October 13, 1994 ESCAPE DEMO INFO Welcome to ESCAPE--the DEMO and MUSIC CD. I thought up the idea of a DEMO CD over a year ago when I was thinking about writing a book on demos. Well, the book never got written but the CD, or a version thereof, is now in your hands. This CD actually started as a "MC][" music/data CD by Snowman and progressed into a DEMO/MUSIC CD. I felt a "mixed mode" CD with demos would have a greater selling value than just "music." That and the fact that I wanted to see a DEMO CD convinced me to join forces with Snowman. So, that is the brief history of this disk...and some six/seven months later the talk is reality. SMALL CHANGES As this CD goes to press I discovered ISO formatting takes up a huge amount of space. Thus, to allow all the music (hopefully) I had to delete some DEMOS and MUSIC items. Even with the cuts we will be pushing this CD to its MAX and may still lose part of a song--sorry if this happens, just chalk it up to inexperience. The files deleted include: MUSIC: All of MC1, and music disk CHROMATI.ZIP and XTCPLAY.ZIP DEMOS: amourfou, batoba, bparty3, b_ware, cpu_uf, dancube, dartdemo, fraggel, gustrit, idh_anim, london, loaders, re, and vectrat. WHY ESCAPE To me it is obvious. At first the CD's name was "ENOLA" or alone spelled backwards. Solitude spelled backwards was also considered. I then discussed the idea with a few artist--one of them being Puppet Head who was going to contribute some art but never did--and the name "ESCAPE" came up between PH and I. It sounded great so I decided to call this CD "ESCAPE." Everyone has their own way of dealing with reality--drinking, drugs, TV,computers, etc. Computers are my escape, my abode. Most can not fathom that so I do not bother telling most. Especially those whose "escape" may be drinking and socializing. This is my world. A different surrounding with those whom I can relate to. Those, who like me, share similar ideals and can relate to what I do and why I do what I do. As "ROLLINS" says: "See me--Put yourself in my place. Be me--Put my eyes in your face. Maybe then you'll see why this place terrifies me and why I've got to get myself away. So hard to deal with the ones who can't feel. They continually blow my mind." SNOWMAN TALKS ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ GENERAL BABBLE BY SNOWMAN/INDEPENDENT ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ I have been asked to write a few words for this CD. As I have nothing particular to say, I will ramble for a bit... This CD represents the culmination of two and a half years of my life. When I first entered the "demo scene" in early 1992, I decided to concentrate on music. The following two years I spent learning how to write tunes in various trackers. In chronological order, I used Whacker Tracker (.MOD), Composer 669(.669), Farandole (.FAR), and finally MultiTracker (.MTM/.MOD). I have not yet taken the time to learn Scream Tracker 3 but it seems like the next logical tracker for me to tackle. An abrupt slow-down to my musical progression was, oddly enough, caused byMusic Contest 1. Since I had so many non-musical duties associated with MC1, I began to think of myself as Snowman-Organizer rather than Snowman-Musician. The 2 Music Contests have taken up 14 months of my life, and consequently I am not as good a musician as I had hoped to be at this point. Lately, I have also been branching out into other "demo" areas; namely coding and graphics. I picked up Pascal, C/C++, and some basic 8086 Assembler over the past year. As yet, I have only done very simple things with this knowledge. My graphics prowess still remains highly in question. One unexpected benefit of learning coding came from a much different area of my life. I am currently a sophomore at Akron University, majoring in Computer Science and minoring in English Literature. Until recently, I had thought these two areas completely unrelated. However, that appears to have been an erroneous assumption. I can now see many relationships in structure between both literature and code. This may seem a bit odd at first, but it is truly a beautiful thing that not many people are able to experience. The Music Contests have given me a lot to do, and the rewards seem to have been worth the effort. It has been a pleasure and an honor to listen to all of the wonderful music that has been submitted. One undisclosed source paid MC2 the compliment that the contest seemed to have better entries than CC1 and even the Assembly 94 Music Compo. After seeing all of the work musicians have put into making MC2 a success, I believe this to be true. I hope you enjoy this CD. It has taken a great amount of effort by numerous people to produce. You may find the occasional mis-printing in the insert, or an error on the audio portion, but I think that this is to be expected given the inexperience of those of us who put it together. Now turn off the lights, take off your shoes, and get in a comfortable chair. Plug a set of headphones in your stereo and turn the volume up to 7. Hit play and close your