Kefrens - Desert Dream (part 1)

[MrCrion1c]

Very nice! After all these years, I still love and enjoy watching this fine release. great music and effects, thanks for uploading

[NeedleFactoryTube]

This demo was basically just a music video and demonstraits the power of Amiga sampling, The Amiga's sampling capability in 1993 was amazing, you would have to spend over £2000 for a Akai s1000 to get the same. This combind with pro tracker produced some of the music that became early UK acid. This is probably why is still use Trackers.

[dahDougieBoy]

@NeedleFactoryTube I would rate the s1000 a couple of notch higher than the Amiga sound quality wise, but yeah, it was way way over any other computer. Everything else in the same price class said blip blip :)

[NeedleFactoryTube]

@dahDougieBoy yeh thats what l was getting at really. l still use Amiga sounds because even though they were a low bit rate they had a personality of their own. l did so much on my Amiga back in 1993 that l just simply would not have been able to afford anywhere else.

[Primalvids]

@NeedleFactoryTube Wrong. This demo is exactly what it is, a demo.

It is a showcase of skill and mathematics, all hand coded off the top of their heads, none of this drag and drop shite. The epic soundtrack was just a bonus.

[Strideo1]

@thetruemetroid Because a banana would look silly!

[lazyeels]

Takes me back, are we all really this old? No one I speak to knows about these good old days. Then, of course, there's the ol' Spectrum PD demo's to trawl through too! So, so good all of them! If these guys are around we should get them to do a long video and album in celebration of their talents!

[sigurdurf]

@thetruemetroid Well, there was another group called Melon Dezign, maybe it is a reference to some rivalry between those two groups?

[TheMks1978]

undieing for the next year!!!

[probbarn]

God damn I love this demo!

Where is Laxity today ? Is he making music or a famous developer somewhere?

[cauda123]

4:02 nice

[TrinTrevellion]

I miss you guys

[TetsuoTheProphecy]

The music is outstanding. One of my favorites.

[Snowwie88]

Why watch an 240p version if there is a 1080p one:

watch?v=ALThLbQiK8s

[patriktofflan]

@Snowwie88

Because the demo is in an Amiga PAL lowres resolution - 320x256 (a bit more with oversan), it is rather pointless to scale it to 1080p before you upload it. That will even worsen the image quality, as there will then be two scalings applied in most cases - the one from Amiga resolution to 1080p before upload and then a scaling in the youtube player to whatever resolution you are viewing it in.

[patriktofflan]

This 240p video is instead a non-scaled pixel-mapped upload. I cropped away 16 pixels of vertical res to match a the standard youtube resolution 240p to avoid the video being scaled by the youtube upload converter.

This way the only scaling that is applied is the one in the youtube player.

However, this is a very old upload, from the days you uploaded videos to youtube in mpeg4 and then the file size limits were rather restricted, so these videos suffers quite badly from compression artifacts.

[Snowwie88]

@patriktofflan

You forget the emulator I used (winUAE) plays the demo "live", by programming, not by any source video. A higher resolution is possible because in the Amiga days we had no bigger monitors, or hardware to support a higher resolution. This is best seen in my video when watching the 1.2.3. - 12,000 dots part.

[patriktofflan]

@Snowwie88

You cannot overcome the resolution limitations of the Amiga chipset WinUAE emulates without breaking the software you run - like this demo. The Amiga was never resolution limited by the size of the monitors back in the days.

However, you are right that something is off with my upload and this shows very well in the 1.2.3.. 12.000 dots part - I am loosing vertical pixels. The reason is that parts of this demo uses PAL Highres (non interlaced) 640x256,

[patriktofflan]

So it was wrong by me to assume that the demo only used PAL Lowres for all scenes (and I blatantly missed it when checking the video afterwards). This is the reason your video looks so much better in those scenes - no missing pixels.

