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The Black Lotus

The Swedish group that kept winning on the Amiga

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A Swedish-based demo group formed in 1989 and known as TBL. It won the Amiga demo competition at The Gathering in 1996 and 1997, won again at Mekka & Symposium, Breakpoint and Revision in the 2000s and 2010s, and in 2006 its Amiga demo Starstruck won the main demo competition at Assembly, ahead of PC demos. It also released on the PC, the Atari Falcon, the PlayStation 2 and the PSP.

In August 2006 an Amiga demo won the main demo competition at Assembly in Helsinki. Starstruck, by The Black Lotus, scored 10,891 points in the same competition as the PC entries; its makers later wrote that it was shown in the WinUAE emulator. Fairlight’s Windows demo track one came second with 7,330. By then TBL had been winning Amiga competitions for ten years. Its demos took first place at The Gathering in Norway in 1996 and 1997, at Mekka & Symposium in Germany in 2001 and 2002, and at Breakpoint in 2003, 2004 and 2005. In 2000 the Danish magazine Amiga Advis reported that “everyone thought they were dead”. The group kept going. It won the Amiga demo competition at Revision in 2014 and again in 2019.

Fast facts

  • From: Sweden.
  • Active: formed in 1989; still releasing.
  • Platforms: mainly the Amiga, especially the AGA models; also the PC, the Atari ST and Falcon, the PlayStation 2 and the PSP.
  • Best known for: Tint (1996) and Captured Dreams (1997), winners at The Gathering; Ocean Machine (2005); Starstruck (2006), first at Assembly.
  • Members included: Rubberduck (a founder), the coders Equalizer, Offa and Kalms, the artists Louie and Tudor, and the musicians Azazel and Blaizer.

Early years

According to the scene database Demozoo, The Black Lotus was formed in 1989 by Rubberduck and an Atari coder who decided to start their own group on the Amiga. Its first releases were small: an Atari ST intro in 1991, then Amiga demos from 1992. The first real success came at The Gathering in Norway in April 1995, where the demo Cybernetic came third in the Amiga demo competition. That December TBL entered Mindprobe at The Party in Denmark. It used a chunky-to-planar routine: the program draws each frame into a simple buffer with one byte per pixel, and the routine converts it into the separate bitplanes the Amiga’s display hardware reads. Amiga Joker was unimpressed by the ending, a flight through a “pale, juddering 3D mountain range” that could have been left out, but told readers to try the demo anyway, because the chunky/planar technique alone made it worth the effort.

The Gathering, 1996 and 1997

The breakthrough came at The Gathering in April 1996. The organisers’ results put TBL’s Tint first in the Amiga demo competition with 458 points; the runner-up had 125. The group also took first and second place in the Amiga 4K intro competition, with Gizmo and EQ-4K. The Italian Amiga Magazine, looking back in 1997, listed Tint and Goa among the notable demos of 1996, with code by Offa, Equalizer and others and music by Azazel.

In March 1997 TBL won the same competition again, with Captured Dreams. It scored 1,752 points, more than 1,100 ahead of the runner-up. Amiga Format put The Gathering’s demos on its cover CD that June: “Don’t miss The Black Lotus’ Captured Dreams demo… it’s amazing!” TBL was working on the PC too. At the same party its PC demo Astral Blur came third, and that December its 64K intro Stash won the PC intro competition at The Party in Denmark.

Quiet, then back

After 1997 the Amiga releases thinned out. At The Party in December 1999 TBL’s Rain came third in the Amiga demo competition. Amiga Advis called it the most remarkable demo of the three, “delivered by none other than The Black Lotus (!). Everyone thought they were dead.” The reviewer noted that the code was not by the group’s “first” coders, Equalizer and Offa, but by Rubberduck. A few months later, at the small Danish party TRSAC in 2000, TBL’s demo Senseless won the Amiga demo competition although nobody from the group was there to collect the prize.

The next run of wins was built by Rubberduck and Kalms as coders, with the artists Louie and Tudor. The results files give TBL first place in the Amiga demo competition at Mekka & Symposium with Perfect Circle in 2001 and Little Nell in 2002, and at Breakpoint with Magia in 2003, Silkcut in 2004 and Ocean Machine in 2005. Silkcut and Ocean Machine were also converted to the Atari Falcon, fitted with a 68060 processor, by the Falcon coder MiKRO.

Starstruck and after

Starstruck came out at Assembly in August 2006, with code by Rubberduck, Kalms, Erique and ReJ, music by Blaizer and graphics by Tudor, Louie and Duffe, and MiKRO converted it to the Falcon too. It won the main demo competition against the PC entries, running in the WinUAE emulator on the competition machine, according to Kalms and Emoon’s 2018 release notes. TBL also made demos for game consoles: 4 Edges for the PlayStation 2 in 2006 and Suicide Barbie for the PSP in 2007.

The group was still winning on the Amiga years later. At Revision in Germany, its Rift came first in the Amiga demo competition in 2014, and Eon, written for the original Amiga chipset, came first in 2019.

Sources

See also

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