Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Second Reality" in English language version.
The code is something like I had never seen before that perfectly represents two essential aspects of demomaking : Team work. Obfuscation.
Each Second Reality visual effects is a full DOS executable. They are called PART and there are 23 of them in total. This design decision allowed fast prototyping, simultaneous development (since FC probably did not have source control tools) and free languages choice (ASM, C and even Pascal can be found in the source).
There were many legends about Second Reality using an elaborated memory manager via the MMU but there is no trace of this in the engine. Memory management is actually delegated to DOS : The engine starts by deallocating all the RAM and then distribute it on demand. The only fancy trick is the ability to allocated RAM from the end of the heap: This is done using the return value of DOS malloc when too much RAM is requested.
It [the Music] comes from one of the greatest hack of all time: "Second Reality" by Future Crew. Yes a deal was signed so I could use the music.
