over_clox @ over_clox @lemmy.world

Posts

72

Comments

3,667

Joined

2 yr. ago

You know how people sometimes like to write their phone number on public bathroom walls, looking for a 'good time'?

Yeah, I've been tempted to go around and write this number on bathroom walls, wonder how many people might actually fall for it...

1-911-867-5309

Things were different back then. QBasic was free yo, I couldn't afford $200 or whatever for paid development software. Besides, I was just starting to learn anyways.

Later on I did end up finding a pirated copy of the full QuickBasic 4.5 at least, which allowed more RAM usage for my programs.

Edit: In a parallel universe, if I could have afforded it, I might have otherwise started with Borland Delphi.

I wish he'd just resign, and take Vance with him while he's at it..

I started from the ground up in December 1998 with a bare wireframe engine, largely inspired from a demo wireframe engine from another developer. I was 17 years old then so it was basically my after school project, not a school assignment, but my teachers were impressed.

I didn't quite just copy/paste his code though, I carefully read over his code and comments to the point that I understood how it all worked, and rewrote a much cleaner wireframe engine of my own that supported colored lines and even loading from files, which the original demo didn't support.

Later on I came across another demo, from the same developer I think, that demonstrated rendering solid triangle shaded 3D models. Again, I read over everything and rewrote everything from the ground up, largely looking to optimize the rendering technique for the highest number of polygons per second, and of course to be able to load different models from file.

Then I just started having a bit of fun with the polygon rendering, starting with an optimized integer based greyscale gouraud shading algorithm, which ran way faster than any similar demos I could find at the time. Note that this was all CPU driven, no fancy GPU at the time, the 3Dfx Voodoo was still a pretty new thing I couldn't afford..

Then I got the idea of trying to bring color to the project via error diffusion, since I was basically limited to 320x200x256 color display mode, unless I wanted to run a high end video mode at a snail's pace LOL! Error diffusion is slow though, so how did I speed that up?

Well, I did away with the gouraud shading and went back to treating each polygon as a single solid RGB color, shaded using the Lambert's Law technique. To speed up the error diffusion process, I'd only process 8 pixels into the diffusion algorithm, then as the polygon rendered, it would just pick randomly from that 8 pixel buffer.

Since I was programming in QuickBasic, arrays were limited to 64KB each, meaning that memory was very tight, and I actually had to allocate two arrays for the Z Buffer, one for the top half of the screen and another for the bottom half.

The inspiration for the camera tracking came from a rather unexpected source, a simple mouse string toy demo of all things LOL! I realized that if I used just one segment of that string algorithm, I could link the viewing angle to follow a point in the model, or with some creative adjustments, basically follow any arbitrary point.

I also made a side project crude CAD scripting thing of sorts, mainly meant to render a torus or sections of a torus with whatever dimensions I wanted. With the right inputs, that also allowed me to easily generate spheres, cylinders, cones and tubes.

I think I finished the original wireframe engine within just a couple or few days, but the other versions that had filled in polygons probably took me a week to start with, and the more advanced techniques probably took me around 2 months each, all in my spare time of course.

I didn't really have any final product in mind, I was just experimenting and learning ya know. When 3D GPUs started becoming a big and common thing, I didn't see much future for my little project, but I sure did learn a lot!

The best I've got is a brown dog. He's not much bigger than a large cat though, does he count?

His name is Brownie..

Back in 2001, I wrote my own 3D graphics engine, down to the individual pixel rendering, shading, camera tracking, Z buffer, hell even error diffusion dithering for 256 color palettes.

And I still don't know half the terms you just used.

I do know points, polygons, vectors, normals, roll, pitch, yaw, Lambert's Law shading, error diffusion feedback..

And my Calculus 2 teacher admired my works and told me I had the understanding of a Calculus 4 student.

Where I'm at, the tap water not only tastes bad, it'll also give you the flying shits for days, and beer is cheaper than bottled water..

Split right down the urethra, obviously.

The average human has one breast, one testicle, one ovary, and half of a penis. So clearly you have half of a penis.

What would Jesus do?

Jesus never owned a gun, they didn't exist back then.

In my experience, Lemmy isn't particularly toxic, though sometimes you might run across people with a bad attitude or just might have simply had a bad day. Block those sort of people if you need to, or report them, depending on context.

Also, life pro tip, people aren't too keen on reading walls of text, especially if it's mostly complaining..

Did your keyboard have a stroke? Haha, I more or less get you though.

Tell them "I need this job because working 40 hours a week at the sperm bank is very exhausting"

You do have a point, but most phones have one edge that doesn't have any buttons, and most people have their phone in a case, which assuming it's a proper fitting case, usually cancels out that camera bump issue and makes it sit properly flat on a table.

Thank you for caring. If you need to or just feel it's best, there are all sorts of safe live animal traps out there, if you need it or any more coons relocated..

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xCZprBPFDVw

I wasn't exactly referring to the military...

Oh no, the bullets and missiles might get wet!

Side note, seal them in wax, they can survive the rain..

Take that information however you will...

My eggs are notarized homie, $10 each.

https://lemmy.world/post/25286184

Strangely, I kinda like it!

I'll pass though, I make my own avatars (which apparently I still haven't applied to Lemmy..)

I'll pass, AI doesn't need any more training data from me than it already has, especially focused on my username.