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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
Who invented sprite stretching?
The history of sideborder sprites or $D011 based effects is pretty much known, but what about sprite stretching? I tried to find out the first demo who used it and it is not as easy as it seems: All the early 1988 demos which I thought that they used sprite stretching used normal multiplexing like used in ESCOS for example (I am talking about these "rasterbars + huge spritescroll + samples parts).
The first demo I found which had real sprite stretching was "Cocktail" from Triad (Feb 1989). Any earlier examples? |
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tlr
Registered: Sep 2003
Posts: 1737 |
Quote: I think the year 1988 of Splasher is wrong. The scroller says that the demo was made by Space Ace / Life who says he previously was in Eltronic/Shine. According to the csdb page on Shine they group was formed at the Horizon & Equinoxe party in 1989 (where the demo compo was filled with $d017 stretchers btw). So the Splasher demo is most likely made in 1989 rather than 1988.
I think you are right about this. One scroller speaks about Shine and the "Eskilstuna party".
Quote:"OF COURSE IT WAS MADE BY SPACE ACE.. AS YA SEE IT STANDS LIFE UP AND DOWN THERE IT'S BECAUSE I'VE JOINED THE COOL GUYS IN LIFE!. BEFORE I JOINED LIFE I WAS A MEMBER OF SHINE! THAT GROUP DIDN'T STAY LONG. AT FIRST WE WERE CALLED ELTRONIC,BUT THEN AT THE ESKILSTUNA PARTY WE DECIDED TO CHANGE NAME TO SHINE 'COZ EVERYBODY LIKED THAT NAME BETTER THEN ELTRONIC."
I updated the entry to 1989 and added him to Life.
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
Looks like Cocktail might be the very first example then... certainly the idea of Bob and Contring inventing it is one i find easy to believe. =-) |
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Marauder/GSS
Account closed
Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 224 |
Quote: I think you are right about this. One scroller speaks about Shine and the "Eskilstuna party".
Quote:"OF COURSE IT WAS MADE BY SPACE ACE.. AS YA SEE IT STANDS LIFE UP AND DOWN THERE IT'S BECAUSE I'VE JOINED THE COOL GUYS IN LIFE!. BEFORE I JOINED LIFE I WAS A MEMBER OF SHINE! THAT GROUP DIDN'T STAY LONG. AT FIRST WE WERE CALLED ELTRONIC,BUT THEN AT THE ESKILSTUNA PARTY WE DECIDED TO CHANGE NAME TO SHINE 'COZ EVERYBODY LIKED THAT NAME BETTER THEN ELTRONIC."
I updated the entry to 1989 and added him to Life.
could be accidently set to wrong date by me...
Splasher could be also 1989 - can have a look at the disks to find out more... |
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Six
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 288 |
FWIW, I used stretching sprites (banged $d011 to delay badlines so I had more rastertime, then twiddled $d017 on each line to stretch the sprites) in a THW intro (Midwest, US cracking/fixing group) in the summer-fall of 87.
Of course, since my little intro probably never saw much if any distribution outside of the Midwest US, I realize that I can hardly claim to be the "inventor" of this effect.
I'm mainly commenting because I find it interesting that some obvious tricks were probably discovered by lots of different people with or without looking at someone else's work.
I've often suspected, that hidden in some little "local lamer scene" intro somewhere is a completely undiscovered VIC trick, or efficient new way of doing an existing one, just waiting for mainstream exposure. (And this is why I spend so much time collecting old stuff from obscure isolated mini-scenes)
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5034 |
six, and how have u discovered the fx? |
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
Hmm Six, I think you mix something up. According to your CSDb entry you joined THW in 1988. |
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Six
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 288 |
Aye, Graham, I oficially joined THW in 1988. Before that they were simply another local group who was willing to give me something in exchange for my work. (And before that, late 1986, I was actually at WAR with them over some comments posted on a BBS)
You should understand, I was the only guy who coded in the 513 scene, so I did intros for ALL of the local groups, bbs ads, that sort of thing in exchange for access, warez, hardware, etc... It gave me an influence and power in the local scene that I valued, though when I look back on it, I was quite silly and full of myself.
Anyway, Oswald, I think "discovered" is probably too kind of a term. I really had no clue what I was doing as far as the actual innards of the hardware. I learned to code on the 64 with no reference material, just a few early intros, a monitor, and good intuition. I know now how the effect works, but at the time I thought I'd stumbled upon MAGIC.
I had tried to do $d017 stretching a few times, always with crappy results. It was a back-burner project at the time, but something I REALLY wanted to do.
Sometime in late 86, I was trying to do a "venetian blind" kind of effect on a row of chars, you know, so it would slide out of view, and a side-effect of my experimenting was that my timing raster lost it's flicker. I figured out that if I messed with $d011 the right way, I could split my color bars 3 times on the screen. To me this was a big deal, I thought I'd figured out some magic way to take the flicker out of effects, and I applied it to every other type of effect I could think of. Smoothly stretchy sprites were kind of icing on the cake to me, it was the split rasters I was all about.
It's funny now to look back on it and walk through my thought process at the time. I had no idea what badlines were or how the effect worked, it simply "just worked". My stretched sprites were the result of PURE LUCK and a lot of time spent twiddling around with the registers and seeing what happened.
Again, I'm certainly not claiming to have invented the effect, just to have stumbled upon it in my own way. If anyone thinks I'm saying that "I invented stretched sprites" , they have misunderstood. (Edit: And thank you for catching that distinction and not flaming me, btw)
Finally, I really believe that this suggests that there are probably lots of intros/demos out there that never saw global exposure, but have unique or ground-breaking (at the time) effects in them. (Which is why I spend so much time collecting stuff from "local scenes")
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5034 |
thank you for sharing :) |
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Six
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 288 |
Heh... Sorry if I drone on. I had so much fun discovering things back then, it brings back fond memories to talk about it. |
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Rost
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 22 |
thank you. Cocktail was missing in my list.
again, here is the short list of all essential VIC-II bugs
Border top&bottom :
11.10.1985 Flash / FCG - Intro
Sideborder :
xx.04.1986 TSI / 1001 - Border Letter I
FLD :
xx.10.1986 Mule / The Cream Crackers - Mega Jive
VSP :
30.10.1987 JCB / Meanteam - VSP&IK+
LineCrunch :
xx.11.1988 Exilon / MDT/Horizon - Bonanza
FLI :
xx.01.1989 Solomon / BeyondForce - Charlatan
FPP :
26.06.1989 Bones, Triangle 3532, Upfront - Random
Sprite stretching :
26.02.1989 Bob / Triad - Cocktail
Sprite crunching :
05.11.1989 Pernod / Fairlight - Rutig Banan
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