Gary from OPA Posted May 13 Share Posted May 13 (edited) 1 hour ago, OLD CS1 said: God Mode: make the demo run on the 99/4 and only use ti basic and tape! and no 32k! (mini-memory is allowed at least, so you have peek/poke/load and 4k for assembly) only way it would be possible! Edited May 13 by Gary from OPA 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted May 13 Share Posted May 13 50 minutes ago, Gary from OPA said: and only use ti basic and tape! and no 32k! (mini-memory is allowed at least, so you have peek/poke/load and 4k for assembly) only way it would be possible! I figured the lack of bitmap mode would be torture enough. But you, Sir, are just being mean. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 2 hours ago, Gary from OPA said: and only use ti basic and tape! and no 32k! (mini-memory is allowed at least, so you have peek/poke/load and 4k for assembly) only way it would be possible! ooooh, have I got a fun link for you! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary from OPA Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 45 minutes ago, Tursi said: ooooh, have I got a fun link for you! Yeah, I briefly read that back a decade ago but never tried. But looks interesting a glitch to break out of basic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
senior_falcon Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 How do you see this demo? Will it be one large program that completely fills the 32K? Will it be a number of smaller programs that load each other from disk? Or something else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 3 hours ago, Gary from OPA said: Yeah, I briefly read that back a decade ago but never tried. But looks interesting a glitch to break out of basic Damn, I thought you missed it. Anyway, MiniMem not required. The trick works pretty well! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 3 hours ago, senior_falcon said: How do you see this demo? Will it be one large program that completely fills the 32K? Will it be a number of smaller programs that load each other from disk? Or something else? Each effect is a separate program that is loaded by the manager. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 9 minutes ago, Tursi said: Each effect is a separate program that is loaded by the manager. I think you mean the MCP. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xahmol Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 (edited) Would love to see a new megademo! Still regularly play the old one. But my skillset in TI programming is nowhere even close to be able to be of any help, especially as the only novice assembly skills I have are 6502 (mainly program on Commodores, but love my TI as well, just never came around to learn any of its assembly language. Did do a project in C for the TI, but C of course is not suited to get to the limit of a machine in a demo) (By the way: would also love a F18A megademo to show of what it can do, but fully respect the wish to have it working on stock iron) Edited May 14 by xahmol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RamonB5^dSr Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 21 hours ago, Asmusr said: Thank you. For the music, at least, I think we are going to need some help. And I think it would be great to make it another demo under the dSr umbrella. I have one idea for an effect now. Nothing groundbreaking - just some layered scrolling. We also need more raster effects, any ideas? And does anyone have an idea for a theme? I wouldn't mind moving away from the 'Lone Star' thing. 🙂 Talked to Orby and he said he would also be down for a part 2. Will make sure we get the music covered, that should be doable and would be honor if you guys do it under dSr label of course No inspiration for a theme yet though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FarmerPotato Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 On 5/10/2024 at 3:11 AM, Asmusr said: It would be cool if the demo could run on an unexpanded console, but I think we do need some RAM for the music player etc., If you could capture a demo's writes to VDP and SOUND, you might compress and stream that from ROM. Such a "recorded demo" could run faster--no one needs to know how long the calculations really took Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RXB Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 Using RXB and SAMS you could make a heck of a demo with Assembly and XB at same time. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted May 14 Author Share Posted May 14 40 minutes ago, FarmerPotato said: If you could capture a demo's writes to VDP and SOUND, you might compress and stream that from ROM. Such a "recorded demo" could run faster--no one needs to know how long the calculations really took True, but streaming music from ROM would be difficult if you also need to run the program from ROM and perhaps stream graphics as well. Streaming music from GROM would be another option. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteE Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 I'm planning to do effects in 24K (or 32K if I do my own music player code?) I want to see if I can get the rotating color bars to work in that memory size. I've been mining lots of ideas watching C64 demos from recent years. I've been making a list of good ideas and tricks that I think could work on a 9918A despite only 4 sprites per line and fewer colors. I would also like to hear something with sampled audio, with short clips stitched together into a longer song, mod-format style. If you can't contribute to coding, then maybe a timestamped youtube link to your favorite demo effect would help inspire someone else, or we could brainstorm ideas how to make it work. