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Break down of a C64 demo effect

nurpax.github.io

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Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#11

Post by digi_owl »

cromwellian wrote: post #10
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was an amazingly capable machine, and the folks who exploited every little aspect were/are clever as hell. If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. It was the only way you'd get anything done and if there is one thing that will bring out the hacker in people it is a bunch of unreasonable constraints and a job that needs to be done anyway.

Yup, constraint = hack/freedom is one of the paradoxes as long as there are hidden degrees of freedom that can break the constraints. Here’s some old c64 intros I did, including a trick of bank switching to fake z ordering of fonts and sprite scs rasters, as well as using FLD to stabilize rasters in the presence of moving sprites in both PAL/NTSC modes. https://youtu.be/aViXXbUg_yU

I think it may be less "constraint" and more "fixed platform".

Meaning that every C64 was like very other C64, so you knew what you had to work with on the hardware side.

You could see this with consoles as well, as the games steadily improved as developers learned how to push that fixed hardware around (though the cartridge ones often allowed in-cart chips to assist).

I guess we have gotten so incredibly used to either being able upgrade piecemeal, or simply replace wholesale every few years, that having a steady set of hardware to explore and learn has become "foreign" in a way.

Compare and contrast the C64 and say the RPi. the former was more or less steady for 24 years, while the latter have been releasing beefier variants every 2 years or so.

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#12

Post by digi_owl »

panic wrote: post #9
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was an amazingly capable machine, and the folks who exploited every little aspect were/are clever as hell. If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. It was the only way you'd get anything done and if there is one thing that will bring out the hacker in people it is a bunch of unreasonable constraints and a job that needs to be done anyway.

The great thing about the C64 is that it never changes. It's the same hardware as it was last year, and it'll be the same hardware next year. Modern systems have plenty of unreasonable constraints, but the foundations are always shifting. How many cool web hacks from 5 or 10 years ago will run unmodified on a modern web browser?

Yeah, i just pulled up a list of RPi variants to check and it has been releasing new generation Bs every 2 years or so.

In those years it has gone from a 700mhz single core ARM11, to a 1.4ghz quad core Cortex A53.

The c64 in contrast stayed largely fixed for over 2 decades!

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#13

Post by dwd »

As someone who spend half their teenage years drawing on graph paper creating custom character sets for use with graphics and large sprites, this is a pretty cool and novel way to do an animation.

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#14

Post by userbinator »

jacquesm wrote: post #5
burnte wrote: post #2

David Murray, the 8 Bit Guy on Youtube, he doesn't have the best delivery but he's a fascinating watch with a lot of his videos. His favorite is the C64 and has done some amazing videos about the hardware and history, etc, and has talked about how various tricks like this work. It was an amazingly capable machine, and the folks who exploited every little aspect were/are clever as hell.

> It was an amazingly capable machine, and the folks who exploited every little aspect were/are clever as hell. If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. It was the only way you'd get anything done and if there is one thing that will bring out the hacker in people it is a bunch of unreasonable constraints and a job that needs to be done anyway.

A lot of demo effects are almost like magic tricks --- before you understand how they're done, they seem like impossible magic; but once you do, you think "that's so simple, why didn't I think of that?"

Animation by essentially "panning" inside a larger pre-rendered image is one of those tricks:

http://norecess.cpcscene.net/the-elders-scrollers.html

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#15

Post by EvanAnderson »

VGA has redefinable character sets. I tried doing some animation with them back in the day, but I ran into some kind of limitation that I don't recall. I was trying to accomplish an animation effect by altering the character definitions in realtime, which I recall being very slow. It never occurred to me to do something like this. Now it'll be everything I can do to stop myself from trying this on an old PC! Goodbye weekend productivity!

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#16

Post by kgwxd »

burnte wrote: post #2

David Murray, the 8 Bit Guy on Youtube, he doesn't have the best delivery but he's a fascinating watch with a lot of his videos. His favorite is the C64 and has done some amazing videos about the hardware and history, etc, and has talked about how various tricks like this work. It was an amazingly capable machine, and the folks who exploited every little aspect were/are clever as hell.

"he doesn't have the best delivery"

I think he is very good at keeping the content interesting. I never get the urge to fast-forward and I've got the attention span of a 2 year old with ADD.

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#17

Post by mromanuk »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #15

VGA has redefinable character sets. I tried doing some animation with them back in the day, but I ran into some kind of limitation that I don't recall. I was trying to accomplish an animation effect by altering the character definitions in realtime, which I recall being very slow. It never occurred to me to do something like this. Now it'll be everything I can do to stop myself from trying this on an old PC! Goodbye…

Weekend may not be productive, instead go for memorable

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#18

Post by diffuse_l »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #15

VGA has redefinable character sets. I tried doing some animation with them back in the day, but I ran into some kind of limitation that I don't recall. I was trying to accomplish an animation effect by altering the character definitions in realtime, which I recall being very slow. It never occurred to me to do something like this. Now it'll be everything I can do to stop myself from trying this on an old PC! Goodbye…

For some ideas about what can be done in text mode on pc, see this demo [1].

[1] http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=5110

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#20

Post by fractallyte »

panic wrote: post #9
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was an amazingly capable machine, and the folks who exploited every little aspect were/are clever as hell. If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. It was the only way you'd get anything done and if there is one thing that will bring out the hacker in people it is a bunch of unreasonable constraints and a job that needs to be done anyway.

The great thing about the C64 is that it never changes. It's the same hardware as it was last year, and it'll be the same hardware next year. Modern systems have plenty of unreasonable constraints, but the foundations are always shifting. How many cool web hacks from 5 or 10 years ago will run unmodified on a modern web browser?

The various board revisions introduced some changes. Particularly notable were the bug fixes to the original 326298 board. We could never get certain games/demos to work on our early C64. I still look wistfully at Gauntlet...
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