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Submitted by , posted on 17 August 2003
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Image Description, by
The Etherium is a 4k intro created by the Northern
Dragons, a mostly Canadian demo group. The Etherium
took about six months of work and 7600 lines of code,
including 4500 lines of production-quality x86
Assembly and 2100 lines of C++ prototype code. From
start to finish, our objective was to create the
best-looking 4k intro possible.
To save space, most visual effects in this intro rely
on alpha, z-buffer, and backface culling tricks. For
example, our reflection technique uses alpha blending
and z-buffer clipping, rather than the more expensive
env-mapping or render-to texture techniques. We also
perform cross-fading between scenes by tweaking the
alpha channel on the affected objects, rather than
mixing two separate scenes.
The main idea behind this intro is code recycling. By
writing generic routines, we reuse the same code in
many locations. For example, we have a routine that
takes a 20-byte list of key colors, and interpolates a
256-entry color look-up table. We use this routine to
color everything, including textures, diffuse vertex
components, and stars. As another example, we use the
texture generation routine to make a height-map for
the island, saving several hundred bytes of code.
You can get The Etherium from
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=10569.
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