[HN Gopher] Second Reality for Apple II
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Second Reality for Apple II
Author : EvanAnderson
Score : 100 points
Date : 2023-11-15 22:15 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (deater.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (deater.net)
| djoldman wrote:
| vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNOqu4vcDto
| nxobject wrote:
| Impressive when you realize the architectural limitations they're
| working against: compared to the C64, the Apple II has, in
| classic Apple fashion, no affordances towards multimedia (e.g. no
| fast RAM for video) and no meaningful special-purpose
| graphics/audio hardware, and this is on top of Woz's hacks. It
| looks like they're using timing interrupts from the Mockingboard.
|
| Part of the humor is poking fun at that, and being awed at being
| able to do something recognizable at all.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Keep in mind the Apple II was designed in 1977 by a cash-
| strapped college dropout from off-the-shelf parts. Fast RAM for
| video didn't exist. Classic Apple multimedia parsimony was a
| thing, but it came later.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > from off-the-shelf parts
|
| This was the most serious constraint. Aside from the 6502
| CPU, its memory, and the ROMs, everything on the original
| Apple II was constructed from simple, off-the-shelf logic
| ICs. No custom ICs besides the ROM; no highly integrated
| parts besides the CPU. You can still buy all the parts to
| build one yourself.
|
| Later versions of the Apple II replaced increasing amounts of
| the discrete logic with custom ICs, but the basic principles
| of operation (and the limitations that came with them)
| remained the same.
| layer8 wrote:
| Certainly impressive. The two-frame looping animations are quite
| hilarious (in a good way).
| user3939382 wrote:
| I'm not sure how he made this but my first idea would be to build
| all this as GIFs or render it into images/frames, then create a
| tool to generate Apple II compatible code to render arbitrary
| images in sequence.
|
| I'm guessing sitting down and manually writing a bunch of
| Applesoft BASIC wasn't the solution.
|
| I still have an Apple IIc. Love it!
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| you might find it a challenge to render arbitrary images in
| sequence at an acceptable resolution and framerate. 1Mhz is not
| a lot of hertz.
| deater wrote:
| some more of the effects (or better attempts at them) should
| be possible. The tunnel, the bouncing dots, the bounce effect
| with the polar bear image. A lot got thrown together at the
| extreme last minute to hit the Demosplash deadline.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| http://www.oldskool.org/pc/8088_Corruption
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The C64 is also 1MHz. The real problem is, the Apple II has
| _nothing_. It 's a CPU and a ROM, basically, as described in
| other comments here.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Well, the page briefly explains each effect. Many are indeed
| just a couple prerendered frames page flipped in a loop.
| deater wrote:
| I do plan to release a "final" version that improves a bit in
| places. There's no video of it yet but if you view the in-
| browser-emulator at archive.org you can see disk2 the full length
| 3d-flying sequence is finished (the party version cuts out about
| 2/3 the way though).
|
| The challenges of trying to be on the demoscene while holding
| down a full-time job ;)
| blackhaz wrote:
| This is amazing. Brings back so many memories! I think I've
| first got this demo (the original one) from the CD-ROM included
| with the Gravis UltraSound. Blew my mind. And now still does,
| on 1 MHz!
| saturn8601 wrote:
| Folks if you liked this, please consider attending Demosplash
| (where this was unveiled this year). I attended this year but
| attendance was pretty low (even for American demoscene
| standards).
|
| Sometimes it feels like Demoscene is slowly dying post COVID,
| lets not let that happen.
|
| The folks running Demosplash have been fighting the good fight
| for years but if no one shows up then it gets harder to keep
| events like this going.
|
| If you are near Pittsburgh, PA in November please consider
| attending. 30$ gets you two days of awesome demos, a chance to
| play and tinker with a huge collection of vintage hardware and
| even dinner on both nights(plus all the snacks and cake you can
| eat!). And if you got a student ID you get your ticket for less
| than half the price!
|
| [1]:http://www.demosplash.org
| zfxfr wrote:
| I don't know in the US but don't worry the demoscene is very
| much alive in Europe! Lots of big and smaller events all year
| long. I am personally going to Revision (where about a thousand
| people gather every Easter) and Evoke almost every year..the
| rest of the time there's often other demoparty you can watch
| live online
| saturn8601 wrote:
| Thats good to hear. Demosplash is one of the largest
| demoparties in the US and I think attendance numbers were
| less than 30 people this year? (I don't have an exact number
| but thats what it felt like).
|
| That tells you what the state of demoscene gatherings are in
| the US.
| deater wrote:
| yes, some people ask why I rushed this out the door rather than
| finishing it later and releasing at some other party. But I
| really wanted to support Demosplash, and as a US scener I try
| to release something nice there each year.
|
| I really would have liked to be there in person this year but
| things came up. November is awkward timing for me, both with
| the college schedule but also because it often overlaps with
| the big Supercomputing Conference that happens around the same
| time.
|
| And as why not release at a European demoparty: most of the
| crowd there don't really appreciate/understand the Apple II
| limitations, but also with Covid over they expect you to show
| up in person and bring along working hardware (sourcing a local
| Apple II, especially an NTSC one with a compatible power supply
| would be a challenge).
