YO! Simon here. Did you like the last bit of the demo? - the best bit I think. Bl**dy oscilloscopes took ages. Anyway... No demo is complete without at least one scrolltext so Masochism Tango has two (one for each author). ARM 3 owners - hope you like the two bouncy balls. ARM 2: something had to go; after all there's nothing but BASIC as far as the eye can see... If you're feeling deprived then load 'scrollARM3' after the end of the demo; without the music it goes at the proper speed. Similarly 'scrollarm6' will work OK on ARM 3s without music. ARM 6 owners can just give me their RISC PCs instead!      Normally people like to put personal messages and thanks in scrolltexts and this one's no exception. Those of you waiting for the drunken efforts will just have to wait a bit longer...      First of all a brief background to the demo. Ravedemo was started in about February 1994 (the more original name 'Masochism Tango' is the name of the megademo). It began as a small program imitating a couple of the effects we had seen at a rave (if you could call it that) running on an Amiga. Some of our results were considerably better - (Here I have edited out lots of my earlier remarks slagging off the Amiga and Motorola 680x0 chips in order to avoid offending Amiga fans). We were inspired to keep adding bits and pieces to the demo every so often (and still are). I typed this, for example, at about 4.00am on Monday 8th August 1994! (missing Izzy; she only left 3 days ago). (actually pasted that bit of text into the scrolltext at 4.30pm on Mon 24th Oct a day after I wrote the bouncy balls code).  Tom would be doodling during a lesson or I'd be daydreaming (but looking oh so attentive) when we'd come up with an idea. As a result, most of the ideas are our own. If not, they have mostly been considerably adapted / improved. It has evolved into a bit of a MegaDemo. (Sorry about my overuse of brackets(). It's so nice being able to use them again though).       This demo was written almost entirely in BASIC V. Our interpreted BASIC programs often achieve the same or better effect than ones which have been written in machine code on an Amiga. However, some of our ideas are crying out for ARM code. I have been learning about the Arc while writing this demo - since getting an (old) A5000 in January; Tom has owned an A420/1 for ages and recently got a new A5000. Apparently those extra 8Mhz of clock speed make a massive difference! (3 MIPS - whoopee!) I've never used it. A levels will probably get a bit in the way of our learning ARM code (although Tom's made a start). If they don't get in the way then they probably should!         It's about time I thanked the many people who have helped Tom and myself (Simon) create this demo. Before I mention personal friends I should thank some people who actually deserve to be thanked:    Hugo Fiennes and co. for the Tracker Module. Tune you are hearing now - 'Not just any trip 7' by u4ia; tune in ravedemo - 'dreamland' by techno jake; tunnel credit tune - 'tonight live'; author unknown...  Acorn - for making such good computers. Where would we be without them? Probably using PCs. What a thought! Yes, I'm a dedicated Acorn fan but still think they should be selling RISC OS 3.1 for 35 quid not 75!   The POVray team - those blobs were raytraced and very nicely too. The spheres above this scrolltext were also raytraced (45 seconds each) using !POVray.       Now onto the truly deserving people! ... Hamish Young aka Hamish++, Binish or Binary Man  (weeeaaahh! snort snort grunt) - Thanks Hamish for all the support you've given us in the mathematical department (particularly with the plasma fractals). It just goes to show that not all gingers are useless. (Yes you are Rathead! Don't get any funny ideas!) ... Mat Jones (Cokey) - thanks for the tunes off your Falcon, and pictures too, but we won't go into that! Cheers also for anything  else I can't remember ...  Ewan Briggs - The proud owner of the hand you will have seen. I'm afraid the closed fist belongs to me though. I expect that tells us something deep and meaningful about our respective characters. Then again, maybe not..... Izzy - the best girl in the world. Why is Northumberland over 200 miles from my house? ... My Dad - He paid for a considerable chunk of my 'ex-demo' A5000. Need I say more? ... James Cooper-Key (thanks for use of your inferior machine (mac!)), Duncan Down (Let's play moonquake!), Nick Owen (It's too blocky), Nick Merkle (GI / billy bunter - of scrolltext fame), Paul Mawdesly (and no your Mac couldn't do this Rathead!), Andrew Jeffries, Ozzy (hope the leg heals soon! ha ha ha), Phizz (The other Simon P.), Andy Hobbs (of M C Biggers fame!), James Merritt (responsible for 'Radioactive Live'. Thanks for showing me your Amiga demos etc.), Yo Mole! (Mr Powell - raving biology teacher who didn't scream when we loaded the demo onto his Arc during a lesson! Acorn Computers rule! Down with the Mac. P.S. Buy Arachne Software's Molecular Modeller. It was meant to be on when our demo was!) and Izzy (again) because I will always remember from the afternoon of Monday 25th September to the morning of Friday 5th August! - I even remember the dates! ...... Anyway ......       