#msxdev compo 2012 #3 - No Pressure

Flying Bytes return to the MSX community with No Pressure, a scroll and logo demo for MSX2 and higher. It is a classic 1990s scene style demo that supports MSX-AUDIO and (on turboR only) Moonblaster stereo. For optimal enjoyment of the demo a (real) MSX turboR is highly recommended.

Relevant link: #msxdev compo 2012 - entries

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Comments (63)

By FiXato

Scribe (1513)

02-01-2013, 16:18

Great!
Now bring us a sequel to Not Again! ;p

By Edwin

Paragon (1182)

02-01-2013, 16:36

Called 'Yet again!' ?

By Jorito

Mr. Ambassadors (1761)

02-01-2013, 17:07

I think "Not yet" is a better name

By Lord_Zett

Paladin (807)

02-01-2013, 17:45

totaly not?

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

02-01-2013, 18:06

Nice demo !

Is there a reason to reserve MSX-MUSIC to turboR ? Do you use DRAM to store the extra music data ?

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (109)

02-01-2013, 18:11

Thanks! And no - we only use a mildly modified Moonblaster replay routine (without bank-switching as we only use 64k). The only reason to not support MSX-MUSIC on MSX2 is that our demo would not run smoothly with MSX-MUSIC on an MSX2, not even in MSX-MUSIC only mode.

(during the development of this demo we only tested on turboR, only on the day before release we used an HB-F500P to check and fix MSX2 compatibility)

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

02-01-2013, 18:21

I like the message saying that MSX must remain a funny hobby, I think it's the real MSX spirit.

I've seen the differences between MSX2/2+ and turboR : the special effects on the picture screen are impressive.

By FiXato

Scribe (1513)

02-01-2013, 19:20

Is the text supposed to go that fast btw? I'm having problems keeping up...

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

02-01-2013, 20:28

You can also read the texts with an hexadecimal editor in the NOPRESSR.006 file - it includes a special additionnal message !

By FiXato

Scribe (1513)

02-01-2013, 20:42

FLYING BYTES PROUDLY PRESENTS
NO PRESSURE
AN ENTRY TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE
ERR LATOK
YES SNOUT
ERR WHERE IS THE HASH CHARACTER
WELL SNOUT WE DO NOT HAVE ONE
ARF WELL OKAY
AN ENTRY TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE HASH MSXDEV COMPETITION
SO DO YOU GUYS LIKE THIS ABSOLUTELY SMOOTH SCROLLER
IT IS OUR VERY FIRST ASSEMBLY PROJECT EVER AND WE THINK IT IS THE BEST THING FLYING BYTES RELEASED IN THE PAST FIFTEEN YEARS
IT IS ALSO THE ONLY THING WE RELEASED IN FIFTEEN YEARS
WAIT I THINK WE EVEN CAN DO A LITTLE BIT BETTER THAN THIS HANG ON
BAM!!!!
THAT IS A WHOLE LOT BETTER, ISN'T IT?....
ALTHOUGH....
WE COULD REALLY USE A LOGO!!!
AHHHH THAT IS MUCH, MUCH BETTER...
SO THERE WE ARE, THE FIRST FLYING BYTES DEMO IN MORE THAN 15 YEARS...
... DID YOU MISS US AS MUCH AS WE MISSED YOU?
....
NOT REALLY, EH?....
SAY LATOK, I THINK THIS DEMO IS STILL A LITTLE BORING.
WHAT WAS IT CALLED AGAIN?
AH YES, NO PRESSURE...
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, THIS IS OUR VERY FIRST ASSEMBLY PROJECT FOR THE MSX...
A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO WE STARTED EXPLORING THE Z80 AND THE VDP...
ONE THING WAS CERTAIN: WE WANTED TO CREATE SOMETHING BUT WE DID NOT WANT TO RAISE THE BAR TOO HIGH,
SO WE DECIDED THAT NO MATTER HOW GOOD OR BAD WE CODED, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TOOK AND HOW BIG OUR IDEAS BECAME...
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WAS FUN, NOT STRESS....
HENCE THE NAME NO PRESSURE
ALRIGHT SNOUT, ENOUGH...
BOUNCE TIME!!!!
EXACTLY!
FLYING BYTES IS GOING TO ROCK THE WORLD ONCE MORE!!!!!!
THIS DEMO RUNS ON ANY MSX2 WITH 64KB RAM AND 128KB VRAM...
USE AN MSX-AUDIO AND YOUR EARS WILL GET BLOWN AWAY BY A DAMN GOOD JORITO TUNE...
ON TURBO R YOU CAN ENJOY THIS DEMO IN EARDRUM POPPING STEREO AND SOME PARTS OF THIS DEMO LOOK BETTER ON THIS MACHINE
TIME FOR SOME CREDITS, THEN...
CODE: LATOK AND SNOUT
MUSIC: JORITO
GRAPHICS: SAKAMOTO-SAN AND JORITO
...
THIS DEMO IS DEDICATED TO ALL OF YOU WHO LOVE SCROLL AND LOGO DEMOS (YES SAMOR, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT YOU!)...
AND GUYS WE CAN TELL YOU: CREATING SUCH A DEMO IS AN ABSOLUTE JOY
OF COURSE WE KNOW THE MSX2 CAN DO SO MUCH MORE THAN THIS, BUT HONESTLY...
WE COULD NOT CARE LESS
THAT'S NOT WHAT MSX IS ABOUT
MSX IS ABOUT CREATIVITY AND FUN RETRO IS ABOUT CREATIVITY AND FUN SO WHY AIM FOR TECHNICAL PERFECTION?
IT WILL ONLY GET YOU STUCK IN A PURISTIC AND ELITIST PARADOX
SO ANYWAY, ARE YOU READY FOR OUR FULL SCREEN IMAGE ROTATION IN SCREEN 5 WITH REALTIME CALCULATED VECTORGRAPHICS AND SPECTRUM ANALYZER?
NO?
WELL, NEITHER ARE WE...
SNOUT, SHALL WE CONTINUE WITH SOMETHING WE CAN ACTUALLY CODE?
YOU'RE RIGHT LATOK, WHY DON'T WE WAVE TO OUR FANS THEN?
HMMM.... OK....
WWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!
LOOK AT THIS BOUNCY BOUNCY SCROLL, IT IS REALLY FAST AND SMOOTH.....
WHAT BETTER PLACE TO LET OUR GREETINGS FLY OUT TO THE MSX COMMUNITY?
ARE YOU READY?
HERE THEY COME!
TNI THANK YOU FOR ORGANISING THE #MSXDEV COMPO
WELL WHAT DO YOU KNOW
WE DO HAVE A ##### CHARACTER AFTER ALL!
FURTHER GREETS GO TO THE OTHER CONTESTANTS TO THIS CHALLENGE, BEING
GAMECAST ENTERTAINMENT
INFINITE
SYN
AETHERBYTE
AND DARKSTONE

