Beyond the Limits:

The Usage of C++ in the Demoscene

Eivind Liland, David Geier
C++ User-Group Meeting
C-Base, 20 May 2014

What is the Demoscene?

Broke out of the cracking scene in

early 80's
Exists almost as long as home
computers!
Used to be the coolest stuff you
could show on computers! (Still is!)

http://www.pouet.net/content/screenshots/981.gif

What's special about the demoscene?

Made for the love of it - without commercial interest

Demos represent a rare combination of great technical and artistic

accomplishments

What is the Demoscene?

Demomaking is teamwork. The
range of required skills is too
much for one person to master.
Demogroups ideally consist of
people with complementing
interests and skills.

Some coders prefer to

write effects from start to
finish, while others prefer
to write tools and effects
that can be tweaked by
artists.

Competitions

Different platforms: PC, C64, Amiga, Atari, Console

Size restriction: 256 bytes, 4k, 64k

Artificial limitation

Needs special programming skills

Creates a point of comparison especially on PC

Typically called intros

3
2
1

http://logoblink.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/12/atarilogo.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/C64_startup_animiert.gif
http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/029/2/d/amiga_logo___dark_blue_background_by_pixelozad4o0vdx.jpg
http://www.computermuseumshop.com/computer/hardware/ibm_international_business_machines/ibm_pc_at_5170/ibm_pc_at_logo.jpg

Turtles all the way down

by Brain Control
(Revision 2013)

Team

Balzs strepto Szrdi

Christian payne Loos

David hunta Geier

Frank skyrunner Scheffel

Martin pap Raack

Some facts

4 minutes 56 seconds

One single 65.536 bytes executable

That's ~7.4 bytes per frame assuming 30 FPS

Runs on a fresh Windows installation + drivers

Sound track (wave data): 75.7 MiB

49 textures: 24.5 MiB (450 immediate textures: 112.5 MiB)

Geometry (static index+vertex buffers): 13.4 + 28 = 41.4 MiB

Total: 229.6 MiB: compression ratio of more than 3500:1

How did we do it?

Not a single JPG, PNG, MP3, 3DS, ... file is used

Everything is generated when the intro starts

Code, operations and parameters are stored

Combine many simple operations to

create complex stuff

Assumption

Code is smaller than data as long as

it can be described algorithmically

Used tools

Demo tool Enigma Studio for

Creating content

Sequencing

Doing post FX

Synthesizer Tunefish

Real-time synthesizer

VSTi Plugin used with Renoise

Exe-packer kkrunchy (by ryg/Farbrausch)

Packs significantly better than e.g. UPX

We saved 22.5 KiB compared to using UPX!

Demo tool: Enigma Studio 5

Viewport

Parameters

Operations

Waterlife

Planet

Why and how did we use C++?

C++? Perfect!

Abstract as much as you can afford

=>

No templates (no STL)

No standard C-Lib

No inline functions

No virtual functions

No exceptions (try catch)

Take care about your constructors

Write compression friendly code (know you packer)

http://murmolka.com/img/l/i42.tinypic.com/140x543.jpg

Demo tool and demo player

are one big code base
Demo tool

Demo player

Modern C++11: STL, lambdas, ...

Contains no UI

User-interface based on Qt5

As small as possible

Conditional compilation

Demo engine

Code used by tool and player

Maintainable, compact, fast

Crafted our own C-Lib

Linking against standard C-Lib not feasible

Dynamic linking => forbidden dependencies (msvcr120.dll)

Static linking => file size

Mostly straightforward (1-5 LOC per function)

Examples: strlen, memcpy, sin,new,delete,

Intrinsics are your friend

A few tougher ones

Inserted by compiler:_alloca_probe_16,_chkstk,...

Getting static/global initializers to work

Virtual functions

Runtime polymorphism induces size overhead

V-Table for each virtual class

Indexed dereference per virtual function call

Sometimes additional this pointer fixup

For small classes with rarely called functions acceptable

We initially used it for the render system (D3D/OGL)

Very bad idea

Interface consists of 63 functions

There are > 250 calls to these functions

Saved around 0.5 KiB (compressed)

Templates: avoid code bloat

We didn't want to live without them!