eyes. Its time to forget about all of the homework you have to do. Its time to forget about all of the sleep you are missing. Its time now to ESCAPE... -Christopher G. Mann October 5th, 1994 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ / Christopher G. Mann (Snowman), r3cgm@dax.cc.uakron.edu. \ / Contributer : DemoNews Weekly | FTP-Op : hornet.eng.ufl.edu \ / Coordinator : Music Contest ][ | Independent musician & coder \ ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ GETTING THINGS TO WORK Most demos on this disk can run with your normal configuration--memory managers and about 570+K. When in doubt do a clean boot (check the demos\misc directory for AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files for a clean boot). Some demos require 600k+. Some will say this while most will just hang providing you with a "clue." I recommend having LOTS of MEMORY free (600k), no memory managers, SVGA, a 486DX, a SBpro (port 220, Irq 7, DMA 1), GUS (port 240, Irq 11, DMA 7, 1024K), and patience. I do not recommend having any kind of STACKER program. My setup consist of: 386DX40, MSDOS 5.0, SVGA Tseng video card, 700+meg Hard Drive, 14.4 Supra Modem, GUS (240,11,7), and a SB16 (220,7,5,1). I have tested ALL the demos on this disk and about 95% ran on my setup. Some require a MATHCO, a few need a 486, others will crash in the middle or end, and some like UNODEMO and BORNTRO just did not work at all on my system. Keep in mind that demos are not games thus the coders do not have the funds nor time to check every configuration so if you have problems work with your CONFIGURATIONS and odds are the demo will run. If not then maybe you do not have a GUS or the demo will just not work with your system. Good luck. NUDITY Some demos DO include nudity. Only one demo--Women by Access Denied--was excluded from this production due to being too extreme. The demos/intros that have even brief nudity include the following: Lovedemo, activity, B_ware, Cardiac, Dz_debute, Demonic, Motion, Monstra, Phantom, Portal, Wish, 2phobia, Symptom, Ass_amen, Megamix, Msrules, Btw, and Tfo_ptm. There may be more but I think this list is exhaustive. So, if nudity offends then avoid the above files. GOOD DEMOS/INTROS WORTH CHECKING OUT Exploring all of the demos on this disk I have come across a few "Greats" and a few "Notables." Greats: AirFrame Amnesia Cardiac Catchup Cosmic Crystal Dreams I & II Elements GBU_SP Heart Quake Images Journey Saga Second Reality (2ndreal) Show Symbology TFO_PTM (The Final Option) Unreal Untitled Verses Notables: Comamtng Cronolog Delight M_python Megademo (2.7 megs) Megamix Nintendo Silence Ssaft T_Holic Tmania Tphdemo Vectdemo Wasted There are definitly more that can and should be added to these lists but I have already typed too much. PERMISSION Demos not here due to permission denied: Legend design -- WARP and all their productions. Dust -- Stoned 4kbyte intro. I have attemped to contact as MANY people as possible regarding "permission." Most seemed indifferent (FC) and 95% of the others gave a YES. Since there is no intention to "profit" off this CD I hope no one will be upset if their production appeared on this CD without permission. Groups that did give permission include at LEAST these: Digital Infinity, Admire, Eniac, EMF, DiE, Flash Productions, VLA, Hystersis, Surprise! Productions, Division Software Group, DNA, Nostilga, Blacktek, Asphyxia, Renaissance, Deadly Force Mag, Razor, Gollum, Complex, Technomaster, Capacala, Remedy Productions, Digital Arts, Wonder Monkey, Immortal Syndicate, Witan, Iguana, Chromatics, Twilight Zone, Darkzone, TET, and Soft_One Productions. Thanks go to all of you. WITAN was nice enough to include a special demo for this CD--WTNHOUSE--which is the GUS version of their TECHNO part in the Facts of Life demo. GREETS There are many people to greet in a production like this but I will keep it brief. Many thanks go to the following: Christopher Mann--MC][, helping with this CD and the demo site. Pim Van Mun (Stony)--CD label art. Jester--Back Insert art...the many hours. Dana Dominiak--Art, ideas, printing help. Johnathan Vail--Screen layout. DareDevil--All the demos uploaded and the QIC. C.C. Catch--The contribution. David & Nick--The CD-R. Joe Schofield--Support and almost a DEMO.TXT interface. Burning Chrome--Possible art, submitting demos. MC][ winners--Thanks for letting us use your music. Uploaders--Thanks for uploading to eng.ufl.edu all these years. And those I forgot. FINALLY This text started off in DOS, went through WINDOWS and was ported back to DOS. It took more time then it was worth--about an hour to correct all the crap WP in Windows did when I incorrectly saved it as a TEXT file. So, if you find any mistakes accept it as wanting to get this CD to press ASAP. So there you go...now, it is time for me to get out of here...Escape back to reality. You can contact me if you have any questions at: (305) 370-1373 E-mail: dmw@inca.gate.net, dmw@eng.ufl.edu Dan Wright 1320 N.W. 76th Avenue Plantation, FL 33322-4740 USA Let the party begin...