BB by Introspec
Party: Demoscene at Multimatograf X
Compo: 8Bit 256b intro
Nickname: introspec
Full title: BB
Requirements: ZX Spectrum (48K and higher)
Duration: 0:45
Email: zxintrospec@gmail.com
Linear notes: This is first and foremost my tribute to the
stunning Atari XL/XE intro "Mona" by ilmenit:
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=62917
which may well be the best 256b intro for any
8-bit system. I was so inspired by it I had
to try to do something simular in spirit,
especially since I fiddled with Galois LFSRs
for z80 just a few weeks ago.
"BB" stands for the Big Brother; however,
if read as Cyrillic, these two letters also
happen to be the initials of a certain
well-known Russian politician. The source
photo taken from the cover of the Time
magazine was made by Platon.
The intro should work on any 48K ZX Spectrum,
although the sound effect requires the
presence of a PSG. Due to the space
limitations the sound is not synchronized to
the visuals, which is why the intro comes in
three versions: the first for 48K/128K/+2 ZX
Spectrums, the second for +2a/+2b/+3 Amstrad
clones and the third for the Pentagon. There
is also a disc version timed for Pentagons.
The code of the intro is not very interesting,
but is available upon a request, as usual.
The key idea of the compressor is, just as it
was in the ilmenit's intro, the iterative
brute-force search through the parameter space
of 24 bit Galois LFSR. Specifically, I used
the third random number generator from here:
http://forum.tslabs.info/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=391
Overall, I went through few thousands setups
(62*65536 or 64*65536 or 66*65536 iterations
each) and then manually chose the best-looking
image. The key to getting a decent picture
quality seems to be the ilmenit's idea to use
masks highlighting the key areas on the photo,
e.g. eyes, mouth and nose.
Many thanks to my comrades in arms: nq^skrju,
trefi^debris, diver^4d, psndcj^tbk, nyuk and
tayle^debris (you all know what for).
Greetings to sq^skrju, psb^Halloween, TS-Labs,
pROF^4d, riskej^simbols, Tygrys^Speccy.pl,
unbeliever, key-jee^tbk, Yerzmyey^H-Prg, AAA,
moroz1999, g0blinish, breeze, Hacker VBI,
robus^entire, tiboh^debris, Ellvis^Zero Team,
Mike^Zero Team, lordcoxis^Papaya Dezign,
Alone Coder, Gasman^H-Prg, Mr Beep and
everyone else on the ZX Spectrum scene.
Software used: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
SjASMPlus ver.1.07RC8 by Aprisobal, based upon
the original SjASM code by Sjoerd Mastijn;
Spectaculator ver.8.0 by Jonathan Needle;
FAR ver.2.0 by Eugene Roshal & FAR Group;
bintap ver.1.1 by infamous BLOOD,
with modifications by Volker Bartheld;
mktap ver.5 by Jan Bobrowski;
TRDtool ver.2.2 by Shiru;
7-zip ver.9.22 beta by Igor Pavlov.
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