hot star by Asphyxia
HOT STAR
-======-
by Denthor
for The Codering
■ Introduction
Hi there. Some of you may still remember me, Denthor of Asphyxia. Yep,
the one who seemed to suddenly dissapear without a trace never to be seen
again.
The truth is, I've been busy. No, really. After I finished working on a
Delrina project, I did the start-your-own-business thing, and to my great
surprise it was an amazing success. On the down side, it's taken a lot of my
time (I took a half day on christmas eve, does that count? ;)
Anyway, when I logged on and read a message from cd that there was a coding
compo, I decided to enter. It's been ages since I coded in Pacal, assembler
or even DOS, so I found my original BP7 stiffies, reinstalled, and
downloaded one or two of my trainers from Hornet. I then spent a few hours
putting this small program together. It was great fun :) Nowadays when I
need graphics we hire a film crew to make something we can put into an
MPEG, it was a challenge doing it all the hard way.
Anyway, this entry probably won't win... I went from reading about the
compo to finishing the entry in just a few hours, but with the source being
distributed, maybe someone else can have some fun with it.
■ Hot Star
The program is basically a star tunnel. With a moving origin. And it
rotates constantly on the z axis. And the stars aren't only pixels. And the
stars are constantly changing. And there is a static background.
I wrote it on my home 486-100 which I use for email... I don't know how
painful it will be on slower computers. It is not optimised... I think
there are even a few divs which could be shifts, if you know what I mean.
■ The source
Straight Borland Pascal with inline assembler. I use the GFX3 unit I
developed through the course of the VGA trainer series. The font is a
nightmare... I didn't have any raw fonts on this machine, and found this
file on an old stiffy disk which I had used to test a little raw data to const
converter. Anyway, the entire font is defined as a const and included in
the main program... hey, at least its an easy way to ensure that you only
have one final executable ;)
Anyway, the source is documented, so there shouldn't be a problem. To get
the suns, I defined a circular region in which I could place hot spots. I
then use a simple version of the fire routine to average out the sun, and
because of the bounding circle code we end up with a circular sun that can
generate 'heat' over it's set circular boundaries.
■ Contact information
You can reach me at dexter@iafrica.com . It's a temporary address, so don't
be surprised if it bounces back at some time in the future. I'll let people
know when I get another address. My Web page died with Vironix.
■ In closing
[ I pulled up in front of her house and quieted the engine.
"Thanks, I really enjoyed tonight", she said, turning slightly
in her seat. "I haven't had this much fun in a long time." Her
hand moved over and lightly rested on mine. "You know, I was
a bit worried about calling you. But everbody knows you are
okay."
"You mean not a knife wielding psychopath?" I replied, totally
confused. She laughed, as if I had just made a joke.
"Silly," she smiled. "I mean you're such a gentleman." I was
totally lost at sea, but she seemed to know what was going on.
I nodded. And was very surprised when I suddenly found that we
were kissing.
Suddenly the door was open and I was on the ground looking up at
her brother.
"I'm going to open up a whole new world of pain for you," he
snarled. I look up in a daze, still confused.
"You don't mean ... Shadebobs?"
]
Byeeeeee....
Denthor
[ back to the prod ]