- Tiny Things -

Runs on plain 4Mb (ST-Ram) Atari Falcon, no FPU needed.
Both RGB (preferred) and VGA works - VGA lacks something, if needed.

HAtari 2.0: tested, works, but real hw recommended.

Mint: tested, works (original MiNT)

TeraDesk: tested, works


The demo starts fine when there are approx. 3,796,040 bytes of free ST-Ram.


Some information about the screens:
1. Particle based fire-effect & scroller 
    In the beginning I was planning to make this screen with other colors
    than red. But for some reason I ended up with these colors. First I
    tried to do this as a "traditional" way, but then I got this ridiculous
    idea to try to use rotating triangles to have it a more life.

    The particles gets a random angle position and a color value from the
    colortable. After that it starts living and moving up as long as it has
    color (life) left.

    Scroller was the late addenum, when I realized, that I start the demo
    with this screen. It uses the same method and triangle than fire-effect.

2. Twister with particles
    This was my tryout based on article in the Skrolli-magazine, which
    processed some basic-language for Raspberry Pi. There were so nice
    pictures, that I had to immediately try it. I figured out that it takes
    quite a little of the processor-time and there are a lot of empty
    screen space to fill.

    As time went by I got an idea to add "prison bars" at the front of the
    twister. Then I visualized that when the twister collides with the edge
    of the bar, there needs to be something with it.
    The "welding sparks" particles did born :) .

    Then I realized, that there are still plenty of time and space left and
    the Silly Venture 2k16 will be held at Father's Day, I decided to add a
    smaller twister, beside the bigger, who is admiring it's father's skills
    to twist.. ;)

3. Bubbles with shading trail and wave
    I had some undocumented ideas to make somekind of seawavesurface and
    to use it for something, but as I didn't make any notes, I lost the
    idea pretty soon, when I got the wave working almost like expeced.

    I was searching for the blue ball with nice gradient and I found the
    Phaser website. There was simple screen with growing and falling bubbles
    which looked attractive. I started to think, can I use the idea anywhere.
    Then I did remember the wave screen.

    This screen was coded at the Assembly Summer 2016 party where I met Mace
    for a long time and he started to watch my code and proposed to me
    some nice optimizations. After that it still looked a bit simple screen,
    so I added the simple shading trail to bubbles.

    There were also a nice couple next to my place and they proposed to
    me to try fancy moving wave for the bubbles. I doubled that proposal to
    x- and y-wave and to my eyes the screen started to live. They started
    to call this screen as a "bubble tentacle". :) Well it can look like it.

4. Metaballs / blobs
    I have been admiring so many nice looking metaballs/blobs, so I wanted
    to make at least one of those too. Well, this is my first try and
    pretty soon I realized that if I try to make it work like real one,
    it would be slow as what. No chance - Let's find some shortcuts here.

    This effect uses an invisible field which have ability to start grow
    energy current when other ball is near enough. It's mostly adding
    the values together to have an index to colortable.

    The other pit hole is the hicolor screen. There are 13 balls flying
    around (on RGB). Because of the effect, there was a lot of empty
    screen space, so I needed the screen filler.
    It wasn't too easy to find one, who has time enough to draw me a
    picture, which I was foreseen. I asked from couple of places but they
    had other projects going on, so no time was usual answer.
    I was going to release the screen without the filler, but then I talked
    to Grey / MSB and he said to me - Hold on. In fifteen minutes I had a
    graphist with whom we started to plan the picture.
    For my mind Jok did good job. He also proposed to me make something
    more, but unfortunately it came little too late. But I haven't forgot
    that Jok! It's a splendid idea, I will give it a try.

    As for the next screen I realized, I need the starfield. When I was
    planning the screen transition, I figured out that I can get the
    colors from the balls with some filtering and blow them out to stars.
    This is done from the visible situation, so the starfield looks a bit
    different depending, are you watching this from RGB or VGA and probably
    accelerated machines.

5. Earth
    Honestly - I've been watching PS3 too much while listened music from
    the CD. That have been the base of this idea. Anyway, no shading added.

    The diameter of the earth is 177 pixels. There is a logarithmic look up
    table, where I get the correct pixels from the map (960x370).
    This is the reason if the earth looks a bit weird.

6. Zoomer with dancing Snoopy
    This was the first screen which I coded to this demo. Idea was from
    as far as the trip to Silly Venture 2k14, when I was listening to 
    Britelite's thoughts. When I got back to home, I had to test it.

    Dancing Snoopy was very early decision as it made me feel happy while
    watching it.

7. Greetings screen
    There almost always need to be one. :)

    Texts comes to (precalculated) random position, stays alive 20 frames
    and after that it changes the place. At the old place there is fade
    still active as long as the block is 0. Fading is done like drop msb
    from each color off and shift bits in a word left.

Whole demo runs in 320x240, first three parts in 8 plane mode and the rest
in hi-color (16-bit) mode. The demo is timed with timer-d.

When I started to collect the screens together and plannig which order
they are shown, I realized that I do not want to use trackermusic this
time. I did search a little as to plan what kind of music I might want
to have and I found one pretty cool from the short video. That music
changed the whole atmosphere of the demo and I immediately knew, what
kind of music it should be. Again, not a luck with musicians known by
me but then I talked to Grey and he did a phone call and again, in
fifteen minutes, I had the musician, Mr. Quiet, online and we made a deal.

All in all - Like we had a conversation with Wiztom, Oasiz and Britelite at
the party, this is definately the coders demo.

There are plans for a new demo, probably for the Assembly Summer 2017. This
time Mace is planning to do the comeback. We are also negotiating with
Shaft, but living with family, with young kids, is always the challenge to
us, old beards, so only time reveals to us, what will happend to.

Now it's time to sign off and start plannig the future. Keep Atari alive!


Sincerely yours,

	Emphii / Extream					20.11.2016
