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View Full Version : Nice "Behind the Scenes of a C64 Demo" presentation



Demon Cleaner
27th September 2013, 12:11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So-m4NUzKLw

It was quite nice watching this, really interesting.


Behind the scenes of a C64 demo

C64 "demos" were the root of the whole demo-scene-thing and they are still the main force keeping the C64 alive today. Audiovisual pleasure, still pushing hardware limits, still exploring different ways of expression. But what is typically happening inside the machine when you watch a demo? What effort is needed to entertain the audience? This talk will give you an inside look at the steps taken for the award winning demo "Error 23" given first hand by one of its main programmers.

This talk extends previous talks and documentation about the Commodore 64 and its demo effects by adding real-life challenges and experiences to it. What were the basic ideas? What obstacles were on the way? How did they get solved? 6502 assembly knowledge is really not required, some general understanding about assembly and low-level computing will be useful, though (think of stack, timer, cycles...). This isn't about theory, this is for real ;)

Topics include (but not limited to):

Explaining design choices
Basic ideas behind the effects
Data compression techniques
Load stuff while displaying effects
Dirty tricks which make your computer science professor run away
Synchronization and linking
how to keep it all in 64KB RAM

Speaker: Ninja / The Dreams
EventID: 4814
Event: 28th Chaos Communication Congress (28C3) by the Chaos Computer Club [CCC]
Location: Berlin Congress Center [bcc]; Alexanderstr. 11; 10178 Berlin; Germany
Language: english

Harrison
27th September 2013, 14:19
Oh yes, I've watched this before. Although I didn't understand everything code related it was still interesting to get an insight into how they achieved the effects within demo productions. It also gives an indication of the real power inside the C64.

Teho
27th September 2013, 15:38
Hadn't seen that, thanks. :thumbs: