A.D.A. Amiga Demoscene Archive

Hello,

seeing that there are still people who start coding on Amiga I decided to release my WickedOS system. It allows you to write multi-part AGA demos and has been used in our productions, e.g. Mnemonics.

WickedOS has mainly been used with ASM-One but is also compatible with Devpac and Optimising Macro Assembler (OMA) which have also been used sometimes.

WickedOS concentrates on so-called chunky-effects at different resolutions and color-depths. It chooses the utilized c2p-routines for some of these modes dependant on the viewers CPU. A NOMODE (no c2p-mode) is also available but has actually never been used.

I think it would serve you as a good starting point to sharpen your demo-coding skills. I recommend you see the system as a black-box with given functionality first and don't worry too much about the "wos_v1.0.s" main-file. It comes with some very basic examples and some scattered (hint! hint!) documentation (most of it in the guide and the wos_infos.txt).

Have fun and report your experiences back to this forum. I'm checking it quite regularly and could offer some help.

Cheers,
Noname

Wos_v1.lha

Is my crass head is understand, it is AGA only, no CGX ?

Yes, AGA only. That's right. But its client-server model is open for you to add CGX support and release it to the public for everbodys enjoyment as well.

@noname:

so you finally decided to release your demosystem :o) Many thanks... i will surely try it out although it seems quite complicated and big for starters...

@z5: It couldn't be simpler to be honest. Just give it a go. The following is the minimal code to display a picture.

---

;--- include headers
incdir includes:
include wos.i

;--- mandatory init macro
INITWOS

;--- select mode 1 320x200
SETMODE #1,#Buffer,#Cols,#100

;--- c2p it twice (because of triple buffering)
DISPLAY2
DISPLAY2

lp
;--- wait for mouse click
CHECKEXIT
beq lp

;--- quit
EXITWOS

Buffer incbin wos:dat/wickedos_320x200x8.cnk
Cols incbin wos:dat/wickedos.col

the effect tracker seems like a really cool idea! I wish I hade more time to give it a closer look...

@noname:

WickedOS doesn't compile. Missing file: LVO.i

Ah, all right. I am currently out of home but will look for missing files when I get back. Try to get it from somewhere else in the meantime.

You can find my LVOs.i include here: http://stingray.untergrund.net/temp/LVOs.i

I hope this will help you.

Umm, forgot to log in. :)

noname, i remember taking a hard look at your demosystem back in the day and it looked really c00l :)))

z5, I can really recommend a lot to learn to code chunky effects under wos/haujobb or karate/mankind demosystems, as they take out all the drudge of screenmodes, music and all that crap XD

I made a new archive that cointains the missing files:
Wos_v1.01.lha

Note that v1.01 fully replaces v1.0.

To get started, follow the instructions given in the readme regarding copying files and making assigns. Then open a shell and type "asmone".

Cheers,
Noname

---
@winden: thanks! where did you get it from? i thought i just gave it to very few people.

noname, leunam was also doublemember in haujobb... somewhere deep at his amiga hardisk there may be some mails we exchanged back in the day when you coded WOS at first (1999 perhaps?)

I tried compiling the examples yesterday, but had no luck. I get the error:
* Double Symbol
In file wos:sub/incall.i (Line: 199) >> push macro ioinclude wos.i

Tried it with both case sensitive and non-case sensitive assembling.

Maybe the new archive will fix this...

I will have a look now. I remember I could assemble WOS w/o any problems years ago (Noname: you know where I got it from :D Btw, Trackloader will come! :D).

Hmm, just checked it, I could assemble everything from scratch w/o any errors in less than 2 minutes. (Well, I just tried the font.s from examples directory (Noname: Now that's what I call an ugly font :D))
Which assembler are u using?

z5: make sure you use the supplied assembler (asm-one 1.29) for your first tests. and follow the readme instructions closely.

stingray: cool news about the trackloader. and sorry about the selection of fonts (which you can change btw) ;)

winden: ah, now i remember. yes. well if you have a look at wos nowadays make sure that you take the new version then. hasta luego.

Still haven't managed to compile it. I'm using Asm-one V1.46 and also tried V1.48. I don't think asm-one 1.29 is supplied in the wos1-package but i'll check again. In the meantime, i have read-erros on my harddisk :( but i have almost all data on a second harddisk...

@Stingray:
Which version of Asm-one did you use to compile the example?

Edit:
Asm-one v1.29 was indeed included in the package but it didn't work either.

z5: actually I didn't use ASM-One at all :D Instead, I have used ASM-Pro v1.16d. =) But there's not much difference between those 2 (except for the bugs :D), so ASM-One should work very well as well.

Well, i'm clueless on what to do next. I would really like to use WickedOS as demosystem :( I will add the full output from Asm here sometime tomorrow. Maybe that will give a clue to somebody.

