Hi, I'm oberje' and I was once a proud member of The Fingerbobs.
The Fingerbob's were a (mainly) ST demo crew which produced demos between 1989 and 1992. Here I've gathered up what I can find from that era, along with source code where possible. The simple fact is that most of that stuff is lost forever, but what most of what I do have is here.
The programs listed below have all been tested as working in the STeem 3.2 emulator. I have also tested this stuff with Hatari 1.2.0, which seems to mostly work, and with Saint 2.12 which works except for the STE hardware scrolling stuff, which it doesn't get right at all!
Where there is source, I tested that it built okay, and it does.
Please enjoy this small slice of history...
Update: 20090131TCC has dug out what he has of the last Fingerbobs prod, which was never released. I didn't do anything much for this one, except I think it may have been using my disk code. I'm going to try and put a working version together if we have all the files we need. Update: 20090205I have updated the Quite Big Demo with source code & a freshy assembled executable that runs from and exits to the desktop with no crashee crashee. I have found my first ever, ever, ever screen on a compilation disk. I'll add it here when I figure out how to extract it. I don't remember releasing it though :-) I have arranged the prods into what I think is approximately the correct chronological order. I probably made a few mistakes. Update: 20090217I have fixed the Naff Demo so it exits to the desktop properly. Update: 20090218I have reversed the Naff Demo and added the Source Code. |
Holburn Software Demo ('89)This was my first complete screen. It managed to pack in sprites, barrel scroller, text scroller, distorted logo and rasters. I think this was not bad for a first attempt. As an added bonus, since this was for a Computer Shop, I managed to get "paid" in blank disks for my efforts! Sadly I have no source for this one, though I think it was released via a couple of PD Libraries. I'm interested if anyone spots it! |
Fingerbobs New Year Demo '90Our first "BIG" Demo. I think I coded the whole thing in the 2-3 weeks around Christmas & New Year 1990. It looks quite ropey to me now, but I think it was probably okay at the time. I don't have source for this anymore, but I know the source was released via a couple of PD Libraries, so if anyone sees it please let me know! |
Insignificant Demo ('90)This was our contribution to the "Decade Demo" by the Inner Circle. If I remember correctly we did this immediately after the New Year Demo (See above). It was also the first time Mr Pixar supplied the graphics. I also ported this to PC a year or two later, but I'm not going to put that up on this page, besides no modern OS will touch it! |
Naff Demo ('90)This screen was written shortly after the "Insignificant Demo" and was also intended for the "Decade Demo". However for some reason it was not included. Eventually I did release it on a "Ripped Off" demo compilation disk. ( Hi Stick! Hi Bilbo! ). The music was from "Seven Gates of Jambala" and is very cool. I personally really liked this one. I no longer have the original source, but I have disassembled it instead. |
Fast Formatter ('90)This is just a little utility I knocked up to create disks that loaded faster. There's no magic here as it just skewed the physical location of the sectors to better account for track to track seek time. Anyway, I guess it might be of interest to someone, so here it is. |
Bootsector Stuff ('89-'90)I found the idea of putting little demos on a bootsector quite intriquing. Later of course this became an actual category in demo competitions. However at the time I tried it, I don't believe I'd seen anyone else try it. The provided zip contains my 3 attempts (with source), as well as a Bootsector writer program I developed which was published on Disk Maggie #3. My first boot demo "Stars" seems to have been widely adopted since it appears on a significant number of the Disk images I've downloaded! |
STE Tracker Player ('90)This was my attempt to create a STe tracker module player using the funky new hardware. Running it on the emulator it sounds noisier than I remember, but since I can't test with a real STe (I have no ST hardware anymore) I can't tell if it was really that bad. Maybe it was, maybe I'll fix it now :-) There's code for the module player, and a player program which I created for "The Demo Club" PD Library. |
Disk Maggie Intro ('91 maybe)Not much to say about this one. Sammy Joe of the Lost Boys asked me to submit an intro for use in Disk Maggie, and this is what I came up with. It appeared on Disk Maggie #3 I think. Actually there is more to say... the 3D code is total shit. At the time I didn't know you could use matrices for 3D rotations so this code does it the stupid way! Oh well, we live and learn... |
Fullscreen ('91)When I went to visit Stick & Bilbo of "Ripped Off" the first time, this little screen resulted. I had neither the time nor the inclination to spend all weekend counting cycles (there was beer to be drunk!) so this uses a simple low cost text printer, and does little else. Stick created the graphics. I think this appeared on one of the "Ripped Off" disks. |
Unamed IntroMr Pixar made a very cool colour palette based animation and this intro for "Ripped Off" showcased it to the world. TCC wrote the code. |
Screen for NTM Demo by Zuul ('91)I created this for the NTM Demo by Zuul, which did eventually get released, though I do seem to remember there was a lengthy delay. Standard fare on offer here. |
STE Scrolling Test ('91)This is just some code to demonstrate STe hardware scrolling of a tile based map. It worked. Little else to say except that there's source code. STe only, obviously. |
Quite Big Demo ('92 I think)Mr Pixar went mental and expanded his colour palette animation picture to 3x2 screens in size (Think that's right), TCC put the code together, and the result was the Fingerbob's contribution to the PETE demo. This one's STe only because it uses the hardware scrolling. |
Cube ('92) [Unfinished]This is a screen I was making for the forthcoming "Genetix" demo by the Inner Circle. I'm not sure exactly why this was never finished, but most likely it's because I had a full-time programming job to contend with. The cube scroller sure took a lot of CPU time, but there was some left over, though I never did decide what to do with it. As an interesting little note, when I asked Mr Pixar to draw me rotating cube sprites on the telephone, he misheard me and instead created some quite wonderful rotating "Q" sprites. Must have been a bad line :-) |
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The Fingerbobs on Pouet.net |