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Border Mania   [2016]

Border Mania Released by :
Hokuto Force [web]

Release Date :
3 April 2016

Type :
C64 Crack Intro

User rating:*********_  8.5/10 (13 votes)   See votestatistics

Credits :
Code .... The Chaos Engineer of Hokuto Force
Music .... Gangstar of Plush
Graphics .... The Chaos Engineer of Hokuto Force
Concept .... The Chaos Engineer of Hokuto Force


SIDs used in this release :
Short Intro Tune(/MUSICIANS/G/Gangstar/Short_Intro_Tune.sid)


Cracks which use this intro :
DownloadAlone Against the BSE9 +6T by Hokuto Force
DownloadAttack of the Mutant Camels +5DHM 101% by Hokuto Force
DownloadBeholder +4 by Hokuto Force
DownloadBrainway +DCM by Hokuto Force
DownloadCross Snake 2.0 +4D by Hokuto Force
DownloadGuzzler +8DH by Hokuto Force
DownloadLupenio +4DGMT by Hokuto Force
DownloadScare Bear +4DGH by Hokuto Force
DownloadStreet Rod +4DM by Hokuto Force
DownloadThe Crown of Ariiance by Hokuto Force

Download :

Look for downloads on external sites:
 Pokefinder.org


User Comment
Submitted by Doc Snyder on 16 March 2018
Browser version (HTML5/JS): https://www.docsnyderspage.com/groups/h/hokuto-force#hokuto-for..
User Comment
Submitted by TCE on 5 April 2016
Re tune: I personally fell in love with it when The Overkiller suggested it as a candidate, along with a few others. All I can say is: try it on an 8580; it kind of has more depth there, but it is still somewhat monotonous if you keep listening to it for long enough.
BTW, the flashing pace of the scroller was inspired by the tune itself!
User Comment
Submitted by Twoflower on 4 April 2016
Really neat and fresh intro! I love the fact that you're using a big (and proper!) font for it.
User Comment
Submitted by TheRyk on 4 April 2016
I think, the tune fits really well, a slight touch of monotony is alright in an intro. All in all, a great intro.
User Comment
Submitted by spider-j on 4 April 2016
Awesome logo! \o/
But I kind of agree with Didi about the music. On the other hand: probably no memory left... :-)
Great intro anyways!
User Comment
Submitted by Yogibear on 4 April 2016
Fantastic!
User Comment
Submitted by Krill on 4 April 2016
Compyx: Nah, not really. You'd have that extra swap routine in he beginning of the intro for development and later just leave it out and save after swap for the "release build". At least that's what i'd do. Been coding on the real thing until 2001-ish, and made lots of native dev-tools and precalc stuff, either implicitly in the post-assembler-start-up routines or in BASIC itself (!). :D
User Comment
Submitted by Compyx on 4 April 2016
Krill: Indeed, interleaving crunched data with the line-crunched data is easy with today's cross-dev tools. But imagine doing it the old way, on the real machine. You'd have to write a sort of 'linker' tool for the intro, just to have a bug free side border scroll, which most people won't even notice, d'oh ;)
User Comment
Submitted by Krill on 4 April 2016
TCE: Oh, and you only need to copy once, after the intro. You can have it all pre-moved after initial unpacking.
User Comment
Submitted by Krill on 4 April 2016
TCE: Feel free. I'm pretty sure there are quite a few already, from 10 years ago or so. :)
User Comment
Submitted by TCE on 4 April 2016
@Krill: it doesn't sound too bad. Sort of swapping memory back and forth for an intro tune that is not easily relocatable (e.g. starting at $9000) but over multiple memory blocks. Worth a forum thread if there's not any yet?
User Comment
Submitted by Krill on 4 April 2016
TCE: Thanks :D Yeah, there are a few possible mitigations. Other than fading (which will not be so smooth with scrolling hires sprites) you may want to simply clear one pixel column per frame on the leftmost sprite edge.
Compyx: Memory overhead is not so bad. It just requires a somewhat funky memcopy routine run between intro and game that would copy game code bytes into the line-crunching-induced gaps all over the memory space.
User Comment
Submitted by TCE on 4 April 2016
@Compyx: "And that 'weird' memory layout takes up a lot of memory, which may not be desirable for a crack intro."
Indeed that's not desirable as the memory footprint is already noticeable as it is. I had the option to reduce the footprint in two areas: code and logo data. I thought that the use of a single self-modifying border opening routine for logo and scroller was the reduction giving most satisfaction, so that's what I went for and I enjoyed it big time. Weird-ish concept, but enjoyable, so I am keen on exploring more weirdness :)
User Comment
Submitted by TCE on 4 April 2016
@Fungus: "Nice intro TCE. What krill said, weird memory layout but doable."
Thank you. I shall do some research then in order to find out how it might be done.
User Comment
Submitted by TCE on 4 April 2016
@Krill: agreed, I would not have gone far with the ROL approach due to the number of CPU cycles I need to open the side borders where the logo is. As I like the 4 sprite idea, I'd have probably accepted a trade-off solution, e.g. non-reversed the scroll font-set to at least prevent a gap showing at the leftmost column (foreground and border color would have been both black). As a mitigation at the left edge of the scrolltext (still ending one column and a few pixels too early on a borderless display) I'd probably have had a text color fade, but that's about it for a first go at opening side borders in an intro working for both PAL and NTSC.
Expanding sprites for a "warp" effect at the borders might have been another viable route.
Your coding skills and working knowledge are from another world, obviously :)
User Comment
Submitted by Compyx on 4 April 2016
And that 'weird' memory layout takes up a lot of memory, which may not be desirable for a crack intro.
User Comment
Submitted by Fungus on 4 April 2016
Nice intro TCE. What krill said, weird memory layout but doable.

