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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

#31

Post by Angostura »

bnastic wrote: post #24
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.

> If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. Don’t underestimate the power of internet today and the ease of obtaining information - that certainly was not the case in the ‘80s. Unless you were close to demo groups you were left with two choices: a) reverse engineer the code (good old “Monitor 49152”), or b) give up

There were a ton of good hobbyist magazine back in the day, many of which dedicated a page or two to low-level hackery

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#32

Post by jacquesm »

Angostura wrote: post #31
bnastic wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. Don’t underestimate the power of internet today and the ease of obtaining information - that certainly was not the case in the ‘80s. Unless you were close to demo groups you were left with two choices: a) reverse engineer the code (good old “Monitor 49152”), or b) give up

There were a ton of good hobbyist magazine back in the day, many of which dedicated a page or two to low-level hackery

I just read the little excerpt from a newspaper in the article about the genesis of the transistor and it struck me that the technical details in those paragraphs were way above what an audience of today would ever be exposed to from a technical level.

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#33

Post by dwd »

keyle wrote: post #25
bnastic wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you had been alive and busy with computer programming back in the day you too would have been clever as hell. Don’t underestimate the power of internet today and the ease of obtaining information - that certainly was not the case in the ‘80s. Unless you were close to demo groups you were left with two choices: a) reverse engineer the code (good old “Monitor 49152”), or b) give up

That's true. With no internet and only a crappy book, my use of the ZX 80 was pretty poor compared to what I would have mentally capable of doing, if I had access to further knowledge.

This

http://www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/Commodore/C64%20Programme...

I still have my copy after all these years.

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#34

Post by bitwize »

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…

Redefining the character set was how some text-mode programs like the old Norton suite got "graphical" mouse cursors and the like.

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#35

Post by millerm »

jacquesm wrote: post #32
Angostura wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were a ton of good hobbyist magazine back in the day, many of which dedicated a page or two to low-level hackery

I just read the little excerpt from a newspaper in the article about the genesis of the transistor and it struck me that the technical details in those paragraphs were way above what an audience of today would ever be exposed to from a technical level.

You made me search for “genesis of the transistor” and I found this old gem: https://youtu.be/WiQvGRjrLnU

Here is a quote from that film that makes me a bit envious of those work environments: “Working in an environment which fosters the uninhibited search for answers to riddles of science related to communications’ needs.”

Wow, to work in an environment that has that sort of mission must be rewarding.

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#36

Post by bitwize »

scottlu2 wrote: post #19

Nice demo. Reminds me of a well done Galaxians clone for Atari 400/800 that used programmable character set animation for the aliens. It was impressive.

Fun fact: The Commodore VIC-20 lacked hardware sprites, so programming the character set was how you did any animation on it. There were still some pretty amazing games given that limitation.

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#37

Post by burnte »

bitwize wrote: post #6
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.

I like his delivery. He speaks clearly, goes over the main points in a slow, methodical, easy to understand manner -- and best of all, doesn't have generic YouTuber, "WHAT'S UP GUYS THIS IS DROWYOSHI3288 BACK WITH ANOTHER VIDEO" type presentation.

Oh, yes, he's lightyears ahead of annoying youtubers. I'd just love to give him a couple of pointers. But I still subscribe, he's great.

Re: Break down of a C64 demo effect

#39

Post by nurpax »

asciimo wrote: post #4

Clever stuff. I like that the author used modern techniques (python) to generate the custom C64 character set.

I also used some Haskell in another C64 project. Made a VICE memory snapshot parser for digging some values out of RAM. Haskell was a lot handier for byte level access than Python.
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