The following message was written one evening during the holidays - I don't think I need to say anything other than ''If you're related to me, stop reading now!'' ....  ....                    Somebody told me the other day that people wwre into writinfg sctollyexts when they weere pissed. I'm giving it a go although I wouldn't say i woas pissed, jst finished pff somre cider  before going back to school. Can't reallt take it back; not the season to be jolly yet. Got no room in my tuck box eeither. still celebrating 5 A stars ina sorta way. Ooops. Just been playing an adventure ga,e after discovering an unopened Acorn USer cover disk stuck on ythe fromnt of one magazine while sortinfhg out my room (at last!!!!) meaning to dol ui t for agesa ans ages!@!  Must write to Izzy again and noe i can saqy that i have actually got round to doin some tidying at last - shit seems like she was here yesterday on;ly not really but holdiays have gone past relaly quick know what i mean. SHIT just finished my cdier BUgger but I hasd to do it. Just been swaerting at the adventurr ganme an it says 'Disgraceful! Once upon a time adventurers had moral standards.' kjhg]   whoops i aslipped. Tyo0ing this in mnode 39 therefore can't actually rwead what i'm typing shit; bet it's full o' mistakes but i can't be fucked to do anythoin g 'bout it though. in middle of geting readly for school L6 my god can'/t believe it FUCK me why do i bothre? aDEtermined to beat my record a pint of cder on 8 secs (actually a biot less) Andy isa  witness jnfortunately! You can't see how bad ,htmy handwriting would be cause i'knm typoing not wrting but next term gonna wsrite loadssa letters more anyways....... bugger did i hold dpwn the . kety too long? Naw Izzy is really busy bein Head of House!!!!????!!!? fuck i wouldnt' rekaly ave though tit thoyugh. Evern if shre iz gorgeous. I; stil getta letter . reminds me of last saturday nigtgh- (like it when my mum wotks really late for deadlines!~) 0-went out into twpn met twpo lobely girls not as nice as izzy but getting there on a par with suZIE AND becky kinda standard SHIT pRESSWD CAPS LOCK by mistajke. nuggerb gotta be pisshed ofn last night before scjholl 'tis now three inmthe moirning  hang abiut on eof thjer girls was talking to her horse when i met her thogth ther was someone else but reassuerrd her - i do the same with phoebe my dog. i'm gonna have sbihgt loads ... gb ugeger missed delete trrouble geting to sleep tommorraw nigth this 3.03 and moy bed's covered wiv stuff for going back to dschool not goin to berd for a while yet . just went to thr bog (alcohol dpeos this to me hope noone wakes up willa dispoes of cider bottle by thje n oh yeah saw the bender fomr frazier's folly in town today probablty get in touch some time. Diane probably won't be in touch though. Spoke no engilsh at all realkly (shame?? ) i didn't hug her when the spider was rhere and didn't get up to kiss and cuddle goodbye like i did wiyh izzy. Actually the girl talikingy to her horse was a nicer person than becky i think and prob about as nice a suzie byut in a difefrrent kinda way read my reply from davina again just now but sheess not as nice as Izzy no way but bout the same as Dibble - more in my reach Lulu(julia( also too old i spose. Shit why can[t i think about anytjhing biut girls all the time nwxt term draeding seeing nicola rawnson in a way nothing ever happened Tim saw Zoe thougfh (with Abby) they're pissheds too but i did wrirte stuf to ugly? no not thatg ugly zoe.  Fuck me why am i typing this shite noyt got better things to do? its 3.15 alcohol s the worst kinda high (tim) he feels shite afterwards but i bounce back wgat it is to be young mjust get im to sent some?;tea in post  maybe. foind return key fell over but las timr  i went to the bog becomning a real atruggkle to find each key now so must go ok bye bye..  just sav thnois as textfile in root directory coodrinatoon wit mouse is difficult speacially in chopper forcfe lotsa jokes with izzy cvam't i think about any one//thing else?? obssessed infatuated probablu shbould tell her more obviously i'm bufggerin off now oko ok byr for the last time./e              Well, I'm glad we've got that over with. If you've read (sorry, tried to read!) this far without loading the textfile into edit then you are a remarkably sad person and we'd like to hear from you. I am not using Tom's font so I can use numbers and any punctuation I like - 1234567890 and so on. Here's our address: Simon Plummer or Tom Godber, Canford School, Wimborne, Dorset. BH21 3AD.       