5 ms·

Quake on an oscilloscope (2014)

322 points by Ivoah 9y ago

nicolashahn 9y ago
The aesthetic effect is amazing.
- crush-n-spread 9y ago
  I feel that we're only getting the half of it since we're seeing 30-40fps video, but in real life it's going to be much different than what we see.
schlowmo 9y ago
This is one of those Why would you even do that? followed by Oh well...sorry for asking, totally got it article. I really applaud such curiosity.
tyingq 9y ago
Trammel Hudson's vector display and oscilloscope tagged articles are worth a look as well: https://trmm.net/Category:Vector_display https://trmm.net/Category:Vector_display Also the hostile treatment he got from the MAME developers is kind of amusing: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/483 https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/483
- sandos 9y ago
  I dont see the response as hostile, at all! It all sounded very reasonable to me.
  - sambe 9y ago
    The tone is very poor. "This is bad: closed" is not a friendly way to communicate and attract contributors. There are obviously better ways of encouraging contributions to match quality requirements/project style.
  - tomxor 9y ago
    I read it all... it is hostile, the MAME owner clearly can't be bothered and just wants to close it, and while I can empathise with being inundated with PRs, it's still possible to be accommodating without actually donating much time, you just need to point people in the right direction. and in the event that something is fundamentally incompatible with the project (which this is not) you can show a little class.
    - slededit 9y ago
      The patch came in barely working (not compiling on all platforms) and hacked together. Anyone who's worked on a long lived code base knows good architecture is important. They explained what was wrong and how to architect it cleanly. It's not the responsibility of the MAME developers to do his work for him. They also reasonably discussed the utility of supporting his niche closed hardware. Remember once the code is in tree it's their responsibility.
ggm 9y ago
I used to play with a tektronix vector scan display at university in 1979. it was connected to a Dec-10 for specialist use. It was almost always free because people hated the non-refresh default operational mode. I found that as long as I somehow mentally treated it as a 2-column ASR33 typed-output device, and did page refresh by hand, it was ok to work on (the two page thing was just weird. it folded output down two halves of the display) Its debug-demo mode was uber-cool. you could plot sine waves to your hearts content. I had a lot of fun on that.
- exikyut 9y ago
  To see what this looks like: 1. Open xterm 2. If you use a fancy prompt with colors in it, turn it off (eg with "export PROMPT_COMMAND= PS1='$ '") 3. CTRL+Middleclick on the window, then "Switch to Tek mode" (it's near the bottom). Note that you must keep the mouse button held down and _release_ it over the option you want. 4. Repeatedly press Enter to make the prompt fill the screen; it will sail to the bottom of the left half of the screen (the left page) and then do the same on the right half (the right page). 5. "Page refresh by hand" in xterm means CTRL+middle clicking the Tek window and selecting PAGE or RESET. Just to clarify, Tektronix 4014 mode uses its own escape sequences that are separate to the VTxxx series. So nothing you have installed will actually "work" in Tek mode. (One of the arguments for removing the code from xterm.)
  - tyingq 9y ago
    You can download some sample escape sequences to see what it does. Like this one: https://github.com/joejulian/xterm/blob/master/tektests/usmap.tek https://github.com/joejulian/xterm/blob/master/tektests/usma... Download it using the githib raw link and cat it while the xterm is in tek mode.
    - Aloha 9y ago
      that's pretty impressive You can also run aclock on on an emulated tek terminal. https://github.com/tenox7/aclock https://github.com/tenox7/aclock Though you need to download the tek source (its one file) and compile it.
cobbzilla 9y ago
this is so cool. I'd love to play a few rounds of Quake team fortress where everyone has to use an oscilloscope as their display.
azureel 9y ago
More info on the old (3 years old) thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8810857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8810857 Ps: Maybe add (2014) in the title.
- dang 9y ago
  Done.
SimonSword91 9y ago
Remembers me of http://compsci.ca/blog/the-difference-between-computer-scientist-and-computer-engineer-according-to-smbc/ http://compsci.ca/blog/the-difference-between-computer-scien...
cjsuk 9y ago
I notice the X-Y mode on my rigol DSO is crap compared to an analogue scope. No hope of ever running it on that.
trowaybloway 9y ago
> This means the frequencies emitted are very high (5 samples per period is 19.2 kHz) > and it seems the audio output is being low pass filtered resulting in silly wobbly lines. Sound Card output is low pass filtered. With a 22KHz cutoff filter frequency, a digital square wave at 22KHz would optimally render as sine of the same period, because that's the base frequency. Resonant frequencies are filtered because they are not audible. That's the principle of digital-analog conversion obeying the sampling theorem.
- amelius 9y ago
  I wonder what the result would look like if they didn't use a sound-card, but a DA-converter with wider bandwidth.
htor 9y ago
pretty darn cool to listen to as well: http://www.lofibucket.com/download/e1m1_fast_48khz.flac http://www.lofibucket.com/download/e1m1_fast_48khz.flac
tomxor 9y ago
I caught it late first time round so... just want to say this is awesome and made me smile, it feels like an embodiment of what hacking is all about (to me at least).
ctdonath 9y ago
Still & so waiting for a port of Quake to iPhone. Doom is in App Store, Quake should be.
hawski 9y ago
It could be fun to use some code from this Quake version and something like the drawille [1]. As a result one could play this Quake on a terminal. There is C implementation - libdrawille [2]. [1] https://github.com/asciimoo/drawille https://github.com/asciimoo/drawille [2] https://github.com/Huulivoide/libdrawille https://github.com/Huulivoide/libdrawille
- mjb 9y ago
  Sadly ttyquake seems to be gone from the internet, but aaquake2 lives on: https://www.jfedor.org/aaquake2/ https://www.jfedor.org/aaquake2/
codewritinfool 9y ago
I used to do this on my standup arcade "Battlezone" machine before I got the video system working. I didn't have Z blanking, so all of the repositioning line segments were visible, but it was completely playable.