ARE YOU STILL WITH US?
GOOD, BECAUSE HERE COME MORE GREETS!
RETROWORKS
NYRRIKKI
XLS ENTERTAINMENT
TRILOBYTE
MSX POSSE
KAROSHI
AAMSX
XELASOFT
BANDWAGON
LIEVES!TUORE
BITWISE
MATRA
KRALIZEC
NEAR DARK
DVIK
JOYREX
WORP3
SUPERSONIQS
SUNRISE
THE C-MEN
TEAM OPENMSX
WAMMES
MARTOS
THE MSX RESOURCE CENTER CREW
COMMODOREJOHN
Z80ST SOFTWARE
CRISIS
ALMA
NERLASKA
303BCN
AND OF COURSE........
YOU!!!!
ALLRIGHT THEN, IT IS TIME TO SAY GOODBYE
IF YOU THINK THIS DEMO ROCKS (OR SUCKS) WE CHALLENGE YOU TO RELEASE A COUNTER-DEMO
LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL AGAIN, LADS!
WE MIGHT HAVE OVERHEATED THE VDP A LITTLE, SO WE WILL TRY AND WAVE GOODBYE...
AND LATOK SENDS THIS ONE TO HIS MUM.
HERE´S TO THE FUTURE!

By Latok

msx guru (3640)

02-01-2013, 21:02

Exactly what the world was waiting for. Thank you, Fixato!

By NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (5270)

02-01-2013, 21:28

Hey, pretty cool demo!

I'm also pretty sure that you wanted to send me greetings, so 10x!

By Jorito

Mr. Ambassadors (1761)

02-01-2013, 21:35

NYYRIKKI wrote:

Hey, pretty cool demo!

I'm also pretty sure that you wanted to send me greetings, so 10x!

Of course you were greeted, here:

Quote:

AND OF COURSE........
YOU!!!!

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (109)

02-01-2013, 21:51

@mars2000you - thank you for your kind words.

@FiXato - yes it is supposed to go this fast. Otherwise it would not be a tribute to 90s scene demos. Playing the demo on a real MSX turboR does significantly improve readability, however. For some reason it doesn't go very smoothly on emulators (at least, not on my PC. might be my hardware is not fast enough?)

