4KB intro - Demoscene

[Harrison]

Different groups use different languages and techniques, but most tend to use assembler I think.

The 4K intros can definitely blow you away with what they can fit into them, with the Amiga and PC ones deliver some amazing results to the strengths of their hardware. And if you watch the slightly larger releases like the 16K and even 64K ones they still leave you wondering how the hell they did it.

I do know that for any 3D stuff they use procedural textures, so no real image texture maps exist, it is all created from code, which helps make it much smaller. One great example of this is the FPS demo create by Farbrausch on the PC, which generated a full procedural textured 3D world that was playable just like any FPS, and it was 90KB total size. That was amazing.

This coding for the demoscene also shows how bloated today's Games and software has become. But it also allows coders to perfect techniques that can then be used on platforms that don't have the luxury of large storage spaces, such as mobile phones and handheld consoles. For these, having techniques developers in such small file sizes allows developers to fit huge games onto relatively small media or downloads. Quite amazing.

[Stephen Coates]

Wisecracker showed us a demo for Windows on his laptop at LAG a couple of years ago. I can't remember how big it was but it was one of those tiny ones.

It was cool.

I'll have to have a look at some Amiga ones.

[Tiago]

I allways like this kind of stuff, creating graphics with maths is something quite cool.
I guess in PC/windows they use functions that the graphic cards have in their chips, but not for the Amiga.

Example if you want to draw 3D in "C" without using direct x/opengl etc... you must calculate the Z axe, C only know what is X and Y, so
if you want to put a dot in x,y,z 10,10,00 you have to calculate the Z in terms of X,Y:

X,Y,Z will be tranformed in pure X,Y,

some time ago i try to draw a cube using this simple method,
to each Z i did:

sen30 = 0.5
cos30 = 0,86

So x,y,Z lets say 10,10,10
if you want to draw that on screen with a 30º perspective bottom/top and left/right



sen30=opp/hyp
cos30=add/hyp

then
opp (vertical) will be y
add (horizontal)will be x

then
zy = sen30 x hyp
hyp = 10
zy = 0,5*10 = 5

zx = cos30 x hyp
hyp = 10
zx = 0,86*10 = 8.6

so, 10,10,10
will be draw at:
x-zx , y-zy
10-8.6 , 10-5
1.4,5


If you want 45º perspective, it will be: (sin45=cos45)
7.07 , 7.07



But it will not work correctly, because the face near you will have the same size as the one far from you...
but the result is not bad...

anyone did anything similar with basic funcions to draw manualy?