[patriktofflan]

However, a video upload in 640x256 (ofcourse the correct aspect ratio needs to be set, it might be simpler to pre-double to 640x512 and I would still crop to 640x240 respective 640x480 to avoid the youtube converter going bananas), will still look better than your 1080p version as there will just be one scaling applied.

[TheUAssassin]

To ALL YOU who loves Amiga - maybe we should support the project Natami???? Kefrens, Andromeda, SpaceBalls and many others - WE MISSING YOU!!!!!

[aga060]

@wabeti

the last demo from kefrens was released in 1994.

THEY ARE DEAD.

[slitor]

@aga060 well...they really died way before that :) the Kefrens that made this prod stole the name from a previous disbanded group that made some megademos...melon design didnt take to kindle to that(the melon reference).

A fuckings you just gotta love them <3 KEEP THE SCENE SPIRIT ALIVE!

[suprimo222]

@aga060

They are playing to Cannon Fodder whit God.

[VCat2006]

Reminds me of Starfox (21 februari 1993).

[MrOnion44]

Oh Boy.........do I remember this. have made a Cd for the car with my all time classic demo music. Retro Amiga at it`s best.

How I miss the scene. LONG LIVE THE AMIGA!!!

[KiiiiingOfPaaain]

Best! Demo! Ever! :D

[wave980]

amiga rulez.. but died:(

[VddEnergise]

@wave980 no no i did not died ..the commodore generation is everywhere

[vicemanFIN]

Hah! try google "varisilma logo" @ 6:45 neat

[vicemanFIN]

the picture search to be specific.

[knortz251]

GOD < .mod

[Fligocac]

At 4:06 the picture is the same for the cover of the album "Stone Cold Sober" from a german trash metal band, and the album was released in 1992, only the letters at the bottom of the picture are differents..

strange.

[Kaminskifahrer]

@Fligocac That´s not strange, it´s simply an adapted scan of a Tankard Cover. Artist was Sebastian Krüger. Some works of him can be found in Sanity or Kefrens Demos. Let´s remember, these groups were mainly Coders and Crackers, not Painters ;) Nevertheless, Great Entertainment!

[JimNortonCZ]

April 1993 and Kefrens, Amiga 600 and Desert Dream!! Daily if i started my Amiga 600, first what i must to do, was to see this demo .... then i was able to play Agony, Walker or Shadow of the Beast x)

[ACDCISCOOLNESS]

I actually hauled my monitor to a friends house just to show him how cool this looked. On a 1084!

[UnperfectGentleman]

4 channel of tracker music and you get this... I love it and have made some covers of this score during the years. I like many miss the Amiga days ;)

[ulmeulme]

epic music

[mariodivine]

One of classic Amiga demos... never be forgotten!

[plexafci]

jasne magiel

!!!!

[mariodivine]

doooooooooooooooh ;)

[monradus]

And the Amiga demos was awesome, they totally put pc and mac to shame.

[monradus]

Still miss the good old Amiga days.

Even when it got hard to get games for Amiga. I played Warcraft and Heroes of might and magic on my Amiga 4000 with picasso 4 grafix card and 68060 cpu. I just used shapeshifter and played the Mac versions. The Amiga was the most superior computer for its time.

[ematech]

Amiga rulezz, f...k pc, we will come back !

[svingor]

Kefrens was one of the best! I hope those dudes still work together! Was always waiting for the Phenomena/Kefrens/Rebels/Melon demos in that timeage. I miss Red Sector ;-)

[bubblebobble2005]

wow !!!!!!!!!  truly awesome demo......amiga rocks

when i had my miggy i remember doing raytracing on a slightly exanded A500 ! gawd it used to take HOURS to render one scene with mabe 2 light sources !

mad now when you think you games like counterstrike source render in real-time at 1024x768 with multiple light sources and physics at over 100 fps

i loved my amiga and regret selling it :(, bought a replacement off ebay but it died after 1 week so i just use winuae now :(

[aga060]

desert dream on amiga was released in april 1993.

second reality on pc was released in august 1993.