@Nyyrikki - oh dear, oh dear... euhm... my bad... I guess you will now have to make a demo and greet FLYYING BYYTES in that one... Perhaps something with full screen image rotation in SCREEN 5 with realtime calculated vectorgraphics and spectrum analyzer?

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

02-01-2013, 23:37

openMSX video by Fixato

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocvoJrSW5zM

blueMSX (2.9 beta) video by myself - unfortunaly reveals some bugs of the emulator

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCt9gthzKQo

By snout

Ascended (15187)

02-01-2013, 23:44

Unfortunately, neither of the videos come close to the smoothness that you get when watching it on The Real Thing. Although part of this is because of YouTube re-encoding the video (to 29.97 or 30fps, if I understood correctly) I'm quite surprised to see this massive difference between emulation and real MSX machines.

Would adding video encoding setting particularly meant for YouTube improve quality?

And to thiink that the demo reveals some minor bugs in blueMSX... I thought the things we were doing were really not that special or difficult. Ah well, perhaps this will come in handy for a future MSX Emulator Comparison...

By FiXato

Scribe (1513)

02-01-2013, 23:49

To eliminate YouTube from the equation, look at the source video instead.

By snout

Ascended (15187)

02-01-2013, 23:53

Even the original video doesn't look smooth to me, there seems to be quite a bit of frameskipping going on. It is such a giant difference with The Real Thing. Would results somehow improve when emulators encode at 30fps themselves, optimizing their frameskip to that framerate as well? (eg. don't even try to render 60fps at some point and 30fps at another, but keeping things steady at 30fps all the time?)

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

03-01-2013, 00:01

Snout, it's really smoother in blueMSX 2.9 by comparison with the YouTube video. Now on pause, Fixato video is better than mine, even before YouTube interference. So, I need to explore that (how to optimize the video capture).

And of course bugs will be fixed. Nothing is perfect, but blueMSX sound is better and openMSX video capture is better.

By Edwin

Paragon (1182)

03-01-2013, 00:03

It stutters for me in openMSX too. Not surprising because the refresh rate of my monitor is not exactly the same as that of an msx. Found that out with testing PD too. If you want it smooth, use a real msx with and old fashioned monitor.

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

03-01-2013, 00:26

Well, let's go for another codec, but I'm pretty sure Edwin has right. PC monitors don't "react" like MSX monitors and as I've said one day, 100% perfect emulation (including video rendering) is impossible, maybe 99%

By snout

Ascended (15187)

03-01-2013, 00:36

I'm not asking for absolute perfection, but imho things that run absolutely smooth on real MSX should not look like a total abomination on YouTube. They should at least look somewhat smooth, right?

By Samor

Paragon (2020)

03-01-2013, 11:25

nice, scrolling and a logo... and as added bonus it also bounces

By Samor

Paragon (2020)

03-01-2013, 11:28

as for youtube videos, maybe someone should record an actual turbo-r

By Samor

Paragon (2020)

03-01-2013, 12:10

little tip for openmsx users with nvidia cards:

-go to the nvidia control panel
-choose "Adjust desktop size and position"
-scaling must be set to aspect ratio (unless you like it really wide)
-let the GPU perform the scaling ("Perform scaling on" setting)

now run it fullscreen. For me this removed the occasional heavy stutter. It's not perfect but a whole lot better.

By Meits

Scribe (5376)

03-01-2013, 12:33

I ran it on a real MSX, but not with a ye olde CRT screen. It was impossible to read. Fixato's source video was the best readably thing I've seen so far

By snout

Ascended (15187)

03-01-2013, 12:41

@Meits - that I can imagine, if your TFT's refresh rate doesn't match that of the MSX you're bound to get in trouble. An emulator should however be able to somewhat bridge the difference between both refresh rates.

Goes to show, nothing beats a good old RGB CRT monitor. VS0080 power!

By Huey

Prophet (2642)

03-01-2013, 13:15

1) the scroll is too fast
2) the font is unreadable

But that is no problem for me as I never read scroll texts
Still a very good entry and example that coding ASM for MSX is fun and accessable. Good work.

By snout

Ascended (15187)

03-01-2013, 14:55

Thanks for the feedback, Huey & Samor... it might comfort you to know that the font was even more unreadable at first Recording the demo straight from turboR would probably be the best indeed. Anyone who has a setup for that?

So cool to see all these reactions come in after all our hard work. Definitely motivates us to try and make something else in the future!

By Akiguchi

Hero (608)

03-01-2013, 20:53

I really like the style of these old style demos. It takes me back to the dutch scene of 90's, even if I wasn't around to experience it at that time.