322 points by Ivoah 9y ago

nicolashahn 9y ago

The aesthetic effect is amazing.

crush-n-spread 9y ago
I feel that we're only getting the half of it since we're seeing 30-40fps video, but in real life it's going to be much different than what we see.

schlowmo 9y ago

This is one of those Why would you even do that? followed by Oh well...sorry for asking, totally got it article. I really applaud such curiosity.

tyingq 9y ago

Trammel Hudson's vector display and oscilloscope tagged articles are worth a look as well: https://trmm.net/Category:Vector_display https://trmm.net/Category:Vector_display Also the hostile treatment he got from the MAME developers is kind of amusing: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/483 https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/483

sandos 9y ago
I dont see the response as hostile, at all! It all sounded very reasonable to me.
- sambe 9y ago
  The tone is very poor. "This is bad: closed" is not a friendly way to communicate and attract contributors. There are obviously better ways of encouraging contributions to match quality requirements/project style.
- tomxor 9y ago
  I read it all... it is hostile, the MAME owner clearly can't be bothered and just wants to close it, and while I can empathise with being inundated with PRs, it's still possible to be accommodating without actually donating much time, you just need to point people in the right direction. and in the event that something is fundamentally incompatible with the project (which this is not) you can show a little class.
  - slededit 9y ago
    The patch came in barely working (not compiling on all platforms) and hacked together. Anyone who's worked on a long lived code base knows good architecture is important. They explained what was wrong and how to architect it cleanly. It's not the responsibility of the MAME developers to do his work for him. They also reasonably discussed the utility of supporting his niche closed hardware. Remember once the code is in tree it's their responsibility.

ggm 9y ago

I used to play with a tektronix vector scan display at university in 1979. it was connected to a Dec-10 for specialist use. It was almost always free because people hated the non-refresh default operational mode. I found that as long as I somehow mentally treated it as a 2-column ASR33 typed-output device, and did page refresh by hand, it was ok to work on (the two page thing was just weird. it folded output down two halves of the display) Its debug-demo mode was uber-cool. you could plot sine waves to your hearts content. I had a lot of fun on that.

