Posted By
TLC
on 2006-09-14
09:36:51
|  Re: +4 biggest screen resolution
In fact that trick with feeding the TED with bitmap data by executing a series of CPU instructions works even without switching to an unused ROM bank; if you remove the upper and lower border by $FF06 magic, you end up with bitmap fetch with no TED bitmap address generation and address bus assertion, provided you keep the CPU in double clock mode; so whatever the TED reads from the data bus will be displayed as bitmap. It's kind of similar to the case when the TED reads from unconnected address space.
But AFAIK this is not new, either; I know of published examples of this phenomenon from Andreas Boose and Marko Mäkelä. Marko even wrote a testprogram that ran completely in unconnected address space (though, this is of kind of the opposite league).
As for the "difference"-thing that you mention above: I kind of agree (so much that I sort of wrote my previous reply in exactly the same sense, even if this sense might not have really come through). Speaking about theory is theoretical, something proving that something works is factual. Who cares if "I" invented this in theory? ...For me, it might be nice, but really who cares?
It may look like that we could stop here (as we seem to have reached "the" conclusion), but there is something more to this... at least as I feel.
From time to time, rumours raise up about things that have never been done before, effects that have been done for the first time ever on Plus/4, exotic TED effects and things like that, created by a couple of nice guys. Sometimes there are rumours about new, upcoming demos from the above sort of nice guys. ...O.K., but what's the problem (if there's one at all), you could ask?
Well, the problem is, all those rumours so far have all proven to be vaporware, that's the problem.
Why?
When someone tells me he succeeded to create something that, say, I had in mind or I also managed to get to work before, I feel disappointed. I'm an egoistic kind of person, after all. Philosophy says, one's ego feels threatened when something that gives him identity is threatened in its existence. Before you'd consider this, say, inappropriate, I'd ask you to tell me the feelings you got when you read this thread here; or I might as well ask Bubis to consider his feelings when he learnt I was forth to him by just three or four weeks. This is real. So?...
In the sight of this, what happens is absolutely false. Coming up with exotic things is nice, but presenting them as just rumours is really bad. ...Sometimes, back then, people knew, or, say, respected themself or others or the things they've created (I don't know which one, if not more than one is appropriate... ). I could never hear or read SCF or Mucsi or anyone amongst those guys rumouring about how cool effects they've created. You could, say, run Sign o' Times instead and wonder what you're watching. ...I wouldn't even consider this a phenomenon of today's better communication possibilities (there are other well known names who don't ever appear to rumour about things, they just come up with demos occassionally). ...The difference it makes is the feeling you get. Being a coder, you possibly feel bad when you hear someone coming up with something that you had in mind (or in test), I mean just the pure fact of deed. You possibly even stop experimenting. Or whatever. What's the use of a revolutionary effect that's also in someone else's hands, after all, even if none of you got it published? At the end, both of you may end up never publishing the stuff ('cos it's really not worth it, one feels).
When you're handed a demo, with no talks or whatever prior knowledge, the situation is absolutely different. For one, I don't feel jealous about a nice demo I see, even if it contains things I might have in mind before, or in test, or whatever. A nice demo is a nice demo. Period. You don't feel bad seeing a nice demo; you (if you like beauty) do like it, just for itself. (For one, I had absolutey no bad feelings about watching BSZ's trackmo, even if it had lots of ideas I had in mind, and some I had in test. I was truly happy about it, and didn't consider what I lost "in theory"; I simply didn't feel like that. Which is a difference).
As a conclusion, it might be useless to know, who had something in mind for the first time... as well as it might be slightly useless, or counter-productive, after all, to have a proof about something, as long as it's not respected to be featured in a demo, or a product, or whatever.
I'd be happy to see demos from guys I've talked about above (as to whom I'm talking about, I leave to their consideration), but no rumours. No vaporware. Please.
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