A.D.A. Amiga Demoscene Archive

It's not easy for a beginner to know what effects are do-able. There are so many. So it would be great to have a couple of ideas on what is reachable or not.

In short, i'm looking for a list of effects for complete newbies. I'm not asking for a explanation on how it's done. Just the effect name and if possible, an name of a demo where the effect is used.

the fire effect is a classic.. even if it really looks like scrolling noise porridge.

chunky plasma should be fairly easy to anyone

What's "easy" really depends on any HLL experience you have. And your maths background. And also on your level of patience and how you like to do things.

You could start by scrolling an image behind some graphics with transparent regions.

Fireplasma, perhaps, but never EVER release anything that has fireplasma in it, cause I will kill you then.

Bump mapping is a little more complicated, but ok for a beginner, I guess. Also, it has some things in common with that water wipe effect you did. Displacement mapping would be easy too. And you could combine the two for a nice layered water effect.

Or, a simple zoomer. Which you could expand on to make a precalculated Mandelbrot zoomer. Zooming takes an understanding of fixed-point math (it's not at all complicated though).

I personally love IFS fractals. And if you know the algorithm, the implementation is really easy for the awesomeness of the effect.

To get started with 3D, I suggest a starfield.

I could go on if you want.

Starfields FTW!!!

Oh, and if you want to do a 3D starfield, the algorythm is this:

Fill an array with X,Y,Z coords for your stars
For each star:
subtract a constant from Z.
If it becomes <= 1, add a large constant to it to put the star in the distance again
Convert 3D to screen coords:
SCREENX = X*256/Z + SCREENWIDTH/2
SCREENY = Y*256/Z + SCREENHEIGHT/2
if the screen coords are on the screen, draw a dot, otherwise put the star into the distance.

Copperchunky zoomrotator! That is a great effect.

Anyways, the first effect on amiga should be a copper bar. If you have not done one, do it now!

Yeah, copperbars! :-D

And then display some image and make your copperlist poke random values into $102 on each line and call it design!

Joking aside - changing pixel shifts ($102) and modulos ($108 and $10a) each line to obtain horizontal wobbling is a good place to start (after the copperbars, of course) if you want to experiment with classical copper effects. Touches a bit of this and a bit of that, especially if you want to make the wobble animation look interesting.

Yeah, messing around with the custom regs to get to know the Amiga.
As effect....perhaps a combination of bitplane interference and modulo water.
Of course _after_ doing a rotating coppertube ;D

Well, I'd say, a blitter scroller! Everyone should have coded at least one real scroller, i.e. using blitter for the scrolling. =) Then you could extend it to a sine scroller! :)

Huh? Real scroller doesn't use blitter! You're supposed to rotate bitplanes horizontally. Only then is it 1337.

(Fact.)