Footnotes, commentary and extras for my Code is Just thread, which is pinned to my @shahidkamal thread. An index to all threads is in the thread pinned here.
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Joined October 2021
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This account serves as a repository of footnotes, explainers and other extras for the Code is Just saga running on my main account @shahidkamal
CODE IS JUST
The story so far:
Season 1
1 teapaw.org/shahidkamal/status/143…
2 teapaw.org/shahidkamal/status/143…
3 teapaw.org/shahidkamal/status/143…
4 teapaw.org/shahidkamal/status/143…
5 teapaw.org/shahidkamal/status/143…
6 teapaw.org/shahidkamal/status/143…
7 teapaw.org/shahidkamal/status/143…
If you want to play along to Code is Just, download the Chimera 2 prototype. Watch for the code that will appear in the thread every night to unlock features and content. Paying for the game shows me your appreciation, but is not obligatory at all!
shahidkamal.itch.io/chimera-…
Season 3 launches on Monday 20th of June at 8pm BST, noon Pacific. With a little surprise. Follow @shahidkamal for the thread, and of course, follow this account for Code is Just related updates and news.
6004:
The speaker in the ZX Spectrum was very simple. The way I saw it was that if you could modulate it fast enough, it would still be able to approximate speech.
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6003:
The Microdrive was Sinclair's infamous "mass storage" device that was essentially a coninuous tape loop device. It was supposed to have a maximum capacity of 100KB, but in reality, you'd get a fair bit less than this.
6001:
The SID chip was the sound chip used in the Commodore 64 and it was spectacularly good.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Te…
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5012:
Contrary to the reports, I came up with Chimera before Alien 8, but Ultimate shipped first. Also, the player character was meant to be a spaceman, but moved and looked like a robot, because I could never draw or animate for shit.
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5011:
The AND operator gives you an output of ON only if both inputs are ON. This is what lets us do a cookie cut of the background, preserving what we don't want to touch and clearing the way for the new graphic that will occupy the hole the cookie cutter leaves.
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5010:
The back buffer is an area of the screen where you "dress the stage" so to speak. You do all your slow and messy drawing work there, then when everything is ready, you copy the whole thing across in one quick routine and then you don't notice as much flicker.
5009:
: It's called a cookie cutter because you use it to stamp out a blank space in the background where you want your image to finally appear. The cookie cutter mask makes the space, then you can put your sprite in and where it's black, nothing from behind will show through.
5008:
he binary XOR operator takes two inputs and provides one output, much like the OR operator, except that if both input bits are set to ON, then the output bit is set to OFF. The output is ON if and only if, exactly one of the input bits is ON.
You'd get some weird glitching sometimes, but people lived with it, because it was bloody fast. You would XOR the sprite image onto the background, then XOR it again with itself to remove it, restoring the background to its original state…