Dark Bit Factory & Gravity

GENERAL => Projects => Topic started by: nzo on December 02, 2009

Title: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: nzo on December 02, 2009
Hmm. I only did this one cos of the scroll. Nowhere have I seen such a scroller since and this was from 1988 again.
There are a few ommisions from the original (different bob patterns etc.) but I was proving something to myself with this and did get a little bit bored with it in the end to be honest. I`ve also been working on some library routines whch make things a bit easier while making this one, so thats mainly why this has been a while appearing.

@Shockwave: I tried to adapt to your scroll routine methods, but I couldn't adapt it to this:)

Oh, no source with this one, cos the functions will be somewhat hard to follow and not really any use at the moment, but I will release a framework with one soon (and add some comments!)

cheers

Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: Shockwave on December 02, 2009
Great early Kefrens release... That scroll is wonderful! I'm trying to figure out how I'd go about it :) K+
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: staticgerbil on December 02, 2009
That scroller is great :)

Keep up the good work!
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: Clyde on December 02, 2009
Great work nzo dude, I really like evolving demos / intros.

I've done a scroller a bit similar to that in blitz, so you've inspired me to do something with it if i can find it on my back ups, im not one of these monkey see, monkey do types.

I have a tip for you, if you use -s gui you'll get rid of that console window.
if your using FBIde: settings-> FreeBASIC-> Compiler command: "<$fbc>" "<$file>" -s gui -lang deprecated

You've done a remarkable job, well done.
Clyde.
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: nzo on December 02, 2009
Cheers Clyde!

I do use FBIDE and perhaps I should not use the mode "depracted console".
It can be useful for printing out debug info when running in windowed mode though.

So changing the project type to "depracated gui" or similar will remove that window then?

Thanks!
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: Shockwave on December 02, 2009
I don't think its a bad problem to have the console window, maybe just compile it -s gui when it's final.

When I'm making something I use that console window myself for debugging.
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: Clyde on December 02, 2009
sure so do I, mentioned it as wasnt sure if you'd come across -s gui.

Looking forward to future ventures dude :)
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: rdc on December 02, 2009
Another excellent program!
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: spitfire on December 03, 2009
So how did you do the scroll?
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: benny! on December 03, 2009
A*W*E*S*O*M*E  :clap:
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: Shockwave on December 03, 2009
So how did you do the scroll?

I am guessing that he has an offset table to offset each row of the scroll horizontally, possibly there even could be two offset tables one for letters behind one for letters in front, then its like a sine scroller drawing behind or in front of the bars, position (I guess) being deternined by another pointer in a sine table. Similar things to this effect was implimented nicely in several demos, sine scrollers usually. Some of them used cheating methods like precalculating the rotating letters, all of them looked cool :)

My favourite one is here;

(http://retro-remakes.net/screenshots/Scoopex_LogicalPreview_Win32Remake_pic.JPG)

In Nzo's remake if those horizontal offsets were gone you'd see how the effect worked better, it's really this clever copperlist trick that makes it look like it's wrapping around the bars.
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: Shockwave on December 03, 2009
btw iirc Photon of phenomena did a nice barrel scroll too...
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: Clyde on December 03, 2009
you'd load in your font and calculate how many shades you want and store those results; quite similar to how you did it to work out the alpha in the twister bar from the CC Comptro; but you'd probably only want a low number like 16 or so. when you come to render you'd use a fake perspective to give you the twist effect from your font colour table. And thats off the top of my head as i havent found the DVD with those on. if you were using ogl, then you'd probably have a better way of doing it.
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: Shockwave on December 03, 2009
Sorry Clyde, that's not how it's done at all mate.

As I said above, the trick to making it look like it's rolling is the offset table, the colours etc are determined by whether the scroll is being drawn in front of or behind the bar (this is calculated for each line (I guess)). The whole scroll is probably controled by a few sine tables.

It's nicely done, on the Amiga it would have been coded much differently.
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: energy on December 03, 2009
Indeeed vry nice job!!!  ;)
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: nzo on December 03, 2009
I just typed in loads of detailed info about this scroll and got an error with my file attachment  :vangry:

bah!

Basically I was describing the use of an intemediary(sp) scroll buffer - which I have been discussing the merits of with Shockwave recently :)
In a nutshell, the scroll is rendered as a normal right to left operational scroller in a pre-buffer.
The faces are copied to the screen in passes - front face lower, back face lower, etc. etc. (allows the drawing of the horizontal bars) where each pass draws only the part it's interested in and works out which way up to draw the graphics etc. and as SW says, the rest is sin tables (fixed for the x offset curve (masked), and a variable array for the Y pos slots). The fixed offset controls the colour from a lookup as the fx is 256 positions wide and loops. The final effect is just controlling the Y offset in the 160 slots on the x axis (loop copy, sin data etc.)

The colours are looked up from an array made from the graphic below (256 colour values)
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: Rbz on December 03, 2009
Nice work nzo :)
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: benny! on December 04, 2009
K++ for scroll explanation!
Title: Re: 4th TinyPTC remake
Post by: Hotshot on December 21, 2009
that is really cool :)