Time Slices / STNICCC 2015

[Dbug]

(I already posted that on the DHS BBS but I realized there was probably way more persons active here)

Hi,
as you probably already know I released a monochrom demo in the Commodore 128 times revisited at the STNICCC 2015 party last week.

This demo is kind of experimental (as far as I know, not many people played with the STe registers in monochrom mode), and as a result the timings are a bit wonky and were tested only on four different machines.

If any of you happens to have a STe (or Mega STe) and a SM124 screen (or a Mono to VGA cable), could you try the demo on your machine and check that the second part is working ok? If it is not, then please try to press/release the left or right arrow keys to see if you can get it to work (probably no more than 4 key presses in any direction) and report the results so we can get some kind of reference values for any future attempt

Thanks.

You can find the demo on pouet: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66703
How the demo is supposed to look (filmed on my own machine): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlpP7JV ... nrzt3iqm04
How the demo unfortunately looked like at the party: https://youtu.be/MhMQVn5K8lE?t=448

Thanks again

[Cyprian]

looks fine on my SM124.
I'll post a video a bit later.

---EDIT---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBIfstdP7h4

[Dbug]

Thanks for the test. Was that on a STe or MegaSTe ?

[Cyprian]

1040 STe,
my MSTE shows me 4 bombs

[Dbug]

Whaou, that's strange, I did most of the dev on my own mega ste.

Can you describe the configuration you used (memory, tos version, from floppy/hdd/ultra satan, if you have a vme card or some fancy cards, ...)
Does my previous demo (Save the Earth) ran on this machine?

[Cyprian]

actually MSTE throws bombs during booting process not during your demo

[Cyprian]

Finally my Mega comes back to life.
Unfortunately there are some glitches in your demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfmm99_sQjA
In additional to STNICCC issue on my SM124 is also visible electron beam issue under the scroll on the left border.

[alexh]

Are you running your MegaSTe at 8MHz?

[calimero]

Very cool demo! I really love recent SM124 mono demoes!

[Cyprian]

Are you running your MegaSTe at 8MHz?

It was clean boot, no AUTO folder, no Harddisk.
If I remember correctly Mega STe boots in 8MHz no cache mode


---EDIT---
My little program set MSTE to mode 8MHz no cache

Code: Select all

; -------+-----+-----------------------------------------------------+----------
; $FF8E21|byte |Mega STe Cache/Processor Control           BIT 15-1 0|R/W (MSTe)
;        |     |Cache enable lines (set all to 1 to enable) -----'  ||
;        |     |CPU Speed (0 - 8mhz, 1 - 16mhz) --------------------'|

   move.b   #$0,$FFFF8E21.w


and the demo shows is the same issue.

[Dbug]

I force the machine to be at 8mhz without cache on startup (and restore the original value on exit), so that's not the problem.
Have you tried using the left and right arrows to see if you could fix the problem?

Basically what I'm looking for is a set of values I can use to setup the timings on the start of the machine, so knowing if this megaste requires one or two key presses to the left or the right to get it perfect, would be invaluable

Thanks for the tests, and videos are cool

[Cyprian]

one right arrow key press fix that problem

you are welcome

[Steven Seagal]

Future version of Steem will support this demo.
I was looking for programs using HSCROLL in high res.

[wietze]

one right arrow key press fix that problem

you are welcome

Same for my ste.

[Dbug]

Future version of Steem will support this demo.
I was looking for programs using HSCROLL in high res.

What would be nice is if you could also emulate somewhat the screen persistence of the SM124, like perhaps adding some blending of the previous frame on the next frame.

On the SM124, flickering between two pictures with alternated black and white pixels gives a pretty comfortable to watch grey, but on a standard PC monitor it's like a recipe for epilepsy

In case that may help, the source code is here: http://miniserve.defence-force.org/svn/public/atari/demos/defenceforce/TimeSlices/

[npomarede]

Hello
looking at the demo on the video you made, as well as looking at it under Hatari, the 1st text scroller looks interlaced / hardly readable to me.
Even on your video, I can read the 3 other scrolltexts, but this one looks blurry.

Is that because you used some double buffer on this scroll to get a kind of grey by alternating on each VBL ?

Nicolas

[Dbug]

On the SM124 it's totally readable despite the speed because the scrolling is smooth as butter, with the mono to vga adapter it's already barely readable, and on the capture it's pointless

I'm not alternating anything on the scrollers, it's just that different frequencies or encoding made it hard to read: It's hard to make a video capture of something that displays at 71.2hz when it's finally compressed into a movie that is then rendered on a 50hz or 60hz screen.