- More or less frequently asked questions.

TMDC FAQ

1. May I change palette?
2. May I make the demo on linux?
3. Why must the demos run under win95?
4. Textmode looks ugly.
5. I don't have win95. How am I going to make it run under win95?
6. The 1.4 megs zipped is way too small!
7. May I make the demo on WinNT console?
8. Your TMDC page site is slow.

1. May I change palette? top

    No.
    You may not change the palette at any point of the demo. Not in the beginning, not in the middle, not anywhere.
    As to how to change colors on screen, you'll just have to use some imagination, or check out txtfli2.zip.

2. May I make the demo on linux? top

    While I don't personally have anything against linux (I use it myself every now and then - its debugging facilities are marvelous), most of the people who are going to jury the demos don't, can't, may or will not use it.
    Nothing is going to stop you from developing your demo under linux tho - you can always use pdcurses for DOS and djgpp to port the demo to the DOS world afterwards.

3. Why must the demos run under win95? top

    This is just a convenience question. More and more people - sceneers and others - are going 95, and Assembly98 rules include the rule that the demos should run under win95. So, since there's even less compatibility issues when you're using textmode, there's no reason why they should not run under win95.
    The demos must still be runnable without win95, mind!

4. Textmode looks ugly. top

    Looking at the specs, true.
    Looking at C64 specs, you wouldn't expect anything from that machine either. The joke here is that you are given some ridiculous limitations, and you'll just have to show the world that something, which is generally thought as impossible, actually isn't.

5. I don't have win95. How am I going to make it run under win95? top

    All you have to do is be careful not to break any obvious rules.
    Use a mod player that is known to work under win95 - if you don't know if your player does, find someone that has win95 and ask him/her to test it. If everything else fails, use MIDAS.
    Avoid direct hardware i/o, let the player mess with timer, and don't trash memory (i.e.. don't read or write in memory that isn't allocated to you).
    That's actually it. Generally speaking these simple rules cause you to make better code, so it's not so bad.
    You might wish to try out Picket Fence (which is a parody of libefence, both in name and action) which may help you hunt down those stray pointers.

6. The 1.4 megs zipped is way too small! top

    Ahem. Learn to use less space.
    You can calculate some textures, use better compressed image formats (i.e.. PING, JPEG, FLC, MPEG), or in the case of 256x256 texture maps, you can always scale and filter smaller maps, or use several small maps to generate fancier textures et cetera ad nauseum.
    As for the music, someone might say, generate samples, store them in MP3 format, or something, but this is a bit too much hassle with the current players that I know of (you'd have to blow midas 1.1 up pretty badly).
    Actually, you shouldn't have any problems with the 1.4 meg limit. If you have, think about it for a while, and do something about it.

7. May I make the demo on WinNT console? top

    Yes, I've been asked this!
    Although I can't see any direct reason for denying these (as Win95 runs these programs), I'm not allowing this, if only to be fair with linux users.

8. Your TMDC site is slow. top

    This is unfortunately true. If someone would wish to mirror these pages, feel free, and drop me a note so I can put a link here. All links have been designed so that the TMDC directory can be moved, in its whole form, in other place. The TMDC3 invitation will probably include these pages in a ZIP.



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