icaBlog

It’s odd how coding works. You can spend ages looking at your code (in my case some Z80 Assembler for my 1k Intro), trying to figure out how best to optimise it. Your scratch your head for ages and can’t work out how to get the size down, or speed up your routine. Then, in a “Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance” fashion, it pops into your head at some inopportune moment. All you can do is try to remember it until you get a chance to write your idea down.

So I’ve managed to squeeze my code down from around 780b to only 590b. This is great as it leaves me with just over 400b to play with. I was getting worried that I’d have to remove some of the “features” of the Intro. I squeezed the size by simply noticing that there was a pattern in some of my data – I was able to cut that data in half. Ordinarily I would be able to cut the data down by half again, but I’m using some “interesting” ways of storing it which would mean more code-work. Not a bad thing per-se, but it’s not necessary. Yet.

Anyway, as I say I’ve been thinking of ways to optimise my code, and some of this may be worth one day writing down and “giving back” to the world. It’s for this reason, and due to a recent poll on raww.org that I’ve registered yet another domain name. I’m rather surprised that it hadn’t already gone but now democode.org is mine. My aim is to create a system (probably I’ll use a Wiki) that will be used to record how various coding things are done in the demoscene. Things like how to code certain effects, how to get sound out of the AY-3-8912, useful methods of code optimisation, and other tricks. Initially the site will just be ZX Spectrum-based, but perhaps if people from other parts of the demoscene are interested in maintaining a version for their platform-of-choice, it could expand to become the “democode Network”.

For now tho’ the site is just a placeholder – it’s yet another project that’s in my to-do list. I should really get my Intro finished first. Hmm.