The demos below are generally older than the ones on the previous page and most of them were never completed but it is interesting (for me anyway!), to see how my coding ability developed over the course of a couple of years. You'll notice most of the demos are by "The Wizard", that's because that was my handle before I changed it to Sub Zero.

Sample Player 1 - 1990

Now this is old, I had just figured out how to rip samples from memory and also found a program to play back samples. I decided it would be cool to have a pile of samples in memory and be able to play them with a single keypress, so here is the result. It's simple but effective, there's also a very dodgy mix of the samples in there if you press the spacebar. The quality of the samples in this version are actually higher than in version two because of the fact that more was going on in version two. Download the file here.

Sample Player 2 - 1991

The updated version! Apart from the improved presentation, this version also had a number of new features, namely the ability to change the speed at which the samples were played at and samples could also be "stuttered" by pressing the control key. The mix in this version was also different, although whether you could say it was any better is another issue. Download the file here.

The Crystal Search Intro - 1990

My first game!! Well it would have been if I ever finished it. I started to code the title screen for the game and then I started the actually game, but after a while I decided to code an intro for the game first. The result of all this changing is a half finished intro and a very incomplete game. The intro was meant to have the scrolling stars screen (which is there) with a ship flying across it, which then crashed into a planet with the ship's power crystals spread all around the planet. The aim of the game was then.. guess..., to collect all the crystals and repair your ship!! P.S. Make sure you keep the fire button held down for a while to see the intro. Download the file here.

The Crystal Search - 1990

Here's a screenshot of the first (and only!) level, the game is actually in a sort of playable state. In that you can move the ball with a joy in port 2, jump by pressing up and using the fire button to fire a flame thing. There's no character collision or anyway of completing the level, but the baddies do move. Move to far to the right of the screen and your ball disappears back to the left, the sprite going over 255 pixels wasn't yet implemented either. The title screen for the game isn't actually too bad considering I didn't know anything about rasters and smooth scrolling back then. The animation of the main character is a little dodgy but all things considered it's not all that bad. Download the file here.

The Intro To Kenz - 1991

There is not much to this, it's just a small intro I coded when I was sending copies of the Sample Player and a few other things to Kenz at Binary Zone PD for a members disk he was doing. As you can see, I figured out nice smooth scrolling. I like the bouncing sprites as well. Press fire on joy two to get onto the next part of the intro. The second part was made using a demo maker but I did draw the logo and design the rasters on it. Download the file here.

Morning Has Broken - 1990 (?)

Well, I'm not going to say much about this. I got a disk from BZ with a lot of music editors so I thought I'd have a shot at writing something in them. This is the result and let's just say I'm glad I stuck to coding and the odd graphical work. Download the file here.

Iraq Demo - 1991 (?)

After seeing a cool demo on the Amiga about the war in Iraq I decided I'd try a C64 version of it. The Amiga demo was basically an animation in which I think, a tank was moving along and it was blown up by somebody blocking its gun turret or something like that. Anyway, my C64 version didn't get very fair, there's the screen on the right and when space is pressed, a map of Iraq comes up and that's as far as I got. I had a really bad habit of getting an idea, implementing a bit of it, thinking of a new cooler idea and moving onto that without completing the old idea! With this demo, I was kinda figuring out how rasters worked but hadn't quite got it yet. Download the file here.

The Little Girl Demo - 1991

Okay, okay, I know the name of this demo sounds REALLY bad, but believe me it had nothing to do with pre 18 year old girls. Over 18, well that's another story (hey I was 15, give me a break!). Anyway I didn't get anywhere near finishing it so it doesn't matter. The original plan for the demo was a intro screen with text and some rasters that would then move onto a screen of a picture of dubious moral content and a few rasters flying around. The screen on the right is about as far as I got. I still hadn't the full hang of rasters at this point, I moved them by changing the value to compare $d012 to, instead of just changing the values in a look up table. Download the file here.

SZ Warez Menu - 1992

Ahh this is more like it, onto 1992 when I was really learning how to do good things on the C64. This was meant to be a menu for all the demos on the previous web page. The plan was to have a pointer controlled by the joystick or mouse so that you could just click on the picture of which program you wished to load and it would load and run automatically. It would have been finished but I wanted to actually link all the small demo parts together to make a megademo but I never got around to it (story of my C64 programming life really..). Everything in the program is by me except the Last Ninja picture which I ripped from the remix version of the game. Download the file here.

Sinus Logo - 1994

Well, we are coming near the end of my C64 coding career. Around the end of 1992 after I had finished the small demos on the previous page I started to get bored of coding on the C64. I also got an Amiga around this time so I started to spend less time on the C64 although I still did use it. Coding on the C64 just seemed more like a chore than the fun it used to be. Around the end of 1992 or maybe even 1993 I almost finished a version of Combat from the old Atari VCS for the C64 but I can't find it at the moment. Anyway, i was still interested in the C64 in 1994 and was in contact with a few guys on the scene, namely a guy from the Irish group Ozone, he happened to mention sinus scrollers and I was asking him how the hell they were done. He told me and it seemed pretty easy so I messed around with it a little and came up with the quicky on the right. If I remember correctly, this was actually coded on a C64 assembler on the Amiga, assembled there and then transfered and run on my C128. Download the file here.

Internet Intro - 1995

This is it, the last thing I ever coded on the C64, during first year of college I discovered lots of web sites about the C64 and I was on #c-64 on IRC a fair bit. A guy called Coolhand on it was always trying to get me to code some more stuff (hell, he still is!) so I decided I'd write a little intro to kinda announce myself to all the C64 guys on IRC. I couldn't be bothered doing anything new so I just ripped bits from my old demos and tied them together. Well almost, I didn't finish this either! I almost did by the looks of it but I guess I was planning to add a few more things to it as well. Download the file here.

Apart from a few small AREXX things for my BBS on the Amiga I've never really coded anything for fun since. I'm not into computers these days in the same way I was back then (which is probably a very good thing, life is about people not machines) but I'll always have a fondness for those C64 days and I am quite proud of some of the stuff I produced. If you have any comments or questions about how any effects work etc. please drop me a line at iain_black@yahoo.com