Nine

Anonymous
Tue 4-Feb-2025 11:29

You rock Man.

Greetings from Athens GR

Anonymous
Tue 4-Feb-2025 22:19

This work is really magical. Great tune!

I tried running the PRG on VICE, but it fails with "?SYNTAX ERROR IN 2059".
Is the file corrupted?

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 02:45

"MULTIPLEXIUS" so maybe each sprite gets 8/9 time, and the flicker is not noticeable? I don't know, I was an Atari kid.

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 07:13

It seems obvious that some kind of wire or string is used by the magician to float those numbers as they are always only floating horizontically but not vertically. I bet there are at least five people in the ceiling puppeteering all those numbers around. As we just saw a video of the trick perhaps further editing - removal of said strings - is involved.

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 07:42

Each number is built from parts and there is 8 types of that. Am I right? That's the reason of 7 shape.

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 07:44

Edit:
Oh, you shared code. I will check that soon.

Amok64
Olivier BERNHARD
Wed 5-Feb-2025 12:04

Did not see where the code was shared, but anyway, lovely demo, and above the nice trick, It's just juicy from a art perspective. I love it !

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 12:19

Did you use interlace. That would let you move a sprite from the upper half of the screen to the lower half by using a hardware interrupt. Many games, like Commando, used this technique. /Thomas

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 15:38

That is not what interlace is about, and yes "sprite multiplexing" can allow you to reuse sprites again vertically , which is why the demo puts them side by side horizontally to show that it is not as simple as that old trick.

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 15:51

Sprites were multiplexed across vertical raster lines (over 8 sprites, sometimes up to 120 sprites). Until the Group Crest released Krestage 3 in May 2007 there was the common perception that no more than 8 sprites could appear at one raster line, but assigning new Y coordinates made it reappear further down the screen.

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 16:22

My guess is that one number is made out of characters and the characters' pixels are animated (changed in memory)

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 18:04

Can't be in the border then.

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 18:13

Open top border creates a junk char, you can place the sprites behind it. You could smooth out chunky multi-color sprites this way, as a type of anti-aliasing, so I think the top part is sprites placed as a bitmap, the reason they stay closer together.

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 20:52

If each number is a sprite, then 6 and 9 share the same sprite code (just flipped). I'm 64% sure I am correct.

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 21:13

C64 allows you to mix and match any sprite data as it's just a pointer to a memory location divisible of 64, but it does not allow you to tell it to draw the sprite flipped or mirrored.

Anonymous
Wed 5-Feb-2025 21:30

Wide the side effect that the whole sprite engine missed the start of the next line, the reason they use a windowed font.

Anonymous
Thu 6-Feb-2025 10:23

Here is a very good analysis of the demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Ik1vsMM2EuY

And indeed the demo is very much magic. There is not a single trick being used throughout the demo, but just like a great magician makes you believe something through smoke and mirrors. Extremely well executed Linus, huge props.

Anonymous
Fri 7-Feb-2025 02:16

Except it hand waves the top border effect, which has something to do with ghost byte and sprite crunch.

Anonymous
Sat 8-Feb-2025 11:54

the song in the back goes insane its so good

Anonymous
Thu 13-Feb-2025 17:58

Sprite re-using is a decade old trick on C64. Even large/multicolor images are made with the help of multiplexed sprites (1. combining with normal char/gfx screen makes possible to break the 4-color-in-a-character barrier 2. sprites can be displayed on the border area).
--
ern0

Anonymous
Fri 14-Feb-2025 18:40

It's a kind of Magic!

Anonymous
Sun 23-Feb-2025 04:54

Awesome demo. Wonderful soundtrack -- thank you for posting an MP3 version too!

Anonymous
Mon 3-Mar-2025 17:23

Wow, supernajs!
Vilket jobb och nogrannhet att fixa var enda liten pixel av utdragna spritar till att bli täckta med pixlar på varje enskild position för att se ut som om de är fyra gånger så stora, dessutom så smörmjuka animationer, verkligen imponerande!

/Jan

Anonymous
Mon 3-Mar-2025 21:20

I added a short code for loading "Nine" directly from here using a Meatloaf device.

LOAD"ML:NINE",8

I love your art! :)
Thank you LFT!

-idolpx

Anonymous
Sat 8-Mar-2025 13:52

Hello Linus - In primary school, in BASIC, the most advanced thing I could write was to get my C64 to display a sprite of my design and move it around the screen. At that time, I was aware the C64 could manage 8 of them. I haven't played with the C64 much since.

It was with this background that I watched your 'Nine' video its accompanying explainer. Super fun to see you explain the additional tricks to achieve impossible effects.

Also - it's just a fun demo artistically, with the magician, the timing, and its soundtrack - I've shared with my father & a few of my childhood friends with a shared C64 experience. Thanks for building, sharing and explaining your work.

AtoMick-u235
Mick Bartram (UK)
Sun 6-Apr-2025 11:56

Hey, Phil gave me some tobacco Thursday, and it had some pot in it, I got a bit stoned and watched NINE for the first time, and it took on a pot induced spiritual meaning, , ha ha - Here are our songs, and a couple of CHIPTUNES on my mini webpage

I just put the NINE MP3 and VIDEO on my page !!, , And Oh yeah, the SID drum, , the best sounding C64 drum i've ever heard in 41 years, , , ha

https://www.micks-sci-tech-portal.co.uk/BCS/BC.html

Anonymous
Mon 7-Apr-2025 16:59

Hmmmm, just thinking of how LFT timed it, the numbers leaving\entering the hat is spot on with the beat of the tune, , and the general animation, , , He must of used the note data as some kind of reference ? !!

Haha, , the swirling spirits don't adhere to the laws of motion, they do the opposite and speed up as the circle widens, , ,

Anonymous
Thu 28-Aug-2025 20:02

I don't know anything about the Commodore 64, other than the fact that it only supports 8 sprites. So yea, this is cool as hell.

Anonymous
Sun 7-Sep-2025 02:28

Nine numerals from eight sprites...? Huh.

Anonymous
Thu 1-Jan-2026 22:45

Even after watching the video that explains it, this is still cool as heck