NOVA 18 demoparty: 22nd - 24th June, Budleigh Salterton, Devon

[kieranhj]

Hi all,

I know it's a bit niche for many but NOVA, the only UK demoparty, is back on again down in the lovely seaside town of Budleigh Salterton in Devon, running over the weekend of 22nd to 24th June.

Details and registrations can be found here: novaparty.org/ Tickets aren't a problem but recommend you get accomodation sorted ASAP as the town is quite small!

The event is obviously not Acorn specific but simonm & I will be there and planning to show off a new Bitshifters demo for the BBC Master. Think of it a bit like ABUG but with a massive AV system and more banging DNB tunes.

I will also post a link to the livestream (assuming there is one) and to our compo entry (assuming it gets finished in time.)

Cheers,
Kieran

[reenigne]

Ooo, a new Bitshifters demo is always something to look forward to! I'm hoping CRTC will have something to show off too, though I'm afraid that if we do it probably won't be Acorn-related.

[simonm]

Unfortunately I can't attend this now (boo), but if anyone else wants my £50 ticket to join Kieran they are welcome to go in my place. PM me if interested.

[kieranhj]

Hey everyone,

The party is getting set up and there is a livestream on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgFR4CqpDQs or SceneSat here: https://scenesat.com/video. Watch me drink beer in real-time!

I will post a link to the new Bitshifters demo as soon as it has been shown at the Retro compo tomorrow evening.

Cheers,
Kieran

[VectorEyes]

Hey everyone,

The party is getting set up and there is a livestream on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgFR4CqpDQs or SceneSat here: https://scenesat.com/video. Watch me drink beer in real-time!

I will post a link to the new Bitshifters demo as soon as it has been shown at the Retro compo tomorrow evening.

Cheers,
Kieran

I'm not seeing much coding going on. Shouldn't you be hunched over your laptop desperately implementing finishing touches before the deadline?!

Good luck! Hope it all goes well.

[kieranhj]

Well that was fun! You can check out our new Bitshifters demo for the BBC Master on our website: https://bitshifters.github.io/posts/pro ... brain.html

We won't find out where we placed in the Old School Demo compo until tomorrow. Fingers crossed...

[FourthStone]

Amazing!!

[lurkio]

Well that was fun! You can check out our new Bitshifters demo for the BBC Master on our website: https://bitshifters.github.io/posts/pro ... brain.html

Nope. Don't believe it. It's gotta be a hoax. Or you're all witches or something.

[tricky]

Nice one, looks like your getting the hang of this demo milarky.

[steve3000]

Well done, that is awesome! Just watched via emulation so far and I couldn't believe the colours, my first thought was this must be using a VideoNuLA... Amazing!

I must try this on real hardware, hoping it'll run on my master compact...

[danielj]

That was outstanding - not just the CRTC, but honestly, no one ever managed to coax such wonders out of the 78469 back in the day. Lurkio's right - you are the magic people

d.

(Just ran it on my master - substantially better than it looks on an emulator! )

[Elminster]

Very nice. Well done. We have a table runner in the same patten and colours as one of the scenes. I shall forever think of this demo when looking at the table.

[cmorley]

Very very impressive!

I just plugged the Master up to run it on a real machine and wow!

[kieranhj]

Thanks everyone! Though I say so myself, because it's all at 50Hz, it does look particularly good running on real hardware with a CUB CRT monitor.

For those interested, and who don't mind the magic being spoiled, I will post some technical details on a thread in the programming section soon.

[Pernod]

For those interested, and who don't mind the magic being spoiled, I will post some technical details on a thread in the programming section soon.

I'm curious as to what it does differently depending on emulator vs real hardware option.

[kieranhj]

I'm curious as to what it does differently depending on emulator vs real hardware option.

Basically the exact rules / timing of when CRTC register values take effect is not emulated correctly (and not 100% understood it would seem from the discussion in this thread.) This only manifests itself in extreme edge cases, such as the 1 scanline / 1 character row x 256 CRTC cycle setup used in this demo.

The net result is that on real hardware I end up with an unavoidable 313 line PAL signal for one frame. In order to correct the timing I have to generate a complementary 311 line PAL signal for one frame. In b-em & jsbeeb I keep everything to 312 lines as per normal. BeebEm is weird and doesn't work properly with either setting.

[Pernod]

Minor comment, but could you fix the downloadable SSD to conform to DFS. It's missing the sector count at offset &106-&107. A Watford DFS reports 00 tracks, and MAME requires this to determine the format of the file whether 40/80 tracks.

For 40 tracks replace bytes &106-&107 with &31, &90.
For 80 tracks replace bytes &106-&107 with &33, &20.

[oss003]

Nice demo Kieran ....... you guys did a great job ....
Looks like you exceeded the limits of the BBC Master ...... or defined new ones ....

Greetings
Kees

[kieranhj]

Minor comment, but could you fix the downloadable SSD to conform to DFS. It's missing the sector count at offset &106-&107. A Watford DFS reports 00 tracks, and MAME requires this to determine the format of the file whether 40/80 tracks.

For 40 tracks replace bytes &106-&107 with &31, &90.
For 80 tracks replace bytes &106-&107 with &33, &20.

Oops, yes I can sort that. Not sure what happened there , must be a dodgy disc template in the build process.

[Pernod]

Oops, yes I can sort that. Not sure what happened there , must be a dodgy disc template in the build process.

Thanks, I remember White Light having the same problem so probably an issue with whatever you use to create the image.

[RobC]

Awesome demo - really excellent

Loved the use of dithering and the music is some of the best I've heard on the Beeb. Even my wife was impressed

[jbnbeeb]

As per another thread...I'm late to the party. But just to add my 2 cents and join everybody else in saying what an incredible demo that is! Knowing the capabilities (and limitations) of the Beeb (or Master) only serves to blow my mind further! I'm really looking forward to the techie write up.

[kieranhj]

OK, I've made a start at a technical explanation of Twisted Brain in this thread.

[cmorley]

According to the pouet list you came 1st... http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platf ... cro&page=1

[kieranhj]

According to the pouet list you came 1st... http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platf ... cro&page=1

Yes, we did! And currently just making the top of the month list on the front page, which will hopefully increase its visibility for a short while.

[VectorEyes]

Twisted brain and Teletextr have become my default "keep my daughters entertained and give them something to dance to while I get them ready for bed" videos.

(Sadly Bad Apple is deemed less impressive because "there aren't any colours daddy". There's no pleasing some people!)

Edit: I keep noticing more and more things I like about Twisted Brain. The way the start of the copper-bars section begins all in one colour and then some of the bars change to a different one, synchronised to the music. Great little touches!

[kieranhj]

Minor comment, but could you fix the downloadable SSD to conform to DFS. It's missing the sector count at offset &106-&107. A Watford DFS reports 00 tracks, and MAME requires this to determine the format of the file whether 40/80 tracks.

For 40 tracks replace bytes &106-&107 with &31, &90.
For 80 tracks replace bytes &106-&107 with &33, &20.

Just done this BTW and pushed an update to the website.