In Memoriam V.N.N. by Introspec & 4th Dimension
__ __
_(__)_____ ___________________________(__)___________ _ __ __ _
___)_ )_ |)_ )_ _)_ )_ )_ _)_ )_ )_ |_________/---/________
| __|: | |: | |:| | |: _||:| | |:| |:| |: |:__ |:| | |________/---/_______ |
|:| |__/_|__/ |_|-|/|___/|_|-|/|___/|_| |__/_|__|_|-|/ ______ ______ |:|
|:|__ _ _/ | | _/ | _/ | _|:|
| _/ / ) | | ) _ | ) _ | )_ |
| | _____/ \_________________________ _ _ | | | | | | | | | | |
| |_| /___\ |_/____|: | | |: | | |: | |___| |
|___| i n m e m o r i a m V . N . N |______|: | | |: | | |: | |_____|
|:|________________________--/______| | | | | | | | | |
|: \/ | |_| | |_| | |_
|:::.. \_____/(_)___|__/(_)___|__/(_)
--|---------\ . : . :
title -- In Memoriam V.N.N.
--|----.___.--\
|:::
--|---------\
authors -- introspec (design & code)
--|----.___.--\ diver/4d (graphics & design)
|:: g0blinish (code)
|:::.
--|---------\
music -- A 40 second sample from the old Soviet movie
--|----.___.--\ "Bespridannitsa" (Girl with no Dowry, 1937). Actually,
|::: this recording reproduces a fragment of the classic XIXth
_ / century Russian song "To ne veter vetku klonit" (It's Not
\/ the Wind that Bends the Branch; composed by A. Varlamov,
|: lyrics by S. Stromilov).
|:::.
--|---------\
lyrics -- Izvela menya kruchina,
--|----.___.--\ Podlokoldnaya zmeya!..
|::: Dogorai, gori, moya luchina,
|: Dogoryu s toboi i ya.
|___
/ /\ I am worn down by my sorrow,
/__/ / Stealthy snake beneath the tree,
\__\/_ Burn, my wood-brand, there's no morrow,
| And I shall burn out with thee.
|: (translated by C. K. Goldstein and I. H. Grade for their
|: translation of "My Mother's Sabbath Days" by Chaim Grade).
|:::.
--|---------\
hardware -- 100% pentagon-compartible clone of ZX Spectrum with at
--|----.___.--\ least 48K of memory and a General Sound (GS) card with at
|::: least 320K of memory. It will also give a warning and start
_|/ without the GS card, but in that case there will be no
\/: sound at all.
|::.
--|---------\
emulators -- If you are running this demo in Spectaculator ver.8, please
--|----.___.--\ make sure that the "General Sound 512K" is enabled in the
|::: Sound tab of the emulator Options.
__|:
)_. If you are running this demo in Unreal, make sure that the
| ULA is set to the standard Pentagon mode and verify that
|: your GS emulation is working in z80 mode (GSType=Z80 in
|__ unreal.ini). If your version of Unreal is VERY old, you may
/\ \ also need to wait for about 10-15 seconds after starting
\ \__\ the emulator until you hear a loud click, which indicates
_\/__/ that the GS finished testing its memory.
|
|_____ We are not aware of any other emulators with proper GS
_/____/\_ support, but if there are such things out there, they
_\____\/ should work too.
:|
|: We also tested our software in ZXMAK2 ver.2.7.5.7 where it
|: works correctly (although without the sound).
|__ _
__( Several popular Western European emulators, such as
| SpecEmu ver.3.1 and Fuse ver.1.1.1 appear to have slightly
:| incorrect timings for where the screen begins on Pentagon
|_____ (1 or 2 tacts off), which affects their display of this
|/ /\ demo. This is a slightly contentious topic because the
/ / / edges of 2x1 border "pixels" on the original Pentagons 128
/___/ / appear to be misaligned in relation to the screen pixels
\___\/- - (and also misaligned with respect to the character grid,
| which is makes them incompatible with the classic Spectrums
:| and awfully inconvenient when programming border effects).
:|: At least one influential demo with highly non-trivial
|: border effects, called "Rage" (you can find a copy of the
|: demo and video recording of it on the Pouet page:
\| http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1929), resolved this
\ difficulty by pretending that alignment is correct (see
\ http://zx-pk.ru/showpost.php?p=598290&postcount=40 for
_ __\ screenshots of the very last effect in "Rage" running on a
| real Pentagon 128). Several modern emulators and clones of
:| the Pentagon take similar approach and simply align the
| start of the frame using the last effect in "Rage" as
|: their guide.
|::.
--|---------\
linear notes- Hi, it's introspec.
--|----.___.--\
|::: I feel that I need to explain myself a little here. The
|: thing is, I did not really know V.N.N. I never met him and
|. we hardly ever exchanged a comment on the forum. However,
|____ because I was working with border graphics on Spectrum and
/\ \ because V.N.N. did so much to popularise drawing on the
\ \ \ border, I felt like I knew V.N.N., through his work at
|\ \___\ least. Somehow, I think, when making my border demos,
| \/___/ I felt that I was involved in an unspoken dialogue with
|:: V.N.N. So the news about his untimely death touched me
|: deeply. I had to say something about this, loud and clear,
|: so that the dialogue continues. This is why this prod had
| to be created.
:|
:| I'd like to thank diver^4d and g0blinish, for agreeing to
:| join me on such a short notice and for making this prod
| possible. I would not be able to do anything half as good
|: without their help. I would also like to thank dman^pcb
|: who produced an elegant ascii artwork for this file. In
| addition, huge thank you goes to Hacker VBI and TS-Labs,
| who tested the demo on their hardware and also to Dmitry
| from zx-pk.ru (he knows what for).
:|
|_____ There is an important reason why this demo only supports
/\____\ Pentagon-compatible timings and requires a General Sound
\/____/ card. First, it allowed us to implement few things that
| cannot possibly be done on classical ZX Spectrums. Second,
|: pretty much every prod with border drawing by V.N.N.
|:: required a Pentagon-compatible clone and the majority of
|:: them relied upon General Sound being present. Hence, this
|: is our way to respect V.N.N.'s style of demo making.
|
| Most of the code here was written from scratch, except
:| from a few libraries lifted from our other projects. We are
:| using a tact alignment routine that was inspired by the
:| Alone Coder's routine from the supplement to ZX-Guide #3
| and the arbitrary delay routine written by Jan Bobrowski
:| for his software "minfo". Our GS detection code is an
| edited version of the routine written by budder for Alone
|: Coder's "The Board II". Our binary is compressed using
| Exomizer ver.2.0.7 by Magnus Lind.
|
:|
| Few words from diver:
|:
|: My role in this prod was not so big. I just polished some
| pixels. Photo frame, Nikolay's photo and candle animation
:| were converted by introspec and refined together by myself
:| and introspec. The whole prod was imagined and directed by
:| introspec. I hope that the result of our work is worthy of
:|__ the dedication in the memory of Nikolay.
/\ \
\ \__\
\/__/ This is g0blinish speaking.
|
:| My contribution to this project is not very large. I
:| suppose that my main contributions are the General Sound
:| routines, as well as few ideas for other procedures and
:| optimisations. I'd like to mention hard work of introspec,
|: who, despite being busy at work, spent few long nights to
|: get the demo finished. This should serve as an example for
|: some other people, who keep complaining about having no
|: time for their demoscene projects.
__|.------....__________________________________________..--/ascii by dman_pcb/-[ back to the prod ]