Author: Mr. B.B.C. (pD9E889E8.dip0.t-ipconnect.de)
Date: 03-25-2003 13:28
What you mean with "demos" was the "rasterline interrupt (palette rotation graphic)" - you quickly change the colour palette during the "beam cycle" of the monitor, so it seemed you've got all the 512 possible colours at once.
Or graphics were appearing inside the "mourning frame", where normal graphic functions can't get to.
So you've also managed a much more higher resolution.
In real the whole screen could have been white/in background colour - 0. All the graphics you saw were simply fata morganas.
Of course for this you have had to write your own graphic functions.
But normal TOS programs won't do without VDI/LineA[1]. The LineA functions are hardly to excel and it would be damned much to write.
Even if you use the rasterline interrupt, you might still use the VDI for drawing inside the normal screen.
For example "Overlander" made the most spread 3D-pipe animation, but the rest of the screen was drawn conventional.
[1] In TOS/autostart programs, only the AES is not available, i.e. you don't have the GEM menus, accessories, windows and so on.
Exception of this "normal TOS programs won't do without VDI" is of course a simple console program with no graphics. The console output is done by the BIOS.
|