Lazerbeat
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Tokyo, Japan

I have been pondering this for a little while. I don't know what it was exactly but I absolutely LOVED the pixelly, LED wally thinger which was used at Blip 2006/7. Also had a bit of a play with Nocarriers excellent Glitchnes and I was wondering how feasible it would be to develop a little NES rom to bland the two concepts. Ideas being something like this.

- NES rom to display a grid of different colored squares.
- A few random algorithms to generate different patterns/sequences
- Limited user interaction to switch algorithm/cycle colors etc

I whipped up a couple of super fast mock up shots and NES ish resolutions

I know next to nothing about NES roms or programming but I was just kind of throwing this out there, seeing what people think. Does it look wildly unrealistic? Am I missing something blindingly obvious which might render this impossible/pointless? Interesting idea?

I will possibly have a try at this as a first programming project at the end of the year and start looking at the NESDev boards. Just curious to hear a few thoughts for now.

Last edited by Lazerbeat (Jun 21, 2010 5:17 am)

neilbaldwin
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WOW MAN!

It's an interesting idea and a nice little challenge smile

The core idea is to be able to independently animate the colour of each square which is going to be very difficult on the NES. You'd need to control 90 (in your illustrations) unique colours onscreen simultaneously - the NES can't do anywhere near that.

You have 4 "palettes" of colours, each palette containing 4 colours (in practical terms only 3 because the first colour is the background colour). The screen is divided into "attributes" which are blocks of 2 x 2 characters (8 x 8 pixels). Within these 2 x 2 blocks, all of the characters have to use the same 4-colour palette.

I'd think the only way to do it is to have timed splits in the screen, one for each row of squares and then swap out all 4 palettes at each split. Tricky smile

bucky
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philly

I wonder if blargg's insane color demo can be exploited in such a fashion-
http://nesdev.parodius.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=6484

neilbaldwin
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WOW MAN!

Heh, that was exactly what I was thinking smile

NO CARRIER
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GNV / FL / USA

Sounds interesting. I was inspired by the Blip wall when I made this last year: http://vimeo.com/5250274

That's on the C64, of course. However, I did use MMC3 to do some screen splitting for this: http://vimeo.com/6740666

I'd be up for figuring out timed code to further split each line, maybe. Would be a cool challenge. smile

herr_prof
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Unsubscribe

Maybe sync multiple nes'es and have each tv be one Pixel big_smile

neilbaldwin
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WOW MAN!
NO CARRIER wrote:

Sounds interesting. I was inspired by the Blip wall when I made this last year: http://vimeo.com/5250274

That's on the C64, of course. However, I did use MMC3 to do some screen splitting for this: http://vimeo.com/6740666

I'd be up for figuring out timed code to further split each line, maybe. Would be a cool challenge. smile

Don, pop over to nesdev, I'm "talking" about this with blargg on there.

I reckon it's do-able, just tricky and a bit manual list of timing code to do all the splits.

:S

e.s.c.
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IL, US
herr_prof wrote:

Maybe sync multiple nes'es and have each tv be one Pixel big_smile

awesome, though a bitch for portable use...
would be a cool idea for gallery/venue installation on the other hand

neilbaldwin
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WOW MAN!

Quick proof that it's doable;

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5493868/litewall.nes

The first, second and third (onwards) rows are all using the same palette but the colours are modified on the fly. Just need to modify more colours per split and then replicate the timing for the remaining rows.

smile

akira^8GB
Offline
New York City
Lazerbeat wrote:

I don't know what it was exactly but I absolutely LOVED the pixelly, LED wally thinger which was used at Blip 2006/7.

Element Labs' VersaTILE display technology, now bought by BARCO  (which I didn't know) and I think put off the market. No wonder they wanted to sell the fucking thing, they were going bankrupt.

now I wonder how to get those VersaTILE blocks sad


[edit] Found the new version of the VersaTILE blocks:
http://www.barco.com/en/product/2262

Last edited by akira^8GB (Jun 22, 2010 1:16 am)

neilbaldwin
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WOW MAN!

Expanded it a bit;

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5493868/litewall2.nes

This time only one split (after first row) but I'm swapping 9 colours during the 8 black pixel gap.

Top row of colours cycles slowly one way while second line cycles faster in the opposite direction.

Flit
Offline
Seattle, WA

Holy smokes Neil, that's really pretty.

arfink
Offline
Minneapolis

Wowzers, nice job Neil! I didn't notice any control response with your second one, or the first for that matter. Care to fill us in?

infradead
Offline
Tacoma WA
neilbaldwin wrote:

Expanded it a bit;

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5493868/litewall2.nes

This time only one split (after first row) but I'm swapping 9 colours during the 8 black pixel gap.

Top row of colours cycles slowly one way while second line cycles faster in the opposite direction.

ok

two cool..  way to fucking cool for words

Theta_Frost
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Milwaukee, WI

Way cool!  Lets see where this goes.

Kris k
Offline
BK

wowwww. any chance of the source being released for this? I'd love to take a look at it.