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Wanderer
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2003
Posts: 478 |
Side border scrolling
Here's a question that I've had on my mind for almost 20 years now.
How do you think side border scrolling was invented?
Do you think someone had sprites on the screen while a scroller was moving and they noticed a gap?
Perhaps someone was watching a depack routine and noticed that the side borders opened up by one raster line. You know the crunchers that used to increment $d016 as it uncrunched.
Or did someone simply break out the programmers reference guide and figure it out?
This is speculation but I'd like to hear your comments.
Oh and here's another... in the early 80's when there were no cartridges I always wondered how games were cracked. You would reset the computer by grounding the first and third pins on the far left port but you'd also lose data in the process sometimes. How would they have done it??? Granted much of it was simple disk error protection but it would still require you to reboot and load a monitor to view.
p.s. I think the easiest crack of all time had to be Flight Simulator in which, if you viewed the sectors it read "23 READ ERROR". You changed the 23 to a "00" (for OK) and it was cracked.
Mike
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
@TNT: So-Phisticated 2 was released about the same time as Charlatan and Black Mail also claims to have invented it :P |
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HCL
Registered: Feb 2003
Posts: 728 |
@Pernod: Gosh! i never saw that demo before. So, you were such a deep shit coder at that time ;). However, that's not what we mean with sprite-crunching. It's another trick which messes up the way a sprite is displayed. With this you can more or less randomly make the sprite stretch or crunch.. or possibly tilt ;). |
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pernod
Account closed
Registered: Nov 2004
Posts: 25 |
@HCL: Ok, I don't know if it is what people call spritecrunching, but the trick in the DYSP part is that I fiddle with D017 back and forth on a few lines, just before the actual DYSP effect area. By doing so, I got sprites that were 63 lines tall.
Maybe that trick has som specific name?
Anyway, at the time (1989) I was mighty proud of it; people were making dysps and competing who could make the most splits. The theoretical limit (when having up to 8 sprites on the same raster line) was 6 splits, and I acheived it by using a novel trick.
Now noone would care, but back then it was cool.
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TNT
Account closed
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 189 |
Quote: @TNT: So-Phisticated 2 was released about the same time as Charlatan and Black Mail also claims to have invented it :P
It might have been that it was found at the same time by two groups. I and Solomon spent plenty of X-mas 1988 holidays on phone discussing FLI and other things and I doubt he had seen So-Phisticated II by then :) |
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Rost
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 22 |
@TNT: i made a 80 rastersplit FLI routine also in march 1989 (Argon Grew Up, second side of Argonic 100%) , but it was to late :-(. And i didn't see Splitter or So-Phisticated before.
And thank you all for the input. Here is a new list.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Border top&bottom :
11.10.1985 Flash / FCG - Intro
- info from www.radwar.com. So it was not Sodan who discovered this first.
Sideborder :
xx.04.1986 TSI / 1001 - Border Letter I
- it was before Border letter II and this was 7.5.86
Sideborder with text :
xx.05.1986 Miki / Thunderbolt Cracking Crew - Impossible Demo
23.01.1988 White / The Judges - Think Twice V
(pre) FLD :
23.12.1986 Wizz / TST - Ace of Diamonds
Godd FLD :
14.08.1987 White / The Judges - Think Twice I
VSP :
30.10.1987 JCB / Meanteam - VSP&IK+
Full VSP :
xx.xx.1988 ASP / Blackmail - So-Phisticated 1
stretch with D011 : (i don't know the name of this effect)
01.10.1988 BitBuster / Rawhead - Partysqeezer
LineCrunch :
xx.11.1988 Exilon / MDT/Horizon - Bonanza
FLI :
xx.01.1989 Solomon / BeyondForce - Charlatan
early 1989 ASP / Blackmail - So-Phisticated 2
FPP :
26.06.1989 Bones, Triangle 3532, Upfront - Random
Sprite stretching :
xx.03.1989 Horizon - Looking Good
- did it anyone earlier?
Sprite crunching :
xx.xx.199x Crossbow / Crest
- sorry, i don't know the name of the demo
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tlr
Registered: Sep 2003
Posts: 1790 |
I released this: Blood 'n Guts the same day as Ace of Diamonds.
Someone stated that Wizz coded it about a month earlier.
I don't know when I coded the first version, but it could be a couple of weeks before the Blood 'n Guts release (first version Scroll).
I got a hint about the technique when speaking to 3D on the phone. He said that you probably could have a big side border opening in the middle of the screen (with graphics) if you fiddle with $d011 to move around the lines with bad timing so you never reach them.
I think we used a term similar to "every eigth line" or something like that to refer to the bad-lines.
Apparently he'd heard about it somewhere, but never tried it himself. Could be that he heard it from Wizz or someone in TST on a phone conference. Anyway, that was all the hint I needed. :)
I wouldn't be surprised if someone used that technique earlier though. Didn't 1001 do a higher that 5 pixel scroller in the middle during 1986?
Note that my release actually has some graphics showing on screen at the same time as the scroll! ;) |
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Rost
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 22 |
ok, new entry:
23.12.1986 The leader / Computer Cracking Team - Blood'n'guts Intro |
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tlr
Registered: Sep 2003
Posts: 1790 |
Stable rasters: TSI of 1001 Crew. Used in ESCOS I. Escos uses stacked interrupt for stable rasters. Second interrupt occurs during execution of NOPs. Correction is done using a branch selected by $d012.
Earlier examples?
Same demo has full screen $3fff enabled. i.e no bad-lines without constantly manipulating $d011.
Earlier eaxmples of this? |
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tlr
Registered: Sep 2003
Posts: 1790 |
Quote: I released this: Blood 'n Guts the same day as Ace of Diamonds.
Someone stated that Wizz coded it about a month earlier.
I don't know when I coded the first version, but it could be a couple of weeks before the Blood 'n Guts release (first version Scroll).
I got a hint about the technique when speaking to 3D on the phone. He said that you probably could have a big side border opening in the middle of the screen (with graphics) if you fiddle with $d011 to move around the lines with bad timing so you never reach them.
I think we used a term similar to "every eigth line" or something like that to refer to the bad-lines.
Apparently he'd heard about it somewhere, but never tried it himself. Could be that he heard it from Wizz or someone in TST on a phone conference. Anyway, that was all the hint I needed. :)
I wouldn't be surprised if someone used that technique earlier though. Didn't 1001 do a higher that 5 pixel scroller in the middle during 1986?
Note that my release actually has some graphics showing on screen at the same time as the scroll! ;)
I just had a look at Extra Ignored. Isn't the scroll a little high up? Apparently he did use it! ;) Looking at the code he does it by picking $d011 values from a table for each line, this way delaying bad-lines.
Though I must say that Extra Ignored, Blood 'n Guts and Ace of Diamonds isn't really FLD. It is just delaying bad-lines for timing purposes. I'd say that Keleline's intro on Tiger Mission (ex: Tiger Mission) is the first real FLD. But it is ofcourse a very important starting point to delay bad-lines. Pre-FLD is the correct term for it. |
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Rost
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 22 |
Tiger Mission was written by Thomas Larsen who has also written the FLD in the Vikings Intro. Which one was the first? Vikings or Tiger Mission? And who is Thomas Larsen? Is there any other demo?
But Extra Ignored seems to be the first Demo. I delete you from the list, ok? :-)
And yes, stable Rasters are very important, but should it be an entry in this list? I would count only real VIC effects.
Write a VIC register at the right time the right value.
If not, we can can count every effect. This would be too much. Or? If you want, we can try it...
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