Tomasz Pytel is a Polish-American programmer, better known as Tran / Renaissance

Renaissance (demogroup)

Renaissance was an American PC demo group started in 1991-1992 by founding members Mosaic, C.C. Catch, Daredevil, and Tran.- History and contributions :...

in the demoscene

Demoscene

The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...

. He is notable for creating the Timeless demo in 1994, and for co-creating the PMODE

PMODE

PMODE is a DOS extender used in several IBM PC compatible DOS applications in the mid and late 1990s. It was created by Thomas "Tran" Pytel, and the first version became publicly available in 1994. The original PMODE was written to be used with programs written in x86 assembler, specifically using...

 DOS extender

DOS extender

A DOS extender is a computer software program which enables software to run under a protected mode environment even though the host operating system is only capable of operating in real mode....

 with Charles Scheffold (a.k.a Daredevil). He was also the designer of the PC game Zone 66

Zone 66

Zone 66 is a top down shooting video game released in 1993 for the PC, that initially was released as shareware. The game involved controlling a number of aircraft over various landscapes destroying various targets....

. After that, he went to 3D Realms

3D Realms

3D Realms is a current video game publisher and former video game developer based in Garland, Texas, United States, established in 1987...

 and was one of lead programmers on Prey

Prey (video game)

Prey is a first-person shooter video game developed by Human Head Studios , and published by 2K Games. The Xbox 360 version was ported by Venom Games. The game was initially released in North America and Europe on 11 July 2006...

. Eventually, he moved to Palo Alto, California and became one of the lead programmers of the engine behind PayPal

PayPal

PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....

.

Demos

After leaving Renaissance, Tran created a trilogy of unique demo

Demo (computer programming)

A demo is a non-interactive multimedia presentation made within the computer subculture known as the demoscene. Demogroups create demos to demonstrate their abilities in programming, music, drawing, and 3D modeling...

s on the PC. All three looped indefinitely with ambient music

Ambient music

Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...

 in the background.

Timeless

Timeless is a demo running on the PC written in 1994. In the demo, images in the background morph and slide sideways, while the color scheme changes and other objects move around the screen. This made Timeless popular as a DOS screensaver

Screensaver

A screensaver is a type of computer program initially designed to prevent phosphor burn-in on CRT and plasma computer monitors by blanking the screen or filling it with moving images or patterns when the computer is not in use...

, both inside and outside the demoscene

Demoscene

The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes in producing demos, which are non-interactive audio-visual presentations that run in real-time on a computer...

. Music in the demo was composed by Tomasz Pytel himself.

Tran released the source to the demo, written entirely in Intel i386 assembler

Assembly language

An assembly language is a low-level programming language for computers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other programmable devices. It implements a symbolic representation of the machine codes and other constants needed to program a given CPU architecture...

 code. It features extensive use of unwound loops and complex use of instruction registers to reduce CPU cycles as much as possible. All data files, for artwork and for the graphics effects, appear in the source code as data statements. The demo features a DOS extender PMODE.ASM

PMODE

PMODE is a DOS extender used in several IBM PC compatible DOS applications in the mid and late 1990s. It was created by Thomas "Tran" Pytel, and the first version became publicly available in 1994. The original PMODE was written to be used with programs written in x86 assembler, specifically using...

 which evolved into a standalone product Tran licensed for money. There is also a work in progress linux port of the demo, written in C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

 and using the SDL

Simple DirectMedia Layer

Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform, free and open source multimedia library written in C that presents a simple interface to various platforms' graphics, sound, and input devices....

 library, and therefore portable to other architectures.

Timeless was featured on the rave culture website Hyperreal as "eyecandy" software.

Ambience

Released November 1994, this was Tran's first demo in which he used his pseudo 21-bit, 100Hz VGA mode. Music in the demo was Drops in Time by Ryan Cramer/Renaissance.

Luminati

Released January 1996. Music in the demo was The Zen Garden, by Basehead.

External links

• Open source version of Timeless ported to modern systems
• Timeless at Pouët.
• Ambience at Pouët.
• Luminati at Pouët.