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DEATHSHADOW'S MADNESS
MADNESS AND YOU, PERFECT TOGETHER

CGA Font
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On this site you will find various libraries and programs I have written
relating to legacy computing, as well as reviews and information about older
retro-computing projects. Everything here is released to the public domain,
meaning free to use so long as you credit the original author, Jason M. Knight.
A backlink to this website would also be greatly appreciated.


10 NOV 2017 - WHY I USE BCD FOR SCOREKEEPING IN 8088 GAMES

For a while I’ve gotten a LOT of questions about why the C64 version, and my
upcoming ASM version of Paku Paku tracks scores in BCD – Binary Coded Decimal.
The simple fact is that it is WAY faster even with the overhead of the long
score additions. Sure, each score takes 8 bytes (I display a fake ‘0’ after
since all score values are multiples of ten, 9 digits is overkill) instead of
four...

But the simple fact is that whilst yes, adding a value to the score takes eight
additions with AAA (ascii adjust for addition), that is still WAY faster than
the multiple divides (16 in total) needed to turn a 32 bit integer into ASCII or
even just BCD -- and you'd need it in one or the other to output to the screen!
You basically NEED unpacked (aka 8 bits per digit) binary coded decimal or
something like it to handle display numeric output in a way Joe Sixpack and
Susie Sunshine can digest. "normal people" aren't going to be happy if you
display your scores in a game in hexadecimal!

Read full article and comments about "Why I use BCD for scorekeeping in 8088
games" ▶


06 NOV 2017 - GOTTA GET BACK IN TIME

For a while I've been laughing at people who thought the old site skin looked
like something out of the 1990's, which quite clearly illustrated said folks had
never been online in the 1990's... so here's a change for you guys. Since I'm
retiring the now eight year old codebase that was sitting under this site, I
figured I'd give it a new skin.

Welcome to 1985! ... and sorry, the DeLorean is a bit too stylish AND
non-utilitarian for this.

Not entirely retro though, I was planning on going with a period accurate
webfont to match, but it compromised legibility a bit too much. Likewise I was
going to limit myself to the 16 CGA colours, but that too led to a few contrast
issues. As such this is a hybrid. Tahoma font which looks kind of nice (almost
like a whole different font) once you give it the line-height and spacing it
deserves, legible colour contrasts across the board whilst maintaining the
overall "feel" of classic DOS text.

You remember TEXT, right? That thing the Twitter generation TLDR mouth breathers
get their panties in a wad over going "wah, wah, I don't wanna have to READ!"
like a petulant orange cheeto-fingered commander in half-tweet?

Read full article and comments about "Gotta Get Back in Time" ▶


16 JUL 2017 - MODEL F MY ARSE

A friend shared an article off NPR's "All Tech Considered" section that really
raised the hackles on my hackles. Normally I don't use this area of the site for
blogging, but given what total BULLSHIT the subject of said article is -- mated
to the fact that MOST places seem to stamp out any dissension or post calling it
out for being bull -- I'm decidedly making an exception!

Simply put, we have some joker claiming he's "bringing back" the Model F...

Their site is here: https://www.modelfkeyboards.com/

First off they make a version without the numeric keypad or the function keys --
fine, I guess for fringe whackos who put form over function having the OPTION
isn't the end of the world, but seriously, LOOK at the bloody LAYOUT of even the
'proper' version in terms of JUST the core key area (ignore the keypad area):

That's a Model M layout!

Read full article and comments about "Model F My ARSE" ▶
Read More Blog Entries Here ▶


FEATURED ITEMS


PAKU PAKU

A simple Pacman clone that clean-room implements the game logic.

MS-DOS COMPATIBLES

Uses the rare 160x100 16 color CGA graphics mode in a way that works with the
majority of other PC video cards. A wide range of sound cards is also supported.

COMMODORE 64

An alpha version no longer in active development. Was more to prove to myself I
could learn 6502 machine language in a week.


HTML 5 CANVAS DEMO

Just playing around with canvas (circa 2008). Was going to be a game, but I axed
it given the state of HTML audio at that time.


GLKERNEDFONT

An OpenGL texture based font system featuring kerning and an optimized file
format. REALLY needs to be updated to use display lists since this was written
when OpenGL 1.2 was the norm.


SDLTEXTURE

Just playing around with generating textures inside Pascal for SDL. From a
discussion on a now long-defunct forums.


JDOSBOX TUTORIAL

How to create the files for the JAVA port of DOSBox, and then embed it in a
website.


ABOUT ME

This site was created by Jason M. Knight, a retired software engineer with
nearly four decades experience in electronics, software development, and graphic
arts - not to mention a wide range of hobbies including Saxophone, EWI,
programming, carving, drawing, and just being a general pain in the ass on web
development forums ripping new holes for the nimrods who think HTML 5, JQuery or
Dreamweaver are actually good things.


MY OTHER SITES


CUTCODEDOWN

Featuring articles, tutorials, and rants about web development. The focus of the
site on minimalist semantic markup, separation of presentation from content,
graceful degradation, and accessible design.


ELEMENTALS.JS

A small lightweight JavaScript library designed to promote good practices
without becoming a bloated mess like most of the "frameworks" out there.
Simplifies common cross-browser tasks, aids in navigating and manipulating the
DOM, and polyfills bits of ECMAScript 5 that are not to be found in any version
of IE.


EWIUSB.COM

An informational website about the Akai EWI - Electronic Wind Instrument.

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Contents of DEATHSHADOW'S MADNESS © Jason M. Knight unless otherwise noted.
All code presented on this site is released to the Public Domain.
There'll be none of that open source licensing malarkey in here.
If you going to give something away, LANDS SAKE JUST GIVE IT AWAY!!!