Scene.org Demoscene News Service

[ Demozoo ] Demozoo Archaeology W15/26: Classic Mac Demos

Last week Ramses shared with us the filebase of his old BBS, Uphold the Law. Being a pure demoscene board and running from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, it hosted many releases that have since then disappeared from the Internet. This includes 37 forgotten demos and intros for classical Macintosh machines from the second half of the 1990s which we now added to Demozoo, as well as a number of previously known Mac productions that were tagged as "lost". As we are not particularly versed in classic Mac emulation, we would highly welcome volunteers to screenshot these newly discovered productions.

[ scenemarket – latest listings ] PCMCIA Flash cards, 8-16MB

[Search] Storage Media · 20€ (by Saga Musix) I'm looking for PCMCIA Flash cards for my Alesis QSR synthesizer. They need to be at least 8MB, bigger also works but the extra capacity will just be wasted. Unfortunately these synthesizers are a bit picky in terms of card compatibility (see https://benweaver.info/alesis/) - I have tried several cards that were simply not recognized at all, other cards were recognized but resulted in some data not being read correctly. Just offer me anything that might be a fit and we'll figure out if it's worth a try. --- Interested? Claim this item at https://scene.market/listings/40 — or list your own stuff for free at https://scene.market

[ scenemarket – latest listings ] PCMCIA Flash cards, 8MB

[Offer] Storage Media · 37€/card (by Saga Musix) Nokia-branded PCMCIA Flash memory cards, 8MB MLC. They don't work for my use case so I'm reselling them for the price that I originally got them for. Price is per card, I have three of them. Also willing to trade them for memory cards that I can actually use (I can explain the details if needed) :) --- Interested? Claim this item at https://scene.market/listings/39 — or list your own stuff for free at https://scene.market

[ Atariscne.org - News ] GCC for asm Experts (and C/C++ Intermediates) - Part 5

← Register Allocation and the Cost Model

Fixing Post-Increment Addressing

Some years after high school, me and AiO worked at the same company for a while. I spent a lot of time at his apartment in Vimmerby, watching demos on my Falcon030 and his accelerated Amiga, playing Elite Frontier, and making grand plans for projects that mostly never shipped. I was going to write a Worms clone called Grubs, built around fractal-generated terrain and a neat paralax scrolling trick. In the end the only game released from that apartment was DB Phone Home, a 4K side-scrolling platformer for the Falcon. But the thing I remember most is reading AiO's copy of the MC68060 User's Manual.

The 68060 can not only do a multiply in two clockcycles, but execute two instructions at once!? Motorola called it superscalar, and I thought it was the most exciting thing in the world. I imagined what an Atari with this beast could do, and where the 68070 would take this — even wider issue, more parallelism, the same trajectory the industry was already on with the Pentium and the PowerPC. Of course, the 68070 never came. ColdFire does not quite count for me. Our beloved CPU family ended with the 68060, and the dream of wider superscalar m68k died with it.

But the industry kept going. GCC optimizes for that dream-made-real on other architectures: x86-64, ARM, RISC-V. Independent instructions that hardware can overlap or even reorder to execute over half a dozen instructions per cycle on for example an Apple Silicon M3/M4. This all works, as long as there are no data dependencies between consecutive operations. And this is where it goes wrong for us.

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Atari at the Revision Party?

So you’re thinking that at the big multi-format Revision Easter party, there isn’t anything of compelling interest for us Atari fans? That amongst the system smashing Amiga and PC releases, there simply isn’t anything there for *our* platform?

A first glance may make you leap to that conclusion, but a slower and more considered examination reveals there are traces of Atari and Atarians. We can be found in all sorts of unexpected places!

This is what we discovered for Easter 2026.

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Sillyventure 2026 SE website is online

The website for Sillyventure 2026 SE is online, featuring a new layout and several interesting new items and photos. 

So far about 30 people have registered. The party itself will take place from 30.07 - 02.08.2026.

🔗 Sillyventure 2026 SE website

You are all cordially invited to the 5th Black Valley. For the big 5, we're bringing you a bossa-nov'ing kickass invite!

So start doing that springtime checking of your tents and sleeping bags, plan your travels and start poking at your entries. See you 10-12 July in Blaker, Norway!

Get your tickets!

