l’étranger

For those who started playing with computers with the rise of the internet, this probably won’t ring a bell but in the late 80s and early 90s, the name of the game was demomaking. I loved and used to spend a lot of time watching these great productions who pushed the computers to the limit. I did myself my share of Z80 assembly programming on the Amstrad CPC.

I decided to check if the scene was still alive (I know it is on Amstrad CPC) and since I now am a happy MacBook and PowerBook owner, I googled a bit and probably the best site I could find was www.pouet.com. Lots of demo to be downloaded.

I gave it a try but to be honest, I really was disappointed. Even though we now have access to the internet, have processors that are almost a thousand times faster and video cards that take care of all of the 3D graphics, I didn’t think the level was that much higher. I might simply be a bit nostalgic but I think the competition from “back then” was a lot more stimulating and led to a lot more creativity. After watching a bunch of demos on my Mac, I felt all I was seeing was yet another OpenGL program. I guess the point of creating a demo is a bit obsolete in 2006 since assembly is no longer needed, all circuitry access is handled via devices and layers of software…

Still, I decided to try and write my own little 80s demo on the Mac. Apparently, programming in x86 assembly language on my MacBook is a no go. I couldn’t find any resources on the web. I have since downloaded the SDL library and am now in the process of writing a small demo in C++. One thing that I already find “fascinating” is the fact that one has to throttle the framerate! Back in the early 90s, you had to use many tricks to make sure your routines would fit within one VBL and now, you have to wait to slow down your program and not go over 50 fps for example! Even though this is obvious, the fact that I had to write such a wait loop in my code really amused me.

If this project pans out, I’ll post updates here.