Goddes of Fuji – Numen for an 8-bit Atari
The most technologically advanced demo on the 8-bit Atari required as much as 130 kB of RAM to run smoothly.
Numen by Taquart! That’s a perfect topic for the first article. Numen (Latin word for goddes) debuted in 2002 at Polish demoparty „Lato ludzików”, it took first place in demo compo. Earliest and most technologically advanced part of this demo was made already in 1997 (authors called it „Turbo vectys” and it presents 3D blocks in last part).
But what it actually is? Imagine if Atari could run Doom – surrealistic, psychedelic version of Doom. It starts innocently with a walk outdoors, but the level of madness is rising rapidly. Soon we will jump into hyper toonels to see proud, purple torrus. We will find also two graphics, both were inspired by art published in early 90s issues of Fantastyka – Polish fantasy and science fiction magazine.
Among other effects, we can see interesting recursive zooming (and text feels like fractal), self-solving Rubik’s cube, break-dancing sticky figure (with very natural and smooth moves). You can also spot the authors travelling in a Viking boat. I love music. X-Ray composed a great track, starting as minimalistic, the composition evolves, gains tempo and unfolds into counterpoints.
Interesting fact – full source code of demo, as well as tools made by authors, is open-source and available on GitHub.
Authors: Fox – code; Eru – code; Dracon – graphics; X-Ray – music;
