How to code a sine scroll on Amiga (5/5)

This article is the fifth and last of a serie of five about how to code a one-pixel sine scroll on Amiga, an effect commonly used by coders of demos and other cracktros. For example, in this cracktro by Angels: In the first article , we learned how to install a development environment on an Amiga emulated with WinUAE, and how to code a basic Copper list to display something on the screen. In the second article , we learned how to set up a 16×16 font to display the columns of pixels of its characters, and to use triple buffering to display the pictures on the screen without any flickering. In the third article , we learned how to draw and animate the sine scroll, first with the CPU then with the Blitter. In the fourth article learned how to add some bells and whistles to the sine scroll with the help of the Copper, namely a shadow and a mirror. In this fifth and last article, we shall optimize the code so that the main loop runs at the frame rate of 1/ 50 th of second. We shall also protect the code against the assaults of lamers trying to hack the text. Finally, we shall wonder what may be learned today from such a coding session on the Amiga. Click here to download the archive of the source and data of the program hereby explained. If you’re using Notepad++ click here to download and enhanced version of the UDL 68K Assembly (v3). NB : This article may be best read while listening to Stolen Data #7, but this is just a matter of personal taste… This article may be best read while listening to the great module composed by Nuke / Anarchy for the diskmag part of#7, but this is just a matter of personal taste… Cliquez ici pour lire cet article en français. 10/27/2018 update: A new section has been added after I discovered that the “Cycle-exact” option had not been activated in WinUAE. Precompute to run at the frame rate Our sine scroll is a one-pixel one, which is better than the one created by Falon shown in the first article , but it runs on Amiga 1200 and not Amiga 500, the Amiga 1200 being a much faster computer! To know if our code is efficient, we have to run it on Amiga 500. For this purpose, we shall copy the executable on a disk, and have have an emulated Amiga 500 boot with this disk. In ASM-One, we use the commands A (Assemble) to assemble, then WO (Write Object) to create an executable and write it in SOURCES: with the name sinescroll.exe . Next, we switch to the Workbench. We double-click on the icon of the drive DH0 , then the icon of the System folder, and last on the icon of the Shell. Let’s press F12 to switch to the configuration of WinUAE. In the Hardware section, we click on Floppy drives . Then we click on Create Standard Disk to create a formated disk as an ADF file. We click on … to the right of the DF0: drive, and we select this file to emulate the insertion of this disk in this floppy drive. Finally, we click on OK to switch to the Workbench. In the Shell, we execute this sequence of commands that shall execute sinescroll.exe if we boot from the disk: install df0: copy sources:sinescroll.exe df0: makedir df0:s echo "sinescroll.exe" > df0:s/Startup-Sequence The archive mentioned in the begining of this article contains the ADF file of the disk. Next, we create an emulated Amiga 500 – we shall need the Kickstart 1.3. Once it is done, we insert the disk in DF0: and start the emulation by clicking on Reset . The sine scroll runs immediately. This almost runs at the frame rate – let’s be honest, it doesn’t run fast enough at all. It would be difficult to create a sine scroll as beautiful as Falon did… Well, we could use a trick. It won’t be documented here, but the idea would be to double the lines at almost no expense by telling the Copper to update the modulos at each line in order to repeat each line once. The result would not be as accurate, but it could fool people. This would not make our code more efficient, though. Hopefully, since we wrote it without regards for its performance, it shall not be very difficult to find ways to save a bunch of CPU time cycles. First, we should have a look at the M68000 8-/16-/32-Bit Microprocessors User’s Manual , that details the time cycles the execution of each and every variant of the CPU instructions requires. We should also refer to the Amiga Hardware Reference Manual , that explains how the CPU and the various coprocessors that benefits from a DMA share the video cycles during the drawing of a line – the pretty figure 6-9 of the manual. Next, we should work on the algorithm to come up with an efficient code regarding the number of such cycles it consumes. As always, the first instinct should always be to find a way to remove from the main loop everything that may be precomputed, since memory to store the results of precomputations is available. For example, the ordinate of each column may be precomputed for each value of the angle between 0 and 359 degrees. This way, the code in the main loop would not be this one anymore…: lea sinus,a6 move.w (a6,d0.w),d1 muls #(SCROLL_AMPLITUDE>>1),d1 swap d1 rol.l #2,d1 add.w #SCROLL_Y+(SCROLL_AMPLITUDE>>1),d1 move.w d1,d2 lsl.w #5,d1 lsl.w #3,d2 add.w d2,d1 add.w d6,d1 lea (a2,d1.w),a4 …but this one: move.w (a2,d0.w),d4 add.w d2,d4 lea (a0,d4.w),a4 It would also be possible to analyze the text before the main loop to create a list of columns for this text. This way, some twenty lines, that are executed on in the main loop, may be removed and replaced with these few ones: cmp.l a1,a3 bne _nextColumnNoLoop movea.l textColumns,a1 _nextColumnNoLoop: Once we are done with precomputing, we may refactor the code that remains in the main loop. For example , we may simplify the loop that waits for the Blitter…: _waitBlitter0\@ btst #14,DMACONR(a5) bne _waitBlitter0\@ _waitBlitter1\@ btst #14,DMACONR(a5) bne _waitBlitter1\@ …like this: _waitBlitter0\@ btst #14,DMACONR(a5) bne _waitBlitter0\@ Or we may store beforehand $0B4A in the data register of the CPU (here, it is D3) that is used to store a value in BLTCON0 when some column is drawn with the Blitter… : move.w d3,d7 ror.w #4,d7 or.w #$0B4A,d7 move.w d2,BLTCON0(a5) …which gives (to move to the next pixel, add $1000 to D3 instead of 1 , and test the flag C of the CPU internal conditions register with BCC to detect an overflow at the 16th pixel; the overflow resets D3 with the expected value $0B4A , which means that we don’t have reset D3 ourselves!) : move.w d3,BLTCON0(a5) The source of this optimized version is sinescroll_final.s , which may be found in the archive mentioned at the beginning of this article. As a bonus, this source contains some code that computes the number of lines that the electron beam displays between the beginning and the end of one iteration of the main loop. This code shows the number of lines in a decimal format in the top left corner of the screen – in PAL, the maximum number of lines is 313. The color 0 is set to red at the beginning of the loop, and to green at the end of it. This way, we can see that the main loop takes 138 lines to display the sine scroll on Amiga 500 (left), and 54 lines only on Amiga 1200 (right): This saves a lot of CPU time cycles, but not that much on Amiga 1200 where the number of lines decreases from 62 to 54, which is 13% less – for information, the number of lines of the version that draws the lines with the CPU instead of the Blitter decreases from 183 to 127, which is 31% less! Any CPU time cycle is good to save, but we shall remind that precomputing requires memory. Precomputing also creates some lag, since the user has to wait for the precomputing to be complete if its results have not already been stored as data linked with the code in the executable. In this case, precomputing the columns for the whole text requires 32 byter per character, which means 34 656 bytes for the 1 083 characters in the text. Well, that’s not that much. So, the sine scroll was not running at the frame rate of 1/ 50 th of a second on Amiga 500. After its code has been optimized, we have plenty of time to add some new bells and whistles! Let’s do it. We shall add a rotating vectorial star in the background, casting a shadow and reflected in the mirror as does the sine scroll – those last effects don’t cost any more CPU time cycle. How the vectorial star works is not detailed here, but the code may be found in sinescroll_star.s in the archive mentioned at the beginning of this article: The main loop now takes 219 lines on Amiga 500 and 103 lines on Amiga 1200, without any optimization – in paticular, the whole bitplane that contains the star is filled with the Blitter, although it is useless to fill the horizontal strips before and after the star in this bitplane. We could easily stretch the sine scroll vertically by playing on the modulos with the Copper, add a starfield made of sprites that the Copper would repeat, add a beautiful module composed by Monty , and so on. But that’s another story… Beware of lamers!

A lamer may rip our sine scroll! He may use an hexadecimal editor to hack the text that scrolls. To protect ourselves from this lamer, let’s add some basic protection that will make him pay for it in case he attempts an assault.

First, we must encode the text so that it is not visible. We just use XOR to combine the bytes of the characters with some fixed byte value TEXT_XOR . This way, the characters won’t show up in a hexadecimal editor.

If the lamer were to guess how this works – and we shall let him guess it by exposing the encoding text to an attack based on the search of recurrences – we compute TEXT_CHECKSUM , a checksum of the encoded text, and add here and there some calls to a code that checks if the text has been modified. This code computes the checksum of the text and replace the text with “You are a LAMER!” (checksum TEXT_CHECKSUM_LAMER ) if the computed checksum does not match any of the checksums of our original texts:

We do not factorize this code, but we copy it so that it is executed at various places during the demo. This way, the lamer won’t be able to get rid of it by simply replacing the first instruction of a subroutine with a RTS .

;Control the integrity of the text to diplay. Watch for the context in which the macro is used, because the macro may modified the length of the initial text (which must be at least as long as "You are a LAMER!", or data wil be overwritten) and make the code that was using it go berzerk CHECKTEXT: MACRO movem.l d0-d1/a0-a1,-(sp) lea text,a0 clr.l d0 clr.l d1 _checkTextLoop\@ move.b (a0)+,d0 add.l d0,d1 eor.b #TEXT_XOR,d0 bne _checkTextLoop\@ cmp.l textChecksum,d1 beq _checkTextOK\@ move.l #TEXT_CHECKSUM_LAMER,textChecksum lea text,a0 lea textLamer,a1 _checkTextLamerLoop\@ move.b (a1)+,d0 move.b d0,(a0)+ eor.b #TEXT_XOR,d0 bne _checkTextLamerLoop\@ _checkTextOK\@ movem.l (sp)+,d0-d1/a0-a1 ENDM

A very easter egg.

Some last words

Coding the MC68000 in assembly language is demanding. Memorizing the values stored in the great number of avaiable registers and trying to use them instead of variables to avoid memory reads and writes makes the developper stack and unstack them in its own memory as he is writing the code. As well as I remember, who codes a 80×86 in assembly language does not face this workload, because the number of registers and their possible usages are so limited that pushing and pulling from the stack can’t be avoided. And it is far more easy to remember the contents of this stack than the contents of 13 registers.

I didn’t expect to code again on the Amiga. Some times ago, I came up with the idea to write articles about how to code a cracktro ( here and there ). For this purpose, I had to read some code I had written a long time ago, and to refer to the Amiga Hardware Reference Manual . That’s when I remembered that I never had study in depth the way the Blitter draws line. I knew this feature had been used by coders to draw sine scrolls. Finally, I gave it a try and I coded this sine scroll from scratch.

Browsing this manual and those of the MC68000, I realized that my knowledge of the hardware and the CPU was very superficial in those times. Should there be a lesson to learn from this, I would say that anytime you get interested in a technology, you should bother to read in details the whole documentation for this technology instead of relaying on its intuition, out of sloth.

Because relying on your intuition may lead you tu miss some important functionalities, and not understand well others. For example:

btst #14,$dff002

14 of the word at the address $DFF002 . In fact, reading the description of BTST in the 14%8=6 of the byte at the address $DFF002 that is tested. This matches the bit 14 of the most significant byte of the word at this address, so our intuition did not betray us. Or was it luck? Making assumptions about the way instructions do work may lead to errors very difficult to correct because we are far from guessing what they are. At first, it seems that this instruction tests the bitof the word at the address. In fact, reading the description ofin the M68000 Family Programmer’s User Manual reveals that if the first operand is N and the second is an address, the tested bit is bit N%8 (ie: N modulo 8) of the byte at this address. So, this is bitof the byte at the addressthat is tested. This matches the bitof the most significant byte of the word at this address, so our intuition did not betray us. Or was it luck? Making assumptions about the way instructions do work may lead to errors very difficult to correct because we are far from guessing what they are.

So, it should be considered mandatory to read the documentation of a technology to masterize this technology. By documentation, I mean the reference manual, not a popularized version. The authors who popularize documentation often treat it loosely, using shortcuts that lead to a dead end, misleading talent and flattering mediocrity. A popularized version of a reference manual should be considered as nothing more than an entry point for reading this manual. That said, it should be remarked that nowadays, reference manual are far from being as well written than the Amiga Hardware Reference Manual

That shall be all for this time, and probably for ever regarding the coding of the Amiga hardware in assembly language – which I hadn’t practice since almost a quarter of century. Those article are dedicated to an old pal, Stormtrooper, without whose help I never would have got interested in coding the hardware of the Amiga in those times, and to the ones whose scene names scroll in the greetings that you shall read by the end of the sine scroll, if you prove brave enough to assemble and run the code. “Amiga rulez!”

The missed “cycle-exact” option

As I was coding a new cracktro, I noticed that I had forgotten to activate an option in WinUAE, that allows a most accurate emulation of the hardware. This is the Cycle-exact (full) . If it is activated, the Cycle-exact (DMA/Memory access) option is activated also:

Activating this option is mandatory if you wish your code to run in WinUAE as if it were running on a true Amiga. Shall it be deactivated, the emulated CPU will have many more cycles at disposal, because the DMA will not steal some from it. This means that the result may run much faster than it would on a true Amiga.

This, I was able to notice when running the sine scroll after I activated the option. Hopefully, this occurs only with the star behind. I fixed the problem on A1200 this way:

the area that is filled by the Blitter in the bitplane that contains the star is restricted to the rectangular area that contains the star;

the area that is cleared in the bitplane that contains the sine scroll is restricted to the strip that contains the sine scroll, and it is cleared by the CPU while the Blitter is completing the previous filling;

the area that is cleared in the bitplane that contains the star is restricted to the rectangular area that contains the star, and it is cleared by the CPU while the Blitter is still completing the previous filling.

Click here to get the source code. The time that the main loop takes to execute is 240 lines.

On Amiga 500, this optimization that relies on parallelization is not enough. The only solution is to precompute the frames for the animation of the star, and copy a frame from this animation in the bitplane that contains the star, on each loop, with the Blitter. The star is a perodic pattern. This means that it is possible precompute 360 / 5 = 72 images only. This number can be divided by the speed of the rotation: this works well as long as 72 is a multiple of that speed.

Click here to get the source code. The time that the main loop takes to execute is 242 lines. Of course, this version runs much quickier on an Amiga 1200 than the previous one – the time that the main loop takes to execute is down to 183 lignes:

As a consequence, the times there were mentionned in this article are false. The sine scroll runs at the required frame rate, but it is much slower than mentionned. The main loop takes 183 lines on an Amiga 500 and 136 lines on an Amiga 1200 to execute:

That’s all!