blinkenlichten

Be an instant legend by Retroporting

yth — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:03:07 +0000

Demo’s are – of course – a way to show the 1337 skillz of the creators to show that they are able to stretch the limited hardware to extremes and show you things you thought weren’t possible on your homecomputer.

Sometimes demo’s are like battleraps; they dis other demogroups and their creations by taking an effect from another demo and improving on it, rendering the original effect obsolete or second-rate.

The ultimate blow in these friendly battles comes in the form of retroporting demo’s to a platform that is older and less powerful, for example porting an amiga demo to a c64 version. Take a classic amiga or pc demo – a demo that has stunned people by the way it stretched thecomputer’s capabilities – and simply make a c64 version of it, disregarding the breadbox’s inferiority regarding memory, processor speed and graphic capabilities, and you will be legend. Check out the examples below:

The legendary PC demo “Second Reality” by Future Crew:

… and the c64 remake bu Smash Designs:

The classic Amiga demo “Desert Dream” by Kefrens:

… and the c64 remake by Chorus & Resource

Computer animation avant la lettre

yth — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 13:30:01 +0000

How to do computer animation when your machine just isn’t fast enough? You create a really slow animation, film the screen and then speed it up, as this video from 1985 demonstrates.

Of course there’s nothing old-fashioned about the technique itself; animation movies like Shrek, Happy Feet, Ice Age etc. are not real-time animations either. It takes a lot of time and computers working at the same time to render each frame in such a movie. And it will stay like this for quite some time into the future, because as computers are becoming faster, the images will become better looking, demanding more processing power.

Renoise video tutorial: from sinewave to basedrum

yth — Wed, 16 May 2007 05:46:52 +0000

Here’s kaneel showing you how to use the render-to-sample function in renoise to create your own sounds. Renoise is old-skool style music creation software, a so-called “tracker”, with new shiny features.

Headbangers made of clay

yth — Thu, 10 May 2007 05:59:15 +0000

Watch these funny little clay creatures wander around on a commodore 64 and do some serious headbanging

Also check out the site of these musicians, golgoth13, it’s a fine piece of retro art.

History of Video Games

yth — Tue, 08 May 2007 05:39:06 +0000

A documentary about… the history of video games

Basic Poetry

yth — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:28:04 +0000

A poem programmed in Basic on a 1979 Apple ][

Boogie on down on Maximum Overdose

yth — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 08:53:22 +0000

Maximum Overdose 8 is coming. I’ts a party for vintage systems lovers, systems like c64, atari, speccies etc. There will be live acts providing some serious 8bit swingin’, and of course there will be scene competitions.

Maximum Overdose 8 is held 25 to 28 may in Luebeck, Germany.

New vibrant tunes straight from the chip

yth — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 05:42:46 +0000

A new batch of mp3’s has just come in at The SID Recordings Archive, with a bunch of tunes from my favorite composers, Laxity and Drax! They’ve been around on the scene for a long time in groups like Vibrants and Maniacs of Noise, creating some of the funkiest and tightest stuff heard on a c64. Since creating these tunes, Laxity has moved on to create music for video games, and video games themselves. Drax has also moved on, but both guys haven’t forgotten their roots and still pop out a ‘scene’ tune now and then on the Vibrants site, or even competing on the c64 at parties like X2006. Get down on these funky ass mp3’s!

The second Second Reality

yth — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 05:40:23 +0000

Remember Second Reality? The PC demo by Future Crew? Well at the time it was state-of-the art PC demo wizardry. Impressive stuff! Enter Smash Designs, a commodore 64 demo. To show that the old breadbox is not dead, they recreate the whole demo on a c64, that’s like, a 100 times less powerful then a PC at that time. And they got it nailed right down to the music!

The biggest SID collection grows bigger

yth — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:08:49 +0000

The High Voltage Sid Collection is the biggest collection of SID tunes (commodore 64 music) available. It is well maintained by a team of fanatic bleeplovers and definately worth the download.

The new HVSC #46 just came out with something like a 1000 new additions.

To play SIDs I recommend sidplay2 if you are using linux or windows. You can also find plugins for winamp and other audio players. Just look for ‘sid’.