A good read! Always nice to see how other demo coders are working.

Thanks Boogaloo!

Thanx for your time and effort, as an old school programmer i came a long way myself understanding coding the c64 and it's demo secrets. But everything helps.
If you need help with your site, let me know !

Thanks John, really glad to hear you liked it :-)

Do you code the sprite multiplexer in pure assembler or C++/C ??? I can only understand from a viewpoint that timing is EVERYTHING.

The multiplexing needs to be timed - some tightly, for example the x-coordinates at some points on the sinus, and some loosely, such as the y-coordinates.

My C++ code spits out a huge ASM file that has all of this, along with border opening, the blitting of the scroller, etc etc. There's just one function call per frame of animation and this is called from our IRQ after we've stabilised the raster.

Great explanation! I hope you post more on this site about techniques like this.

Thanks Kev! That's the plan - hoping to post stuff here quite regularly.

I do not understand much, but its a great explanation.

Thanks Ian! Can't wait to see what you make next.

Very cool writeup, thanks!

Cheers! Coming from you, that's very nice to hear :-)

Luckily there are people from the old days like Jason Kelk (RIP) who shared absolutely all of their source code or people like Richard Bayliss. One of the things that I have always hated the most is the lack of empathy and the ego of the demosceners of the old school regarding their code. They think they own the holy grail, it's pathetic in people almost with 50 years old. Anyone understands that even if you know the formula of the gravity that doesn't means that you can build a rocket it's the same with this, sharing code routines does not imply that whoever watches will create a great demo or effect and if they do, you should feel proud that with your knowledge you have helped someone to create something cool.

Thanks! I think more would share, honestly, but often codebases rely heavily on hacky code, weird toolsets and macros, etc etc.. sharing that code can be either embarrassing for the coders or a worry about dealing with questions from people struggling to compile it for themselves.

It would definitely be nice to share the codebases more - but I can understand as well why some won't want to. I doubt that it's about "trade secrets" in most cases ;-)

Very nice mate, never understood why people wouldn't explain some of the code they have done and maybe just keeping this scene alive by inspiring others….. some nice tools you have coded there, keep it up…

Yeah, that's my thinking with this … if it helps some people think of slightly different ways of doing things, that might push the demoscene just a little bit forward. The old scene had plenty of such help articles too - just look at C-Hacking etc.

I don't understand anything ...
BUT: Sharing is caring (a l w a y s)
Thanks a lot for your effort!

Haha, thanks Shine! Looking forward to seeing more awesome art from you in 2022 :-)

Thanks for the interesting insight.

Cheers!