AGA-fixed by Noname in June 2026
The Loop
An Amiga OCS demo by Ghostown and Haujobb.
The Loop was released at Revision 2023, shown at Siggraph Asia 2023, and nominated for Best Midschool Production at The Meteoriks 2024.
Run the demo
The demo is made to be run from disk in endless loops, ideal for user meetings and demo parties.
Place the disk in the drive and reboot the machine. Alternatively, you can run it by double-clicking the demo icon, if you dare and have enough RAM.
Requirements
The Loop was made for:
- Amiga 500 / 1000 / 2000
- OCS
- 512 KB Chip RAM plus 512 KB Fast RAM, or 1 MB Chip RAM
- PAL timing recommended
The plain 68000 at 7 MHz is still supported. A 14 MHz 68000, real Fast RAM, or a 68020+ CPU makes disk loading and loop transitions more relaxed. The demo now runs fine on AGA chipset, too.
This fixed version was tested on real Amiga 500, 600/620, 1200/1260, and 4060 with Kickstarts ranging from 1.3, over 2 and 3.1 to 3.1.4.
We recommend running it on any Amiga with Kickstart 3.0 or better.
Version history
June 2026
AGA-fixed version, runs on Amiga 500 and 4060 and hopefully everything in between. The old GCC 11/12/13 build path was brought up to GCC 15, AGA palette handling was fixed, memory pressure was reduced, tons of warnings were fixed, timing/race issues on fast Amigas were addressed, including 1x1 zoom-rotator glitches on 68060.
March 2024
Final version, properly polished and looped, still targeted at OCS. Greetings-part split into two halves, refined voxel and tunnel timing, improved playfield equalizers and WB flip, added copper stretch, updated music, and streamed crunched overlay data from disk.
The overlay executable was a major part of this release: demo data is packed into an archive and attached to the load-file. The resulting executable file can be loaded from any AmigaDOS device, allowing on-demand access to files stored in the exe while the production is running. This was inspired by Titanics Cruncher, Deluxe Paint, and our own demo Mnemonics from 1999. This works from disk, HDD/CF, RAM/RAD, and even over network, e.g. using smbfs.
April 2023
Compo version for Revision 2023.
Physical disk edition
We made a boxed physical edition of The Loop, written back to the medium it was made for: a real Amiga disk, with printed label, cover artwork, all in a proper case!
The QR code image labelled "Getphysical" points to: https://www.dig-id.de/the-loop/
There you can find more context, pictures of the boxed edition, and various user submitted photos. Thank you! It seems like mail-swapping of physical disks is still a thing!
You can get a physical edition, too. Check the site and contact me.
Disks are hand-copied using X-Copy, mostly by my son :)
Credits
The Loop is a Ghostown and Haujobb production.
- Code
- Peabrain and Noname
- Graphics
- Slayer
- Music
- Virgill and Jazzcat
- ASCII
- Sim
Development used Bartman's excellent vscode-amiga-debug environment.
- C/C++ code was built using GCC bundled in that Visual Studio Code Extension.
- Assembly code was built with GNU assembler and vasm by Phoenix.
- Compilation coordinated by GNU Make 4.2.90.
- Music playback uses KPlayer by Moonstone.
- Crunched with Cranker by Bifat.
Special thanks to everyone who helped, motivated, supported, watched the demo, showed it around, got a physical edition, helped with hardware, or discussed demo-coding and life in general with us at parties or elsewhere.
Video sharing
Please read the included video-licence.txt before uploading your own capture of this demo.
Basically, we love seeing demos shared, but we ask you not to upload careless or monetized captures when the demo itself is the sole focus. Please share official videos and download links instead.
There is already a high-quality video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PcUj7SX7qA
WWW
If The Loop found a good place in your drive, leave a comment on Pouet or Demozoo, follow us on Facebook, or visit Noname's blog for more Amiga notes and background stories, e.g. a book-chapter, a cultural newspaper focussed on the demoscene, podcasts, and our Haujobb Amiga Framework: