Demo effects seen on other platform's you would love to see the A8 have a crack at doing

[+CharlieChaplin]

In the last 10-20 years we had lots of very small demo/intro fx on the A8 (e.g. 1k, 256 / 128 / 64 / 32 Bytes). I would like to see some kind of collection of these small fx in one larger demo. Afaik, on other platforms they did not present one demo effect after the other anymore at a certain time and made transitions to blend from one part of the demo to the next, nowadays larger demos are running like a movie or trying to tell a story while showing effects - the A8 demos have been following that trend, it seems. Retro as I am, I would still like to see some demos from time to time presenting one effect after another (e.g. starting with the name of the demo and its authors and then simply part 1, part 2, part 3,...).

 

While doing hundreds of TIP animations, I also found a website that presents great effects that do have mathematical, chemical, physical or other scientific backgrounds. Allthough I do not understand most of the scientific background, the shown effects are really good (and often available as GIF animations) and could surely be used as an inspiration for a larger demo (or a demo collection with many fx). It is Paul Nylander's webpage.

 

[Beeblebrox]

@CharlieChaplin I am out and about at the moment so will read and reply to your post above later.

 

Just to say this topic isn't actually asking for existing demos on the A8 that have come from other platforms.  Rather I was interested in effects in demos anyone might have seen on other platforms that they would love to see and think might be possible to replicate to some degree on the A8. ?

 

 

 

 

[Jetboot Jack]

21 hours ago, Poison said:

No, colours are changing in realtime when position of light source is changed. you can look into the code of this part. It is great effect in year 1996, only three years later  Our coder was only 15 years old and he was very good.

Video on YT is not running properly, there are some gfx glitches and music sounds strange

Yes I know the colours are changing in realtime depending on the position of the light source, but the proximity of the light source to the letters makes no difference - i.e. letters nearer the light source are not MORE lit than those further away - so it is adjusting colours/register values depending on light source position rather than actually lighting the letters with a source of light - if that makes sense (in both the Amiga and A8 versions) - unless my eyes are faulty...

Edited May 5, 2022 by Jetboot Jack

[Cyprian]

On 5/2/2022 at 2:34 PM, Beeblebrox said:

First up I saw this Youtube video of a 2015 ST demo called We are @ which at the very end had this very interesting rotating/interlocking horizonal cog effects in a monochrome colour. 

I'd hazzard a guess a similar effect is possible using the lower res 16 hue GTIA mode on the A8:

 

 

 

 

first attempt:

 

WeWere.obx

[Beeblebrox]

@Cyprian Cool - nice job. Just out of curiosity is the colour pallette easy to change  eg to mirror the original turquoise colour if you ever wanted too?  Really nice to see someone implmenting an effect mentioned in this thread - thanks so much. 

[Rybags]

For the cogs, something like TIP mode could be helpful there.  You'd want to have the right alternation of Mode 9/10 to suit the shape of the particular animation.

PMGs could be used to smooth out the cog teeth.

[Cyprian]

10 hours ago, Rybags said:

For the cogs, something like TIP mode could be helpful there.  You'd want to have the right alternation of Mode 9/10 to suit the shape of the particular animation.

PMGs could be used to smooth out the cog teeth.

how to convert e.g. PNG to that mixed 9/10 mode?

 

@Beeblebrox I can try to adopt ST colors to that effect.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Cyprian

[Rybags]

PNG?  As in the picture filetype?

 

I was referring to PMG - player/missile graphics.

How to convert - for such a task - a fair amount of thought having to go into it.

[emkay]

15 hours ago, Cyprian said:

 

first attempt:

 

WeWere.obx 22.6 kB · 14 downloads

Looks very nice. 

I wonder how this looks without transitions?

[Cyprian]

  

1 hour ago, Rybags said:

PNG?  As in the picture filetype?

 

I was referring to PMG - player/missile graphics.

How to convert - for such a task - a fair amount of thought having to go into it.

 

I mean PNG - graphics file not PMG - player / missile.

I would try that mixed 9/10 mode, but I have no idea how to convert bunch of PNGs to that format.

Regarding PMG, the quality of that animation is fine with me. Also preparing PMG data for that would be time consuming, therefore I'm not sure whether it's worth to go in that direction.

 

1 hour ago, emkay said:

Looks very nice. 

I wonder how this looks without transitions?

what do you mean by that transitions? shadings?

[Rybags]

Conversion - it's generally easier to convert stuff to BMP since that's just a linear bitmap and easier to deal with.

Though by default they're stored upside down.

Since TIP has pixels offset depending on mode on the particular line you'd probably be best off doing luma averaging of pairs.

[Cyprian]

24 minutes ago, Rybags said:

Conversion - it's generally easier to convert stuff to BMP since that's just a linear bitmap and easier to deal with.

Though by default they're stored upside down.

