Introduction:

"To Be Continued..." was my April 2nd, 1999 contribution to the demoscene.  It was released under Xona.com's former name, Saw Tooth Distortion.

It was first presented at Acadia University in April 1999 for my COMP 4983 final project.  I coded it and Jussi-Matti Salmela (better known as Elwood) composed the musical score.  The soundtrack is Elwood's "Sick On Monday".

(The Saw Tooth Distortion domain name, www.sawtoothdistortion.com, now points to Xona.com.)

YouTube Video:

"To Be Continued..." by Saw Tooth Distortion

(YouTube video with very poor sound quality)

(Xona.com™ was formerly known as Saw Tooth Distortion™.)

Download:

Download To Be Continued... (2 Parts)

Part 1 of 2:

To Be Continued...
(Actual demo)
(3MB size)

Part 2 of 2:

zeckensack's Glide wrapper
(Glide wrapper; Required unless you have an ancient 3Dfx Voodoo 1 or Voodoo 2 graphics card installed, doubtful.)
(Link takes you to Rolf Neuberger's "zeckensack" page; download his latest glide wrapper from there.)

Notice:

"To Be Continued..." was coded for Voodoo 1 or Voodoo 2 3Dfx cards.  A Glide wrapper (or 3Dfx wrapper) is required unless you have a Voodoo 1 or Voodoo 2 3Dfx graphics card installed (doubtful).  We suggest Rolf Neuberger's zeckensack's Glide wrapper, linked above.

Coding Details:

All coding was done in Microsoft Visual Studio C++ v5.0 with the 3Dfx Glide v2.x API.

A note about Glide:

"Glide is not a full featured graphics API such as OpenGL, PHIGS, Autodesk CDKTM, or DirectX. It does not provide high level 3D graphics operations such as transformations, display list management, or light source shading. Glide specifically implements only those operations that are natively supported by the Voodoo Graphics hardware. In general, Glide does not implement any functions that do not directly access a Voodoo Graphics subsystem's memory or registers." - 3Dfx

This means is that you have to understand 3D graphics and algorithms to program 3D effects in Glide.  Basically, only the inner code of a two-dimensional 3-sided polygon rendering procedure is performed by the graphics card for you.

Screenshots:

Screenshot descriptions, in order: 1) Flat Shading, 2) Specular Highlights / Gouraud Shading / Texture Mapping, 3) Environment Mapping / Gouraud Shading, 4) Object Wave / Gouraud Shading / Texture Mapping, 5) 3D Parameterization / Environment Mapping / Gouraud Shading, 6) Phong Shaded Specular Highlights / Gouraud Shading.

Special Thanks:

Special thanks goes to the following people and companies which helped make "To Be Continued..." a reality.  It can be shocking how much actual work goes into the production of even the simplest application.

Jason Doucette: (http://xona.com/jasondoucette/)

For help in all fields and aspects of 3D programming. Jason basically taught me how to program 3D graphics and optimize code.

Jussi-Matti Salmela (Elwood): (http://www.loommusic.net/)

For composing the musical score for this demo.  The song was composed in Fast Tracker 2 before my demo was ever conceived or created.  I have always been a big fan of his music.  Elwood, if you are reading this, drop me a line.

Triton: (http://www.starbreeze.com/)

For creating Fast Tracker 2, the program that Elwood used to composed the musical score for this demo.  Triton became Starbreeze Studios, a video game developer.

Tommy Krul: (http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,146472/)

For help with texture loading management.  His Glide Programming Tutorial and Glide Programming Tutorial 2 articles helped a lot.  He is a software developer for Guerrilla Games in Amsterdam and has worked on Killzone for the PS2.  Killzone won two IGN awards, PlayStation 2 Best of Show and Best Shooter!  Tommy is currently working on Killzone 2 for the PS3!  Very exciting work. I cannot wait to check it out. I wish him the best.

Omar Santiago:

For help with 3Dfx initialization coding. Omar, if you are reading this, drop me a line.

Andreas Ingo: (http://home.swipnet.se/~w-67924/andreas/main.html)

For his 3Dfx Programming Secrets which both pointed my to Tommy Krul's articles and help me setup my compiler for 3Dfx-based programming.

Housemarque Inc.: (http://www.housemarque.com/)

For letting me use their MIDAS sound system, released with full source code, for free in my non-profit demo.

3Dfx:

For creating the best 3D accelerator graphics card around (at the time), and releasing a free SDK to allow me to program the demo.

External Links:

• Demoscene - Wikipedia
• scene.org - A site dedicated to the demoscene
• Fast Tracker - Wikipedia
• 3Dfx - Wikipedia

By: Matthew Doucette
(Interested in Writing Articles For Xona.com?)