demoscene

41 Articles

Under The Hood Of Second Reality, PC Demoscene Landmark

May 3, 2020 by 31 Comments

In 1993, IBM PCs & clones were a significant but not dominant fraction of the home computer market. They were saddled with the stigma of boring business machines. Lacking Apple Macintosh’s polish, unable to match Apple II’s software library, and missing Commodore’s audio/visual capabilities. The Amiga was the default platform of choice for impressive demos, but some demoscene hackers saw the PC’s potential to blow some minds. [Future Crew] was such a team, and their Second Reality accomplished exactly that. People who remember and interested in a trip back in time should take [Fabien Sanglard]’s tour of Second Reality source code.

We recently covered another impressive PC demo executed in just 256 bytes, for which several commenters were thankful the author shared how it was done. Source for demos aren’t necessarily released: the primary objective being to put on a show, and some authors want to keep a few tricks secret. [Future Crew] didn’t release source for Second Reality until 20th anniversary of its premiere, by which time it was difficult to run on a modern PC. Technically it is supported by DOSBox but rife with glitches, as Second Reality uses so many nonstandard tricks. The easiest way to revisit nostalgia is via video captures posted to YouTube (one embedded below the break.)

A PC from 1993 is primitive by modern standards. It was well before the age of GPUs. In fact before any floating point hardware was commonplace: Intel’s 80387 math co-processor was a separate add-on to the 80386 CPU. With the kind of hardware at our disposal today it can be hard to understand what a technical achievement Second Reality was. But PC users of the time understood, sharing it and dropping jaws well beyond the demoscene community. Its spread was as close to “going viral” as possible when “high speed data” was anything faster than 2400 baud.

Many members of [Future Crew] went on to make impact elsewhere in the industry, and their influence spread far and wide. But PC graphics wasn’t done blowing minds in 1993 just yet… December 10th of that year would see the public shareware release of a little thing called Doom.

Continue reading “Under The Hood Of Second Reality, PC Demoscene Landmark” →

Hackaday Podcast 064: The COBOL Cabal, The Demoscene Bytes, And The BTLE Cure

April 24, 2020 by 4 Comments

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys pan for gold in a week packed with technological treasure. The big news is Apple/Google are working on contact tracing using BTLE. From adoption, to privacy, to efficacy, there’s a lot to unpack here and many of the details have yet to take shape. Of course the episode also overflows with great hacks like broken-inductor bike chain sensors, parabolic basketball backboards, bizarre hose clamp tools, iron-on eTextile trials, and hot AM radio towers. We finish up discussing the greatest typing device that wasn’t, and the coming and going of the COBOL crisis.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (60 MB or so.)

Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast

Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:

Continue reading “Hackaday Podcast 064: The COBOL Cabal, The Demoscene Bytes, And The BTLE Cure” →

A Jaw-Dropping Demo In Only 256 Bytes

April 21, 2020 by 58 Comments

“Revision” is probably the Olympics of the demoscene. The world’s best tiny graphics coders assemble, show off their works, and learn new tricks to pack as much awesome into as few bytes as possible or make unheard-of effects on limited hardware. And of course, there’s a competition. Winning this year’s 256-byte (byte!) competition, and then taking the overall crowd favorite award, was [HellMood]’s Memories.

If you watch it in the live-stream from Revision, you’ll hear the crowd going (virtually) wild, and the announcer losing his grip and gasping for words. It’s that amazing. Not only are more effects put into 28 bytes than we thought possible, but there’s a full generative MIDI score to go with it. What?!?

But almost as amazing is [HellMood]’s generous writeup of how he pulled it off. If you’re at all interested in demos, minimal graphics effects, or just plain old sweet hacks, you have your weekend’s reading laid out for you. [HellMood] has all of his references and influences linked in as well. You’re about to go down a very deep rabbit hole.

Continue reading “A Jaw-Dropping Demo In Only 256 Bytes” →

Creating A Contest-Winning Amiga Demo Soundtrack

May 1, 2019 by 11 Comments

The Amiga platform took the world by storm in the 1980s. Developed by a crack team and brought to market by Commodore, the OCS chipset brought high-quality graphics and sound into the home computer market in a way never seen before. These capabilities cemented the Amiga’s place in the demoscene, and it maintains an active development community to this day. [Hoffman] is one such member of that community, and has shared some of the hacks that go into pulling off a banging soundtrack in a cutting-edge A500 demo.

The Amiga has 512 KB of so-called chip RAM, accessible by the custom chips and CPU for all tasks. There’s also commonly an additional 512 KB in a trapdoor under the machine, though it is limited in the ways it can be used. With these limits in place, [Hoffman] was overjoyed when the rest of the team allocated him a full 200 KB of memory for the soundtrack. In order to make the most of this precious resource, hacking ensued.