[Submitted by susencrusen]

Amiga Pack and Magazine for you to enjoy! Including bonusdisk!

Download here: https://nahkolor.c64.page/Speed75Revision.zip

[Submitted by magic]

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Whack a Virus - bug fix

YesCrew has released a bugfixed ST/TT version of their "Whack a Virus" game, fixing some minor issues (clean return to desktop).

🔗 Whack a Virus website

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Spectrum 512 Painter

Anima aka Percy/Light, proven specialist for Atari image online conversion tools also published "Spectrum 512 painter", a painting and conversion tool for Spectrum 512 pictures in a nice GEM appearance.

GEM layout in your browser (and yes, I know, the dull screenshot doesn't cover the colorfulness possible with this tool)

🔗 Spectrum 512 Painter

🔗 Spectrum 512 Painter on Github

[ Wanted! ] Support organizers wanted for Network & Partymeister / Compo Team / Infodesk @ NORDLICHT 2026

Nordlicht 2026 is cancelled - or is it?? Unexpected real world events forced us to give up our initial schedule for Nordlicht Demoparty in July 2026. The location owner has since offered us an alternative date to host the party, just one weekend after the one we had originally aimed for. This would be Thursday 30th July to August 2nd 2026. While the current orga staff cast their votes to decide whether or not to go forward with planning Nordlicht for this year or skip until 2027, we're also...

[ scenemarket – latest listings ] Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain - Big Box Map

[Search] Other · Surprise me (by lutherplissken) I have a copy of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain PC Big-Box, but it came without a map. I am looking for a copy of the map alone, or of course another copy of the Big-box, as long as it has a map too. --- Interested? Claim this item at https://scene.market/listings/38 — or list your own stuff for free at https://scene.market

[ Atariscne.org - News ] GCC for asm Experts (and C/C++ Intermediates) - Part 4

Register Allocation and the Cost Model

The m68k has 15 usable registers: d0-d7 and a0-a6 (a7 is the stack pointer, and sometimes a6 is also reserved as a frame pointer). For a CPU from 1979, this is actually quite generous; the 6502 has three, the Z80 and 8086 have seven or eight. So 15 should be plenty, right?

Not so fast. We have two register files with different capabilities. A pointer must be in an address register to dereference it. Most arithmetic must happen in data registers. For many use cases, we effectively have 7 or 8 registers to choose from, not 15. And if our function calls others, the ABI reserves the caller-clobbered registers, effectively leaving only ten registers: d3-d7/a2-a6 for free use with fastcall. When we run out, the allocator spills to the stack: on 68000, each 16-bit spill costs at least 16 cycles (8 to read, 8 to write back), and 32-bit values adds another 8. In a tight loop, it adds up fast.

When you write assembly, register allocation is intuition. You look at a routine and think: I need this value for the next three instructions, then I can reuse the register for something else. You juggle lifetimes in your head, naturally overlapping short-lived values. Teaching a computer this intuition is the fundamental challenge. The answer is to build a graph of which pseudo-registers are live simultaneously; two pseudos that overlap in lifetime interfere and cannot share a register. Then color the graph with K colors, one per available register, starting with the cheap caller-clobbered regs. When 19 pseudos from put_pixel compete for 15 registers, some will not fit — especially once you account for the data/address split — and those get spilled.

So how does GCC make the best of a difficult situation? 

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Revision 2026 shapshots

Here are a few snapshots from Revision, provided by Lotek Style and Samurai. thanks for sending those in!

Atarisceners spotted (from top left to down right): Havoc, Samurai, Havoc again (there can never be enough Havoc), NebulaH, Gunstick, Sgt Slayer (Atrocity!), JAC!, Lotek Style - not on the photo: Spiny and Havoc's friend with the sun glasses from last year ;p

A group photo may follow.

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Outline 2026 webpage online

The Outline Party 2026 will take place from May 14th to 17th! The freshly baked website is now available, so better get out your remote controls!

🔗 Outline 2026 website

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Adventures in Retro - A new diskmag for the ‘other’ 16 bitter!

Why is Atariscne.org reporting on a release of a new Amiga diskmag eh, CiH?

Well, yours truly offered to help out a friend, a little side-project, as it were.

