[zxspectrum] The status of the Spectrum scene worldwide and in Russia in particular

The status of the Spectrum scene worldwide and in Russia in particular

by Elfh of Inward / CPU

 

More than two years passed since I last spoke about this topic in the magazine 
'Pain'. These kinds of articles are rare, simply because not much is happening 
on this platform these days. If you look at the list of Spectrum productions 
released in the last 2-3 years, then you'll notice 3-5 groups, making demos and 
intros and releasing them at the same parties each year. Nevertheless, if we 
compare 2006 and 2007, then it is easy to notice that more interesting works 
were made this year. Recalling last year's Chaos Constructions, I only feel 
despondency, because at the main event of last year in Russia, there were only 
three productions made by two groups released. And I took part in creating two 
of them. Now, try to imagine my feelings after the democompo: disappointment 
and bad mood chased me for a long time, until I visited Breakpoint 2007 and got 
cured completely.

 

Now it is time to speak about highlights of the 'speccy' scene, coming from my 
subjective  point of view.

 

I'll start with the last year's Scene.org Awards, where our demo 'I am the 
seed' was presented in the two nominations 'Best Demo on an Oldschool Platform' 
and 'Best Effects'. It didn't win, but the fact, that more European people paid 
attention to the speccy demos released in Russia, made a lot of people happy. 
As I mentioned above, this year we made a trip to Breakpoint with our demo 
'Your song is quiet' and got a lot of unforgettable moments. For me this all 
seems like a part of our integration into the world-wide demoscene, because 
Russia is still disconnected from it a bit.



 

Your song is quiet by Inward/CPU

 

 

Continuing on this topic I'd like to also joyfully mention that a young team 
named 'Ate Bit', formed in 2004, won the 'Most Original Concept' award this 
time. They really brought their own style, upholding oldschool traditions even 
today.

 



Oldskool Invitro Maker by Ate Bit 

 

Icabod/Raww Arse is holding the speccy demoparty Raww orgy since 2005. What is 
really astonishing here is that he can attract people to the party whose works 
I never thought to be released anywhere. For example, Pissedbob from the very 
old speccy demo crew Technium 220 scored first place in the 256b intro 
competition, having done something for the first time after a 10-years-hiatus. 
Also, a new team from Russia - Debris, revealed itself for the first time at 
Raww orgy 2007, too.

 

In the middle of this year Skrju, who blew the demoscene away with their works 
in 2002-2005, started to make demos again after a break for 1,5 years, when the 
fate of the group remained unknown. Sq - their coder, recently moved to Rybinsk 
- a small Russian town with a population of 300'000 people, where the majority 
of CyberPunks Unity lives, including me. Their first work in this year was 
called 'Almost here' and featured views of my hometown. It was released at 
Forever 8 demoparty and got the 1st place.

 



Almost here by Skrju

 

Not long time ago, in Nizhniy Novgorod the party DiHalt was held, which is one 
of two demoscene events held in Russia each year. I think that 100-150 
attendees is a very small quantity of people for the major European 
demoparties, but in Russia, the scene is having a hard time now. That's is why 
it was very good for us. Besides that, holding Chaos Constructions which had 
the status of being the biggest demoscene event in Russia for the last 3 years, 
was uncertain, because organizers are in lack of money. The situation with CC 
became clear only after DiHalt, when organizers announced that it would be 
held, but on a smaller scale, than last year. Speaking of DiHalt I must say, 
that party made me happy, because of good new demos from 4D+Triebkraft, CPU and 
Skrju. In particular, I was impressed by the work of 4D+TBK, who came up with a 
new style and won the compo. 

 



Ugly kid, magic star by TBK+4D

http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=30901

 



Another one day by CyberPunks Unity

http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=30905

 



InSilver by Skrju

http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=30902

 

As a lot of you already know, the ZX-Spectrum was spread in Russia because of

radio amateurs, who hacked original machines and started to produce homebrew 
clones using cheap Russian parts. Nowadays, people craving for spectrum 
compatible hardware developments are still omnipresent. If you visit  
http://zx.pk.ru - a Russian speccy forum, you will find 3-4 currently discussed 
threads about new clones in the 'Hardware' topic. Some of those machines have 
extended graphics or sound features and some don't go further than the standard 
speccy 48. I've seen a few foreign sites with such developments too, and one 
thing that I am not sure of, is: does anyone else except developers use those 
machines? It is like the demoscene, but dealing only with hardware, where 
everyone is doing what he likes. So, I think a hardware exhibition at Chaos 
Constructions 2007 would be cool, if all those people bring their machines. 
Like in 2006, when we were shown a streaming video with sound, using ATM Turbo 
2+ IDE Cd-rom.

