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High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Wed May 21, 2014 2:18 am
by MegaData
Although I never acquired any source code for the various demos, I am privy to some interesting notes, SoundFX, Music, 2D/3D graphic builds, animation sequences, and Milestones. The following text is packed in with the C Maze Demo.
TRF7_5/RESUB9/MAZE/HVSCMAZE(6-24-95) wrote:Info on HVSCMAZE:

This is a direct translation of a Dr. Dobbs Journal raycasting demo.
It runs entirely on the GPU. The 68000 is stopped while this demo
is running. (If you stop the stub in the debugger and trace over a
few 68000 instructions, you'll notice the GPU wakes up and runs the
demo even though the 68000 is still running the debugger stub).


The changes that were made from the Dr. Dobbs version are:
Reading graphics from ROM instead of from files
Using blitter to copy pixels instead of CPU
Adding work-around to fix compiler comparison bug


Compilation:
The C code was compiled with GCC for GPU version 2.6.
The code was post processed with GCCGPUM (HVS tool).
No hand-tweaking was required.
No 4k segments were required.
No function grouping was required.
In other words, it went pretty smoothly.
The overall size of the code running is larger than 4k.
The HVS GPUMGR is used to handle virtualization of the
GPU cache.


The frame rate is 30FPS. None of the code is hand optimized
assembly, it is all C. Screen copy and vertical line drawing are
done with the blitter (set up from C).



Scott

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Wed May 21, 2014 7:14 am
by a31chris
The GCC GPUM tool must be the custom overlay manager that Adisak and McGroarty talked about.

But thank you for this information! How long have you had these notes?

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Wed May 21, 2014 7:15 am
by a31chris
And GCC for gpu 2.6.x is the one included in the Official Atari Jaguar development package.

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Wed May 21, 2014 7:17 am
by a31chris
It sounds like they are compiling, then having their program alter the object files in some way, then linking it all together.

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Wed May 21, 2014 7:32 am
by a31chris
Do you have the maze demo?

Can you post more of these notes and texts?

They may have important clues in them on how to get the gpu gcc to work. Or at the very least be interesting reading. :)

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Thu May 22, 2014 1:48 am
by MegaData
I went through my entire collection over the last couple months and thought of this text when I read the interview post. I did show the Maze Demo at JagFest 2004 along with a parallax scrolling background(s) demo. So, I do have the Maze Demo wich generally looks and moves similar to DOOM and Wolfenstein. It is part of the Thea Realm Fighers (VRF/TRF) Milestones. Most of the other text files are about which moves/backgrounds/openings/.anim/variations/renaming of characters were completed or submitted. I have not seen the HVS tool mentioned.

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Thu May 22, 2014 7:03 am
by a31chris
MegaData wrote:I went through my entire collection over the last couple months and thought of this text when I read the interview post. I did show the Maze Demo at JagFest 2004 along with a parallax scrolling background(s) demo. So, I do have the Maze Demo wich generally looks and moves similar to DOOM and Wolfenstein. It is part of the Thea Realm Fighers (VRF/TRF) Milestones. Most of the other text files are about which moves/backgrounds/openings/.anim/variations/renaming of characters were completed or submitted. I have not seen the HVS tool mentioned.
You probably would not be able to recognize the tool if you seen it. It's a one of a kind. It may not be a Jaguar executable. It may be a pc executable that modifies the source files. But its probably like Wille said, a Jaguar runtime file that manages that. But it says something about post processing on there.

I doubt the tool is absolutely necessary to use the compiler. I think its just something they used to make easier something they otherwise would have to do manually. Sorta like the macros SubQmod put in smac to automate working around the main ram bug.

Whatever you are willing to share out of that stuff from texts or files would be very interesting. Can you share the maze demo with us? Or how about a youtube video of it?

This is all way interesting.

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Thu May 22, 2014 9:20 am
by txg/mnx
Hi Megadata did you also look on the CD's and DDS tapes you got from Curt in the past maybe there are the tools/binairies used to compile source code ?

I hope you can share the Maze demo and when possible the sources so we can atleast take a look at this.

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 2:26 am
by MegaData
The media I have seen, that I can access, contains no tools or source code. I've used Belboz, StarCat, and Scatologic tools for anything I have ran. I did not need to compile anything from these Milestones. There is some media I have not been able to get into but it's highly unlikely they contain anything more than a variant of what I have already seen. Curt's offer claimed source code so it is confusing to people. Disappointing to me as High Voltage did the same thing, but they further threatened me with lawyers before I even had anything. I am under the impression I would have to contact High Voltage for permission to share much of anything concerning graphics. It has been made plain to me that the actors have rights to their images which makes sharing most of the files difficult. If I remember correctly, there are faces on some of the Maze walls.

I don't really have a way of running any Jaguar development environments, anyway.

Please realize, I have no working computers in my home. I am writing from a public library, a family member's house, or some other multi-user PC for internet access. I am not near the items being discussed and this has been the case for a great many years.

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 7:16 am
by a31chris
MegaData wrote:I went through my entire collection over the last couple months and thought of this text when I read the interview post. I did show the Maze Demo at JagFest 2004 along with a parallax scrolling background(s) demo. So, I do have the Maze Demo wich generally looks and moves similar to DOOM and Wolfenstein. It is part of the Thea Realm Fighers (VRF/TRF) Milestones. Most of the other text files are about which moves/backgrounds/openings/.anim/variations/renaming of characters were completed or submitted. I have not seen the HVS tool mentioned.
Is it possible to Youtube a video of the maze with perhaps the faces blurred out? Maybe some software out there can go through video and auto-blur faces?

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Fri May 23, 2014 11:52 pm
by a31chris
If I remember right, Jagmod and those who tried the risc gcc said it could not handle a simple for(i++) loop. This must be the comparison bug HVS mentioned they had to make a workaround for.

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 12:29 pm
by txg/mnx
Maybe the most important thing is the lack of documentation about this thing... there is almost nothing that you can find about it....

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Sat May 24, 2014 4:49 pm
by a31chris
I think the comparison bug is the key to everything. I think that is the reason why HVS was able to use it and no one else was. They made a workaround for it and had a functioning risc compiler.

I wonder why Brainstorm never fixed it. That's kind of a very big, very basic bug.

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2014 5:30 pm
by a31chris
MegaData wrote:Please realize, I have no working computers in my home. I am writing from a public library, a family member's house, or some other multi-user PC for internet access. I am not near the items being discussed and this has been the case for a great many years.
So you've just been carrying that readme around in your pocket?

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2016 9:38 am
by txg/mnx
Hi,

Here the maze demo from High Voltage, let find out if we can extract the HVS GPUMGR from this rom time to disassemble

Let's dissassemble it, I already posted a PM to Scott if he could help answer questions when we got some after looking at the code.

http://www.jaguar64.eu/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=254

Re: High Voltage C Maze Demo

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2016 11:14 pm
by a31chris
Vladr is right. Probably faster to rewrite it. Maybe Scott could give advice along the way for anyone skilled and ambitious enough to go that route.