‘Adventures in Retro’ is a long term project, created by a very good friend known as ‘Woodycool’ or Duncan, in civilian life. He’s a UK based retro-fan, primarily Amiga, but he also takes in a wide range of 8-bit interests, such as Commodore C16/Plus 4 and Amstrad CPC. He also owns and enjoys an Atari ST or two, so he’s living up to the ‘cool’ part of his nom-de-scene. 

Anyway, I’ve been tempted to add a few articles, the sort of thing that wouldn’t fit easily in to atariscene.org. There is the future possibility that this mag could be released in other formats, including Atari.

If you have one of the other 16 bit machines, here’s a link to the home page, with a download of the first issue. -  https://www.adv-in-retro.uk/ - It’s pretty compatible with most Amiga’s.

I do have an Amiga 600 waiting to be resurrected and slightly upgraded. I’ve been using the OSZX Online Amiga emulator in the meantime - OSZX Online Emulator

Anyway, enjoy!

CiH - Atariscne.org - April 2026.

[ Demozoo ] The Meteoriks 2026 - Congratulations, Laureates!

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for NEW TALENT goes to DJ_Level_3 & Marv1994 for Primer
https://demozoo.org/productions/371249

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for OUTSTANDING CONCEPT goes to ReelTime by Demostue Allst★rs
https://demozoo.org/productions/379064
with an Honorable Mention of No-CPU Challenge by Demostue Allst★rs
https://demozoo.org/productions/376675

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for BEST EXECUTABLE GRAPHICS goes to Heritages by iapafoto
https://demozoo.org/productions/371224

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for [b]BEST OLDSCHOOL PRODUCTION goes to
Codeboys & Endians by Booze Design
https://demozoo.org/productions/366745

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for BEST MIDSCHOOL PRODUCTION goes to
Vaporous by The Twitch Elite
https://demozoo.org/productions/371134

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for BEST SOUNDTRACK goes to AddMortem by Arise & Joker
https://demozoo.org/productions/370512

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for OUTSTANDING TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT goes to
Small64 by N64Brew
https://demozoo.org/productions/371258
with an Honorable Mention of The 2025 Rotozoomer Challenge by Batman Group, Capsule, DESiRE, DHS, Django, Lemon, Loonies, Tarnow & mis, TTE
https://demozoo.org/search/?q=%5Brotozoomer-challenge%5D+year%3A2025

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for BEST VISUALS goes to
Brute Concrete by Digital Dynamite & United Force
https://demozoo.org/productions/377656

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for BEST TINY INTRO
goes to
Party.DLL by Desire & Haujobb
https://demozoo.org/productions/371106
with an Honorable Mention of Starpath by HellMood / Desire
https://demozoo.org/productions/367702

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for BEST HIGH-END INTRO goes to
Tension by Digital Dynamite & Aenima
https://demozoo.org/productions/371364

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for BEST DIRECTION goes to
Hexer by LJ
https://demozoo.org/productions/371094

The Meteoriks Award 2026 for BEST HIGH-END DEMO goes to
BREACH by mfx
https://demozoo.org/productions/371397

[ Atariscne.org - News ] Revision 2026

It's Easter time - and of course Revision party is taking place. A few Atari sceners will be present. Maybe we can share some impressions from the party later.

Here is an Atarian's management summary of the timetable:

Saturday

• 6 pm - compo block including oldschool music compo and ASCII compo
• 10 pm - compo block including Amiga intro, 256 byte and oldschool demo

Sunday

• 4 pm - compo block including oldschool graphics
• 6 pm - compo block with oldschool 4k intro and game compo
• 9:30 pm - compo marathon for the fittest, including Amiga demo compo

🔗 Revision CCC live stream

🔗 Official Revision time table

[ OpenMPT - Open ModPlug Tracker ] OpenMPT 1.32.09.00 released

This small update to OpenMPT 1.32 is mostly a bugfix release.

We found that OpenMPT 1.32.07.00 and 1.32.08.00 were compiled with versions of Visual Studio that contained a code generation bug, and it is known that this resulted in at least one way to crash OpenMPT (through playing notes in a VST plugin editor). We cannot rule out that other parts of OpenMPT are affected in one way or another, so we strongly encourage you to upgrade immediately, to avoid any data loss. No, this is not an April Fool's prank.

