Oldskooler Ramblings

The response to 8088 Domination was warm, wonderful, and widespread. To everyone who dropped me a note via twitter, email, or youtube — and there were thousands of you — I want to thank you for the kind and encouraging words.

Even before I finished the design, I knew that I was going to release all of the source, so that others could make their own videos for their own vintage systems. I was careful to design the system to be easy to understand, so that it could be easy to port to other languages or extend with new features. I have a lot of comments in the code, some fairly verbose, so that there is no confusion why something is designed a particular way, or why one operation happens before another. I want this to be representative of the quality of code I usually write.

So, why am I overdue in releasing the code? Bugs! Or, more accurately, edge cases. To ensure that the encoder works properly in the real world, I’ve been testing it with vastly different sources: Animations, music videos, cartoons, even a full-length movie. And almost every time, I encounter a new edge case that needs fixing. Oh, don’t worry — The code isn’t full of special cases or bubblegum-and-shoestring workarounds. It just takes time to address each issue that crops up, and determine if it’s a true bug that needs fixing, or an issue that can be safely ignored.

“Ignore issues in code? Impossabru!” Actually, here’s an example of what I mean: I discovered a few weeks ago that I could improve the efficiency of the output a few percent by re-running some optimization phases before final compilation. However, doing this will sometimes create a small “empty” 1-byte delta that actually isn’t a delta (ie. the locations contains the same data in the previous and next video frames). It’s a bug, but is it worth fixing? I could spend days rewriting the optimization phase into a gigantic, monolithic procedure where all parts coordinate… or, I can throw these 1-byte non-changes away at the end of the existing optimization phase. You can guess which path I chose.

Some bugs are indeed bugs, and they must be fixed before I put my name on the code. For example, the bug that forced the encoding loop into a deadlock, or the bug that randomly produces black flashes in the output (still working on this one), or the bug whose generated code forgot to set a single register which prevented videos from being played without a soundcard present.

So, I hope everyone understands why the code release is late. Well… one of the reasons it is late. The other reason is that making your own videos will require some documentation (some user-directed preprocessing of the source video is necessary — sorry!), and a video showing the steps involved couldn’t hurt either, so that will require a few days by itself.

While you’re waiting, why not help me decide what movie to convert and release with the final distribution? In keeping with the spirit of the time period, I’m going to convert an entire full-length movie using the system, and ensure that it will fit onto a single CD-ROM so that users without homebrew XTIDE controllers can hook up a SCSI CDROM drive and enjoy the flick (ironically). The defacto example for this kind of thing is Star Wars, although I’m partial to TRON, as it was released after the IBM PC itself was and has its own share of iconic sequences. But, I’ve already done TRON to death, so what would you like to see? Vote in this handy poll, and if the movie you want to see isn’t there, please write your choice in the comments.