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted May 14 Share Posted May 14 The music is generally handled outside of your effect, since we want a smooth experience across the effects. Assuming we aren't changing how we did it last time? My music player has no trouble playing out of ROM, it just needs 120 or so bytes of RAM somewhere. Putting that in VDP is possible but it's not a good choice, it's very random access so you can expect it to take 3 times as long to execute with data in VDP. But, not confirmed if we're using it yet. I'd have to add the attenuate into the new player. Disk loadable was a restriction last time, I think that's a good restriction to keep. Maybe that's where to start - what are we restricting to? It's completely possible to go completely nuts and do anything with the modern options available. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
senior_falcon Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 Proof of concept. Running in CPU overdrive, but the program could be compiled and not need that. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FarmerPotato Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 I was imagining: an underutilized effect of the 4A is speech. What is a demo but pushing the limits of what was believed possible on the platform? I will be posting to share all of the knowledge that I find in my dad's Lubbock speech lab papers. Meanwhile: shall we debate whether to make Speech Synthesizer an option? If not present, can be skipped. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted May 15 Author Share Posted May 15 20 hours ago, Tursi said: Disk loadable was a restriction last time, I think that's a good restriction to keep. Maybe that's where to start - what are we restricting to? It's completely possible to go completely nuts and do anything with the modern options available. I agree that it would be good restriction to keep. If somebody comes up with a brilliant idea that requires ROM space we can reconsider. So I think we're settling on the same restrictions as last time, which are basically max 24K per effect (upper memory RAM) and enough CPU time left to call the music player at 60 Hz. In addition to the default workspace at >8300, I think we need to reserve 32 bytes more at >8320 for the music player's workspace, but otherwise scratchpad is free to use. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retrospect Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 I'd be out of my depth with everything about a demo, however I did have an idea for a tune for it. It might even be do-able for those who know how? Funky Town from 1979 (marking the year the TI was first brought out albeit the obscure one) Funky Town would be a great song for a Demo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOT2VxBQoE8 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asmusr Posted May 15 Author Share Posted May 15 On 5/9/2024 at 1:12 PM, TheMole said: I have these two effects that I made back in the day for inclusion in the original demo. Are those effects color table only, and if not, would they run faster if they were? I'm thinking of a similar effect where you have 3 identical color tables (3 thirds of the screen), and then draw 'sine waves' using color table only that wrap around at the top or bottom of a 3rd of the screen. You would only have to send 2K to the VDP to update the screen. Here's a very rough sketch. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMole Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 22 minutes ago, Asmusr said: Are those effects color table only, and if not, would they run faster if they were? Color table only, indeed. They can likely be made to run a bit faster though, I'm sure I missed some optimization opportunities back then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMole Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 I think we should try to agree on a graphical style as well, perhaps something a bit darker than Don't Mess With Texas. It'd be good if all scenes could match up nicely in terms of style. I also really like it when the effects somehow reflect the beats in the music, makes it seem more coherent to me. Not sure if there's a way to use the music player's output as input to our effects in the framework you guys set up last time? As far as effects go, I'm trying to see if this MSX bump mapping example can be achieved on the TI (at 4 seconds into the clip): 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted May 15 Share Posted May 15 2 hours ago, TheMole said: Not sure if there's a way to use the music player's output as input to our effects in the framework you guys set up last time? The music player maintains current frequency and volume for each channel in publicly available memory addresses... though you'd need to decide how to process them. My own little vizzes usually just look for bumps in the volume. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whoami999ster Posted May 24 Share Posted May 24 I'm able to do nothing (whit programming) but anyway I'm at your disposal ... only thing that I can provide is my freetime and robot work if you tell me what it is need to do ... Ciao Francesco 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speccery Posted May 24 Share Posted May 24 Just discovered this thread, I would be definitely interested in contributing. I don't know how much I could put in it but would love to give it a go. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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