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20-year-STE-Megademo


Introduction

August 1989, Atari presented the 1040 STE to the public for the first time on the Atari Fair Duesseldorf/Germany.
For this reason we (Paradox) and hopefully you want to celebrate the 20th birthday of the STE with a special Megademo which shows the world what our underrated STE could still achieve!
We hope it will be a success like the „20 years“ demo for the Atari ST 2005 and count on your support. 8-)

By the way: Thanks to Havoc/Marcer for the impulse to this project... ;-)


Project

We want to pick up the good old ST-Megademo-style for this. This means there will be a main menu where you can choose between the several demo screens.
Our aim is to make it working on any Atari STE with at least 1MB RAM from floppy or hard disk (>1MB RAM)

Paradox will do an intro and the main menu for this Megademo which hopefully uses a lot of STE special features. :D

It is planned to release this Megademo within four weeks after the deadline.


Rules for the screens

• The demo screen has to work on any Atari (Mega)STE with 1MB RAM.
  
• If your screen will do better/faster/more effects/sound/graphic with more than 1MB this will be okay for us, but make sure that it also definitely works with just 1MB!
  
• Maximum packed filesize is 160kB (we recommend upx - deliver just one single executable file!
  
• The maximum entries is two per group.
  
• No fake screens will be accepted!
  
• Using of at least one STE-feature (like DMA-Sound, extended palette, Hardware-Scrolling or Blitter) is required. Of course, the more the merrier. ;-)
  
• The demo screen must be able to exit cleanly to the operation
  
• Don´t overwrite low memory between $1C0 and $1FF, because we will need this area for the main menu and to provide you with information about the system!
  

Do you have something that bends the rules a bit? Give us a shout and we will discuss it.


Coding package

If you need any example sources or a testing environment for your demo screen you could use the coding package from DHS which was used for the ST-Megademo 2005.

It is planned to provide you with information about the running system:

• $1C0 WORD: ST-RAM (in kB)
  
• $1C2 WORD: TOS version (e.g. $206 for TOS 2.06)
  
• $1C4 BYTE: Computer (1=ST, 2=STBook, 4=TT, 8=STE, 16=MegaSTE, 32=Falcon)
  
• $1C5 BYTE: CPU (680xx, e.g. the value is 10 for a 68010)
  
• $1C6 BYTE: FPU (0=no FPU, 1=FPU available)
  
• $1C7 BYTE: DMA sound (0=no DMA, 1=DMA available)
  
• $1C8 BYTE: Blitter (0=no Blitter, 1=Blitter available)
  
• $1C9 BYTE: Monitor (1=SW, 2=RGB, 4=VGA)
  

If you need some hints about STE coding/hardware we recommend you to read the STE FAQs by Paranoid.


Deadline

Sunday 29th November 2009 - 22:00 Central European Time

This should be enough time for everybody to contribute.

Send your contribution(s) to: ralf.zenker[no spam]me.com


Voting

Wheter there will be a voting for the screens or not is not finally decided. It depends on several things and will be settled during the next months. If anyone would like to assume this part feel free to contact me!


Conclusion

If there is still something misty for you or you have any useful hints/information or just want to help us with this project – please use this forum!

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