The Sinclair QL Forum

Derek_Stewart wrote:Hi Per,

I tried your programme in QPC2 and SMSQmulator with ptrmen_cde loaded, the programme stops at line 68 giving error message Out Range??

Thanks for trying. Sorry it didnt work for you. Try OUTL instead of OUTLN. Or perhaps your screen is 512x256; it should be larger for that clip.

Theres a new version, including the 3 minute film mentioned, at https://app.box.com/s/xznyg1q1w7ql6yxb75rasfvxh3w5fknq. Beware! The download is about 50Mb! Tested on QPC2 and SMSQmulator, but should work on any 24bit colour systems with a large enough hard disk (140 Mb when uncompressed) and 1+ Mb memory. Checkout the readme for details. Also details on how to produce your own films for use by this method. The player on its own should work on any QL that can run PE2 and use ptrmen_cde, provided any "clips" are produced for a mode the computer is capable of.

It should look like this: In the left turquoise pane you see the clip data, in the right grey pane you see the player's functional code, and in the middle you see the output.

Per

Hi Per,

The download was no problem, downloaded on my phone. I have transferred it to my NAS server.

I will have a look in the morning and will try the OUTL command.

I use a screen size of 1024 x 768 on QPC2 & SMQmulator on a Fujitsu Celsius H700 core i7 laptop running Ubuntu Linux.

All seems to work great with Wine...

Derek_Stewart wrote:All seems to work great with Wine...

I like to do my QL'ing with beer

Two more animations added. Thanks to Dilwyn's comments now the code should be more readable.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/397 ... ated/X.zip
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/397 ... /Shake.zip

The first one has some sound: be careful because on certain emulators the sound may be unreliable.

Hi Per,

The Good time video worked okay.

Is this an equivalence to mpeg for the QL. Could the individual files be combined into a single file with a compression routine.

Cristian wrote:

Derek_Stewart wrote: Tried all the files on QEMulator under Wine on a Linux machine, works really well.

Tkanks

Derek_Stewart wrote: I remember a while back, there was talk about using the Minerva enabled second screen flicker free animation. I think the idea was to write one image to the SCR1 and SCR2 at the same time and flip the screen after the raster scan.
I wrote some assembler extension to copy SCR1 to SCR2, quite trivial really. Maybe worth revisiting the idea.

This is almost the same idea expressed by Rich, I suppose. Well, I do have Minerva, but alas not many programming skills: may someone suggest me how exactly could I realize this "trick" please?

Hi Cristian

If you read the Minerva manual, there is a fast move routine accessed by assembler.

I wrote some commands to copy the second screen to the first screen. This was 20 years ago I struggle to remember.

I have recently recoveref my old BBS files. So the assembler source should be there.

There appears to be more interest in indulging in nostalgia over 30 year old games than trying to create new stuff. I was never really into QL games, so it kinda washes over me. Well, each to his own. My contribution is a further updated QPlayer. Thisll probably be my last iteration of the "program", as Ive proved (to myself) what I set out to do. After this comes sound and compression, which is serious stuff, best left to those with long fingers, or who have studied computer science at college or something.

QPlay 2 (https://app.box.com/s/k7lf5kbb4xhgsh0no0v2vnlvgugqb91b) is a mere 6Kb download. For those who were brave enough to download the Goodtime clip: a file, QP_inf, has to be copied from here into the the Goodtime folder. Either checkout the QPlay_txt file first, or crash first and then checkout the QPlay_txt file.

I also uploaded another film clip someone sent me. It should have been called Blonde16, but that would give entirely the wrong impression, since it is only a relatively respectable blonde joke. The 16 refers to the QL Mode number. It would be nice if someone could test it on an Aurora-compatible system (and let me know the result!) It should also work fine in QPC2 (or SMSQmulator) in the usual 16 bit Mode 32.

Blnd16 (https://app.box.com/s/beaa1yuzncc3hjjj92a9hjey66ihuqpk) is a 6.4Mb download. Mode 16 (8 bit), 10 fps, 30 seconds. It already contains the required QP_inf file.

(Remember Zip may convert the QL extension separator '_' into '.'! This could cause some minor problem. (I should have thought of that before uploading, but I didnt.))

pjw wrote:It would be nice if someone could test it on an Aurora-compatible system (and let me know the result!)

I forgot about QPC2's mode 16 (and mode 0). In mode 16 both the 8 bit and 16 bit versions work fine, except both are shown in mode 16. In mode 0 there is no display, but at least it doesnt crash. What Id still like to know, though, is: What is the minimal QL system that will produce a usable performance? With mode 4 sprites I guess any QL with a floppy should scrape by (as Cristian has demonstrated) But there doesnt appear to be an easy way to convert PC images to mode 4/8 sprites in batches..

Could I suggest that this gets uploaded to the SinclairQL GitHub - as it might attract non-forum users to have a look !!

I wouldnt mind for the idea to get a wider viewing, because I believe it has some merit. But its not really a program, just a proof of concept sketch. Its a bit like the nail in the nail soup scam: Put a nail in some boiling water, add a little of this and a little of that, top it off with salt and pepper to taste, and enjoy! (after remembering to remove the nail!)

I have considered using GitHub for future (and past) projects, but I havent had time to look into it properly yet. This will take a while, as Im immersed in other projects at present. In the mean time, if anyone still thinks it would be a good idea to GitHub it, please feel free!