Since TIP has pixels offset depending on mode on the particular line you'd probably be best off doing luma averaging of pairs.

ok, I can use BMPv files instead.

 

I see one issue with mode 9 vs 10 - a different amount of colors - 16 vs 9. Therefore every other line should have limited number of colors to 9. I can't see that modification done by hand.

 

Edited May 6, 2022 by Cyprian

[ivop]

18 hours ago, Beeblebrox said:

@Cyprian Cool - nice job. Just out of curiosity is the colour pallette easy to change  eg to mirror the original turquoise colour if you ever wanted too?  Really nice to see someone implmenting an effect mentioned in this thread - thanks so much. 

If you change the background color of graphics 9, you change the hue of all the luminances.

 

[ivop]

2 hours ago, Cyprian said:

I see one issue with mode 9 vs 10 - a different amount of colors - 16 vs 9. Therefore every other line should have limited number of colors to 9. I can't see that modification done by hand.

The idea is that mode 10 is shifted half a wide pixel in relation to mode 9. Interleaving these modes gives the illusion of having 160 pixels wide, instead of just 80.

 

Mode 9 lines use all the luminances.

Mode 10 lines have the colors set to 0, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 (eight luminances and black)

 

You can increase the illusion by using a flicker mode (it's not interlacing) by switching between screens that either start with mode 9, or with mode 10. Especially at 50Hz (PAL) it is not that easy on the eyes IMHO.

 

About the half wide pixel shift, this results in a zig-zag edge on the left and right side. You can mask them by putting a black player or missile in front of the edges.

 

Edited May 6, 2022 by ivop

[emkay]

4 hours ago, Cyprian said:

  

 

I mean PNG - graphics file not PMG - player / missile.

I would try that mixed 9/10 mode, but I have no idea how to convert bunch of PNGs to that format.

Regarding PMG, the quality of that animation is fine with me. Also preparing PMG data for that would be time consuming, therefore I'm not sure whether it's worth to go in that direction.

 

what do you mean by that transitions? shadings?

Yes. Just use the available 16 hues.

[tebe]

Usage: 
java -jar tipconv.jar [options] file... 
When no arguments (options or files) given, GUI is opened 
Options: 
-t      --tip           convert to TIP image (default) 
-h      --hip           convert to HIP image 
-f      --fit           fit 
-c      --crop          crop to fill 
-s      --stretch       stretch to fill 
-l      --linear        enable separate linear brightness conversion 
-aS     --saturation=S  set saturation multiplier S (default 4.0) 
-pFile  --palette=File  use palette file "File" 
        --help          print this message 
        --version       print version info 

 

for %%z in (*.png) do tipconv.jar -l -f -a3 %%z

TIPConv.7z

[zzip]

1 hour ago, ivop said:

The idea is that mode 10 is shifted half a wide pixel in relation to mode 9. Interleaving these modes gives the illusion of having 160 pixels wide, instead of just 80.

 

Mode 9 lines use all the luminances.

Mode 10 lines have the colors set to 0, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 (eight luminances and black)

 

You can increase the illusion by using a flicker mode (it's not interlacing) by switching between screens that either start with mode 9, or with mode 10. Especially at 50Hz (PAL) it is not that easy on the eyes IMHO.

 

About the half wide pixel shift, this results in a zig-zag edge on the left and right side. You can mask them by putting a black player or missile in front of the edges.

Here's a document briefly describing all these tricks and "software graphics modes" like HIP, RIP, TIP, APAC  to hopefully make it clearer.   This information can be hard to find these days:

 

https://atari-owner.com/club/articles/atari-software-graphic-modes.17/ 

[Cyprian]

@ivop I know that mode well, but I have no idea how to convert dozen files

@tebe Dzięki

[+CharlieChaplin]

1 hour ago, Cyprian said:

@ivop I know that mode well, but I have no idea how to convert dozen files

@tebe Dzięki

 

In TipConv 1.1 by EPI you simply create a batchfile which includes a command to convert e.g. all *.PNG into *.TIP. (BMP or JPG => TIP would also be allowed.)

 

When doing TIP animations I sometimes converted several hundred PNG into TIP with such a batchfile; first I loaded and converted some 3-5 examples to choose the right palette and other settings in the TipConv.JAR program, when done I converted all PNG files in one go by starting the batchfile. Attached an example batchfile.

 

NOTE: Rename *.TXT into *.BAT if you want to use that batchfile. The filename indicates, that this batchfile will use OlivierP (PAL) palette and saturation 1.0.

olip_10.txt

HowTo.zip

[pps]

imho it suits here, even if it is not THAT effect

@pouet

original version

[+CharlieChaplin]

On 5/5/2022 at 11:40 PM, Cyprian said:

 

first attempt 22.6 kB · 29 downloads

 

The original version looks blue-ish to me, one may also use Gr. 9 with 16 blue tones...?!?