Writing To The Border - Plus/4 Encyclopedia



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Writing To The Border

Category
Glossary/Demos Programming/Assembly

Topic
The border of the screen by default is an area that programs cannot write to. It's a solid color, specified by TED register $FF19. This has been overcome by clever programmers.

The upper/lower border was the first one. The first program to do this was probably 1987's Summer Events by Udo Gertz. The Mad also did this in his games: Invincible, Digital Ball (upscroller), Godzilla (intro screen).

The sideborder is a completely different story.

- First ever side border effect: Master Computing in MC Demo then TCFS in Dynamix intro. They were release about the same time, but TCFS admits that the idea is from MC. This effect is pretty weird, it uses a side effect of the monitor display (that's why YAPE can't emulate it properly). The effect uses $FF1D/$FF1E writing.

- Five Magics is the first real one by Crown. It extends the sideborder by one char in each direction. The effect is rather limited though. However it's the only HIRES one so far. It uses $FF07.

- Chaos: Larry's old SAS ( = eagle) routine is finally public. Extends the screen by a total of 3 chars, has to be multicolor by the nature of the effect, and the colour map goes bye-bye, so it's 3 colors only. It uses $FF07.

- Crackers Demo 4: Larry improves on the effect by interlacing it, so now we have 7 colors.

Keywords
Border, sideborder