Re: A86: List / Challenge idea (was dismissal)

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Re: A86: List / Challenge idea (was dismissal)


when you think about it I don't think anyone would want to have a 1k
transition just to erase the screen in an interesting way.  instead you
could put an awful lot of game into 1k.

I say we do 200 bytes.  That would be a real contest.  Much bigger than that
and the added "niceness" of the pretty looking transition just doesn't
justify wasting that much mem.  Remember we want to make something useful
right...

Anyone else want to participate in the contest?  Also are we doing grayscale
or black and white.  If we do grayscale I think that the interrupt's size
should be excluded from the limit. (200 byte max besides the interrupt
routine).
----- Original Message -----
From: Aaron Curtis <acurti1@umbc.edu>
To: <assembly-86@lists.ticalc.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 1999 3:14 PM
Subject: Re: A86: List / Challenge idea (was dismissal)


>
>I like the first idea better...  there are already way too many
>putsprite routines out there and I never use them anyway.  But yeah,
>transition effects are cool.  I've seen some that make the screen
>"ripple" away or roll up like a canvas (although I doubt either would be
>very easy to do).  I think a good contest might be to see who can come
>up with the best effect under a certain amount of memory...  maybe 1k.
>
>David Phillips wrote:
>>
>> I agree!  This list has little value as it is, without losing any more
good
>> programmers!  I'm interested in seeing some graphics demos, is anyone
else?
>>
>> I think we should have some contests.  The game of life has been used for
>> many optimization challenges (this was Michael Abrash's first challenge),
>> but I doubt too many people are up to writing a full screen game of life
at
>> 30+ fps.  Besides, it would take too much time to write just for
something
>> cool to look at.  Something useful would be better.
>>
>> I'm all for grayscale graphics.  I was scared of doing grayscale for the
>> longest time.  But once I started, I'm hooked!  There's nothing
>> better...black and white just looks so plain!  So my two ideas are
>> grayscale...
>>
>> First, screen transitions/effects.  There are all kinds of cool ways to
>> clear the screen.
>>
>> - One way that's very easy on the PC (one line in C!) but would take a
>> little more doing in asm is just filling the screen with black dots, at
>> random spots until it's (almost) cleared.  This was used in Wolfenstein
3D
>> (remember that game?!) when you died...the screen was filled with red
dots
>> simulating blood.
>> - Another way is sheers.  This is where the screen is cut away at many
>> places at the same time.  You might do it horizontally, where colums in
>> multiples of 8 are cleared.  Or it can be done at a 45 degree angle,
where
>> say every 8x8 square is being rotated or swept away (hard to say, I know,
>> maybe a demo).
>> - Doom had a cool transistion.  The screen was eaten away by a bunch of
>> "worms" that floated down the screen.   There are several ways to do it.
>> You can just have the columns filled in with black at different intervals
>> until it's cleared.  Or they can be shifted down.  I actually think Doom
>> scaled the strips down, but I don't remember (that'd take some doing!).
>> - I had an idea to do an explosion like effect.  There isn't enough
memory
>> or time (processor-wise) to do all 8192 pixels (using all of page 1 and
some
>> _very_ clever coding might make it possible), but you could do it in 8x8
>> blocks or so.  Each block would be given x and y velocities and the
screen
>> would seem to "explode" with all of the blocks going in random directions
>> and speeds.
>>
>> We could come up with rules and see who could do the neatest looking
effect.
>> Since there's no good way to time code, we'd need a judge to tell who's
>> looked the best.
>>
>> The other idea for a challenge is a fastest routine challenge.  The two
>> routines that come to mind are a grayscale PutSprite and a Line routine.
>> Both would be useful.  Since there are so many ways to do a putsprite,
we'd
>> need a standard for it.  I suggest an 8x8, masked grayscale putsprite,
with
>> clipping.  Background saving?  Interleaved or layered sprites?
Hmm....the
>> same set of calling registers should be used.  "Standard" is BC for x,y
and
>> HL for the sprite.  Should the buffers have to be contiguous?  For the
line
>> routine, I think that Jimmy Mardell's FastLine routine would be
considered
>> standard.  That routine would be tough to beat :)
>
>