By FiXato

Scribe (1513)

03-01-2013, 20:56

Needs more commodore bashing. ;p

By Haohmaru

Paladin (771)

03-01-2013, 21:29

bash

By Manuel

Ascended (15362)

03-01-2013, 23:05

snout: openMSX doesn't skip any frames when recording a video. All frames are recorded into the AVI. What YouTube does with it will remain a mystery but the source video which FiXato recorded is really how it is rendered by the MSX (as far as emulation is accurate). It is of course possible that your PC replaying that video is skipping frames (both with the AVI and when playing from YouTube).

mars2000you: what is wrong with openMSX sound emulation?

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

03-01-2013, 23:25

Review on MSX blue :

http://www.msxblue.com/?page_id=8261

Manuel : listen to the MP3 on my site and compare .... it's a question of 'color' in the sound (probably due to a different conception, as Wouter has already explained in another discussion). I'm pretty sure that Jorito will prefer the blueMSX 'color'.

By Manuel

Ascended (15362)

03-01-2013, 23:34

I'm not sure what you mean with 'different conception'. Can you point me to that other discussion? I'd like to remember what this is about.

By Jorito

Mr. Ambassadors (1761)

04-01-2013, 00:28

Manuel, you can compare the music's demo here:

In general the OpenMSX version sounds a bit more sharp, harsh than the BlueMSX one, that sounds more rounded.

The BlueMSX version sounds more pleasing to me and closer to the real sound I got through my Bose Companion II speakers while composing it on a real MSX.

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

04-01-2013, 00:53

Manuel wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean with 'different conception'. Can you point me to that other discussion? I'd like to remember what this is about.

Here :
http://www.msx.org/forum/semi-msx-talk/emulation/its-here-ms...

Wouter :

Quote:

By default openMSX emulates sound devices at their native frequency and does band-limited resampling to the host device sound frequency. BlueMSX emulates sound devices directly at the output frequency, possibly with oversampling and interpolation (I don't know what the default setting is). The first approach is more CPU intensive but has better audio quality. For embedded devices with small speakers the difference in audio quality is not that important and you can activate the cheaper resampling algorithm in openMSX.

dvik :

Quote:

blueMSX sound devices runs either at native frequency (e.g. MSX Audio, moonsound) or oversampling (PSG is 16x oversampled). Not fully sure what the SCC and PCM does.

Note also that the blueMSX audio mixer has more options to get better stereo.

By Manuel

Ascended (15362)

04-01-2013, 08:51

Those things do not explain the difference that Jorito is talking about. The openMSX method should actually give a very accurate sound quality, when we implemented it we noticed that the then implemented method (subsampling, I'm not sure if this effect also can occur in blueMSX) for high frequencies like in Solid Snake in the elevators is not sufficient.

The stereo thing is also in openMSX, you can set the balance per chip. But also that is not related, I think.

By snout

Ascended (15187)

04-01-2013, 13:58

@Manuel - apparently there is a difference between theory and the actual experience, because to my ears blueMSX is also a lot closer to the real thing than openMSX.

@Mars - wow, thank you very much for your extensive and positive review! I'm glad you enjoyed our demo this much.

By Samor

Paragon (2020)

04-01-2013, 14:15

FiXato wrote:

Needs more commodore bashing. ;p

true. **** Amiga!
I wasn't that much into the community at the time, but still enough to experience BCF, Fony, probably some others.

By Samor

Paragon (2020)

04-01-2013, 14:16

...anyway, I tried to turn this demo into a .DSK image but if I do it starts giving syntax errors (using Disk-Manager), so it's dir-as-a-disk for now.
Any idea why?

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

04-01-2013, 14:26

Try the files on my site (DSK + ROM).

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (109)

06-01-2013, 20:58

Samor, I followed the diskmanipulator instructions for openMSX and came up with an auto-starting NoPressure.dsk image without any problems.

By Samor

Paragon (2020)

04-01-2013, 14:57

thanks mars, fixato

..is this a bug in Disk-Manager? I used that tool for as long as I can remember but I never had it fail on me.

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

04-01-2013, 14:59

Don't forget to press LeftCtrl when booting; however, I've noticed it's not requested with Fixato DSK on turboR.

There's another difference between Fixato DSK (created with openMSX tool) and my DSK (created with DiskManager) : when I open Fixato DSK in DiskManager, I get a message saying that the backup copy of the FAT does not match. Maybe something due to DiskManipulator ?

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

04-01-2013, 15:00

Samor wrote:

thanks mars, fixato

..is this a bug in Disk-Manager? I used that tool for as long as I can remember but I never had it fail on me.

