4FX by Spreadpoint [web]
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presents
4 F X
Brought to you in 50 FPS by mcCoy
Release date October 5, 2024
Release party Deadline
Production Demo (200 KB)
Music (Schmoddermann [cut]) Virgill
Inspiration MnemoTroN
Code and GFX Depeche
"The Ladd Company" data Daniel Hansen
ASCII Shapechanger
Cruncher (Cranker) Bifat/TEK
Music player (LSP) Leonard/Oxygene
System Amiga (PAL)
Minimum requirements Motorola 68000 CPU
Original chip set (OCS)
512 KB RAM
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Some words and notes from Depeche
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At a cozy dinner with Zodiac (https://demozoo.org/sceners/18618) we talked about
careers unrelated to tech. I wanted to jokingly encourage him to become a
forester. There would certainly be nice B-trees and Lindenmayer systems in his
forest. With a smile he then said that there would certainly be a lot of bugs
too. This is how the idea for a demo called "Zodiac’s Forest" came about. In the
end there was only a single tree and only a few or hopefully no bugs. So I
changed the name to 4FX.
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mcCoy's The Ladd Company logo intro (Blade Runner edition)
After Depeche's Mode Demo, 4FX again starts with a surprise for my friend mcCoy
(https://x.com/mibosshard). He's probably the biggest Blade Runner fan I know
and he'll be happy about this intro.
I took the graphic data of the tree from Daniel Hansen's Apple II HGR2 Grid
project. https://github.com/DanielHansen-IMD/apple-ii-hgr-grid
And I copied the animated image structure from the original opening sequence.
https://youtu.be/36Wc-E1HEls
During the intro some things are pre-calculated for the following effects.
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Effect 1: LMS (Lindenmayer system)
A simple rotating tree based on the "classic" axiom F[+F]F[-F][F] with red
"cosmic rain" flowing down from time to time.
https://gist.github.com/roger-wetzel/53a72d69dcaba124f74336e38e567250
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Effect 2: TXT (Text)
I've always wanted to create an effect that is reflected in all directions. Only
the top left quadrant is drawn/blitted with pre-calculated text blocks. With the
help of a small lookup table, the quadrant at the top right is mirrored byte for
byte. The lower part is a cheap mirroring of the upper two quadrants with
negative bitplane modulos.
For color cycling, 4 bitplanes with 15 filled rings are precalculated. I came up
with this idea while reading through Losso's blog post You're breaking my balls!
where the circle equation is mentioned.
https://heckmeck.de/blog/you-re-breaking-my-balls
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Effect 3: SRF
This effect imitates a jingle from Swiss television SRF zwei.
https://youtu.be/1Gz4LND7GIc
As with the LMS effect, some played instruments trigger the movements. I was
amazed at how few lines need to be drawn for this effect. Think about how you
would do it for a moment.
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Effect 4: MTN (MnemoTroN)
The idea for this great effect came from MnemoTroN
(https://demozoo.org/sceners/67808).
He programmed a PoC that showed the structure of a Spreadpoint lettering. That
looked great. With his permission (well, I had annoyed him for a long time) I
was then allowed to implement the effect for the Amiga.
I copied the timing for the "neon flickering" at the end from Warner Bros.
https://youtu.be/w_PwrnhbKO0
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Last but not least: The music
Virgill sent me the track Schmoddermann, which was later heard in Teo's
PT Weekender VIII (Atlantis Calling) DJ set. https://youtu.be/9oIWkqqej_s?t=2448
I liked it straight away and asked what would happen to the track. Virgill then
left the track to us. It's a perfect fit for 4FX. Thank you very much Virgill.
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Thanks to Dipswitch for pointing us to Shapechanger's colly with the
Spreadpoint ASCII we are using in this NFO file.
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