| rideontime wrote:
| please, more attendees. I can't eat all those pretzels and cake
| myself
| exogeny wrote:
| Whaaaaaat! I _attended_ CMU and didn 't know this was a thing.
| I tried my best to turn all of my dorm-mates in Schlag on to
| the demoscene for months! I don't know how much or if any of it
| stuck, but I can feel assured that "Elysium" and "Odyssey" and
| "Second Reality" were exposed to a new generation, if only for
| a few minutes.
|
| Well, anyway, rock on fellow Tartan(s). Thanks for keeping the
| demoscene hacker spirit alive!
| saturn8601 wrote:
| If you know people near CMU that would be interested in
| attending, please let them know for next Nov. Non-CMU people
| are welcome as well(I'm not CMU affiliated but they are super
| welcoming regardless).
| bane wrote:
| I'm not CMU connected either and can confirm the party
| organizers, volunteers, and attendees have been great the
| few times I've made it in person. They really just want to
| do cool stuff and have fun with computing equipment.
| Jeema101 wrote:
| I thought about going but wasn't sure if it was actually
| happening or not. There were almost no updates on the website,
| Facebook, or Twitch in the time leading up to it and during the
| weekend. This is actually the first confirmation I'm hearing
| that it actually happened.
| bane wrote:
| I really second this. Even if your participation is virtual.
| The party organizers are _really_ accommodating of just about
| anything that 's entered, which means the barrier to entry
| isn't super high, and there's multiple categories of things you
| can enter, even just an mp3 of some music you're sequencing, or
| an image you are painting in some interesting way, somewhere is
| fine.
|
| It can be really fun to go, and in person can be a real blast.
| I'll also echo that since the party is run by CMU's computer
| club, the collection of vintage hardware you can mess with is
| absolutely unreal.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| What are they booting? It says "Dos 3.3" but it has the cd
| command, directories and backslash separators.
| pvg wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_DOS
| curtisblaine wrote:
| But as far as I know Apple DOS does not have directories
| (PRODos has), and neither have the cd command.
| pvg wrote:
| Ah, I misunderstood what you were asking. You mean the
| interface right at the start of the video, right? I don't
| know what that is, I assume some sort of custom firmware
| and/or hardware?
| deater wrote:
| It's a fake BIOS/DOS bootscreen to parody the startup of the
| original DOS demo (the c64 version of the demo does something
| similar).
|
| It says DOS3.3 as a joke, because Apple DOS3.3 was a real,
| long-running operating system for the Apple II that predates
| MSDOS.
|
| The actual demo runs no operating system at all, it's a custom
| bootsector designed by qkumba that can load arbitrary tracks
| off of a raw Disk][ floppy and is much faster than DOS3.3 or
| ProDOS and also requires very little memory overhead.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| Thanks. I remember AppleDOS 3.3, and I remember it had no
| concept of directories (you had to use ProDOS for that, which
| didn't use the cd command anyway).
| js2 wrote:
| There was one other way to play music on an Apple II besides a
| Mockingboard sound card.
|
| You could do it with a Novation Apple-CAT II modem:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novation_CAT#The_Apple-CAT_II
|
| I wish I could remember the name of the software that would play
| music on it, but I can't. I'm positive there was also a way to
| use the tone generator with a speaker so you could do more than
| play music over a phone line.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Behind the Scenes: Future Crew putting the finishing touches on
| Second Reality a week before release...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIBRr31DIU
| gruturo wrote:
| 3 minutes into the video, not a single Perkele heard. I'm
| impressed!
|
| (I was also thoroughly impressed by Second Reality itself when
| I found it on a BBS in the early 90s. I couldn't believe anyone
| could be _that_ good at coding. It pushed the envelope in
| almost every dimension)
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I can almost physically hear those old chips screaming for mercy!
| Well done.
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| Second Reality was truly a technical marvel and arguably
| represented the pinnacle of the PC demo scene. It's amazing how
| much influential it has been and how it continues to endure some
| 30 years later. Not too shabby for a group of teenagers from
| Finland.
|
| (And now I feel extra old realizing the original Second Reality
| was released 30 years ago.)
|
| Aside: I first watched Second Reality on my PC at the time which
| was a 386/40DX. I must have watched it 100 times at least. When I
| upgraded to a 486/66DX2 the first thing I did upon booting it up
| was to watch Second Reality. I was amazed at how much I had been
| missing before; everything ran smoother and elements that had
| been truncated before were now visible. Yet even when it was on
| my old hardware it was still completely presentable. It's a
| credit to the Future Crew coders that it could run so well on
| such disparate hardware.
|
| Another aside: the Second Reality source code was released on
| GitHub for its 20th anniversary:
| https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality
|
| There was a great 5-part blog series to decipher it:
| https://fabiensanglard.net/second_reality/
| tverbeure wrote:
| I didn't notice many things when upgrading from a 486 to a
| P5-90, but the upgrade an 8-bit Soundblaster clone to a Gravis
| Ultrasound was incredible.
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| I would guess that that 486 speeds were the terminal velocity
| for Second Reality's performance. That was the high end when
| it originally came out.
|
| Don't get me started on the GUS. That was such an incredible
| sound card for its time.
| Dwedit wrote:
| I'm more impressed by the tricks done in the low res graphics
| mode than anything else here.
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