[spmbxj]

I've never been much into the amiga scene so i've never seen this demo... The music is a lot like the music in second reality in some parts, i wonder who borrowed from who :)

[fcycles]

This type of music was very popular back in those years. Techno, house... arpegiator with some filtering offset. I am not a musician, but this is just my personnal feeling. I really like this production! :)

[Snowwie888]

Amiga demo's with lots of pace and descent dance/trance/techno music did always well those days. Just like State of the Art or 9 fingers..

[downphoenix]

explosive watermelon

[NerdBirdBeaker]

This is my favorite demo of all time. A few weeks back I felt nostalgic and broke out my Amiga 1200 and 4000 just to play this, some other demos and some badass Psygnosis games. I really miss the Amiga era.

[waxfrenzy]

A beautiful work of art, second to none.

[MustBe18YearsOrOlder]

I love the part @ "These aren't filled vectors, they're 10000 DOTS!"

[waskus]

Respect too the old amiga days

[llclusterll]

lea si, offset [good]

mov cx,ffffh

rep movsb .....to you :p

i remember this period...

[Jawattdenn]

Your memory fooled you. It's:

LEA offset,A0

MOVE.W $FFFF,D0

etc

[c0v3n4n7]

Second Reality has so much influence from this demo.

The .mod of this demo is one of the best 4 chan tracks ever. Hail Kefrens

[dudechesterdesigner]

I believe this possibly the best tune Ever made in all time???

It makes me go cold everytime!!!

[trauschu]

Yes, it is the best demo track

[afxgroup]

@dudechesterdesigner

yes.. it is!

[kinalskimirek]

Nie ma jak obejrzeć demo na żywo z AMIGI.Żadne YOUTUBE tego nie zastąpi.Nie ta jakość i ten dźwięk i nie te wrażenia.

[arkadiuszweiss]

super demo with atack rack :)

[orizondelu]

Awesome, thanks for posting this one.. I literally made a jump into my memories.

[IckyThump88]

also mir gefällts net.

[skipper7302]

amigaremix[dot]com there are some good remixes of this tune.

[jagfan84]

I remember how mindblowing this was back in the time of release. If you ever wanted to convince someone of the Amiga's superiority to the PC - and they WERE so much better until about 1996 - you'd fire this up on an A1200 and watch their eyes widen with shock.

What impresses me, even now, is how this still holds your attention. And the music still sounds pretty wicked - Amiga's always did have great sound custom chips. Real nice analogue quality to them.

Thanks for the upload... memory lane!

[Retroplay]

This demo works on all Amiga models as long as they have at least 1MB of RAM.

And yes, Amiga's soundchip "Paula" blows everything else away (with the exception of C64's SID chip that is ) ;)

[jagfan84]

Yeah dude, IIRC the Amiga had 14-bit sound output which was very unusual for the time, especially considering the uneven assignment of bits due to virtual channel assignment. No wonder people still use them for music production.

[sterby1]

Are they shooting a watermelun at the pyramids?

I wanted that waturmelon ;_;

[Roomer645]

You are so right, It's Laxity ... I'm getting old and sloppy at 37 years of age.

[Roomer645]

Azatoth was a genius in his day.

All that coding and a SUPERB soundtrack !

These 2 skills usually don't go hand in hand and such a combination at this high level was never repeated or execeeded to my knowledge.

Belongs in the Top 10 of Best Amiga demos ever

[CrabHunter]

Azatoth? (Phenomena coder who coded Enigma). I guess you mean Laxity...? (the coder and musician). Yeah, really good creative work by him.

[whitespaces]

This is an absolutely wicked demo - one of my favourite from back in the day. I just hope Laxity is now earning lots of money making computer games - he is a modern day da vinci or at least a polymath. Was all this coding done in assembler then aswell?? Devpak?? Does anyone know anyting about laxity or where i can find info out about him?? What nationality was he?

[Blunder1248]

All this from a floppy disk. Can any one remember if it was one disk or two ran at the same time? I was a bit young!

