Nov 23, 2023
To celebrate Blender 4.0, here's something rendered with Blender 4.0 without actually using any of its new features.
seen from Austria
seen from Philippines
seen from Türkiye
seen from Türkiye
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seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Finland
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United States
To celebrate Blender 4.0, here's something rendered with Blender 4.0 without actually using any of its new features.
It's a bit telling, if not maybe damning, that some of the very first posts on this blog were talking about the state of the A3X's software and such, and after all that time not a single word of those posts is outdated. I could repost their contents verbatim and it'd still be entirely true.
The State of the Asspull IIIx, 2026
Emulator: No real need to work on it. All basic features are there, except...
System: ...I had that one idea about page flipping/backbuffers three years back. Never actually did anything about that.
Actual hardware implementation: Wasn't ever gonna happen to begin with.
File manager: Needs more basic functionality, but I appear to have gotten stuck on word wrapping in the text file viewer.
Image editor: Development died out after the main source of inspiration and input went... I'm not sure what to call what happened to them. Incommunicado, let's just say. Tempted to redesign the UI to be less like DeluxePaint to distance from said person, but that just amounts to more senseless busywork without actually adding functionality.
Platform game: Barely anything to show for it. I've always struggled with collision detection, but studying the Commander Keen source code reconstruction is vaguely inspiring.
Basic interpreter: Too, well, basic to be of any use. I really should just port something off the shelf.
Columns: Basic gameplay is in, but no progression or fail state. No settings menu or title screen.
Tetris: Basic gameplay is in, but failing just sits there. No settings menu.
Sokoban: Basic gameplay is in, level pack support from diskette is in. Is supposed to have a level editor.
Anything 3D: I might look into rendering wireframes or better again, now that floating point math is supported.
All in all, it's been... an easy two years now since the last change. Being the only one on the project, I gotta admit it's not easy to keep the drive going. Which is why I started working on other projects.
Which is why I keep doing that, never finishing anything...
I should go to sleep.
I spent way too long on this.
Early A3X screenshots
Because why not?
Here’s the first take on the boot screen...
... to which I then added a sprite and HDMA background.
But before I got code running, I tested the video modes by hardcoding certain test materials. This is 640x240 16 colors, automatically stretched down. You might recognize this image (edited as it was from a copy protection error screen)...
...as it was then edited into the first appearance of the system’s mascot Farrah.
Mind you, this is a mockup. If I cared enough right now I’d include a reproduced "INSERT CART" below the logo.
And because I felt bad about tracing from some semi-obscure MSX game’s copy protection screen, this was eventually replaced.
So then I felt bad about probably having messed up the proportions but I don’t feel like I can commission someone to do better and bluaaaagh.
So yeah, thanks to @foone for helping me out with what is for now the final version.
But speaking of Foone...
This one lasted for all of five minutes, as a joke.
KaBOOM!
The Asspull IIIx paint program actually sorta-kinda functions like a paint program now!
I wanted to get at least this basicest of basics done before the day's out, instead of focusing on UI stuff, and I'm posting this at 23:49 so goodnight!
To time_t or not to time_t, that's the tea
Considering the real time clock on the Asspull IIIx runs at an offset from the host's reported time and defaults to January 1 1984 (you're supposed to reset it), and considering this is the only 64-bit register on the system... I wonder if that's worth the effort?
GCC actually has to pull in some extra support routines just to let the time functions handle such a large value.
If I make its time_t 32-bit it'll cut its range, but it'll look more contemporary and simplifies the compiled code.
What do you think?
Fake systems can have little a Y2038 bug as a treat
Keep it as it is now
Yes, I did ask the same thing on Mastodon. It was pretty nearly a 50/50 split. But I feel like I might get a bigger audience on Tumblr (especially if @foone helps out) and I'm curious.
Just found out floating point is fucking broken. I haven't the tools, knowledge, or means to even begin finding out why, let alone fix it...