z0ner
xlm_fire.zip - 2nd Xylem release!

This was a quick little intro I coded only days before (and a few
after) the #coders 256 byte fire compo deadline.  I had very little knowledge
of asm before I wrote this and I learned a whole lot while coding it.  The
source was just commented by myself so that anyone who was at all interested
in "how I did that" could look at it and maybe understand it.  I am a firm
believer in releasing source code because it takes quite a bit of effort to
read someone's source and understand it.  It is harder and harder to blatently
rip it and paste it into your onw (I've learned this the hard way).  Besides
if someone does (and this is meaningful, not some 1987 effect that no one
gives a shit about) then everyone will know and flame them.  Hmm, this is
becoming too moralistic.
The routine uses a faked 160x100 video mode by writing 2x2 pixels.  I
did use a virtual screen so that it would still run rather smoothly on really
slow machines.  I didn't have a "wait for vertical retrace" routine in it
until the very end when I cut up the FULL FLEDGED RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR so
that it make words instead of dwords.  The random number generator was
"borrowed" from another fire routine in which the author "borrowed" it from a
guy who coded some other routine who still goes un-named.  It only produces
slight errors on some numbers so if the fire doesn't look all that random then
just hit a key and try again (if you hit F3 then dos prints out the last line
you typed for ya :).
This info file was typed very slowly at 11:00 pm and I hope I did a
better job of the grammer ands spelling :) then our last production in which
I had to finish writing the source, test it, and get it to compile correctly,
and then write some cheezy little info file (of which my main man Loki cut
out my original ascii art :) and then get it all zipped and uploaded to
cdrom.com; all of this on x-mas day only minutes before I had to run off to
my girlfriends house (with only 4 hours of sleep x-mas eve) and talk with her
ultra-conservative, morman, ancient, old-school mother until midnight.  Man,
that sentence was as bad as they get.

Signing out!

The Unlord/XLM
a.k.a.
Nathan Egge