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".