I HATE EDIT. It keeps buggering up and printing  the same line twice and missing bits out. Tom gave me a copy of !Zap but before backing it up I wanted to see how big it was. I clicked menu over it, slipped, and the !Run file had been deleted before I could hit abort. Aaaarrgh. This is sheer irrelevance and I don't really know why I'm bothering to type it; every byte of disc space is important you know. My new 540Mb hard disc hasn't arrived yet but I've got no money left. I don't know what will happen when the program reaches the end of the scrolltext, but if you've read this far then you're about to find out. BYE! ....  ....  P.S. Don't ask for any explanations about the above.     P.P.S. I've just discovered that the program comes up with an error if it gets to the end of the scrolltext so I've decided to make it much longer. Sorry; quite a few more minutes more now. (trapping the error is just too easy!) This scrolltext is now over 17k!      You've probably gathered by now that Tom and I aren't all that keen on Macs. If you are in a similar situation to us then the following will be useful to you....       Our silly school decided to buy Apple Macintoshes for the computer room. The school now has a room full of Mac LCs, bought in 1991 for around 1400 pounds each. These computers are virtually obsolete and can be usefully used for little more than word processing. A room full of A5000s or even A310s would have been far more useful, longer lasting, reliable, powerful, productive etc. What makes the situation worse is that these Macs are crippled with a security program called MacPrefect. The supposedly impregnable has been defeated. If anyone else has this problem - symptoms include dreadfully slow computer, can't run applications from floppy disks, can't copy most programs, can't DO anything, then get in touch. The tell-tale sign is a jigsaw piece shown early on startup with a pencil on it. The pencil has a line drawn through it after a second or so (after it has deleted the essay you spent hours on because it was more than a week old)! We can supply the necessary tools and knowledge to rid you of this problem.        I was being honest when I told you this message was going to be quite a lot longer.    The following message was written one evening when I wasn't feeling very positive. It is not a remotely accurate reflection of my character. Anyway, here it is....   Hello again. Tom has just added loads to his scrolltext so I now feel obliged to add more to mine. If you're reading this then you've probably already read his drivel. That's the filename and it's a very accurate description of some of that file's contents. You may have had the misfortune to read his absurdly one-sided account of the writing of a certain tunnel program. Allow me to set the record straight...  The tunnel you saw after Ravedemo in that credits sequence used to be a simple little program, written in BASIC, without any sprites, music or whatever. It went at a reasonable speed (unlike the credits sequence) and ran in a 16 colour mode - that meant the depth shading was correct. When I proposed a potential method of improving it, Hamish and Tom gave suggestions - Hamish was Terrier-like, enthusiastic, full of ambition and good ideas, optimistic, impressed and so on. Tom was also his usual self. Through most stages of the writing of the megademo whenever something was suggested he immediately retorted 'it's not worth it' or 'no, it won't work.' or 'I'm a really sad pessimistic uninspired person' or something similar. After informing Hamish and myself that he thought the exercise we were about to commence was a totally and utterly pointless waste of time, he could not back down. Although it isn't nice for me to have to ask this, isn't the entire demo pointless? It may be entertaining and reasonably impressive - if we tell people WE wrote it - but we could have made far more 'pointful' use of the time. Anyway... (I like that word so I'll type it again). Anyway. One day I saw a super-fast ARM code quadrilateral plotting routine and I thought that my tunnel program could be made to go at a better speed, or more smoothly, if I used it. Tom describes this as brutally ripping someone else's code etc etc and maybe it is, but I never had any intention of distributing this program or anything, it was never going to spoil the Masochism Tango's pure BASICness and hardly anyone would even know about it if Tom had not brought it up. I probably won't even keep it - disks don't last forever. After a few minor adjustments which did not take very long the new adjusted tunnel program should have worked. OK so the routine can't cope with co-ordinates that are off the screen. A quick check to make sure co-ordinates are within screen bounds and everything should be just wonderful. It's not. After the right honourable gentleman Mr Godber had enlightened us with his incredible wit, I noticed what the only two problems were, and had been all along. (I knew about one of them before but Tom was in no mood to