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8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

trixter.oldskool.org

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Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

#91

Post by Gormo »

rasz_pl wrote: post #84
guard-of-terra wrote: post #4

I never knew CGA could do 16 colors. In my memory 16 colors is EGA.

King's Quest I did 16 colors on CGA

CGA wasn't natively capable of displaying 16 distinct colors in its higher-resolution modes. KQ1 - and a lot of games in that era - did 16 colors on CGA's composite mode by actually exploiting the peculiarities of NTSC video to generate color artifacts on the screen. If you were to view the same video on an RGB monitor, what you'd actually see would usually be a monochrome screen filled with varying patterns of narrow horizontal and vertical stripes.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#Special_...

Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

#93

Post by rasz_pl »

gaius wrote: post #92
rasz_pl wrote: post #85

This looks like reimplementation on animated GIF.

That is not at all like how GIF animation works. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format#A...

Umm yes it is?

"Some economy of data is possible where a frame need only rewrite a portion of the pixels of the display, because the Image Descriptor can define a smaller rectangle to be rescanned instead of the whole image"

Every frame of animated gif can choose to modify small portion of previously drawn image. This is why you cant display animated gif starting in the middle, you will only render moving parts until you loop whole thing.

This is precisely what Author implemented, he is encoding changes between frames, this way cpu has to only modify parts of display memory that are changing.

How is that not the way animated gif works?

Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

#95

Post by pjc50 »

rasz_pl wrote: post #93
gaius wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not at all like how GIF animation works. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format#A...

Umm yes it is? "Some economy of data is possible where a frame need only rewrite a portion of the pixels of the display, because the Image Descriptor can define a smaller rectangle to be rescanned instead of the whole image" Every frame of animated gif can choose to modify small portion of previously drawn image. This is why you cant display animated gif starting in the middle, you will only render moving parts until…

This is delta coding; it's part of animated GIF, which then applies LZW compression to the deltas. This guy has used RLE compression (like TIFF, I believe) instead.

Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

#96

Post by Audrey_II »

ketralnis wrote: post #90
Audrey_II wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible work! If only we had this kind of ingenuity today to get a simple graphics card working with Linux! Imagine the possibilities. One day, I might even have an option in Ubuntu to change the refresh rate to 60hz without entering 'xrandr -r 60' into the console EVERY DAMN TIME I REBOOT. Now, I know I'm going on a limb with this next one, but imagine if someone had the intelligence to code a universal installer…

> imagine if someone had the intelligence to code a universal installer that works every time and installed every piece of needed software all at once with zero user interaction What's stopping you?

The time it's taking to pull off a half-way usable Linux install, to answer your question.

Believe me, I'd love to hit the books, but I've got to reinstall Ubuntu for the third time after a failed GPU driver installation.

And don't get me started on the EXT4 Superblock fiasco...

Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

#97

Post by hereYouGo000 »

Audrey_II wrote: post #79
ajross wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out (on a quick scan I don't see this called out in the article itself) that the preprocessing involved in generating these executables is almost certainly not meaningfully possible on a 5150 PC. So while this might run on 1978-era hardware, it wouldn't have been possible for 1978-era hackers to create.

Incredible work! If only we had this kind of ingenuity today to get a simple graphics card working with Linux! Imagine the possibilities. One day, I might even have an option in Ubuntu to change the refresh rate to 60hz without entering 'xrandr -r 60' into the console EVERY DAMN TIME I REBOOT. Now, I know I'm going on a limb with this next one, but imagine if someone had the intelligence to code a universal installer…

https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/installation-guide/i386/automa...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9683357/ubuntu-run-comman...

Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

#98

Post by rbanffy »

voidlogic wrote: post #83
Audrey_II wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible work! If only we had this kind of ingenuity today to get a simple graphics card working with Linux! Imagine the possibilities. One day, I might even have an option in Ubuntu to change the refresh rate to 60hz without entering 'xrandr -r 60' into the console EVERY DAMN TIME I REBOOT. Now, I know I'm going on a limb with this next one, but imagine if someone had the intelligence to code a universal installer…

IMHO you are being down voted for being off topic, not necessarily for the accuracy of your thoughts. (I did not downvote you BTW, I take pitty on gray comments)

The tone and innacuracy certainly didn't help.

Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

#99

Post by rbanffy »

Audrey_II wrote: post #79
ajross wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth pointing out (on a quick scan I don't see this called out in the article itself) that the preprocessing involved in generating these executables is almost certainly not meaningfully possible on a 5150 PC. So while this might run on 1978-era hardware, it wouldn't have been possible for 1978-era hackers to create.

Incredible work! If only we had this kind of ingenuity today to get a simple graphics card working with Linux! Imagine the possibilities. One day, I might even have an option in Ubuntu to change the refresh rate to 60hz without entering 'xrandr -r 60' into the console EVERY DAMN TIME I REBOOT. Now, I know I'm going on a limb with this next one, but imagine if someone had the intelligence to code a universal installer…

> getting Linux to talk to a relatively unheard of device called an iPhone 5s! It sure would be nice getting pictures and video off this damn phone so I can free up space!

I do it all the time. All it takes is to plug the phone in.

Re: 8088 Domination Post-Mortem, Part 1

#100

Post by wiz21 »

jacquesm wrote: post #52
frownie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Try changing modes in the middle of the scan :)

Argh ! was that possible ? I actually stop playing with that with my last overscan "320 x +/- 240" attempt during which, for some reason, the screen beamer concentrated itself on exactly on scan line of the screen, rendering it super bright and emitting a super scary sound. My screen always had a darker line in the middle of it since that experiment :-( You could actually damage things by playing with hardware...
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