I don't think so, maybe you are using an old version or you've made an error when transferring the files.

By FiXato

Scribe (1513)

04-01-2013, 15:01

I've never had to boot that demo with control pressed.

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

04-01-2013, 15:29

FiXato wrote:

I've never had to boot that demo with control pressed.

Actually your DSK is DOS2-formatted while mine is DOS1-formatted.

So, on turboR, your DSK takes advantage of the DOS2 when booting and you don't need to press CTRL; it's the same on MSX2/2+ with the DOS2 cartridge in a slot for both DSK (just tested in blueMSX).

By NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (5270)

04-01-2013, 15:39

Quote:

I tried this as a consept (without the sound stuff), but I think it looks already too messy to actually be a great demo effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8oJawPk8Jw

By snout

Ascended (15187)

04-01-2013, 16:06

o.O
O.o

@NYYRIKKI - you never cease to amaze me. Perhaps I can allow you to cheat on the full screen rotation a little bit by using a clever colorloop or something like that...

By Samor

Paragon (2020)

04-01-2013, 16:20

mars2000you wrote:

Samor wrote:

thanks mars, fixato

..is this a bug in Disk-Manager? I used that tool for as long as I can remember but I never had it fail on me.

I don't think so, maybe you are using an old version or you've made an error when transferring the files.

nah, it was the latest version... I even tried it twice. Maybe a Windows 8 compatibility thing.

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

04-01-2013, 16:36

Maybe, I'm still on Win7

By Jorito

Mr. Ambassadors (1761)

04-01-2013, 16:39

NYYRIKKI wrote:

Quote:

I tried this as a consept (without the sound stuff), but I think it looks already too messy to actually be a great demo effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8oJawPk8Jw

Nice concept! Even though the spectrum analyzer is missing :P

By NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (5270)

04-01-2013, 17:17

snout wrote:

@NYYRIKKI - you never cease to amaze me. Perhaps I can allow you to cheat on the full screen rotation a little bit by using a clever colorloop or something like that...

Ok, in that case next time I'll use a color loop.

By FiXato

Scribe (1513)

04-01-2013, 18:03

*bows to NYYRIKKI*

By Manuel

Ascended (15362)

04-01-2013, 22:31

snout wrote:

@Manuel - apparently there is a difference between theory and the actual experience, because to my ears blueMSX is also a lot closer to the real thing than openMSX.

So, what can we do to change it? If you put 'resampler' setting to 'simple' you will get the old algorithm. Does that make any difference? What if you try 'hq'?
If it doesn't make any diff, I have no clue what the difference is that you actually hear. And we can't do anything about it if we don't know what it is... :S

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (109)

05-01-2013, 04:05

@Manuel - I will think about that and might get back to that later

@NYYRIKKI - It might just be me, but maybe a true Finnish way to solve this problem would be to let a robotarm connected to an MSX physically rotate a small TFT screen. Or perhaps I should get some sleep.

By BlueCrystal

Expert (68)

05-01-2013, 14:12

Kudos for this demo. I did some simular newbie z80 coding at the beginning of 2012. My attempts died out around march. Cool to see that you continued. Maybe I should pick it up again

By Manuel

Ascended (15362)

05-01-2013, 16:15

Why did the attempt die?

By BlueCrystal

Expert (68)

05-01-2013, 16:47

No specific reason really. Maybe I should expand it a bit and use it for msx dev 2013 (which has been announced on http://msxbanzai.tni.nl/compo/)

Btw, Manuel, you avatar has a green haze over it. any chance to update the white balance on it?

By Lord_Zett

Paladin (807)

05-01-2013, 21:37

BlueCrystal wrote:

Btw, Manuel, you avatar has a green haze over it. any chance to update the white balance on it?

nha thats his color. bit green

By mars2000you

Enlighted (5468)

28-02-2013, 00:27

I've finally managed to make a better blueMSX video of the No Pressure demo :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17urbi4ipGs

This time, I don't have used the video capture feature of the emulator, but a nice freeware tool called SMRecorder :

http://www.video2down.com/

In the video options, you can select 30 frames per second and it seems to be very helpful for the YouTube compression also based on a better AVI (this tool has its own powerful codec).

Of course, it's still not the perfection (blueMSX bugs are still present), but it gives a better idea of this excellent demo ! ;)

By FiXato

Scribe (1513)

30-04-2018, 15:46

Maybe I should reupload my video, so it makes use of YouTube's 60FPS support now.

#msxdev compo 2012 #3 - No Pressure

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