andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> I think Andrew is referring to the time when there was a sort of
> competition going on on Amiga's who could have the most balls
> moving at the same time. I think at first people used sprites for
> that. That would limit the number to 8 (IIRC) unless you used
> some tricks with the coprocessors. Creative use of the coprocessors
> thus became a sport. Then someone invented a technique with the use
> of extensive double buffering and use of BitBLT only to simulate
> an infinite number of balls in real time. That was very impressive
> when you saw that first and you knew how difficult is was to get
> even 16 balls all moving at the same time. It also spoiled the whole
> bouncing balls thing in one stroke. So to cut a long story short,
> *not* being cyclic was what made it impressive. Usign POV and
> infinite amounts of RAM and precomputing the animation is just
> cheating IMHO.

How informative, thank you Andrel. I vaguely remember something like that.
Still its simplicity is enchanting and I like pretty screensavers, not that
I use them:-)

pyramids, did it not?

Stephen

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