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Saxonia Issue 03 Part 013
So much which is possible
By Rumrunner/VOID
l
I have always liked to think of what's possible to do, with engines, tools
and ofcourse computers. Therefore, it was extra interesting for me when I
took the time to read one of the scrollers in the musicdisk His Masters
Noise from Mahoney and Kaktus.
Right, the scroller is taken from a demo either by Gluemaster or Cerebrandil
if I'm not mistaken. What he explain here is how he transferred a picture
from a friend's Atari to his Amiga for use in the demo. Right, if not using
disks, most people would use a paralell-cable I think, however he had
found another way to do it. Now, most people know that the Atari had
builtin midi-interface. Just so happened, our friend had a midi-interface
connected to the serialport of his Amiga and he also happened to have a
routine that received data on the serialport. So you see where this is
going? That's right, he wrote a routine so that he could transfer the
picture to his Amiga over midicables. Say that to any pc-maniac today and
you will get a strange look (I know I have had fun doing so).
This is what I consider an important part of the scene, using your
imagination in ways that most other people would never think of. While I'm
at it, lets also take a little look at the suggestion proposed in one of
the latest Eurocharts (perhaps three-four issues back now). Here, Dr Doom
(it was him if I'm not mistaken) tells about his ideas of writing a routine
that displays 256 colours using four bits. It's done by altering the
copperlist and let it change the bplcon4 register to switch what part of
your palette you want to show. There are some exciting possibilities here,
as we all know, the copper is one of the features that made Amiga the best
computer ever. Just think that still today, except the Commodore One which
we had an article on in the previous issue, the Amiga is the only computer
which can show several resolutions on the same screen at the same time.
Although this would be possible without the copper, it would take too much
time waiting for the correct rasterpositions. I hope to see interesting
features again, and while we're on the subject, did anybody ever finish a
racing-game using only the copper for graphics? Such would be interesting
from a demoperspective aswell.
Having said that, I can shortly spell out one of my ideas if I ever want to
do something demo-like on the pc (which I guess I will not do). As we all
know, the new graphicscards have hardwaresupport for a lot of things, like
for instance texturemapping. Condidering that texturemapping is boring,
people should use these features for something else. My idea would be a
trackerprogram that used these small chips to make sounds for an analogue
synth-emulator, you know, almost like AHX, but the sounds could be made
more or less at a fly when you needed them. Make the sounds for the next
update at the current one, so to say. It's just an idea, and I for one
doesn't even know the intel instruction-set, but it's a question of using
your imagination in the first place.
So, start thinking now.
