BEEB-NICCC: New Bitshifters demo released at Revision 2020

[kieranhj]

Hello fellow Stardotters,

Bitshifters released our new demo at the legendary Revision demoparty in the Old Skool compo yesterday: https://bitshifters.github.io/posts/pro ... niccc.html

It is a recreation of the classic 3D demo STNICCC-2000 by Oxygene, which was originally released on the Atari STe back in 2000. It took quite a bit of work to crunch down a 1Mb demo running on a 8MHz 68000 machine to run on a BBC Micro.

To run on real hardware you'll need 16K sideways RAM in slot 4 and it has to run from a real floppy disc or a Gotek, unfortunately DataCentre RAMFS and MMFS are not currently supported. This has been tested on a BBC Master; there is a known issue that may cause the demo to freeze on Model B machines. We will release a v1.1 update soon that allows SWRAM slot to be configured and maybe a little surprise bonus...

Enjoy!

[0xC0DE]

Wow, this is ridiculously AWESOME!!
I watched the video (thanks for the mention!) and can't wait to play it on my Master.
Congratulations to the whole Bitshifters crew!

[davidb]

Looks and sounds very good indeed!

Strangely, I think I prefer the "replay" section at the end to the main event with the polygons. I'm sure you could do some interesting tricks with that sort of mini-display.

[marcusjambler]

Very very cool fellas

[BigEd]

oooh - will there be a mega making-of thread?

[oss003]

Nice job Bitshifters, great demo .... very impressive .....

Greetings
Kees

[steve3000]

absolutely unbelievable conversion, amazing work again! And awesome choice of sound track, never thought I'd here that on a beeb!

[Diminished]

Excellent work, guys.

Once again kieran (et al)'s work leaves me wishing I had a Master.

[tricky]

Or a model B with 16K sideways RAM

[spanners]

Amazing work. Well done.

D.

[nicolagiacobbe]

Really wonderful.
I will eagerly await the "into the development" documentation. I always learn some new strange and powerful way to push the beeb.
If I am not bothering much, may I ask the update rate of the screen (and if the code will be available^H^H^H, sorry, I just discovered the "source code" button)? I'd like to "steal" it for a long sought version on knot3d.

[kieranhj]

UPDATE! Version 1.1 has just been released!

This has a number of bug fixes, including the Model B lock up problem, but most importantly Video NuLA support. A huge thank you to Tom Seddon for doing 99% of the work to get the NuLA version not only running but optimised and polished. I have to say it looks absolutely sweet!

Tom wrote some voodoo code that auto-detects whether Video NuLA is present, so that version will automatically play. If you want to see the original MODE 5 version of the graphics then press 'N' during the Intro only to toggle. If you're not lucky enough to have a Video NuLA then you can still try the experience with Tom's excellent b2 emulator.

Version 1.1 can also be run without SWRAM but you will have no music. It also detects available SWRAM and uses the highest available slot. Music can be toggled on and off by pressing 'Q' during the Intro only.

Download the updated disc image from the Bitshifters website and let us know if you experience any problems. Enjoy!

EDIT: I should add that the only known issues are when not running from real floppy drives or a Gotek. Unfortunately both RAMFS (DataCentre) and MMC/MMFS devices will exhibit slowdown and audio issues due to incompatibilities with the way interrupts are handled. I have come to the conclusion that Gotek is the most highly-compatible modern floppy replacement solution for the Beeb, so will be unlikely to expend additional effort to support MMC/DC type devices for future games & demos I'm afraid (and I have both.)

nula-niccc!

[marcusjambler]

Wow... even better with the Nula colours

[Dave Footitt]

Haha fantastic work

Never thought I'd hear that music on the beeb *goosebumps*

[RobC]

That's brilliant

And what an ingenious way of detecting VideoNuLA I'd never have thought of that! I'll add it to the manual.

[BigEd]

I hope it's no spoiler to say a bit more: detecting the VideoNuLA is done by detecting frame interrupt timings(?) using several calls to

*FX19 Causes the machine to wait until the start of the next frame of the display for animation.

See loader.bas.