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                                  .Credits.
                                  ---------
                      Code, music: Seven
                      tools used:  Crinkler, custom tools

                                .Requirements.
                                --------------
     * To run perfectly, the compo version of this 1K should run at exactly 60 FPS.
       Otherwise it will run slower or faster than it was designed for. To ensure this,
       you need:
        - A very fast video card with lots of Pixel Shader 4.0 compatible shader pipelines.
          It was designed to run in 1280*720 mode on a RTX 2070 Super (which was in the compo
          machine). Sorry for the high hardware requirements but a 1K doesn't leave much
	     space for speed-optimisations.... The intro should work on Nvidia and AMD cards.
     	  - V-Sync set to Always On in the drivers
     	  - AMD Optimize Power or the equivalent Nvidia feature that limits the FPS to 30
          should be turned off in the drivers.
	* Safe version will be released later.
     * 200 MB ram (for the Crinkler decompression)
     * Tested on Windows 7 and 10, might even run on Windows XP
     * 1 kb diskspace

                                  .Thank You
                                  ----------
           - Blueberry and Mentor for Crinkler 2.3
		- Knighty for the Cosmos fractal, again.
		- The Assembly organizers for keeping Assembly alive in this rather bizarre year.
           
                              .About the intro.
                              -----------------
This intro was inspired by the typical spaceships seen on science-fiction covers from the 70s/80s, by Chriss Foss and others: huge bulky machines with ocean-liner portholes everywhere and nonsensical colored stripes and surfaces, giving them a very industrial look. I also wanted to re-visit my "Escape through subspace" intro, since space and fractals are a very pleasing combination, Crinkler has improved again and I learned a few new tricks.

Due to the corona situation I knew Assembly would be postponed, so I wasn't in a hurry. During the summer I dabbled with procedurally-generated spaceships, but that was it. In the fall I had the idea of ships flying through a warp gate, so I searched a formula that would fit both ships and a gate. I also wanted to make a static version of Knightys Cosmos fractal, with only smaller stars, and during my experiments I found a very pleasing geometric-looking 2D fractal which had an inversion when animating one of its parameters. So that got incorparated as a warp effect.

The weekend before Assembly I started working on the direction, and improved my shader minifier a bit more. On sunday evening I finally bothered to read Pouet thread, and realized the deadline was not on thursday or friday as usual, but on tuesday noon. I took some days off and started working fulltime on the intro. Hours were spend changing the random seed, hoping that all 4 ship types looked OK. Then repeat for the gate. Then find some optimisation that requires a change in the ship formula, and re-start searching anew... Minimal sound was added in the assembler code of a previous intro. 

When testing on an AMD card, I realized my formula relied on undefined behavor (multiple calls to a random function as parameters, and the order in which parameters are evaluated isn't defined...) Updating the AMD drivers actually caused my editor to misbehave, so I had to drop AMD support for the first time in my career, as there wasn't time for a new search :( . 15 minutes before the deadline, I submitted the intro. 

But after some sleep, I was unhappy with the result: the assembler code was unoptimized, the ships were supposed to fly to the gate but since only the camera moves, it looks as if they fly backwards etc etc,. So I added some color(almost the same fractal as the stars), reversed the ship direction and tweaked the duration for shorter end-checking in the intro. The intro was still over the limit (again) when I got a call from Finland: the organizers had trouble capturing the intro in fullscreen and asked for a windowed version. Since I hadn't kept the old code, I had to tie up everything quickly, which of course proved to be more work than expected, but at least now pretty much every byte is used. I hope you enjoy it!

                      .                                  .
                   .:._\  _\.............................:..
                    : \   \                              :
                   ::  '   \ Fulcrum memberstatus:       ::
                    :      ------------------------      :
                   :.   seven.....................code   .:
                    :   coplan...................music   :
                    :   el.blanco................music   : 
                    :   ranger.rick..............music   :
                    :   the.watcher.........code,music   :
                    :   yncke.................graphics   :     
                    :   miss.saigon..............music   :
                    :   kneebiter.................code   :     .
                     ::                                ::     /     .
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       .: . .........:          visit us at :           :..../..... . :.
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           ' ''::::::: . http://www.fulcrum-demo.org/ . :::::::' '
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                   ascii:..sim1/theloop,.titan,.wanted.team

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                       : use AMIGA TOPAZ fonts, please :

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