Wiz / Imphobia here.. Damn, that is dedication. I didn't know there was a 160x200 X 4 bits resolution on the CGA card. How was that activated ?
8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1
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Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1
#22Wiz / Imphobia here.. Damn, that is dedication. I didn't know there was a 160x200 X 4 bits resolution on the CGA card. How was that activated ?
forget about it, the answer to my question was written below my post :-) kudo for the video on the XT !
Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1
#23I never knew CGA could do 16 colors. In my memory 16 colors is EGA.
That caught my attention as well. I wish I knew this trick 3 decades ago.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#160.C3.9...
Interstingly they talk about the "change palette in the middle of the screen" tricks that we used in Imphobia. The precision timing was certainly tricky, especially when playing a MOD-file while drawing ! Ahhh memories...
Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1
#24That's absolutely insane at that clockrate. The way I would get 'animations' (for want of a better term) done is by rendering them frame-by-frame, compressing that and then playing it back at high speed. And even that was next to impossible. Decompressing video @60fps, and doing real-time dithering to increase the effective number of colours and still have time enough for 45KHz audio is totally nuts. This qualifies a…
For me, the most interesting part is that his solution - updating only the changed parts between each frame and the previous one, and approximating the changes so that they're not (too) visually perceptible in order to satisfy a bitrate constraint - is one of the ways that modern video codecs achieve their compression. I agree it's also amazing that apparently, the true limitations of hardware from over 30 years ago…
> "throw more brainpower at it"
Back then there was simply no other way. I remember doing a 3D real-time fly-by of a big architectural development in Amsterdam ("Meervaart") in the 80's. I custom built the machine, pulled a trick where I clocked the fp coprocessor faster than the main processor, had a tseng graphics card (just about as fast as it would go at the time). And all the rest was software, hidden line removal, 800x600 on some primitve beamer at 25 fps. It was the best I could do at the time and it took many weeks to prepare for that demo. Just digitizing the whole neighbourhood was a monks job, I still have the aerial photograph as a souvenir from the job.
I got paid with a rusty old car that I wanted the engine from :)
Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1
#25Amazing!
Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1
#26The work is very impressive, but the part I loved most was how even after deciding the problem was "impossible" to solve, he kept at it: > "Then I thought about the problem for 7 years."
In the demoscene, doing the impossible was just regular behaviour :-) Just look at what they get out of a mere C64...
Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1
#27Wiz / Imphobia here.. Damn, that is dedication. I didn't know there was a 160x200 X 4 bits resolution on the CGA card. How was that activated ?
Wikipedia has a bit under "special effects on composite monitors" http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter
Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1
#28This is truly impressive, I'm amazed by how fast it renders. So I guess Mr. Gates was right, you only need 64k...
and no more than 4.77mhz.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" - Thomas J. Watson, 1943.
Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1
#29That's absolutely insane at that clockrate. The way I would get 'animations' (for want of a better term) done is by rendering them frame-by-frame, compressing that and then playing it back at high speed. And even that was next to impossible. Decompressing video @60fps, and doing real-time dithering to increase the effective number of colours and still have time enough for 45KHz audio is totally nuts. This qualifies a…
"This qualifies as art, not just software." For me there was never any doubt. A bit unrelated, but I've got an old 5150 at my parent's place, so when I'm visiting next Xmas I'll try to load this demo onto it. The only problem is that of transferring files to it. It only has a 5.25" floppy drive, and I don't have a means to copy files onto those floppies. Any suggestions?
KryoFlux is a USB-based floppy controller
http://www.kryoflux.com/
Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1
#30The author mentions getting involved with Video for Windows in the early '90s. For a laugh, here's some official VfW sample video from 1992 for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4ieKNtZ8yY