exikyut 9y ago
To see what this looks like: 1. Open xterm 2. If you use a fancy prompt with colors in it, turn it off (eg with "export PROMPT_COMMAND= PS1='$ '") 3. CTRL+Middleclick on the window, then "Switch to Tek mode" (it's near the bottom). Note that you must keep the mouse button held down and _release_ it over the option you want. 4. Repeatedly press Enter to make the prompt fill the screen; it will sail to the bottom of the left half of the screen (the left page) and then do the same on the right half (the right page). 5. "Page refresh by hand" in xterm means CTRL+middle clicking the Tek window and selecting PAGE or RESET. Just to clarify, Tektronix 4014 mode uses its own escape sequences that are separate to the VTxxx series. So nothing you have installed will actually "work" in Tek mode. (One of the arguments for removing the code from xterm.)
- tyingq 9y ago
  You can download some sample escape sequences to see what it does. Like this one: https://github.com/joejulian/xterm/blob/master/tektests/usmap.tek https://github.com/joejulian/xterm/blob/master/tektests/usma... Download it using the githib raw link and cat it while the xterm is in tek mode.
  - Aloha 9y ago
    that's pretty impressive You can also run aclock on on an emulated tek terminal. https://github.com/tenox7/aclock https://github.com/tenox7/aclock Though you need to download the tek source (its one file) and compile it.

cobbzilla 9y ago

this is so cool. I'd love to play a few rounds of Quake team fortress where everyone has to use an oscilloscope as their display.

azureel 9y ago

More info on the old (3 years old) thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8810857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8810857 Ps: Maybe add (2014) in the title.

dang 9y ago
Done.

SimonSword91 9y ago

Remembers me of http://compsci.ca/blog/the-difference-between-computer-scientist-and-computer-engineer-according-to-smbc/ http://compsci.ca/blog/the-difference-between-computer-scien...

cjsuk 9y ago

I notice the X-Y mode on my rigol DSO is crap compared to an analogue scope. No hope of ever running it on that.

trowaybloway 9y ago

> This means the frequencies emitted are very high (5 samples per period is 19.2 kHz) > and it seems the audio output is being low pass filtered resulting in silly wobbly lines. Sound Card output is low pass filtered. With a 22KHz cutoff filter frequency, a digital square wave at 22KHz would optimally render as sine of the same period, because that's the base frequency. Resonant frequencies are filtered because they are not audible. That's the principle of digital-analog conversion obeying the sampling theorem.

amelius 9y ago
I wonder what the result would look like if they didn't use a sound-card, but a DA-converter with wider bandwidth.

htor 9y ago

pretty darn cool to listen to as well: http://www.lofibucket.com/download/e1m1_fast_48khz.flac http://www.lofibucket.com/download/e1m1_fast_48khz.flac

tomxor 9y ago

I caught it late first time round so... just want to say this is awesome and made me smile, it feels like an embodiment of what hacking is all about (to me at least).

ctdonath 9y ago

Still & so waiting for a port of Quake to iPhone. Doom is in App Store, Quake should be.

hawski 9y ago

It could be fun to use some code from this Quake version and something like the drawille [1]. As a result one could play this Quake on a terminal. There is C implementation - libdrawille [2]. [1] https://github.com/asciimoo/drawille https://github.com/asciimoo/drawille [2] https://github.com/Huulivoide/libdrawille https://github.com/Huulivoide/libdrawille

mjb 9y ago
Sadly ttyquake seems to be gone from the internet, but aaquake2 lives on: https://www.jfedor.org/aaquake2/ https://www.jfedor.org/aaquake2/

codewritinfool 9y ago

I used to do this on my standup arcade "Battlezone" machine before I got the video system working. I didn't have Z blanking, so all of the repositioning line segments were visible, but it was completely playable.