his patience and for collaborating on the project. I hope to reciprocate with some game for REDPILL. Write REDPILL always in uppercase. Hugs and kisses to Fermin, Leunam, Nork, Winden, Xeleh, Stephan, Techniman, Neuroflip, Skynet, JuanDa for setting up Posadas and continuing to set it up, Peskanov and all the scenners I'm forgetting. Cheers, GOD Zener at the keyboard: Is this the musicdisk with the highest requirements ever? Probably yes, it certainly does not fit in a floppy disk. Event the readme is huge! But when you work with people as talented in their areas as Cueder and GOD you want to give them freedom to express their art. Thank you for for still being part of the Amiga demoscene. Also thanks to the incredible people in Posadas Party 2024, to all the organizers, participants and attendees. It is wonderful that 30 years later the party is still going on and improving every year. I am a bit too tired to mention all the people I am grateful to, so I will greet all the Amiga demoscene, the REDPILL game creator community, AmigaWave and all the Amiga fans! At first I thought doing this musicdisk would be easy, but I never imagined I would have to manage this big amount of gfx and music data, and use a super overscanned screen that probably can only be fully seen in a 1084 monitor, I do not think many people has UAE configured for overscan resolutions. This left me with little bandwidth for Amiga custom chip sorceries. When I discovered not all melodies were in MOD, I thought about using AHI to allow people with expanded Amigas to improve the sound playblack quality. At the same time this forced me to be somehow system friendy and actually the prod is running in multitasking mode using a Workbench screen. Each song has about 100 images that are playing randomly. Of course they do not fit in memory, same as the audio. Images and audio are both being streamed, for audio if there is enough memory the file is copied to ram: and the streamed from there, otherwise it uses disk as well. Probably I will need to make a postparty version at some point, so stay tuned. End of transmission. ZENER
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