actually listen to what either Hamish or I had to say - if he could not easily extract the urine from it!) The sides of the tunnel were transparent because I was still in mode 9 and the routine treated one screen pixel as one byte. Simple. Switch to mode 13, add a quick colour table and Bob's your uncle. The other problem resulted in an 'Address exception ...' error. The one and only Lord Godber in all his infinite wisdom recorded this for posterity as 'address acception' and only changed it after I had pointed it out to him. The problem was caused by one simple letter. The line  'IF sy%(i%,j%)>128 sx%(i%,j%)=128'  should have read  'IF sy%(i%,j%)>128 sy%(i%,j%)=128'. It's one of those bugs which could happen in any program, BASIC or any other language. One of those bugs which really annoy you when you realise how absurdly stupid and simple they are. If you've never had the pleasure of experiencing this kind of thing then suffice it to say that it's bloody annoying! It's also a relief when the code finally works. The improved tunnel does now work - at least it never crashes. I have learned a few useful things from that exercise and believe it to be no more pointless than much of the demo. (Having scrolltexts so absurdly long that only a very few people will actually bother to read them is an example.) The frame rate is very impressive - very much faster than the entirely BASIC one (not really surprising I suppose). The plotting method had to be compromised slightly and the screen banking does not work as yet, but the speed improvement is good. The stroboscopic effect Sir Godber described was due to the routine only ever plotting in screen bank one. It is not an insoluble problem but a copy of the PRMs would come in useful I think. Hang on, the 4mb RAM upgrade, RISC OS 3.11 and loadsa software are higher on the list! At least I've got Matt's 270mb hard drive working. (Tom has only 160mb).   Sorry about the above if you're reading this Tom. If you are not Tom and are reading this then he probably hasn't yet! This is what happens to me when I'm typing irrelevant scrolltext during prep and I know I have to get up for breakfast at 7.00 am the next day.    A wise and really rather irritating chemistry teacher - 'Andy B' - once asked us, 'Do you lot ever do anything except slag each other off all the time?' Hamish, Tom, Rathead (Paul) and myself had to answer 'no'. (This was during a chemistry lesson and he was trying to teach us something ... a mistake). To discover more about the Dark Lord Browning and the Rat Head, write to us! This is probably an appropriate time to be typing this because I will soon discover the result of a chemistry exam we did yesterday. Ooops. Not up to my usual standard I think. You will probably learn what result I got when I come back to add some more to the scrolltext at some later date. I met my nob end of a housemaster earlier (who teaches me chemistry) but he didn't mention the exam - wanted to know what sport I want to do next term. I don't bloody know. Oh well. I hope he doesn't see this.                Matt kept on playing 'Come out and play (keep 'em separated)' by the Offspring whenever I went into his room. It didn't take me long to come round to his way of thinking - their music is cool. We're gonna see them on Saturday. I'll probably write some comment here after the event. Sorry, got cut short. Unfortunately I've gotta do something useful now so I must stop this 'session'. Bummer. I've just wasted half of prep - could have written a really good letter to Izzy in that time. Oh well bye. Hopefully I'll be more my normal self next time instead of being so sour.         Well this is the first bit of scrolltext I have written in the new year (1995). In fact it's the first time I've added anything to it since last term. During the Christmas holidays I didn't use the computer much - when I got pissed there was no opportunity to record my valuable thoughts. I didn't exactly want to anyway. Loads of things happened that have made my life generally more interesting although I will not go into detail unless bribed with several pints. Met Nicola properly for the first time (who lives next door to me) and she is ... well I won't write anything here in case she reads this sometime and I get embarrassed! I'll just say that she's a warmer person than Izzy who lives far too bloody far away and doesn't write often enough. Izzy's too busy being incredibly important and responsible - not like me. My brother is doing PPE at Oxford although he's dropped the politics bit (if you don't know what PPE stands for then ignore this bit) He assured me that a B.A. at Oxford or Cambridge is worth more than an M.A. anywhere else so people who complain about being about to buy your M.A. after getting a B.A. at Oxbridge should just get a life. The philosophy he is studying (as half of the course) is so much harder than philosophy anywhere else. One of his mates is at Swansea and that stuff is relatively a piece of piss.  