Archive for the ‘Demoscene’ Category
Posted by Trixter on June 17, 2014
A few days ago, I debuted 8088 Domination at @party 2014, which is an official sequel to 8088 Corruption that I made 10 years earlier. Like the former, 8088 Domination displays full-motion color video with audio on a 1981 IBM PC with CGA, a Sound Blaster, and any hard drive — but, unlike the former, Domination uses full graphics mode whereas Corruption used only text mode. This is significant because graphics mode requires 8x more memory and processing, and I had to combine a lot of creative and technical disciplines in order to pull it off.
Here is a capture of 8088 Domination running directly off of my IBM PC 5160; video is the composite CGA output signal, and audio is from a Sound Blaster Pro 2.0.
I am working on a postmortem write-up so you can all learn how I did it, but until then, download the party version at https://www.scene.org/file.php?file=%2Fparties%2F2014%2Fatparty14%2Fdemo_oldschool%2F8088_domination_party_version.zip&fileinfo if you’d like to run it on your own vintage hardware.
PS: A second round of thanks to Great Hierophant, for without whom I wouldn’t have been able to show off my production. He provided the hardware locally that I was unwilling to ship across the country.
Posted in Demoscene, Digital Video, Programming, Vintage Computing | 15 Comments »
Posted by Trixter on June 5, 2014
Giving a bit too much away here, but hit another milestone and wanted to celebrate a bit, so enjoy. It should be pretty obvious what I’m doing at this point.
Posted in Demoscene, Programming, Vintage Computing | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Trixter on May 20, 2014
Right first time. Awesome.
Posted in Demoscene, Programming, Vintage Computing | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Trixter on May 20, 2014
Before you ask, this *IS* a bug. Always make sure your pointers are normalized, kids!
Posted in Demoscene, Programming, Uncategorized, Vintage Computing | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Trixter on May 14, 2014
1E PUSH DS
0E PUSH CS
1F POP DS
BEFFFF MOV SI,FFFF
B800B8 MOV AX,B800
8EC0 MOV ES,AX
FC CLD
Posted in Demoscene, Programming, Vintage Computing | 4 Comments »
Posted by Trixter on April 18, 2014
For @party coming up in June of this year, I thought it would be fun to revisit 8088 Corruption with a spiritual sequel. I designed two new ways to improve the tech and visual quality. I came up with a new disk I/O strategy to deal with the new tech. I built a new model of handling color for it. I’ve previewed the results for both monochrome and color test material, and I liked what I saw.
One problem: I haven’t written a single line of code yet. It’s all in my head.
At night, as I fall asleep, I “pull it out” and run it through with different test material and “watch” the results.
And with the puzzle solved, I’m “done”, and I no longer have the desire to actually write the code.
Posted in Demoscene | Tagged: spiritual sequel | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Trixter on March 22, 2014
If the airlines gods shine on me next week, I will be at NVScene 2014 in San Jose Tuesday through Thursday. Co-located within the GPU Technology Conference, the entire event is looking to be the most concentrated collection of Very Intelligent People in regards to realtime computer graphics hardware and techniques.
I have mixed feelings about attending events like these, because I am so completely out of my league among these people. I understand no more than 10% of everything they present or create. I am looking forward to visiting and staying with friends, but my knowledge and accomplishments are dwarfed in orders of magnitude by every single other attendee. It’s very intimidating.
That’s all. No pithy observations or self-help advice in this post, sorry. My level of anxiety is high enough that, if I weren’t seeing some old friends there, I definitely wouldn’t be going. I have no business being there.
Posted in Demoscene | Tagged: GPU Technology Conference, realtime computer graphics hardware | 2 Comments »
Oldskooler Ramblings 