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2021-12-04 18:42

Richard

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 620

Event id #3140 : Intro Creation Compo 2021

I am very happy to announce that The annual Intro Creation Compo is here once again. There will be an entry to kick off the competition from me some time later on this or next week.

Didi currently has no time, and has allowed me to step in as host for this year's competition.

The competition runs from December 4th, 2021, until January 31st, 2021. So you have just under 2 months to deliver your creations. This should be enough for an intro.

RULES for both categories: (Same as last year's compo)
Your intro entry...
- has to work on a plain stock C64 (PAL standard) without any extensions.
- has to be a one-part intro. Short fade-ins and fade-outs are OK.
- has to contain at least one Logo at whatever size you like.
- has to contain a changing or moving text message (e.g. scrolling text, different lines fading in & out, etc.)
- has to be interruptable any time by pressing SPACE-key (exception are the short fade-in and fade-out).
- does not need to have exclusive graphics, charsets or music. But the code should be exclusive, so reuse of existing code with just exchanged graphics and music is not allowed.
- has not been publicly used before entering the competition.
- has to be handed in as executable format startable with RUN (.prg or embedded in .t64 or .d64).

Your 16kB intro...
- has a maximum RAM footprint of $4000 bytes at one block, at whatever location you like. Screen RAM counts as used memory. Exclusions are system addresses like VIC (inkl. Color RAM), SID, CIA, Stack, Zero-page, IRQ vectors. This means RAM besides chosen $4000 bytes area and exceptions has to be the same before and after running the intro. What happens during runtime is up to you.
- has to contain music (not just a humming sound, please).
- is linked to this competition as "C64 Demo" entry (sorry, no other fitting entry exists).

Your 4kB intro...
- has a maximum RAM footprint of $1000 bytes at one block, at whatever location you like. Screen RAM counts as used memory. Exclusions are system addresses like VIC (inkl. Color RAM), SID, CIA, Stack, Zero-page, IRQ vectors. This means RAM besides chosen $1000 bytes area and exceptions has to be the same before and after running the intro. What happens during runtime is up to you.
- does not have to contain any sound, but feel free to add some.
- is linked to this competition as "C64 4k Intro" entry.

You are allowed to enter maximum 3 entries per participant and category, so you can enter 6 entries at best. Entries might be taken back from the compo until deadline. That means if you want to remove one of your works from the compo to make space for another entry from you, this can be done until deadline.
Deadline for entry submission is 31st January 2022 at 00:00:00 GMT+0 (UK).
Voting closes 28 February 2022 at 00:00:00 GMT+0 (UK)
Voting platform is CSDb (with all disadvantages it may have), therefore entries have to be posted here.
Entries will be ranked by weighted average of CSDb votes. Entries with the same weighted average are ranked by their percentages of 10s, 9s, etc.

No prizes to win, all just for fun, and to share around the scene.

Have loads of fun.

PS: Please do not lock your entries on submission. This is because the problems I had with the CSDB Fun Compo 2021 when setting the results for each entry.

... 66 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....

2022-10-06 09:11

iAN CooG

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3142

@CJam: <$d000 is a restriction only for the final linked & crunched program. Once unpacked, an intro should not touch any RAM from end of intro to $ffff, to allow larger programs. The more RAM an intro clutters, the shorter a linked cracked game can be.

Also I don't understand what you mean with "that can be loaded with any fastload", an intro shouldn't load anything with any fastload, everything must be in memory, else there wouldn't be any memory restrictions =)

2022-10-06 09:11

ChristopherJam

Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 1382

OK, so, then modify that to "once the demo is uncrunched, don't touch RAM from X to $d000" where X is the start of where the once-crunched game goes. X is $3000 in your example, but I'd love to see what people can do with lower ceilings, but not the usual 'don't touch RAM outside a 4k window' rule.

I get that most games will compress to well under 40kb, but presumably there was the occasional exception? Particularly as 20th century crunchers didn't have ratios as good as are available now.