The logo is very nice, now make it parallax scrolling too ;)
User Comment
Submitted by Krill on 4 April 2016
TCE: Having a full-resolution bugless (i.e., gapless) sideborder scroll may not be so trivial, though. The problem is that the left border is 6 chars wide (minus 2 pixels of HSYNC hyper-white burst). So with the 4 sprites available on an open-border badline, you'll have a gap in the leftmost area of the left border when soft-scrolling the two sprites there (just as you can see in this intro). That is no biggy if you can afford soft-scrolling in software (ROL over a few hundred times each frame), but likely you may not be able to do that (when having open borders elsewhere, too).
So, you want 5 sprites and thus need to disable badlines (using line-crunching) while still having a scroll that is higher than 7 rasterlines. Doable, but a little complicated and with weird memory layout.
Shameless plug: See the intro of Vandalism News #34 for an implementation example. :)
User Comment
Submitted by Compyx on 4 April 2016
I was talking about an old CRT display I had hooked up to my C64 and Amiga, some old Philips 15" display. That display managed to show 6 columns of the left border and 5 columns of the right border.

Many TV sets couldn't do that, so there's a lot of "bugged" border scrolls out there.
User Comment
Submitted by TCE on 4 April 2016
@Compyx, Shine: I see what you guys mean. Been testing on my CRT TV (yes!) and non-full-border emulation so I honestly didn't notice. Two more columns should have overflown into the leftmost couple of sprites at the left border and everything would have looked fine. Next time I guess :)
User Comment
Submitted by Compyx on 4 April 2016
@TCE: If you're using VICE: set "border mode" to "full", you'll see the bugs. Same thing should happen on the real hardware when using a CRT display.
User Comment
Submitted by Chico on 4 April 2016
The scroll charset looks very nice ! Cool intro !
User Comment
Submitted by Shine on 4 April 2016
Really NICE intro!!! I like all except the mirrored tech tech, because it's somehow disturbing the flow for me. Anyway ... GREAT WORK !!! :D
User Comment
Submitted by G-Force on 4 April 2016
One of the best hf logo's yet.
User Comment
Submitted by TCE on 4 April 2016
@Krill "Border scroll with obvious bugs, though."
Would you mind expanding on that? I can't seem to be able to appreciate anything obviously buggy there.
User Comment
Submitted by Krill on 4 April 2016
Nice gfx. For once a crack intro that isn't totally worthless. :) Border scroll with obvious bugs, though.
User Comment
Submitted by Motion on 4 April 2016
Outstanding...except for the hyper active flashing of the scroller! Music rocks, too. This really has presence. Thumbs of a approval way up! <3
User Comment
Submitted by Moloch on 3 April 2016
Great logo, thumbs up!
User Comment
Submitted by hedning on 3 April 2016
VERY nice!
User Comment
Submitted by Joe on 3 April 2016
Like it, looks good!
User Comment
Submitted by Smasher on 3 April 2016
great intro!! there's too much flashing in the scroller for my taste, but other than that it's perfect! congratz! :)
User Comment
Submitted by Didi on 3 April 2016
Cool intro, code and gfx wise, but the monotonous music ruins it a bit. Would need some really powerful to fit the mighty appearance.
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