About this introThis intro was originally made back in August of 1994 for MSDOS PCs. As there are no longer any MSDOS PCs left in the wild, as something to do I decided to convert it to Windows one boring week at work in June 2001. The original intro was written in 100% 386 assembly language and utilised something called ModeX which has no equivalent in Windows. So the job of converting it to a C-language Windows program turned out to be not trivial. To make sure the intro played exactly the same as the original I basically just converted the assembly language mnemonics into C-language equivalents. Therefore as a C program it is abysmal, so don't look at the code and be shocked. The important thing is it does play the original intro exactly as it appeared back then, except for some minor glitches. There are some slight colour "flickers" every now and then, and the music's loop has a slight gap unlike the original due to a fault of SDL_mixer. The final text was the original ANSI credits text, but of course ANSI support has also disappeared in modern OSes, so now doesn't look so good, and may require the intro to be run from a DOS prompt to see. The addresses listed in the final credits, of course, are way out of date so please don't bother sending mail to them. This remake has only just been released now (Jan 2006) as I only just got off my ass to fix the last couple of problems. For the original .NFO file distributed with the intro, check INSPIRAT.NFO. Once again, this only looks correct in an ANSI viewer. Oh well. Excuse the rather puerile writing in the .NFO and the scroll-text; it was 12 years ago when I wrote them. The intro is pretty standard stuff, though it did have one notable feature in that it used full perspective-correct texture-mapping for the Reality logo. This isn't a big deal these days, but remember this intro was developed only a few months after DOOM came out, and a long time before Quake, the first game to main-stream perspective-correct texturing at all degrees of freedom. Just my little claim to fame. The remake uses SDL to make the conversion process much easier. The original 1994 intro included everything in the same file, including the .NFO file. It even included extra graphics (nude woman holding a sign) for instances when the intro couldn't run due to not enough memory. The working data for this version is split into four; the executable, two SDL libraries, and the music track. This remake was actually developed on a Sun Ultra 5 running Solaris 8 and ran perfectly, even down to the music. For cross-platform development, SDL just plain rocks. The only downside was the way SDL_mixer internally forces MikMod to not allow Pattern Jump commands so mod tracks that use PJ to loop, don't. Guess what the mod track that was used for the intro used... Of the demo-group Reality, sadly not much is left. We're now all split around the world and haven't produced anything in years. Although, like the series Red Dwarf, we have never actually officially disbanded, it seems highly unlikely there'll ever be another Reality production.
Where are they now?Shayde: Now usually goes by the name PlayerX, he went on to develop two popular online games that had developed large communities, though both are now defunct. He is currently working on an original MMORPG of his own, which at the time of writing was at approximately 100,000 lines of code. Resides in New Zealand. Rogue: Formally known as Bad Grafix (despite his graphics being far from bad), he has had much success founding and running his own web-development companies. At time of writing resides New Zealand, but is moving to England. Void: The group's musician, he also single-handedly produced the code, graphics and music for two of our intros along with countless music mods. Unfortunately none of his true musical talent is present in Inspiration as the music used was actually his remix of two tracks made by other musicians, which is a shame as his own musical talents are prodigious. We were looking for a very specific sound for the intro which these two tracks fit perfectly, so were unable to utilise Void's resources fully. Currently resides in Australia. Myth: Went pretty quiet after this intro was released but was one of the founding members of Reality (along with Bad Grafix and Shayde) and so will always be a part of the group. Resides in Australia.
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