Releasing my Lynx demos

[Lamer Deluxe tm]

At the Amiga 30 Years event in Amsterdam last Saturday, I showed RJ Mical, one of the creators of the Atari Lynx chipset and the creator of the famous Amiga Boing Ball demo (and Amiga GUI), my two Boing Ball demos for the Lynx.

He was surprisingly enthousiastic about them, which was awesome. I wrote about it here in Karri's (who I also met there) 'Lynx on the big screen' topic and was asked to release my demos here.

 

The first demo is a replica of the original Amiga Boing Ball demo. All graphics were taken from the original demo and adapted for the Lynx, same with the sound sample. It uses multiple frames of animation for the rotation of the ball. The audio pans left and right with the ball on the Lynx II. The shadow transparency is created by drawing the shadow sprite every other frame. This will only look right on the original Lynx display, because of the slowness of the display.

 

The second demo is also a Boing Ball demo, but updated for the capabilities of the Lynx. It uses the scaling ability of the Lynx and the multiplication ability of Suzy to calculate and draw the ball bouncing in 3D space. For every frame it renders either just the colors of the image, or just the brightness, mixing them together to create a shading effect, showing many more colors than just 16. This also only works correctly on the real Lynx hardware. Color cycling is used for the rotation effect of the ball.

It draws the ball sprite from its top-left corner, which is much faster than from its center and then uses tables to adjust the position to scale from the center. It also uses a fixed point division table to calculate the perspective projection.

 

The third 'No Game' demo uses a lot of transparency effects for the parallax background, sparks (inspired by QiX), rainbow text and 'no game' text anti-aliasing. The white flash effect fades both the palette colors and the gradients. It displays lots of colors at once and also doesn't look right on emulators.

 

All three demos were written in assembly, using Bastian42's SDK, in 2002, for a Lynx multi-cartridge developed by Ray Ryland, which unfortunately never saw the light of day. They were to be used in empty slots of the cartridge, instead of a boring message. At the time I was also exploring tricks to make the Lynx display lots of colors at once, together with Sage.

 

Years later I showed my demos to Lynxman and he asked me to write the small demo to be included in the Lynx anniversary edition of his excellent flash cartridge.

 

This is the first time I'm releasing my demos to the public, they are just simple things, but I hope you enjoy them.

 

 

LynxDemosByLamerDeluxe.zip

[108 Stars]

Thanks a lot for releasing those! So nice to see such work that nobody knew existed.

[Lamer Deluxe tm]

You're welcome

 

I've held off releasing them because I thought there might be a chance that the multi cartridge might resurface one day.

 

I might modify the first boing demo to display correctly on emulators and McWill's display as well.

[Trew]

Thanks for these! Look forward to checking these out tomorrow.

[GadgetUK]

Thanks for releasing these =)

[+MacRorie]

Awesome! Thanks!

[aminor00]

Lamer Deluxe Thank you very much for releasing your demos.

 

Would you like a box, cart label and a little something for the inside of the box for when you release it?

I've added an alternative style of cart label now too.

UBER-Demo Cartridge Label.pdf

Lynx UBER-Demo Box.pdf

Lynx UBER-Demo Label alternative.pdf

Edited June 30, 2015 by aminor00

[Lamer Deluxe tm]

Wow, awesome job, you sure are fast

 

Is that a DIY boing ball? Amazing.

 

I cannot access the alternative label, I get a rights error for some reason.

[aminor00]

Yes, its a DIY Boing Ball by Henning Thielemann. I found it online here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amiga-Boing-Ball-Icosahedron.png

 

I think it probably needs tabs for gluing it together but I thought it was a fun idea to include with the box instead of a manual.

 

I had problems uploading the alternative cart label but it looked like it had worked. I'll try again here.

Lynx UBER-Demo Label alternative.pdf

[TrekMD]

Cool, thanks for this!

[Lamer Deluxe tm]

Yes, its a DIY Boing Ball by Henning Thielemann. I found it online here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amiga-Boing-Ball-Icosahedron.png

 

I think it probably needs tabs for gluing it together but I thought it was a fun idea to include with the box instead of a manual.

 

I had problems uploading the alternative cart label but it looked like it had worked. I'll try again here.

 

Atari has posters, we have a DIY boing ball

The alternative cart label looks cool as well.

[aminor00]

A little bit of playing around with the logos and graphics for your cart label. Photos attached.

 

These have been printed on A4 vinyl sticky label sheets and cut to size. They've just been placed on top of existing carts and I've used my Remnant 3D cart to give context to how this might look for future homebrew releases (if people wanted to use that label template)

 

BTW, I've been watching the demos in Mednafen and Handy and think they're excellent. I can't wait to try them on real hardware once my 16-in-1 arrives.

Edited July 2, 2015 by aminor00

[BadPricey]

Far Cry 4 lol

[Lamer Deluxe tm]

Wow, that is pretty cool looking, I like the boing ball and how the circuit board graphics look on a real cart.

 

And the demos look much better on real hardware, with all the flickering gone and color properly mixing

 

EDIT: This is kind of what the boing 2 and nogame demos are supposed to look like (Handy doesn't render the gradients correctly).

 

Edited July 2, 2015 by Lamer Deluxe tm

[lotek_style]

I have put your stuff to our demo-database: https://demozoo.org/sceners/67377/

[Turbo Laser Lynx]

Great stuff, always good to see new (and new old) stuff on the Lynx!