my first C++ program

[robcat2075]

After many false starts, I have embarked on learning C++ again with the goal of eventually writing an A:M plugin.

 

This is my first program that is not something in the tutorials.

 

It will draw an anti-aliased circle of any radius and thickness with ASCII characters and bounce it against the sides of the console window.

 

(you may need to click to animate)

 

 

 

 

 

[Rodney]

Congrats! You are well on your way.

 

Wait! I think I see a bug.

(just kidding!)

[nemyax]

Next step: port it to OpenGL =)

[robcat2075]

Anti-aliasing works for sub-pixel motion also...

 

(click to animate)

[Rodney]

Feature Request: Squash and Stretch. Squash upon impact with the border. Stretch upon rebounding from border.

Feature Request: Save and Reopen files for easy playback.

 

 

I'm very interested in your eventual plugins effort and hope you will record your sessions.

It's that initial learning process that is so difficult to recall after pressing on and achieving success.

By the time most achieve success they forget the obstacles encountered and so cannot pass those on to others.

So the learning process largely resets.

There is surely a name for it but it's an interesting phenomenon.

 

I recall once upon a time running across a forum (perhaps an early Google group) where aspiring A:M developers got together and important information, useful tips and orientations.

Many of the wizards and plugins we enjoy now arose from Q&A topics in that forum. Steffen likely knows of the forum I speak of as he was in the early stages of mastering A:M code during that timeframe.

(I recall part of that forum was closed to the public so... I didn't see what activity was going on there)

[robcat2075]

duplicate post

[robcat2075]

Feature Request: Squash and Stretch. Squash upon impact with the border. Stretch upon rebounding from border.

 

 

 

 

This was an interesting problem to try.

 

This works by testing if the center of the circle is near an edge and then scaling it if it is. It doesn't accommodate the case when the center is near two edges.

 

It's not great squash but it's squash. No stretch.

 

Horizontal squash only:

 

 

 

 

Horizontal and vertical squash:

 

[robcat2075]

 

Why doesn't the gif play automatically?

 

 

The Forum seems to make a basic thumbnail for images over a certain size, so you need to click through to see large animated GIFs.

[John Bigboote]

Can you port a mac version? (kidding!) that is pretty cool Rob! Reminds me of 1979 Waterford Mott High School Computer Lab when we were learning to do a similar simple task in BASIC language... I could not grasp the code, and would not 'cheat' like everyone else so I failed. The foresighted teacher told me, 'If you can not learn to code, then the farthest you will ever go in computers- will be as a punchcard machine operator!" I outdid him with my fortune telling... 'I don't need computers, I am going to go into animation!" What little did we know!

 

Meanwhile, have you seen the amazing coding that Greg Rostrami is doing with less than 1mb of code??? He is in a group of programmers that are using 'ray marching' or 'sphere tracing' techniques... mumbo-jumbo to me- claims they use 4096kilobytes MAX, which is less file size than a 37X37 pixel image to contain all programming, textures, lighting, music and renderability. (filesize of executable is 4k) Here are some samps from his peers, his are quite amazing as well:

 

https://youtu.be/roZ-Cgxe9bU
https://youtu.be/ISkIB4w6v6I
https://youtu.be/0w_xEUoK79o

[Roger]

Can you port a mac version? (kidding!) that is pretty cool Rob! Reminds me of 1979 Waterford Mott High School Computer Lab when we were learning to do a similar simple task in BASIC language... I could not grasp the code, and would not 'cheat' like everyone else so I failed. The foresighted teacher told me, 'If you can not learn to code, then the farthest you will ever go in computers- will be as a punchcard machine operator!" I outdid him with my fortune telling... 'I don't need computers, I am going to go into animation!" What little did we know!

 

Meanwhile, have you seen the amazing coding that Greg Rostrami is doing with less than 1mb of code??? He is in a group of programmers that are using 'ray marching' or 'sphere tracing' techniques... mumbo-jumbo to me- claims they use 4096kilobytes MAX, which is less file size than a 37X37 pixel image to contain all programming, textures, lighting, music and renderability. (filesize of executable is 4k) Here are some samps from his peers, his are quite amazing as well:

 

https://youtu.be/roZ-Cgxe9bU

https://youtu.be/ISkIB4w6v6I

https://youtu.be/0w_xEUoK79o

 

 

These are pretty cool, I've always found those sort of tech demos fascinating. I forget what it is called, I will have to hunt around for it again but there is some person that crammed an Unreal engine type game into I believe about 1MB. Everything is procedurally generated at runtime.

[Roger]

Found it. And it is actually more impressive than I remembered, all the code fits into 96KB, not 1MB as I thought. I think the group that did it is called Farbrausch. I've posted some other links that contain some demoscene stuff but the one for the game (called Kkrieger) is the first link.

 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kkrieger

 

https://www.techradar.com/news/computing/10-of-the-coolest-demoscene-creations-715166/2

 

http://www.mindcandydvd.com/2/frames?p=scene

 

http://www.pouet.net/