FizzleFade
fabiensanglard.net
FizzleFade
1–10 of 182 posts
Re: FizzleFade
#2It never ceases to amaze me how many of the older games were implemented as circuits first, and then translated to code. Makes you really appreciate how far we've come, and what sort of background that generation of developers had.
Re: FizzleFade
#3Fascinating. Who wrote the original ASM? Carmack?
Re: FizzleFade
#4Cool, I knew that LFSRs were used in ciphers. I was not aware that they were also useful for implementing old-school graphical effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear-feedback_shift_register...
Re: FizzleFade
#5I have the feeling that knowledge about bits is lacking by a lot of younger coders. And I also think this is what causes bloatware.
CPUs are powerful enough to use a naive fade transition. But coders who are aware of the internal workings can make it even faster on todays hardware.
Great article and imho still relevant on todays much more powerful computers.
Re: FizzleFade
#6I used LFSR to render the red grading in this little experiment: https://youtu.be/fUpUrpHLUxo .
I have a feeling the Octane rendering engine uses it too.
It's a good fit for most cases where you want random sampling of a set without replacement.
Re: FizzleFade
#7What properties are required in an LFSR that it covers the whole range (2^n-1 numbers) before returning? Or are such configurations found experimentally?
Re: FizzleFade
#8[deleted]
Re: FizzleFade
#9I have the feeling that knowledge about bits is lacking by a lot of younger coders. And I also think this is what causes bloatware. CPUs are powerful enough to use a naive fade transition. But coders who are aware of the internal workings can make it even faster on todays hardware. Great article and imho still relevant on todays much more powerful computers.
You should have said "thinking outside of the abstraction" instead. Bits are implementation details. The very knowledge of linear-feedback shift register is essential in this particular example.
> CPUs are powerful enough to use a naive fade transition. But coders who are aware of the internal workings can make it even faster on todays hardware.
Not really. No one would do the fade transition---or more accurately, the regional alpha blending with a fixed color---in CPU nowadays exactly because GPUs are much more capable in that job, and such a job is actually fairly easy in most abstractions used because it is an integral part of UX and whatever. The ability of leveraging all resources and determining their efficient utilization is a key.
Re: FizzleFade
#10Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_congruential_generator
A pseudo-RNG that cycles through a all elements of a modulo-ring.
Example for a 2^32 bit cycle:
X(n+1) = (a * X(n) + c) mod m
a = 134775813
c = 1
m = 2^32