2022-10-06 09:18

ChristopherJam

Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 1382

Quoting iAN CooG

@CJam: <$d000 is a restriction only for the final linked & crunched program. Once unpacked, an intro should not touch any RAM from end of intro to $ffff, to allow larger programs. The more RAM an intro clutters, the shorter a linked cracked game can be.

Ok, yes this. I forgot that the decrunch before the intro starts can itself push the crunched game past $d000.

Revised rule: intro cannot touch any RAM above X aside from interrupt vectors, IO, and color RAM. But I'd love to see a couple of different values of X to allow for extra large games, or cracks that show docs or other extras before decrunching the game itself. Oswald suggested $3000, but $2000 or $1800 would be more interesting IMO

Quote:

Also I don't understand what you mean with "that can be loaded with any fastload", an intro shouldn't load anything with any fastload, everything must be in memory, else there wouldn't be any memory restrictions =)

Oh I just meant that the final linked and crunched program should be loadable with any fastload, not that the intro should be doing any loading.

2022-10-06 09:22

iAN CooG

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3142

The better way to link and crunch was always to link the UNPACKED game if it fits, or if it doesn't, only charpack it (rle) so there will be only a final crunch that gets smaller than having a payload already crunched, and it also unpacks faster. This would lead to needing more free RAM, hence needing also $d000-ffff occupied by the payload.

This is probably not anymore true with modern cross crunchers that don't get worse crunch results when you recrunch already crunched files (exomizer 1.x for example still had this problem, solved in 2.x with better handling of literal sequences) but it's still an habit by the oldtimers to avoid having to crunch the payload and then crunch again the linked intro+payload.

2022-10-06 09:43

Krill

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2856

Not the first to suggest this, but...

Just have differently-sized dummy payloads made of random bitsalad, that can be checked after intro with binary compare, and will be replaced with secret bitsalad and checked again. =)

2022-10-06 09:49

ChristopherJam

Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 1382

Ah, but how do you replace the bitsalad with a different bitsalad while still maintaining the old school workflow of the payload getting crunched along with the intro?

I am once again forced to conclude that Groepaz Is Right - compo should just specify a nominal payload, and everyone gets to use the same one.

2022-10-06 09:56

Krill

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2856

Quoting ChristopherJam

Ah, but how do you replace the bitsalad with a different bitsalad while still maintaining the old school workflow of the payload getting crunched along with the intro?

Secret test binary with other bitsalad doesn't have the $d000 restriction (but shouldn't be far off mark after crunch anyways), it's just to make sure that the payload is really unchanged, and only defined by size (i.e., replaceable).

Quoting ChristopherJam

I am once again forced to conclude that Groepaz Is Right - compo should just specify a nominal payload, and everyone gets to use the same one.

I thought that is basically what i just concurred with. :)

2022-10-06 10:12

ChristopherJam

Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 1382

Under Groepaz' proposal, my understanding is the payload may be compressed alongside the demo by the entrant (eg as per the workflow that Oswald described) - that makes it harder to replace, no? Particularly as the decompression might not be complete at the time the intro starts.

2022-10-06 13:50

Krill

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2856

Quoting ChristopherJam

Under Groepaz' proposal, my understanding is the payload may be compressed alongside the demo by the entrant (eg as per the workflow that Oswald described) - that makes it harder to replace, no? Particularly as the decompression might not be complete at the time the intro starts.

Partial decompression is not the traditional workflow, is it? =)

With both the payload and the intro being crunched en bloc (payload may still be lightly compressed but comes with its own decompressor), no problem replacing the payload, or is there?

But the 2nd blob is just an extra layer of validation, and sort of optional.

2022-10-06 16:06

Didi

Registered: Nov 2011
Posts: 480

I will not be organizing an ICC this year.
From my point of view it turned out that every year is too often and the amount of entries is very limited because of that. Let's head for 2023 instead. After the X party has been a good time in past years because the people were hot and some threw their leftovers from finished or unfinished party demos together for an intro.

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