Back in the early 2000s, I was part of a Polish online group of Assembler enthusiasts called New Age Assembler Group or NAAG (now defunct). Some of our works made it to the broader demoscene. For example, in June 2002 we released our only zine that can still be found here.
Here is a collection of graphical effects written originally for DOS in x86 Assembly language. Some of these effects were published on Demozoo, a demoscene site.
The effects are all implemented in 16-bit Assembly and use real mode. I have some better effects in 32-bit protected mode Assembly in a new repository.
This collection also contained effects written in C, but I have made a separate repository for them.
To compile and run the graphical effects, there are many options. You can use a retro PC with DOS, a virtual machine running DOS, or a PC emulator such as DOSBox or PCem.
Secondly, you need some assembler. Back in the days, I used compilers from Borland. Luckily, they seem to have become abandonware. For example, here you can download Borland Turbo Assembler 5.0.
Once you have the assembler installed, open the attached makefile and replace the paths to TASM and TLINK with your own.
Then, simply run make:
c:\legacy > c:\tasm\bin\make.exe -f makefile
At this point, you should have around 19 COM files.
Press any key to quit. In asmshade, you can press [space] to cycle between different display modes, and [escape] to quit.
If you are using DOSBox, it may be that some effects run too slowly. It is possible to accelerate them to some degree by repeatedly pressing [ctrl + shift + f12], which will increase the number of "cycles" in DOSBox.
On a system with DOSIDLE installed, it may be necessary to temporarily switch it off. Otherwise, the animation gets stuck after a few seconds. To switch off DOSIDLE, use:
c:\legacy > c:\dosidle2\dosidle.exe -off
The code is really ancient 16-bit Assembly, but it makes use of some 32-bit instructions, e.g. to accelerate copying display buffers. It also relies on the mathematical coprocessor.
The target platform was a Pentium 133 MHz with a VGA/PCI video card. To measure the performance on slower systems, I configured several virtual PCs with 86box, and did some benchmarks with asmshade. I recommend at least a Pentium 100 MHz to have acceptable framerate.
All effects use the tiny memory model, but allocate additional segments. 256 kB of free conventional memory should be enough.
The reason for publishing these programs here is solely because I think they may still have some educational, fun or nostalgy value for some people.
I am the only developer of the programs. Licensing information can be found in COPYING.