Released 11/05/2024 at X2024 and came 1st in the C64 Demo competition. Credits: Code & Directing : Trident Graphics & Art Direction: The Sarge Music & Sound Design: Fegolhuzz Graphics: Soya End Tune: Danko Video Capture: Pitcher
@@FairLight1337 - It's a fusion of art and magic.... really, it's that amazing. Question, the new full screen graphics in all borders, is it only in monochrome or can be made color too? It's incredible as is. ;)
I love how modern C64 demos utilise story-telling techniques mixing in highly technical and advanced techniques and skills in order to deliver stunning visuals and sound with a great storyline.
Add the music to support the story. Have another look at the demo and look and how the music also drives the story. I am biassed but I love the full package...
if you would show this to demo to young girl me, struggling to understand C64 ASM, and say “try for the rest of your life”, i could not create something like this. Truly inspiring work from everyone on display here!
There are quite ome demos where one gets at least an idea how it's done when you watch them a second time. Raster here, FLI there, sprite multiplexers everywhere... And then, there's THIS. The sheer craft of it is awesome, but even combining it with a story... and the icing on the cake is the ending that wraps it all up, you guys delivered. I bow in humility.
Remember when 1001 crew showed the world border sprites.. and that was just the start, this demo is insane, technical it's incredible, and it backs it up with so much confidence in it's style and graphics, pretty much the number 1 C64 demo i have ever seen... I need to boot up my MISTer and watch this on a CRT screen..
It wasn't just any demo that saved the world. It was a demo that went far beyond what anyone could have imagined just a few decades ago. But it was a demo we dreamed about. It was something we visioned the world would look like in the future. We didn't even know what human love and passion was capable of. But then... then came the rastersplits. In that defining moment we realized who we really are as humans.
The zoom effect at 6:14+. I am dumbfounded.( well this whole thing is basically unbelievably great lol ) edit: OMG the perfect rendering of the false colours around 11:42.
Kids of today, with quadruple GeForce RTX boards in their gaming rigs, must be wondering what the F*** this is about..? :D You must have "lived in a shoebox in the middle of the road" to appreciate it! And appreciate I do..!
I have my iPhone Picture in Picture set and will open up demo and cracktro videos on RU-vid and set to full screen mode then press the home button so it's playing PiP and then lock my phone so the music still plays and listen to that whilst gardening, taking my dog for a walk or using public transport. My wife and adult boys (20 and 24) think I'm a bit strange but as you say there's a certain level of understanding needed to appreciate it - you either get it or you don't.
At one company I worked at I had four monitors and on one of them I would literally have these things playing in full screen without sound and people would be like "cool screen saver" or "retro screen saver". Only one guy who was a lot nerdier than me came up and said "C64 - nice".
Woo that made me lol. My lesbian not gf but kinda gf thinks its strange too. 😂 I learned to code the C64 under the stairs in my friends house in Ireland. Then met few other guys we did stuff as MDMA. Mostly on BBS, downloading, hacking cracking a bit. Up till 6am working on code, music, gfx. Those lack of borders. Nobody gets the tears in my eyes watching it appreciating beautiy of the timing in between raster interrupts 😂 anyway this just made my day 👾👾👾
Just like rice grain painters are able to create beautiful paintings on a tiny canvas, the c64 demoscene wizards never cease to amaze me! It's creativity in spite of restrictions. THIS is ART!
The strong theme, storyline and jaw dropping FX make this a highlight for the year for me. Godspeed to Trident and the Fairlight team for an absolute banger! 💥
Amazing work! The music is also such a banger! Truely inspirational piece, makes me go back to my own retro/nostalgic demo project which I have put aside for some time. 😀 Thanks for the inspiration!
Insane piece of work.... you brought back the "how is that even possible" feeling to c64 Demos.... i didnt thought that would ever happen again. Now i have to put way more effort in my next coding sessions.... thanks guys!
Raster Splits are the best, I used to stop games from loading on tape sometimes and just watch the raster splits, often whilst the loader music still played.
Might be passing this summer, but can't promise. Would you be interested in any scene memorabilia? (Mail me on Bacchus@fairlight.to for a separate discussion)
If someone was born around 2000 it's not a big surprise. Just like most people don't know about punch cards nowadays. When I tell people that first machine I used to play a game was taking a huge room and required over 60kW of power just to shoot some Klingons, they usually freeze for a few seconds. Now you can use a microcontroller that costs just a little more than average ice cream to emulate that mainframe and it will run for about 5 years on a single CR2032 battery.
