DREAMSCAPE

by Seven

Intro:

This 4K competed at Bizarre'99. Almost it didn't. After a week of coding, I
uploaded it 1 minute before the deadline, and the system gave a confirmation
message. However, the orgos did NOT get it, so it wasn't shown with the rest
of the 4Ks. Big thanks to the organizers for helping so quickly and showing
it between the 64Ks. The music didn't work, but nevertheless, I was happy it
was shown. We'll see at the prize-ceremony how it did.

Features:

- Fractal landscape in a 512*512 map (Pmode rules!), with 4 degrees of
freedom.
- 32-bit colormap with height-related colors, and shades depending on the
slope of the hills, giving a nice shadow-effect.
- 2 different kinds of fractal 3D-trees.
- Sky with clouds
- Fog at the horizon, to prevent the objects from appearing suddenly.
- Lakes with a nice blue filter if you walk in them.
- Canyons, roads and a mysterious building.

Credits:

First big thanks goes to Jibz, whose excelent Apack compressed the 4871
bytes large original file down to 4096. The Adlib music system is written
by Psi/FC, and adapted by The Watcher/TUHB. Franky & Shiva/Kolor released
the stub of Void 3, which helped me greatly initializing Pmode and getting
VESA to work. All other code, and the crappy tune were written by me (Seven).
Thanks to Copplan/Immortal Coil and Syturvy for trying to help me with the
music, but a mailbox-crash at university messed things up, so I had to do
it myself.

The Idea

Ever seen Mars.exe? A 5K-big file with a martian landscape. It was the first
of that kind that I saw, and I was stunned. In my first 4k, Fractal Life, the
end was supposed to be a landscape with trees in it, but I ended up with a
flat floor with Conways game of Life on it. Now, more than a year and 2
intros later, I finally managed to do it. Another nice 4K with a similar
idea is Orinocco/Digimind, 2nd place at ASM'99.

Requirements:

I've made this on a PII 350, and the compo-machine was a PII 400. It was
very hard to make it run as fast as it does now, and I've speed-optimized as
much as possible in 4k, but even here it runs at only 10 FPS. The intro is
timed with this speed in mind, as I had no place to add speed-detecting code.
You can skip the main part with escape if it's too slow, the intro & outro
should run at full framerate everywhere, so no skipping there.

So: - PII 250 (preferably)
- 16 MB RAM with DPMI manager (use a dos-box if you don't have one)
- An adlib-compatible soundcard for the low-fi music.
You can turn the music off by adding any command-line parameter.
- A VESA2-compatible videocard, capable of using 320*240*32 with LFB.

Problems & Solutions:

P: I get a DPMI? error message
S: You don't have a DPMI manager installed, or you have but it is a 16-bit
version (don't try to run this on a 286!!), a Win9x dos-box should work OK.

P: I get a VESA? error message
S: You don't have a VESA2 compliant videocard, or it does not support
320*240*32 bit with a Linear Frame Buffer. Some cards, like the Matrox, is
only Vesa-compatible: it does support lots of modes, but does not tell that
to the program. Bad bad videocard, go stand in the corner. Univbe can solve
lots (but not all) problems, try it.

P: It crashed!
S: Try without any other program loaded. Sorry, no space for any error-
checking. All you can do is pray :(

Contact info:

If you want to cantact me, you can E-mail me at:
Stefaan.VanNieuwenhuyze@rug.ac.be.
This address will be valid until September 2000.