Hamish is now looking over my shoulder and is probably about to make a remark about how no one will actually read this and that there is no point in having such a long scrolltext. Well, let me tell him something. Size IS everything. (nearly). Well... no I've typed 'well' too often. Let's start with another word... Anyway... used that one too often too. Hamish has just buggered off to talk to Tom so that's OK. He didn't say anything. I've been sidetracked again. I was just leading on to some philosophy of my own. Tom has just come over to distract me and lead me off the point so I will probably never get started. Chuckle chuckle says Hamish. He tried (successfully) to stop me calling him a ... (words omitted due to ... (more censorship ...(I do like brackets))) Are we going to go to supper or what? This is just so completely irrelevant. Anyway. Where was I? Life is a journey; and on that journey stuff like work is constantly trying to pull you down. You have to keep upright and not let stuff like work drag you down with it. The scenario is like this: Each piece of work that is set is like one of those sets of weights they use in physics labs. Tied to you with nylon which is nearly impossible to break they hurt and dig in to your skin as well as dragging you down. If you start a prep or project or something then say 100 grams can be taken off. As you progress through the work the individual weights fall off their carrier untileventually you can cut the cord. The last mass falls below you and the feeling of relief is uplifting and more. Every so often someone says something or you get a letter or phone call which lifts you up that little bit further. Those in positions of authority who live for the world of GCSEs, A - levels, UCAS forms, University applications, finding a job and so on do little but constantly pile on the weights throughout the course of a term. During the holidays the legacy of the thin fishing line cuts lives on but the overall burden is reduced and some recovery time is possible. It is important to climb during this time so you are equipped to face the late nights (of work - not going out) which lie ahead. (Late nights not during term time often succeed in pushing you upwards). Most of the weights have fallen but an increasing number linger on even during this time which should be reserved for excessive sleeping, drinking, relaxation and other recreational activities.        This is the first bit of scrolltext I have typed after half-term (feb 95) and during those few days I took part in plenty of ''other recreational activities''! I can probably safely say here that Nicola is a really nice person not bad looking either and I fancy her more than is good for me. No one will read this far anyway! Now a short break. Hope you appreciate the fast-forward facility (right cursor key - what? haven't found it yet? try now! shift & right arrow for v fast) see ya in a minute...                                  By the way Tom Tilbury couldn't live without a mention somewhere in this scrolltext so here it is. Cheers Tom.     A quick note about hidden bits: the best is in this demo, there's a cool fractal as the background fades away in Mindslide, and a game at the end of the Chill Out blobs.  Oh, and a few extra words from the dodgy geezer just before it.  That's quite enough hints, anyway...         Thanks to the Shamen and the Prodigy for their great music although Matt definitely wouldn't agree. So on behalf of all three of us thanx to:   Offspring (Come out and play ... you gotta keep 'em separated, self esteem, bad habit, genocide   etc that concert we went to at the London Astoria was fucking good. Just remember I typed it here first .. Offspring will be BIG .. self esteem's in the charts now (Feb '95)), rage against the machine (bullet in the head ... just victims of the in-house drive-by .. they say 'jump' you say 'how high?', killing in the name, know your enemy etc), Terrorvision (Alice what's the matter?, discotheque wreck, middleman, still the rhythm, pretend best friend, some people say etc.. why is it that every terrorvision song is good?), Soundgarden (black hole sun, superunknown etc), therapy (knives, die laughing, animal bones etc)           Here is some more valuable insight into life, the universe and everything..........  