[bazzatuk]

From memory it switched half way those were the two parts, but with two disk drives you never really saw the switch.

[EinFremderAusElea]

...no play...

(Too much work indeed. And soon the sun rises again. John's day isn't far...)

[EinFremderAusElea]

Sorry, the last post was somewhat premature...

moveq #0,d0

decrunch ...

addq.w #1,d0

move.w d0,$dff180

bra.s decrunch

I'm in a lame mood, I guess. Too much work and no fun makes Jack a dull boy...

[EinFremderAusElea]

moveq #0,d0

decrunch ...

 addq.w #1,d0 move.w

[dazman76]

Still my favourite amiga demo of all time, thanks for uploading :)

[EinFremderAusElea]

Sanity has many good demos so I won't mention anything in particular (it kills me that Chaos went to the Wedel Technical University at the same time as a class mate of mine, whereas I was at the UH), but this demo surely sticks out too: /watch?v=dQYMYJm5WjY

[EinFremderAusElea]

Patrik tofflan...

You aren't Mahoney by any chance? (Probably too young...)

[patriktofflan]

Nope.

[EinFremderAusElea]

I also want to use this platform to address Patrick Tufvesson (err... no, the family name is probably incorrect, anyway better known as Mahoney) and say this:

You know, you always wanted to be a real musician like the Pet Shop Boys? Go figure... real musicians of nowadays seem to want to copy the Amiga demo musical style.

And thx to Kaktus for "The optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears that that is actually true." One of my all time favorites!

[EinFremderAusElea]

And this one... the Enigma demo of Phenomena...

/watch?v=N1uBK7Wfac4

[EinFremderAusElea]

I meant this demo of Razor...

/watch?v=h_l_8k31x2o

[EinFremderAusElea]

Great music, nice use of the bplcon0 (or 1?... it's been some time) register for the pudding effect also.

My favorite demo? Well... one of my favorites. I really like Sanity's demos too... and the Razor 1911 demo that annoys UAE with its totally unnecessary use of the CIA-B event counter to prohibit faster processors (which is completely idiotic since it runs on faster processors and the later effects look considerably better with them (you know this logo zoomer)... that one had great music too

[AmigaFalcon]

the GREATEST demo of all time!

[Nemesis99099]

i actually got this demo on my old amiga1200 standing in my closet:DD

[SphinxRa30]

hell yeah:))))

[Blobstor]

music is just awesome, cant stop listening it

[seani2o]

Best demo ever and will never be beaten. The music is so good that I can hum it all the way through. Simply fantastic

[ezoray]

My fave amiga demo, brilliant music and visuals.

[Nemesis99099]

just love this demo, brings back memories:D

[leesnj]

just superb...

i practically burned out those diskettes watching this over and over back in the day.

[magmalinux1]

I have show this demo with an A1200 Commodore

I like it

Thanks

[vstman]

Hell this IS the best demo. And the part when the saw hits... yummy!!

[SkuldChan42]

Always a favorite - I remember downloading this back when it came out - still blows me away :).

Interesting bugs in this demo - if you didn't run it on a cycle exact A500 (ie a Pal A500 with no fast ram) the missles miss their target, also some white lines show up in the dot section. Maybe thats what I get for having an A4000.

[skipper7302]

there is a secret part in this demo. how to access it: Boot disc two and wait for the screen to fade into black. Press both mousebuttons along with the fire butten on your joystick to access the first hidden part.

[skipper7302]

How the hell did the programmer of this demo expect anyone to figure out how to access the hiden part if u are not able to poke in the code?!

[SURFiNGO]

best demo EVER!

[c0v3n4n7]

Is there anyway to get the .MOD of this track?

Best demomusic ever.

[AnalogX]

Just do a google search there are many scene related websites who have them online.

Not going to post it here.. dont want to attract trolls or spammers.

[ulmeulme]

head over to amigaremix, they got a lot of new desertdream remixes

[AndrewTSq]

just what i thought too!.. Laxity is the god!.

