This was a 1-level demo written for a university course, so it wasn't actually released anywhere. I'm now a Senior Games Programmer, so it must've worked :) I am tempted to go back to the ideas I had, and what I wanted to implement and making a finished game out of it at some point...
When I watch demos I try to figure out how they are implemented. This one has me thinking how they got a full screen font to fit in the limited 1mb memory of the Archimedes. My guesses are: 1. A superfast outline font render that only caches the visible characters. (this would be a stretch on an ARM2). 2. The font is reduced to a monochrome bitmap and stored as RLE (which could be 1 - 7 transitions per row, = 2-14 bytes per row?) . Each monochrome RLE bitmap is rendered into a full colour buffer, and used as a stencil for a repeating background texture. This is done on demand and each character buffer is discarded once the character goes offscreen. 3. Or is it as simple as each character is reduced to 2 bit (4 colours)? If each character is upto 100x200 pixels x 2 bit colour = 5k per character x about 60 chars = 300k. Any thoughts?
To be honest I haven't looked. I have a MiSTer and it breaks the VIDC implementation of the archimedes because the horizontal overscan is pretty much at the limits of what the VIDC can manage and it uses register tricks for the scrolling to reduce the amount of redrawing needed. I spent a while staring at the register outputs trying to fix that but I haven't even thought of the letter data - I always assumed it was a tilemap as if you were handling a scrolling game background...
This is actually better than the Amiga version! I'm in love with this track.. Have had it on loop for weeks now and I don't see that ending anytime soon.. I just imagine what kind of reception it would have gotten back in the day if a game dropped on C64 with this soundtrack. It would be Commando / Turrican hype levels no doubt.
im pretty sure they were just mentioning about how it sounds like a completely composed song rather than only sounding what you'd expect only 3 instruments in the set to sound and not whatever you just said@@inphanta
Goat Tracker (export to SID file) and any music player with conv. capability (e.g. Sidplay, Foobar with plugins). Most of published C64 songs have been archived in the HVSC database (hvsc.c64.org) in SID file format. But at page: www.6581-8580.com/socse you can find it in MP3.
let me put a like to this great retro feel, both optimistically experimental and introvertly-undeground... the pumpkins would've liked this! please do more
I ALWAYS clip me toe nails to this chiptastic little banger !!! Here we go again, COME ONNNNNN !!! Left big toe is getting it first (blimey look at the state of them - it's been a good few months), about to hit play !!!