 

One of the few Russian groups who really promote their spectrum-related 
hardware is Nedo pc (http://www.nedopc.org). They started with producing one of 
the most enhanced clones of the past century - the ATM Turbo 2+ 
(7mhz/1Mb/IDE/Covox/new screen resolutions),  originally designed by the 
company Microart in the late nineties. Then they produced the Turbo-AY card 
which included 2 AY chips (6 channels instead of 3) and could be installed into 
any speccy on the place of a standard AY. This card was originally designed by 
Himik ZxZ in 2000 or so, but was not spread very much. Nedo pc improved the 
scheme and gave some cards as prizes at demoparties, so a lot of people are 
owning this device. They also done cheap and good pal-coders, so connecting 
speccy to a standard TV became much easier now. And finally, they presented 
Turbo-FM board this year, which included 6 channels of AY sound and 6 FM 
channels. Editors for this device exist only for Windows at this moment. The 
first compo for this sound card was held at DiHalt this year.

 



Turbo-FM card

 

 

In spite of all those hardware developments, the Pentagon remains the standard 
speccy demoscene machine since the first Russian demoparties. Nearly all demos 
still work with 128kb ram; 3.5 mhz and AY/YM sound chip. Thanks to the Moscow 
hardware developer with the deterrent nickname King of Evil it became possible 
to buy new boards of this machine, built with Altera chip. The main differences 
to the original is a 1mb onboard memory, done with simm, 7mhz turbo mode and 
4bit per dot color mode with the possibility to turn it all off. The board 
costs 100$ and could easily be installed into the ATX case. This board also has 
ZX-Bus slots to connect new devices, such as IDE controllers or SD card 
readers, which is still in development.

 



Pentagon 1024sl v2.2

 

The construction of new sound devices pushed musicians to be more creative, of 
course. And here comes the new Ubiktune netlabel created by C-jeff with Newart 
and oriented on releasing speccy musics in various formats. It started in 2006 
with the 'konami' album by C-jeff. In 2007 they continued with the release of 
an album by Karbofos written with the Turbo-AY card. I look into the future of 
Ubiktune with hope, because it might speed up the progress of modern speccy 
musicians. Because I don't like current situation with only two composers 
(nq/skrju and simon/cpu) writing music for all Russian speccy demos, except 
some rarely seen stuff by me. I don't want to say that they are composing bad 
songs - no, I just think that seeing new names here would be great.  

 

Now a few words about speccy games, released in Russia. The center of the 
speccy gamedev community is the group Perspective, which releases a printed mag 
about speccy named Abzatz. They also distribute some games from Russian authors 
and carry out annual 'Your game' contests with a prize fund about 200$. Games 
taking part in this contest are commercially spread (6$ for the disk with all 
the entries). Usually 3-5 are released on there. I will not speak about the 
quality, because I am simply not very interested and didn't even see the 
entries from last year's participants. I should say that game development 
stands a bit out of the demoscene here. In spite of the fact, that people are 
not gaining big financial profit with this.

 

This article wouldn't reflect the full current situation if I did not mention 
the most important problems, at least how I see them. First comes the language 
barrier, which prevents Russians from integrating with the world-wide demoscene 
on a full scale. Yes, it is true - a lot of people here neither speak nor 
understand the English language. Some time ago CPU tried to improve the 
situation a bit, releasing the bilingual spectrum mag Adventurer. It is hard to 
say whether it gave us some positive results or not, but at least we tried. And 
now comes the second problem - there is no single mag devoted to the speccy 
demoscene now, not even in Russian language. Some mags are released from time 
to time, but they are not covering all aspects of the demoscene. Guys from the 
Simbols group, who were silent for about two years, promise to continue 
releasing their Genz mag this summer, but without any English language 
articles, I think.  Another obnoxious thing is that Russian scene on various 
platforms is not united. We still have some kind of cold war between PC, Amiga 
and the Spectrum. Single groups communicate, of course, but when you are at the 
party, you can feel the division.

 

Forecasting the development of the demoscene on the Spectrum in the nearest 
future, I can say something regarding the appearance of productions, which will 
use enhanced possibilities of modern clones. It is still in an early 
exploration stage and only few people are working on this. For example, not 
long time ago Alone Coder released a demo, where he illustrated a hardware 
scroller in hi-res colour mode on ATM-Turbo 2+. This feature was undocumented 
in manuals and no emulators are able to work with this properly. He also 
released Ball Game - a game for 16 colours per dot mode on Pentagon 1024sl v2.2 
and ATM Turbo2+. As far as I know, it is available for MSX now. I also hope to 
see a return of some oldskool people to the scene, who left it in the late 90s. 
Now a lot of them have a more stable social life and some old names were 
already seen in forums. With modern development tools like SjAsm,Vortex Tracker 
and good emulators it has become possible to work more comfortably everywhere 
using PC's. Of course, watching demos and listening to music on a real machine 
always brings more joy to everyone though.

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