[Hoffman] does a great job of explaining all the tricks involved in creating a compelling 5 minute soundtrack in just 200 KB of RAM. There’s discussion of compression, sample sizes, and the vagaries of the ProTracker format. Smart hacks such as prioritized sample loading and pre-rendering drum loops also help to get the project over the line.

It’s a great write-up, which clearly explains the strategies used to help build a world-class demo soundtrack. [Hoffman] promises that the tricks used by the rest of the crew are equally as impressive, which we’re sure helped Eon to win the Amiga Demo Compo at Revision 2019. We’ve featured Revision winners here before, too. Demo video after the break.

Continue reading “Creating A Contest-Winning Amiga Demo Soundtrack” →

Full Motion Video And 3D Graphics Make This Genesis Demo Pop

March 27, 2019 by 8 Comments

The SEGA Genesis (aka Mega Drive) was launched at the tail end of the 1980s, bringing a new level of performance to the console world. At the time, 2D graphics ruled the roost, outside a few niche titles here and there. Decades later however, the demoscene continues to work in earnest. The Red Eyes demo is a great example of what can be done when pushing the Genesis hardware to the limits.

The demo features full motion video and an impressive 3D sequence. It’s quite a feat to pull this off with the limited resources of the Genesis platform. [Remute], [Kabuto] and [Exocet] have laid their secrets bare in a technical document, describing in explicit detail how it’s all achieved.

There’s plenty of juicy reading material here. There are palette hacks to produce high-quality greyscale images, rendering tips to produce the smooth 3D rendered sequences, as well as optimizations to create the best possible sample playback using the onboard YM2612 sound chip. It’s a tour de force of development, and it’s astounding to look behind the curtain to see just what can be achieved.

If you’re thinking about tinkering with the Genesis yourself, you might find it useful to have a dev kit on your bench. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Full Motion Video And 3D Graphics Make This Genesis Demo Pop” →

Apple II Megademo Is Countin’ Cycles And Takin’ Names

December 5, 2018 by 23 Comments

The demoscene is an active place to this day, with enthusiasts around the world continuing to push the envelope as far as the capabilities of machines are concerned. [Deater], along with a skilled team, produced this Apple II Megademo which won first place at Demosplash 2018.

The demo starts with an intentional tease, with an emulated C64 BASIC startup screen which splits to reveal the title card. White-on-blue text isn’t the easiest on the Apple II, due to palette limitations, but it’s necessary for the joke to work. The following scenes make heavy use of mode-switching techniques in the middle of drawing the screen. Single screens are made up of various sections in LORES, HIRES, and even text modes. The term “cycle-counting” refers to the fact that the demo is written to operate in a cycle-exact fashion. This is necessary to achieve the mode-switching effects and to make the most of the limited resources of the Apple II.

It’s a demo that, like many others, does the right things in the wrong way to achieve its impressive results, and is a worthy competition winner. [Deater] has kindly provided an FAQ and source code for those who wish to study it further.

If you’ve written a mindblowing demo yourself, be sure to notify the tips line. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Apple II Megademo Is Countin’ Cycles And Takin’ Names” →

LayerOne InfoSec Conference Returns Next Weekend

May 18, 2018 by 1 Comment

This year’s LayerOne conference is May 25-27 in Los Angeles and Hackaday will be there! Hurry and get your ticket now as today is the last day for pre-registration.

As the InfoSec community takes over the Pasadena Hilton next weekend you’ll wish you had a week instead of just three days to take part in all that is offered. There are organized talks and workshops on pen testing, being the bad guy, and DevOps Security. Learn or improve on your lockpicking skills in the Lockpicking Village. The conference hardware badge will be hacking in every direction in the Hardware Village, and new this year is an Internet of Things Village.

If you ask us, the L1 Demo Party is where it’s at. We love seeing what kind of audio and video demos can be squeezed out of a microcontroller board. If you want one of your own, LayerOne is selling the L1 Demoscene Board on Tindie, and you can dig into the hardware on the Hackaday.io page. Take a look back at the results of the 2015 Demo Party for some of the highlights.

This con has an incredible community supporting it, many of the people you’ll meet have been at every LayerOne since it started back in 2004. Supplyframe, Hackaday’s parent company, has been a sponsor since 2015 and is once again proud to support the event and sponsor the hardware badge. Members of the Hackaday and Tindie crew will be on site so come say hello and don’t be afraid to bring a hack to show off!