Linker map can be used to check for code bloat

Exclusively used for tiny functions (e.g. abs, min, ...)

And our beloved std::vector replacement eArray

Constructors

Usually, the default constructor

zeros out Vector

sets Matrix, Quaternion to identity

Can induce unnecessary code

Bad!

Good!

Gameboy Advance (2001)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/GameBoyAdvance1stGen.png
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/97274thelegendofzeldatheminishcapgameboyadvancescreenshot.png

Matt Current
by

Gameboy Advance (2001)

Platform:

CPU:

128KB External RAM

ARM7 at 16.7MHz

32KB Internal RAM

Modern 32-bit architecture!

Lots of MB of ROM

No 3D acceleration*

No FPU
Very flexible sprite/
background engine

Great both for C/C++ and for

hand-coding assembly!
Two instruction sets

Thumb 16b/instr

Arm 32b/instr

* Kusma and I were at the time working at a Norwegian start-up, developing a low-power GPU, later to become the ARM Mali.

Shitfaced Clowns
Group members:

Dixan Music

Lug00ber Music

Synteesi Music

Fred 2D GFX

Snarling 3D GFX

Kusma Code, GFX

Spooky Code

Q&A
Q: It's been 7 years. When's the next demo coming out?

Why a GBA group?

Fun sprites,
fun restrictions,
yet somehow comfy
Console demos were just
becoming popular
Only a couple of active demo
groups
We thought we could do better

A: Before you know it, bitch!

GBA Toolchain

Hardware fully reverseengineered. Documentation and

emulators available on-line.
Straight-forward to control
through memory-mapped
registers (no drivers needed!)
DevkitARM: Homebrew toolchain based on GNU C++, just
install and go!

http://nocash.emubase.de/gbapics.htm

C++? Perfect!
BUT:

Avoid standard libraries and bloated runtime

Avoid dynamic memory allocation

Inner-loops:

Think about how you would write them in assembly

Count the cycles

Code it in C++ with the desired output in mind

Check what the compiler produced!

Shitfaced GBA Tricks

We developed a largely automated

tool-chain. In particular:
Integration of our 3d-engine and
3D Studio Max made life much
easier for the 3d graphics artist
Due to automatic tool support, we
were working in true-color despite
the demo running mostly in
paletted graphics modes.
Miscellaneous tools such as an
overlay-editor using sprites of
different resolution

http://cdn.altrn.tv/s/16eda490dec44cf7a6dc0a52a9fb4120_5_full.png

Shitfaced GBA Tricks

Trick for paletted graphics modes:

Palettes generated such that right-shift
tints towards background color. This is
much cheaper than shade-tables, etc.
Instead of typical sample-based music:
Real-time sound decompression with
<10% CPU time (ADPCM 4 bits/sample).
RAM is precious, so store resources
such that they can be used directly from
ROM.

Effects breakdown

Does it have any practical use?

Embedded platforms

Mobile platforms
1

Performance critical code

2

http://www.mobileapplicationservices.com/images/pageimg/crossplatformdevelopment.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/CERN_Server_03.jpg

Why do we do that?

Nothing but fun!

1
2
http://www.slengpung.com/?id=25357&eventid=623
http://www.slengpung.com/?id=25477&eventid=623

http://www.slengpung.com/?id=25521&eventid=623
http://www.slengpung.com/?id=25564&eventid=623

Getting your feet wet

You can find more demos on www.pouet.net

Source code of our demos is publicly available

http://www.braincontrol.org/demos/enigma4_turtles_edition.zip

https://github.com/kusma/newton

Go to a demo party: e.g. in Germany

Revision in Saarbrcken

Evoke in Cologne

the Ultimate Meeting near Darmstadt

(shameless ad)

www.swarm64.com

We're hiring
Send us a quick message at
[email protected]

Thank you for your attention!