Star Wars scroller (in STe demo) explained

[uko]

Hi guys !

After the release of my STe demo (The Star Wars Demo by The Arctic Land, see links below), I have received lots of nice comments about it (thanks !), but also several requests to explain how the Star Wars scroller is implemented.

I have therefore prepared few PPT slides, that are available in the demo repository: https://github.com/Uko-TAL/TheStarWarsD ... sSWSC.pptx
(make sure to be in presentation mode to see the embedded videos)
And for easier viewing of this presentation, I have also converted it to a video: https://youtu.be/quv_D2c6LGw

I think most of the ST demo coders won't find any revelation there, but I have tried to go from basics to more advanced topics so as anyone can find some interest in this presentation.

Hope you'll enjoy it !

David/Uko

Source code & tutorial:
https://github.com/Uko-TAL/TheStarWarsDemo

Links:
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=87771
https://demozoo.org/productions/289094/
https://youtu.be/UEuqfD_gW6U

[dhedberg]

Thanks for sharing! Some clever solutions in there!

[uko]

Thanks Daniel ! Happy that you have liked it !

[Cyprian]

cool presentation and nice trick Uko

[thomas3]

Hey Uko,

Thanks for taking the time to do this. Always really interesting to see how people come to problems like this. I wouldn't have guessed that this was the way you did it - the regular/shared lines in the font are kind of hidden by the projection, which is neat.

Out of interest, has anyone looked into how TCB did theirs all those years back?

[uko]

Thanks Cyprian & Thomas3 !

Out of interest, has anyone looked into how TCB did theirs all those years back?

I haven't and didn't want to, in order not to be influenced . And also I suppose that it is the habit I have taken from back in the days, i.e. to try to reproduce their demos without having access to their source code !

[dhedberg]

I haven't and didn't want to, in order not to be influenced . And also I suppose that it is the habit I have taken from back in the days, i.e. to try to reproduce their demos without having access to their source code !

That's the spirit and that's when you truly can point at something and say "I did this!".

[thomas3]

Cooking up some batshit, off the wall method for solving a problem, and then prototyping it and seeing that (a) it looks OK and (b) there's still half a frame of CPU left, is my favourite part of making demos

[uko]

I haven't and didn't want to, in order not to be influenced . And also I suppose that it is the habit I have taken from back in the days, i.e. to try to reproduce their demos without having access to their source code !

That's the spirit and that's when you truly can point at something and say "I did this!".

I completely agree with you !

[uko]

Cooking up some batshit, off the wall method for solving a problem, and then prototyping it and seeing that (a) it looks OK and (b) there's still half a frame of CPU left, is my favourite part of making demos

Yes, it is the most intersting part for me too. Except that there are always a lot of iterations before (a), where "It takes too much CPU or memory"