A few days ago, I saw on Twitter an interesting link to an article from Mark Wrobel explaining how the classic horizontal distortion effect was done on the Amiga computer using the copper, complete with some source code and pictures to explain it all.
2020
Mind Bender
Sat 15th August 2020
Size coding is an interesting challenge: After spending a day at work using a computer that counts memory in gigabytes and storage in terabytes, it's refreshing to go back to basics.
Back in the days, people HAD to write compact and efficient code, simply because the hardware would not allow for anything else.
These days it's more like an intellectual puzzle game, which I find deeply satisfying.
Back in the days, people HAD to write compact and efficient code, simply because the hardware would not allow for anything else.
These days it's more like an intellectual puzzle game, which I find deeply satisfying.
2019
Shadow of the Beast
Sat 12th October 2019
Now and then somebody speaks of the "game" Shadow of the Beast and uses it as an example of something the Amiga range of computers could do but the Atari ST could never dream to achieve.
This is totally true: Even with all the time and talent of the universe, there is no way a standard Atari 520 ST could compete, in what is after all mostly a technical demo designed to exploit every single feature the Amiga had.
The actual point of contention is regarding if the Atari ST port of Shadow of the Beast was as good as it could possibly have been considering the usual constraints of time, budget, etc...
This is totally true: Even with all the time and talent of the universe, there is no way a standard Atari 520 ST could compete, in what is after all mostly a technical demo designed to exploit every single feature the Amiga had.
The actual point of contention is regarding if the Atari ST port of Shadow of the Beast was as good as it could possibly have been considering the usual constraints of time, budget, etc...
2016
Reverse engineering
Tue 17th May 2016
Thanks to a correct alignment of planets I ended up with a four days long weekend.
I had plenty of things to do, but I decided instead to spend the time looking at how one of my favorite Atari demo screens was done.
I had plenty of things to do, but I decided instead to spend the time looking at how one of my favorite Atari demo screens was done.
STNICCC 2015
Sun 17th April 2016
In December last year, the little city of Gouda became once again the home of some very strange people celebrating the 25th anniversary of an event almost nobody ever heard of.
2015
Noise reduction
Sat 2nd May 2015
I'm planning to attend the STNICCC 2015 demo party later this year, ideally with an Atari prod ready in time to participate to the competitions.
Even if I'm doing most of my development on emulators, it's important for me to test everything on the real hardware!
Unfortunately the hardware in question is old and prone to failures, so it's time to get it ready and fix the issues.
Even if I'm doing most of my development on emulators, it's important for me to test everything on the real hardware!
Unfortunately the hardware in question is old and prone to failures, so it's time to get it ready and fix the issues.
My software history (part 4)
Wed 29th April 2015
Welcome to the fourth (and last) part of this series of articles.
The previous part was about Eden Games, this new one covers the period from when I moved from France to Norway in 2005 to join Funcom.
This article is a bit different from the others, because I am still working at Funcom. All the content of course represents my personal views, other people may disagree :)
2012
Minitel memories
Sat 3rd November 2012
What's this Minitel thing anyway
Outside of France most people never heard of the Minitel.Released in 1981, first as a small scale test in Bretagne and then extended to the rest of the country, the Minitel business plan was a stroke of genius from France Telecom: Give the choice between the regular printed White Pages and a small dumb black and white terminal allowing you to find the same thing faster; then use the large number of available terminals to allow the creation of commercial offers to make a profit of it.
2011
Communication protocol exploits
Sun 27th February 2011
If you found this page using a search engine with the hope of finding any relevant information about exploiting things on the Internet, you are going to be disappointed. What I'm going to write about now was relevant only in a now semi-distant past.
I have to start first with a disclaimer: What you will read is related to events that happened a long time ago, when we were young, stupid and lucky. If you try to do this kind of thing now, you may very well do some jail time and have heavy fines to pay as well.
I have to start first with a disclaimer: What you will read is related to events that happened a long time ago, when we were young, stupid and lucky. If you try to do this kind of thing now, you may very well do some jail time and have heavy fines to pay as well.
2009
Atari STe 20th anniversary
Wed 25th November 2009
In 2005 I participated to the online demo competition organized by the group DHS (Dead Hackers Society). With other members of the group Creators we made the Conflict of Interest demo screen, and reached the 3rd position in the compo.
We are now in 2009, and yes 20 years ago - 1989 - this was the unveiling of the Atari STe. Time to do a new demo !