DIY possible?

[dr.zeissler]

Hi, I am a big fan of oldskool Demos/Intros with oldskool effects.
I do not know anything about programming.

My development-system is a Celeron433 Win98se DX6.1 Voodoo3 machine.
In this forum there are some "code-snipps" for "freebasic" shown.
My first idea is to install freebasic to that machine und try out some codes that are already proven to be working.

The latest version of freebasic comes with some dx9-basic-demos, but I have DX6.1.
Is it a good idea to use that latest version of freebasic or should I go for a very old one for my dx6.1 machine?

Is it possible to generate something under these circumstances?

Please let me know what you think.

Thx
Doc

[flightcrank]

personally i recommend you update your dev machine. and leave your decade+ old machine for running legacy applications/demos ect. That way you can use modern dev tools like everyone else and run code they give you to help you along. that should make learning easier for you.

having said that, your old machine should still be fine to code with. just focus on the basics first. like ploting a pixel, then  line drawing algorithm ect.

[dr.zeissler]

Why that machine:
- I do not have anything faster than this. My Internet-PC is a 27" Mac, but I do not want to code anything for the mac.
- The PII/Celeron with Voodoo3 should be fast enough for "stutterfree" "2D stuff".
- Most of the oldskool effects (Scrollers, Rasterbars, Starfields,) worked stutterfree on machine below 10 mhz!
- I am very satisfied with that 433/Celeron, because pre 2000 Games (mostly 3dfx-glide) run just fine on that machine.
- It's a very good combination for both Dos and Windows. But I had to admit that some CPU-Sensitive stuff (TP-Bug etc.) do not work.
- The Problem is, nobody releases remakes for that machine! 99% of the remakes of oldskoll/demos/intros/cracktros require much more cpu-power and gfx/dx-versions. The middleware creates a lot of overhead. I am not a programmer, but if the effect worked below 10mhz, then it should be possible to recreate it stutterfree on 433mhz.

I have to do basic work, because I do not know anything yet. What I need is a "toolbox" to create something, but not out of scratch. When I have the basic toolbox. Freebasic perhaps with the essential libs etc. and copy and paste working scroller/Rasterbars/Starfields in it to run on that machine it would be a first step. Changing paramters and watch the results would be my first approach.

Creating something out of scratch means understanding the whole thing, this means working stuff in 10 years from now

Frist of all "playing" with "code" and a working "toolbox" should be the target. The goal is alway creating stutterfree-stuff because the pc has not so much of it.

I think I should go for Directdraw6.1 not D3D (because that voodoo has limitations on that).

What do you think?

Doc

[flightcrank]

I think your artificially limiting your self, making the process of learning harder for you. If you have a modern Mac machine i would look into the processing programming language environment to begin learning. Its basicly java which is a C style language. The programs you write will work on the big 3. Apple, windows and linux. so when you upgrade your old computer all your programs will just work with 0 changes.

After you learn the basics with that then i think you can go back and do the harder stuff. Coding fast stutter free routines for older hardware is harder than on a modern machine. and requires lots of difficult to understand tricks that beginner programmers can sometime find hard and give up before they produce anything.

[dr.zeissler]

you are right for sure...but I will try it out the other way first.

[dr.zeissler]

I found this Oldskool Demo-Toolbox and it is fuckin' great... I only had to upgrade to DX7 and within half of an hour I put something together...great!
The Logo and the music belong to their creators...I will try to make my own stuff...in the first place I only wanted to check out if my machine is
capable of creating oldskool-demoscen-stuff....

it was REALLY fun to play with this!

[Hotshot]

Very good and run well on AMD Laptop where Surface 3 was very slow(you can reduce starfield down to 100 as then it would run well)

Well Done

[dr.zeissler]

Thx! It's optimized for my machine. (Celeron433/Voodoo3/DX7)
I think I can do another one with only 100 Stars. Stay tuned...

EDIT:
I created a Version with 100 Stardots (750 has the original one)
Please test this again. Thx!

[dr.zeissler]

Hi, does anyone know what the problem with ODSM, Deltaforce-Team, Testaware etc. is?

1. I get no activation-Mail from the OSDM Forum
2. The guestbook of Deltaforce-Team and theire forum does not work either
3. testaware (the creator of OSDM) has also been gone

What is wrong with these guys?

I would like to ask some questions on OSDM and would like to download betas etc. linke here: http://forum.deltaforceteam.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=380

Thx
Doc

[padman]

What is wrong with these guys?

There's most likely nothing wrong with these guys, you are just a couple of years late, that's all.

I've attached O.S.D.M v1.01.108 to this post. It's the oldest version available. It dates from 2005. Have a go and see if it works on your config. Please note, that DBF is not affiliated with the OSDM forums in any way, so we can't provide any further help with this.

Thanks.

Pad

 

[dr.zeissler]

Thx! I already use 1.01.126 and it works fine except the effects for the Logo.

If I choose any effect for the Logo, the Logo disappears (black) or a white Image is shown. I think the voodoo3 does not do this effect? Therefor I currently use a static Logo. (I upgraded DX7a to DX9 for Win98se and upgraded the Voodoo3-driver to the lastest available Version which is DX7), but it's the same. Does the Logo effect need T&L in hardware?

Though the currently used Version 1.01.126 has this effect, the featureset of this is limited. With my two Scene-Intros I already use 95% of the possible features.

Perhaps you can upload one or two higher Versions after 1.01.126.

Thx!
Doc   

***EDIT***
Sorry for asking, no further help, I overread that

[padman]

Ok, I've uploaded all available old versions to wikisend. Grab the zip while it's still there. The link will expire in 7 days.
Any further probs regarding the usage of it should still be discussed at the OSDM forums. That's what I actually meant with we can't provide any further help...

[Click here to download]

[dr.zeissler]

THX!!!