Oedema animae cogunt by Rustbloom
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Entry for Assembly 2025 Oldskool Demo competition
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Production: "Oedema animae cogunt"
Group: Rustbloom
https://iki.fi/ase/rustbloom/
Additional Contact:
https://iki.fi/jetro/
History
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We made a hi-res full-framerate (60 fps) demo back in 2019 for Assembly
Summer oldschool demo competition. Our choice for minimum spec computer
back then was a Pentium 133 MHz, not so coincidentally a machine we had
around to test with (except it turned out to be stale, and had to find
another one to test with). Back then we thought it was a real challenge
to make those effects run so fast with such old hardware.
However, after that, covid19 must have softened our brains. This year
we decided to ramp up the difficulty. "Let's make a demo for the oldest
PC hardware we still have lying around... 16 MHz 386 SX! And of course
it must run again in hi-res mode, full-framerate!"
And no even floating point unit in CPU. And on top of that, also the
mode is 70 Hz, quite typical for many graphics modes back in the days.
So, not 60 what we're learned to accept as good base level on modern
desktops in past years.
Funny story is that for a while we thought we have to use even higher
refresh rate (79 Hz). That was our initial version of the mode we're
using, verified to be so both with real hardware, using a CRT monitor,
and on DOSBox-X. Luckily we found a way to tweak the VGA clock down
a notch to get down to 70 Hz again, although we were already content
with the fact that we'd have to run at 79 Hz.
Working on this was still "fun" -- just take our word for it!
Hardware Requirements
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Roughly this kind of old DOS PC:
CPU:
- Intel 386 SX (80386SX), 16 MHz or more
Memory:
- 2 MB
Sound card:
- Gravis UltraSound (1MB memory)
- Used sound system offers other options as well,
but the other options are not officially supported.
Software mixing the music (e.g. with Sound Blaster) will
require a lot faster PC, if it works at all.
So, only GUS is tested, with other options demo
probably won't work correctly!
Graphics Adaptor:
- Generic VGA (tested to work with Genoa ISA VGA card)
DOS Emulators
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The demo is also tested to run relatively fine also on DOSBox-X,
however it is IMPORTANT to use CORRECT SETTINGS in dosbox-x.conf.
See below for example settings changes.
Most importantly, DO NOT use this menu setting:
"Video > Output > TrueType font" (NOT SUPPORTED)
Alternatively, please use this for example:
"Video > Output > Surface"
Here are EXAMPLE CONFIG CHANGES for dosbox-x.conf:
[sdl]
#...mostly defaults...
# IMPORTANT:
output = surface
# If you want to limit speed to roughly equivalent CPU power
cycles = fixed 1600
# Other:
enable_overscan = true
[render]
#...mostly defaults...
overscan border = true
[video]
#...mostly defaults...
allow overscan = true
[cpu]
#...mostly defaults...
cputype = 386
Troops
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Knights Samurais
tonic stRana
Random Changgu
Tug Malomaz
Warek thp
Acknowledgements:
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- The demo writer and credits fonts were based on these fonts:
- Metamorphous by Sorkin Type Co (licensed under SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE)
- Zero Mojo by "Le Renard Rouge" (free for personal & commercial use)
- Torii by Andrei Assis (fonte livre para uso pessoal e comercial)
- Thanks to osdever.net for information in FreeVGA Project
- Thanks to wiki.OSDev.org
- Thanks to Sean Eron Anderson for "Bit Twiddling Hacks":
https://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html
- stb_image: public domain image loader by Sean Barrett et al.
- MIDAS Sound System 0.7 (hmqa07b1 version):
Written by Petteri Kangaslampi and Jarno Paananen;
Copyright 1996, 1997 Housemarque Inc.
- Thanks to viler-int10h for Fontraption
- XLINK version 2.02: Copyright (c) 1994,95 by J.E. Hoffman aka Jinx!
- Open Watcom compiler: http://www.openwatcom.org/
- PMODE/W: Copyright (c) 1994-1997, Charles Scheffold and Thomas Pytel
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