Besides addressing this regression, a few other minor issues were fixed as well:

• Fixed disappearing spin buttons in the main toolbar when locking the screen or invoking a UAC prompt.
• The PPQ position reported to plugins was not updated if a module tick spanned multiple VST processing calls.
• The MIDI I/O Plugin sometimes sent multiple duplicate Song Position Pointer messages.

For a complete list of changes, have a look at the full version history. If you are upgrading from OpenMPT 1.31 or older, read the release notes to get a glimpse of the biggest changes.

[ scenemarket – latest listings ] Feline Frequencies Allstars Vol. 1½ cassettes

[Offer] Merchandise · €5 (or other, see description) (by lynn) made as a limited run of 10 back in 2020. never managed to get them all in people's hands due to circumstances :) selection of my Amiga MODs dubbed to cassette. comes with a free bandcamp download code that hopefully still works (if not, let me know). 1 per person :) €5 each, but i'm happy to trade it for something else i've asked on here, or just any cool kind of hardware or media you might have! I love floppies, videotape, laserdisc, any kind of media you can think of really, used or blank! colorful ones are best

[ Demozoo ] Demozoo Archaeology W14/26: Old DOS Gems

Throughout the past years, the archival teams of Demozoo and Scene.org have been working tirelessly to preserve old demoscene stuff from disks, CDs, tapes, and lost websites. From now on, we will present you with some highlights from the current excavations on a regular basis. This week, we have sifted through half-broken Wayback Machine captures to preserve releases from two MS-DOS era demoscene producers. First, we have Dual Processor System, a two-person outfit from Berlin who made oldschool intros and FM music in 1995-1996. And secondly, Albert Software Inc., who was, despite the name, a solitary coder on the Estonian island of Saaremaa. Happy Easter holidays! We'll be back soon with more preservation updates.

[ Atariscne.org - News ] 30 years of Exocet

The one and only Exocet has published an interesting résumé about his demoscene activities during the past 30 years on his blog 16 coleurs in French language.

In this summary you will find some interesting statistics, views, production examples and demo party photos.

"Vroum Paf" - a hidden gem, first place at Outline 2007, 16 colors

According to the visualized statistics Exocet had two major phases of activity, which might be typical for many sceners. One longer and rather normally distributed episode around the year 2000, when many graphics for demos like Odd stuff, many contributions to other groups like Alive team, YM-Rockerz, DHS, JFF, MJJ etc. were created. This period also originated many of the (bitter-)sweet character pictures in unique Exocet style.

Exocet's "Lapinots" - a classic and editor's all time favorite, among many!

And after a longer multi-year break around the year 2010 we witnessed a less excessive, but highly appreciated constant comeback on many different platforms until today.

"Enemy At The Gate Array" - winning picture at Shadow party 2025 oldschool graphics compo (Thomson T08 16 colors) - as Exocet puts it in the related text file, this one was "rushed with Grafx2 in a single day at the party place"

 

"Rate my ride" - That cat knows how to chose number plates.

 

🔗 30 years of demoscene on Exocet's blog "16 coleurs"

🔗 Exocet on Demozoo

[ scenemarket – latest listings ] Amiga ECS Agnus 8372A

[Offer] Computers · Buy me a drink (by cp_) 99.9% sure that it works :) --- Interested? Claim this item at https://scene.market/listings/36 — or list your own stuff for free at https://scene.market

[ Atariscne.org - News ] atrfs - Atari ATR disk image filesystem tool

Peter Kaczorowski published a tool for accessing and modifying Atari 8-Bit floppy disk images (ATR). This can be very handy for extracting, adding, updating or removing files from ATR images, directly via command line. The tool supports different kinds of Atari file systems and can be integrated in Midnight commander as well.   The functionality of atrfs reminds a bit to Krystone's extremely practical online disk image extractor for the bigger brother, the Atari ST with its ST/MSA-images. While the preference of a graphical or command line interface may be a matter of taste, the command line approach could turn out more sustainable regarding availability on the long term?   🔗 atrfs on Github

[ scenemarket – latest listings ] Arles Demoscene Awards bike courier bag no. 2

[Offer] Other · Buy me a drink (by Netpoet) This is the second of the two bike courier bags I had made from MAiN poster tarp. Same as with the other one: very good condition, just not used in years. Please raise your hand if you want to give it some love. --- Interested? Claim this item at https://scene.market/listings/35 — or list your own stuff for free at https://scene.market