Infinite launch 4-motion final and website

Infinite finally polished their 4-motion engine, used for the trackmos Sphere and Wings. Wings already ran fine on 3.58mhz when it was released, but now Sphere also runs on 3.58mhz for the very first time! The most important fixes are:

Obvious bugs were removed
Added a 'loading' and 'change disk' notification
4-motion now runs in both DOS1 and DOS2
4-motion automatically scans all connected drives for the next disk before asking you to insert it
In DOS2 it uses all the available memory you have, for DOS1 only the primary mapper is supported
You can exit the 4m show by pressing [space]

So, for example: NMS8255 users can put the two disks in drive A: and B: or in reversed order. Even more complex: people who have a CompactFlash interface, CD, harddisk, diskdrive can put the files everywhere on all media, as long as the current active path on a drive leads to the required file. This means that the .com file and the *1.dat (those two should always be in the same dir!) could be on E: from your CF and the *2.dat can be on a disk in diskdrive G:. Only when the program doesn't find the next file, it prompts you to insert it.

Now that the engine is done, new 4m shows are purely a matter of visual and musical creativity! A number of new 4m shows are on the drawingboard already, some of them could use megabytes of memory to grant the watcher longer and more varied trackmos in the future!

Also new is Infinite's stylish and colorful website, which will host all of Infinite's releases and a few related products, such as Polka and individual songs.

Relevant link: Infinite's website

Comments (17)

By Edwin

Paragon (1182)

03-06-2005, 22:11

The largest paragraph to tell that you may insert the second disk in any drive. That's excessive Wolf!

By wolf_

Ambassador_ (10109)

03-06-2005, 22:26

Nonetheless, on my CF the whole thing runs 35 seconds after the dos command, including the full intro.

CF ^_^
CF ^_^
CF ^_^

03-06-2005, 22:31

Naturally: those ppl who have an old version of sphere and wings may as well flush them through that hole in the smallest room.. these new versions are the ones you want!

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6480)

03-06-2005, 22:46

Finally ... the Infinite site .... the most creative MSX demo group of the 21th century

A very original design .... another surprise as usually with Infinite !

Keep on with this excellent work !!!

Btw : 2 subdomains on msx.nu !!!!! Excellent initiative, Patriek

By NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (6067)

04-06-2005, 00:15

Just so beautifull...

By Oscar

Guardian (585)

04-06-2005, 01:30

Excellent work! Infinite rules!

By ro

Scribe (4962)

04-06-2005, 09:50

kewl guys!
(altho I'm a bit dissapointed when scrolling through the links list, if ya know what I mean)

keep it up

04-06-2005, 10:12

yes Ro yes .. shout it out.. which one to include?

By Sander

Founder (1871)

04-06-2005, 12:10

for the newbee user: "what is 4-motion" and "what is trackmo" is missing in this post.

04-06-2005, 12:38

perhaps a link to the original 2 challenge-topics would be handy, the terms are explained there in detail..

By Maggoo

Paragon (1217)

04-06-2005, 16:20

Very cool site !

By cax

Prophet (3740)

05-06-2005, 18:47

sander: and this missing "trackmo" definition is also a challenge for the news translator. I assume it means "demo track", isn't it ?

05-06-2005, 19:03

hm.. I wouldn't translate it .. just use that term in any language, like we import tons o' english words in Dutch.

The word is composed of a (music-)track and a demo .., a demo in Dutch or English is more or less the same, dunno about other languages about that..

A track .. it's not really like a 'song' orso, or 'tune' .. it prolly refers to a song/number on a CD.

By leaving it a 'trackmo' you avoid the most issues I think ^_^

By Manuel

Ascended (19461)

06-06-2005, 23:34

I guess it's a computer programmed video clip

07-06-2005, 00:04

Trackmo is a demo, that includes multitasking trackloader. AFAIK there has not been trackmos on MSX yet. NOP's RealMotion animations are anyway quite a close, but they are recorded pieces from movies and not really demos.

Quote from Wikipedia:
Since the early 1990s, however, the predominant demo format has been the trackmo, in which visual effects follow a set timeline, synchronised to a continuous soundtrack, much like a music video. To be called a trackmo, the demo should run from a diskette and use a custom-made trackloader for reading data from it. The loading should be unnoticeable by loading while running the demo. The first trackmos ever made are "Enigma" (1991) by Phenomena and "Mental Hangover" (1992) by Scoopex. Both are on the Amiga computer.

By poke-1,170

Paragon (1783)

11-06-2005, 14:31

Aaaaaaah yeah phenomena now THEY knew their shit !
Amiga had a lot of trackmos,some might remember the spaceballs 1 & 2 demo,with
rotoscoping people dancing in it...

30-06-2005, 11:27

Finally I found a good article in Russian about demoscene, so from now I will just link to there when translating news with all these terms like introdemo, trackmo, megademo, textro, dentro, GFXpack, diskmag, etc.

This russian article was published in Computerra magazine:

http://www.computerra.ru/print/compunity/openair/25666/

Infinite launch 4-motion final and website

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