If the truth can be told, so as to be understood, it will be believed. Human history represents such a radical break with the natural systems of biological organization that preceded it that it must be the response to a kind of attractor or dwell-point that lies ahead in the temporal dimension. Persistently Western religions have integrated into their theologies the notion of a kind of end of the world and I think that alot of psychedelic experimentation sort of confirms this intuition; I mean it isn't going to happen according to any of the scenarios of orthodox religion but the basic intuition that the universe seeks closure in a kind of omega point of transcendence is confirmed; it's almost as though this object in hyperspace, glittering in hyperspace, throws off reflections of itself which actually ricochet into the past illuminating this mystic inspiring that saint centre of visionary, and that out of these fragmentary glimpses of eternity, we can build a kind of map of not only the past of the universe and the evolutionary ingression into knowledge, but a kind of map of the future. This is what shamanism has always been about. A shaman is someone who has been to the end. It's someone who knows how the world really works; and knowing how the world really works means to have risen outside, above, beyond the dimensions of ordinary space time and kazoomstry, and actually seen the wiring under the board - stepped outside the confines of learned culture and learned an embedded language, into the domain of what Liechtenstein called 'the unspeakable' - the transcendental presence of the other which can be exceptioned in various ways to yield systems of knowledge which can be brought back into ordinary social space for the good of the community, so in the context of 90 per cent of human culture the shaman has been the ancient of evolution because the shaman learns the techniques to go between ordinary reality and the domain of the ideals - this higher dimensional continuum that is somehow parallel to us, available to us, and yet ordinarily excluded by cultural convention, out of the fear of the mystery, I believe; and what shamans are are people who have been able to decondition themselves from the community's instinctual distrust of the mystery and to go into it, to go into this bewildering higher dimension and gain knowledge; recover the jewel lost at the beginning of time - save souls, cure, commune with the ancestors and so forth and so on. Shamanism is not a religion; it is a set of techniques and the principle technique is the use of psychedelic plants. What psychedelics do is they dissolve boundaries, and in the presence of dissolved boundaries one cannot continue to close one's eyes to the ruination of the earth, the poisoning of the seas, and the consequences of 2000 years of unchallenged dominator culture, based on monotheism, hatred of nature, suppression of the female, and so forth and so on. So what shamans have to do is act as exemplars by making this cosmic journey to the domain of the Gaian ideas and then bringing them back in the form of art to the struggle to save the world. The planet has a kind of intelligence that it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being. The message that nature sends is: Transform your language through a synergy between electronic culture and the psychedelic imagination, a synergy between dance and ideal, a synergy between understanding and intuition, and dissolve the boundaries that your culture has sanctioned between you. Become part of this Gaian supermodel. I mean I think it's fairly profound, it's fairly apocalyptic - history is ending; I mean we are to be the generation that witnesses the revelation of the purpose of the cosmos. History is the shock wave of the escaton; history is the shock wave of escatology; and what this means for those of us who will live through this transition into hyperspace is that we will be privileged to see the greatest release of concressed change probably since the birth of the universe. The 20th century is the shudder that announces the approaching cateracts of time over which our species and the destiny of this planet is about to be swept.         If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed. The emphasis in house music and rave culture on physiologically compatible rhythms and this sort of thing is really the rediscovery of the art of natural magic. The sound, that sound, properly understood, especially the percussive sound, can actually change neurologically the states, and large groups of people getting together in the presence of this kind of music are creating a telepathic community of bonding that hopefully will be strong enough then to carry the vision out into the mainstream of society; I think  the youth culture that is emerging in the 90s is an end of the millennium culture that is actually summing up Western civilisation and pointing us into an entirely different direction, that we are going to arrive in the third millennium in the middle of an archaic revival which will mean a revival of these physiologically empowering rhythm signatures, a new art, a new social vision, a new relationship to nature, to feminism, to ethos. All of these are taking hold ... and not a moment too soon.                             Now I've sorted the program out; it will detect the end of the scroll text. As a result we shall be going on to the next bit of the demo shortly .....   5     4     3     2     1                   