Computer Animation - 1980 style

[mbarrick]

I think this qualifies as a "fisherman's vacation" - after a particularly annoying week at work (I never got around to mentioning it yesterday, but I was awakened by a trouble call and dragged in a full two hours before my usual start time yesterday). What we have here is a little recreational programming. 

Click the link below, I assure you that there is no virus attached and it is utterly harmless. It is a small (28,944 bytes) console application (i.e. "DOS prompt") written in, of all things, Pascal. It should run on any PC using DOS/Windows. Any I *do* mean *any* - this will run on a vintage 1980 IBM XT. From the programming perspective this is utterly trivial, akin to

10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

but it's all about how it looks.

Walking.exe <-- Click, select "open", and watch it run. While it is running try pressing ALT-ENTER to put it in full-screen mode for a more authentic 1980 feel.

Addendum - Heh, turns out the gazillion year old compiler (Borland Turbo Pascal 7.0) I used to do this uses CPU ticks rather than a clock time for the "delay" command I was using to time the frames, so the animation was running at different speeds on different computers. I've fixed that now. Now the executable is a whopping 29,696 bytes and should run smoother. I'd forgotten about the days where all PCs were 8 MHz unless you pressed "Turbo".

Comments

[imdrunk.livejournal.com]

That rocks! It reminds me of when I was nine years old and programmed with basic.

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

I was actually going to do this in Basic, but since not too many people have interpreters anymore I went with something I could compile. On my Windows machine that left me with a choice between Pascal and C. Pascal seemed more approprate.

Why I still have a Pascal compiler is a whole other question.

[sovietnimrod.livejournal.com]

10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10

That looks like Basic to me - it would work on a VIC-20 or Commodore 64

There are still some old systems out there - until this coming Wednesday, the Greater Vancouver MLS system will still be on a ca.1977 COBAL HP system. On Wednesday, we jump ahead about 30 years in programming...

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Yes, the example is in Basic. The executable was written in Pascal. It's just an illustration of how trivial the programming logic is in the executable.

[saturn13.livejournal.com]

that is a basic code. pascal didn't use line numbers!

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Yes, the example is in Basic. The executable was written in Pascal. It's just an illustration of how trivial the programming logic is in the executable. The actual main routine in the program is:

begin
     TextBackground(white);
     TextColor(black);
     ClrScr;
       Repeat
             walk;
       Until KeyPressed;
     NormVideo;
     ClrScr;
end.

and the "walk" subroutine is just a bunch of writeln statments with some delays to keep it from running too fast.

RE: Computer Animation - 1980 style

[tnkgrl.livejournal.com]

Yay! I got excited... Thanks for reminding me of how much of a geek I am :)

Re: Computer Animation - 1980 style

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm glad someone a) got it, b) thought it was neato, because I sure did.