New Plasma Effect Demo

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J.B. Langston

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Aug 31, 2020, 9:36:53 PM8/31/20
to RC2014-Z80
Continuing to sharpen my Z80 demoskills ;)... I ported over a really nice plasma effect from C64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-DdxUdJskI

It's got a lot more variety and nicer colors than the one I wrote before.  The way the plasma is generated can be configured with a set of constants, so different effects could be randomly generated at runtime once I add a RNG and a UI to control it.

S P Dixon

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Sep 1, 2020, 9:23:45 AM9/1/20
to RC2014-Z80
What an awesome demo, congratulations! I wasn't fully aware of the video card but have just ordered a kit. Thanks for the inspiration.

Todd Decker

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Sep 2, 2020, 11:03:11 AM9/2/20
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I've ordered one too!  Very nice card

J.B. Langston

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Sep 4, 2020, 1:50:38 PM9/4/20
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Thanks! Glad you liked it. BTW, I've tweaked the color palettes a bit and made a longer video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIT_a1AZj5A

positron (Jose L. Collado)

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Sep 6, 2020, 12:11:20 PM9/6/20
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Hi J.B. ! Amazing ! A cool demo of an Anti-aliasing algorithm. Is the code SC-126 (Z180 + ROMWBW) compatible ?

Cheers, JL

J.B. Langston

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Sep 6, 2020, 12:15:21 PM9/6/20
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I haven't tested it on my SC126 yet but there's no reason it shouldn't be. I will try it out and if I find any problems, I'll fix them.

Yesterday I added a lot of features so it's now possible to interactively control the program, holding an effect indefinitely, generating random effects, changing the palette and tweaking other parameters.  Eventually plan to add the ability to save and load your favorite parameters to CP/M but I'm not there yet.

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J.B. Langston

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Sep 6, 2020, 12:23:42 PM9/6/20
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Just tested it out. The only issue was I forgot to remove the code that double's the Z180's clock speed.  Faster clock speed is not necessary and it makes the baud rate double which interferes with using the interactive features unless you change the setting in your terminal.  I've fixed that and pushed the changes.  I've only tested assembling with sjasm but it should work with others as well.  I've attached a binary here. Rename it to .com to run it.
plasma.out

positron (Jose L. Collado)

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Sep 6, 2020, 12:32:19 PM9/6/20
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Brilliant JB ! Many thanks for this geek toy ! I’ll run it permanently when my SC-126 is idle...
By the way did you have a chance to implement the line drawing functions in your BBC Basic port ?

J.B. Langston

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Sep 6, 2020, 12:50:59 PM9/6/20
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Never did get around to it.  Dean Netherton did though: https://github.com/vipoo/bbcbasic-z80.  Unfortunately he also introduced a dependency on RomWBW, which I do not want in my version of the code.  This shouldn't be an issue for you since you're running an SC126 but since I want to remain compatible with my z80ctrl board, which doesn't run RomWBW, I need to untangle the dependencies on RomWBW and merge the drawing code back to mine.

Rob Dobson

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Sep 6, 2020, 3:04:38 PM9/6/20
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Really nice job! Very cool effect.

On Tuesday, 1 September 2020 at 02:36:53 UTC+1 J.B. Langston wrote:

J.B. Langston

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Sep 7, 2020, 3:14:18 PM9/7/20
to RC2014-Z80
If anyone's interested, I've written an explanation of how the code works: https://hackaday.io/project/159057-game-boards-for-rc2014/log/183324-plasma-effect-for-tms9918
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