[tredfxman]

Hum.. Have you ever heard Future Crew - Second Reality? Although a PC Demo. Also the creators of the later upcoming Max Payne!

[c0v3n4n7]

Sure I remember FC. Skaven and Purple Motion were the ones that got me into tracking. Good old scene days

[Gu1ll4um3r0m41n]

awsome demo

[Gamewitzer]

Absolute Great! (try pulling this off on a ST :P )

[kikaram]

The ship plays a watermelon in the Piramid! HAHAHAHAHA! But taking off this, music is cool and the demon is ten! Amiga Forever!

[CrabHunter]

kikaram: it was some sort of internal joke (Amiga demo scene intrigue between the groups Kefrens and Melon Dezign... and a certain leader from another group creating intrigues. Hence, an Alien shoots a Melon on the Kefren pyramid. I seem to remember)

[1337Shockwav3]

Thank you for probably the most informative youtube comment ever. Fun story :)

[Genetix26]

The Greatest Sound Track For A Demo . . . . . . . Ever!

[skipper7302]

this music rocks!

[skipper7302]

Agree 100%

[Exitof99]

Don't forget, this ran off an Amiga 3.5" DD floppy disc. That means 880k max (uncompressed). One of the boasting points was that this ran on a stock A500 and had mostly was realtime rendering and visuals, not simply playing an animation, but actually doing 3-D, texture mapping, and rotating picture zooming!

Since the Amiga was basically a mulitprocessing computer, it could load new data from the floppy, play music, and certain video effects without needing to burden the 7 mhz microprocessor.

[one800weirdo]

as far as i remember it desert dream was actually two disks. that is unless i'm completely mistaken. but i honestly do believe i have a 2-disk version of that.

whatever, amiga never dies! besides it is funny how many of the old guys from back in the day are still around in the it-scene... you'd be surprised really

[CrabHunter]

one800weirdo: there's quite a lot of ex-scene members working in the computer game industry. The creator of this demo being among them. Also: you're right. It was 2 discs. No animations of course.

[EinFremderAusElea]

The processor had only 1.8mhz or something. The fastest command took 4 cycles, so... you have to divide 7 by that. The bus speed was 3.6 mhz that was the important thing. PCs needed quite some time before they had the same bus speed.

Anyway, this demo doesn't make that much use of the blitter. It does however make critical use of the copper bplcon0 trick (which comes very close to an animation really, I mean having copperlists of some kb is pretty similar to having an animation.)

[Ahle2]

1.8mhz? What are you talking about?

[EinFremderAusElea]

Well, what good is 7.2mhz if moveq #0,d0 takes 4 cycles?

That's the fastest command. O.k., some commands take a number of even cycles that is not divisible by 4, like bne.s if taken(?) (or not taken... hmm, one is 10 cycles the other 8) but that's hardly reason enough to say that the processor is in effect any faster than 7.2 divided by 4, i.e. 1.8mhz.

[EinFremderAusElea]

Or even 6 cycles instead of 10. I'd have to look that up again. dbf takes 10 cycles in one case or in both, I remember that though. Truth is I never used dbf, I think, and the only possible reason seems to be that something like

subq.w #1,d0

bne.s loop

is faster on average (perhaps 10 cycles when taken, whereas dbf in that case needed 12, but I'm not sure).

Well, perhaps there's another reason, namely that counting down by 1 is inappropriate and something like subq.w #4,d0 is more efficient.

[Ahle2]

Well, what you're talking about is called MIPS... even though many opcodes takes up to 8 cycles, they still are quite effective compared to those in the Intel 286 for instance, which had a higher MIPS/MHZ ratio compared to the MC68000, but was considered slower for most tasks (when running at the same speed as an MC68000). There is no easy way to compare how fast a system is compared to others if they are using different CPUs.

[Energuman]

amiga rulz

[gannondork]

this is correct.

[Energuman]

isn't it ?

[MoltenDude]

That´s so cool! Please more!!!!