True, true. A depressing fact that a lot of old knowledge is lost with every new generation. But that is true also for us in the 50s today. There are som many things our parents and grandparents knew that we don't. So many things they could do that we can't. That's just life.
One must keep pushing if one seeks to avoid being hasbeens. Id say we do a pretty good job at that, but we are glad there is challenge in trying our best to maintain the edge.
The art of creating demos is mainly given by the union of an absolute knowledge of the hardware and the application of magical algorithms. And, yes, there is also a lot of artistic flair, of course. Great demo!
I grew up with your helpful additions to various pieces of software; I can't believe you lot still make demos. And I'm flabbergasted you get this much out of a cbm64, I'm in fucking awe. .... brb ... finding a SID player to install.
Just unbelievably great! Kudos to everyone involved, this is a classic straight out of the gate. Incredibly smart use of the C64 color palette everywhere too, in addition to the fantastic music and great story pacing!
I am just floored. Is this really the same machine that brought us The Gret Giana Sisters? Amazing just dont cut it. AI stopped by raster splits and nothing about it on CNN. Far out and massive massive respect!!!
That is a Masterpiece. Everything in this project screams love. Im so into it. And the plot.. kept me on edge man. Im truly amazed. Not much these days has as much charme as this Demo. Thanks ❤
I've seen the how computers have evoled since the 80's. After seeing it all it's really hard to be genuinely impressed anymore about the latest advancements. Yet hardware from 8-bit era with computing power of less than 0.00001% of a modern portable device using only 3 tone polyphony can still genuinely impress me when used like this. The technology itself is not the answer and has never been. It's almost poetic how it's actually the human element of effot, care and love that makes this magic happen.
Trident is a group, no? 😉 Dude is amazing. He keeps pumping out lots of stuff the last month. Impressive! Congrats to the whole team who worked on this amazing stuff. I am looking forward to Trident’s next demos. I am so glad, that the raster splits did the job. To this day I love them.
Watching this demo in live was a great and unforgettable moment ! Thanks Fairlight for this great demo ! Mind blowing and epic atmosphere, design, and coding ! All the best !
Work of art, good theme and great effects. Well done everyone. Fego/Danko - loved the music. The Sarge: amazing art as always. Sayo, not sure which parts came from you - but all art looked amazing, so hat's off! Trident: Every time you coded something I wondered if that's the peak of your tricks and then the next one is better. This is no exception. Never stop making C64 demos guys! And please save us from AI 🙂
This is one of the best C64 demos I've ever seen. The art direction & storytelling elevates it above most other codepr0n stuff. Already watched it 3 times and I need to watch again XD 10/10
Agree! I'm just so confused that this is The Sarge. He was able to just adopt a totally new style for this project. Takes someone with next level competence.
I really miss the days of getting access to a box of disks and firing up games with sick intros like these. I was able to learn enough ML that I was able to crack the game Project Firestarter. Never released it to the masses since I had no connections to any groups back then, but I did spread copies to the homies.
I wish someone with tons of knowledge about C64 limitations and stuff could sit me down and yap for hours about specifically why this is so impressive. I really like C64 demos and retro video game music and sprites and stuff but I didnt grow up with an Nes or C64 or whatever so I dont fully understand just how limiting the hardware is. Like the raster splits, Id love to hear the full story behind those. Or why Demo people love text scrollers so much. Or why the zooming and panning is such a big deal. I love the aesthetics of these demos though, I just dont know where to find information on all this stuff. Either way, very very cool demo! Im happy that Im starting to see more fully realized stories within these demos! Mojo from last year was another good example of storytelling through a demo, and I think this one did an even better job than them!
Fair question indeed! The c64 has 8 hardware sprites and 16 colours. You see a lot more than this of both. It has a border where no graphics could go. Here you have graphics there all the time. Sprites are 24 pixels wide so a mat of all 8 doesn't cover the width - you need them expanded, but sacrificing resolution. Here you often see full resolution. Some consoles have functions for hardware scaling and zooming (SNES was one that I know of). On the c64 you have none of that. You need to do it with a 1 MHz CPU that also doesn't support multiplications nor divisions. Anyone who would like to add aspects to this?
People with competence, undestanding and a sufficient time at their hand can squeeze this out oif the old machine. In most of todays world, we lack all or at least one of these aspects and then just throw more computing power on inefficient code so that it becomes usable...