Hmm, can you make an .lha of the includes you are using?

All includes were actually included in the package. I am also clueless but could imagine you might have forgotten to set the two assigns that are required.
Make sure you have the following somewhere in your "s:user-startup"
"
assign includes: asm:includes
assign wos: asm:wos
"
where asm is the name of a drive or assign and can be replaced.

Maybe it's worth making an .ADF file file to get things going for starters?

This is what Asm-one gives me on assembling:
Pass1...
include "INCLUDES:wos.i"
include "Wos:NewestWos.s"
include "wos_v1.0.s"
include "wos:includes/hardware/custom.i"
include "wos:sub/incall.i"
include "lvo.i"
include "INCLUDES:exec/memory.i"
include "INCLUDES:exec/nodes.i"
include "INCLUDES:exec/types.i"
include "wos:sub/Macros_v5.i"
*** Double Symbol
In file wos:sub/incall.i (line: 199) >>push macro
16 include wos.i

There might be some spelling mistakes but it should give a general idea on what is happening. Hope this helps. By the way, i can reach both includes: and wos: from the shell so my assigns are correct.

A "Double Symbol" error usually is an indicator for upper-case/lower case mismatches. I haven't seen this for a while but thanks to the log I can now try to reproduce that error.

There was one thing left to try and it worked. I completely removed my includes and just copied the ones from the wos package over and it compiled without problems. Always had troubles with these includes, though they were from the official 3.5 or 3.9 package.

So the examples compile but i've stumbled onto the next problem. After assembling (a), i try to run them (j + enter) and asm-one hangs. It doesn't crash my Amiga but i can't do anything anymore. When i write to an object and run from a shell, they work. Not being able to run them in Asm-one would be a major drawback though. Any ideas there?

On a slightly off-topic note, on startup asm asks me allocate some memory (fast/chip/public,...). What should i choose and how much.

First project will be to display a picture.

z5, good to hear that you finally managed to assemble the package! Welcome to the club!

Now as you got it running, you can happily try and use another assembler, e.g. a different version of Asm-One (which one are you using now?) or Asm-Pro (which allowed different screenmodes). If you want any advice, it would be good if you described your config briefly. I actually don't know if you are using WOS in an Emulator or on a real Amiga.

Concerning the startup memory question. Amiga has Chip memory and Fast memory. If you ask for Chip or Fast and they are full, you cannot reserve anything, although the other pool might still be available. If you ask for Public memory, it tries the Fastmem pool first (and usually succeeds) and then tries Chipmem as a last resort. Therefore use Public memory whenever you want Fastmem and would prefer getting (slow) Chipmem as opposed to nothing at all! This is espacially the case on unexpanded machines (e.g. A500/A1200) which do not have ANY Fastmem.

Since the code is already given above and also in the EffectTracker.s example, I would recommend you try to convert a selfmade picture of the same resolution (use ArtPro), then fade it in and out (without using interrupts).

When you have done that you can try displaying a hires picture and do the fading in the interrupt based on the effects runtime that you get passed from INITWOS.

Have fun!

@noname:
i still need to find out why Asm-one hangs when trying to run a WOS example though. If i can't run / test projects from within Asm-One itself, i can't do much.

I have a very normal setup:
Amiga 1200
Apollo 68060
32Mb Ram.
CD-rom (using IDE-fix with a 4-way adapter installed)

That's it really. I have oxypatcher installed but nothing more. No fancy expansions, hacks, gfx-cards, clock-port expansions,... I always kept my Amiga config as simple as possible because it's the best way to run demos. I'm still working on a normal 640*256 workbench screen, which is rather annoying.

I did some simple palette things a year ago so i will start with those. Keep in mind that this is just a hobby thing. I haven't got the age anymore to invest vast amounts of time in it so i'm quite sure that i will never achieve any big things :) But i still would like to do at least one simple production so i can let my dream rest :)

Since it is a real Amiga, I would try to look for possible hardware/software compatibility issues. Disable Oxypatcher and IDEfix and take out the CR-Rom and the accelerator card. Then load Asm-One on that naked system and see if your problem still persists.

If it doesn't, you just took out the faulty part and can now locate it by putting things back in one after another (and testing Asm-One every time).

Well, i only have this problem with Wos examples. Other sources (including my own startup-code and intro) ran all fine from Asm-One (unless i put some horrible code in it ofcourse :)). So it should be a combination of Asm-One with Wos/hardware or Wos/software then...

My picture is working.

About the "running from Asm-One" problem. It does work with Asm-One 1.29 and the supplied prefs file, it doesn't work with Asm-One 1.48, even when i set the prefs exactly like in 1.29 (apart from some new items that is). So it seems that Wos does have issues with newer asm-one versions, regardless of hardware/software installed.