Date   : Sun, 13 Jun 2004 12:57:34 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: network-aware scrolling message thingy

On Sun, 2004-06-13 at 10:57, Pete Turnbull wrote:
> On Jun 12, 18:50, Jules Richardson wrote:
> I think the suggestion of a line of monitors on Beebs, with something
> scrolling across, is more realistic. 

Well I think they're both workable - the scrolling message system being
easier to implement, whilst the picture wall is perhaps more interesting
(although the scrolling message is cool in itself) and has the potential
to be interactive, which is nice for a museum exhibit.

> That means you won't have time to transfer much data between frames, so
> you'll either have to stick to something fairly chunky,
> resolution-wise, or something each Beeb can do on its own, and just be
> synchronised by the master unit.  Synchronising probably won't need to
> be frequent; once or twice a second should do because Beebs all run at
> pretty closely the same speed.

Yep. I think I prefer the slow but detailed approach rather than quick
and chunky. Too poor-quality and it's just yuck, too good and it'll just
look like it's been badly implemented on a bunch of modern hardware! :-)

So I need to aim for a sort of "retro but cool" look...

> You're not limited to left-right scrolling, of course.  In graphics
> modes, you can easily have each Beeb do some palette switching to fade
> things in and out, or in Mode 7 you might achieve a similar effect by
> switching changing the graphics characters in your 1-kilobyte image to
> switch off alternate sixths of the graphics characters, and so on, and
> you can scroll things up (and down).  If the screen mode is such that
> the screen memory is small, you can do bank-switching by reprogramming
> the start-of-screen address.  Stick to really simple techniques and
> small amounts of data, and add imagination.

Yep, I was looking at some of the stuff about the CRTC in the AUG
earlier - looks like there's potential there for hardware scrolling
which would help with the scrolling message system. (of course with a
4x4 wall and using different code to the picture wall system I could
bounce the message slowly around the wall which would probably look
quite good)

cheers

Jules