Post for: #code (8 Posts)

Update: See the "Spin Doctor" Hard Drive Speakers play Second Reality

Twenty years after Assembly '93, Future Crew released the source code for Second Reality.

I was 16. I downloaded it from a BBS on a 14.4 modem.

I wasn't a beginner. I was writing TSRs. I wrote routines to render 3D meshes with Gouraud shading. I was doing inline assembly blocks in Turbo Pascal. I understood VGA registers. I could set up Mode 13h, chain to Mode X, write directly to 0xA000.

Then I ran SECOND.EXE.

The real-time 3D. The rotozoomer. The texture-mapped tunnel synced to the beat. The lens distortion. That transition where the music drops and everything snaps into the next effect without a single frame of hesitation.

I knew exactly enough to understand how far ahead this was. It was not just palette tricks. These guys had the entire VGA timing pipeline under control while mixing a multi-track soundtrack in software on the same CPU. Twenty-three effects in sequence with music sync and zero glitches on the same 486.

Update: Added more information and thoughts in 2020, 2024, 2025, 2026.

The Source Code

Twenty years of wondering how they did it. Now I can read it.

Today I wanted to write a new software module, and considered using Linked Lists. To my surprise, while searching for Software Patents (which is common practice before writing a new module), I realized I have to either give up using such lists (and go over the existing code base to make sure no else does), or start paying royalties to LSI Logic.

"Congratulations are in order to Ming-Jen Wang of LSI Logic Corporation who, in patent #10260471 (filed Sep 26, 2002 and granted Apr 11, 2006) managed to invent the linked list. From the abstract, "A computerized list is provided with auxiliary pointers for traversing the list in different sequences. One or more auxiliary pointers enable a fast, sequential traversal of the list with a minimum of computational time. Such lists may be used in any application where lists may be reordered for various purposes." Good-bye doubly linked list. We should also give praise to the extensive patent review performed by Cochran Freund & Young LLP." (Slashdot)