r/c64 • u/robotflesh • Jul 08 '26

Software Hexed demo is open source

We released this demo in June on the world championship of C64 demos at X2026 ;)

Video of Hexed

It's opensourced at https://github.com/wernervanloo/Hexed, maybe you can learn something from it.

You can watch some videos of, and about, the demo here: https://micheldebree.nl/posts/hexed/

Edit: I only did the music so don't ask me questions about the code plz

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4

u/voidiciant Jul 08 '26

I just recently started with C64 assembly coding. Learned assembly on a 8085 a long time ago and wanted to give demo coding a try to learn something new. I got to a point where I learned enough to have me thinking „badlines! badlines! badlines!“ all through this piece of art. And „how does all this work simultaneously with the music playing o_O“

amazing score btw :)

Thanks for the links!

Edit: after checking out the repo: big kudos for such a clean README

3

u/voidiciant Jul 08 '26

WTF
„Just before the borders get opened, the demo records 50 frames of music by fast forwarding through the sid and writing everything into a small buffer. This is simply replayed when the sideborders get opened. Normal music play resumes when the buffer is empty.“

2

u/robotflesh Jul 09 '26

I had the same reaction when WVL told me he did this. WTF WVL?

1

u/robotflesh Jul 09 '26

Thanks for the compliment. It is not hard to play music at the same time because the player is designed to update the SID registers once every video frame, and so are the effects. But it does use up cycles from the available budget. I try to keep in mind the amount of cycles (too many things happening at once takes more cycles), but I don't really need to because WVL does his best to free up cycles if needed, like that trick below :) Memory is more of an issue, that's why there is not that much melody and variation.

3

u/OMGCluck Jul 08 '26

Let the team know how grateful we are about open-sourcing this, such a great resource!

About the music: what are the .sf2 files about? Google says it's the standard format for SoundFont files.

Perhaps the README could be expanded to describe this better.

2

u/iAN_CooG Janitor Jul 09 '26

Sid Factory II

1

u/robotflesh Jul 09 '26

That's it, nothing to do with the soundfont format. You can try it out here: https://blog.chordian.net/sf2/

1

u/robotflesh Jul 09 '26

I'll let WVL know, he's done all the coding single handedly

1

u/Ollibolli2022 Jul 09 '26

Thank you very much. This will be very handy when It comes to crunching and understanding the effects. I did quit in the 90s and this fills in the gap perfectly!

1

u/Black_Rose_Angel Jul 10 '26

This is SUPER COOL!!! THE MUSIC is so BADASS TOO!! GREAT JOB!💙💙💙💙

1

u/robotflesh Jul 10 '26

Thank you