The Industrious Rabbit

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Get your paws dirty and learn something new! Animations, live streams, and other videos, published whenever. By @[email protected]. Read blog posts, browse the wiki & code repository, and... more

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FAQs about The Industrious Rabbit:

How many episodes does The Industrious Rabbit have?

The podcast currently has 28 episodes available.

The Industrious Rabbit episodes:

June 29, 2025 Art Stream -- Getting better at DPaint on a real Amiga 1200 - 6/29/2025, 9:34:26 PM
Drawing for a bit on real Amiga hardware! I need to make a real thumbnail for this eventually...
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June 29, 2025 Art Stream -- Getting better at DPaint on a real Amiga 1200 - 6/29/2025, 8:27:34 PM
Drawing for a bit on real Amiga hardware! I need to make a real thumbnail for this eventually...
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June 22, 2025 Art Stream -- Messing with DPaint and a Drawing Tablet on an Amiga 1200 - 6/22/2025, 7:59:13 PM
Drawing for a bit on real Amiga hardware! I finish the piece and get a little better at DPaint and the drawing tablet.
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June 22, 2025 Art Stream -- Messing with DPaint and a Drawing Tablet on an Amiga 1200 - 6/22/2025, 6:41:28 PM
Drawing for a bit on real Amiga hardware! This is the first part of actually working on the finished piece.
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June 22, 2025 Art Stream -- Messing with DPaint and a Drawing Tablet on an Amiga 1200 - 6/22/2025, 6:32:58 PM
Drawing for a bit on real Amiga hardware!
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September 26, 2024The Obligatory Amiga Blitter Video
It's time...time for a video on the Commodore Amiga Blitter! Topaz walks through the memory copy capabilities of this feature in the context of a small demo written to exercise the blitter, copper, and sprites.
Thanks to Tyrel (@[email protected]), corb0!
Mastodon: https://oldbytes.space/@TopazRabbit
Website: https://theindustriousrabbit.com/
RSS: https://theindustriousrabbit.com/index.xml
Donate: https://ko-fi.com/topazrabbit
References
Code:
Cool Bun Demo on Hackerbun (https://code.hackerbun.dev/TheIndustriousRabbit/cool-bun-demo) - All the blitter code I used for this video is here, including the code to convert PNGs to Amiga assembler embedded images used in the main C code.
Documentation:
Amiga Blitter Hardware (https://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD_2.1/Hardware_Manual_guide/node0118.html) - The Amiga Blitter section of the hardware manual
SAS/C and DevPac interop (https://amigasourcecodepreservation.gitlab.io/total-amiga-assembler/#xdef-and-xref) - Since I use SAS/C and DevPac, I needed to know how to get the two to talk to each other
Credits
Music:
"Silly Fun" and "Wallpaper" by Kevin MacLeod
https://incompetech.com
CC-BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
SFX:
Dragon_Wing.wav by Bsdjak
https://freesound.org/people/Brsjak/sounds/483095/
CC-BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
slap-cards.wav by themfish
https://freesound.org/people/themfish/sounds/45821/
CC-BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Bell 3.wav by el1n
https://freesound.org/people/el1n/sounds/442747/
CC-0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
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May 27, 2024How did DOS games draw to the screen so fast?
The EGA and VGA video standards share some similarities with how the Amiga did graphics, but the similarities end when it comes to the 256 color graphics that defined 90s PC gaming. Topaz walks you through the basics of how those video modes worked, and what made them get so fast over time.
Thanks to Tyrel (@[email protected])!
Mastodon: https://oldbytes.space/@TopazRabbit
Website: https://theindustriousrabbit.com/
RSS: https://theindustriousrabbit.com/index.xml
Donate: https://ko-fi.com/topazrabbit
References
3d game source code:
Wolfenstein 3D (https://github.com/id-Software/wolf3d/blob/master/WOLFSRC/WL_AGENT.C#L244-L361) - Wolfenstein 3D using latched VGA copies to draw things on screen
Duke Nukem 3D (https://github.com/grepwood/duke3d/blob/master/source/buildengine/dos_drvr.c#L532) - The DOS driver shovels data into the chunky mode as fast as it can. It didn't use page flipping.
Quake (https://github.com/id-Software/Quake/blob/master/QW/client/d_copy.s#L20-L148) - Quake shoveling data into either the planar or chained VGA. Quake didn't use any of the page-flipping approaches that unchaned modes allowed, so the only benefit was higher resolutions.
Commander Keen in Keen Dreams (https://github.com/keendreams/keen/blob/master/id_vw_ae.asm) - The EGA drawing routines used in this game were more sophisticated than in the earlier Commander Keen 1, but all of the fun tricks are still there.
Code on Hackerbun:
VGA and SVGA code examples (https://code.hackerbun.dev/TheIndustriousRabbit/vga-logic-processor-examples) - My code exploring how the VGA and SVGA modes work in more detail, as well as learning more about x86 assembler.
2d games and the EGA pipeline:
Duke Nukem II Reconstructed (https://github.com/lethal-guitar/Duke2Reconstructed) - Walks through a ton of detail on how this VGA game used the EGA pipeline, but on a VGA card, to achieve its smooth scrolling
Lethal Guitar's Duke Nukem platformer blog posts (https://lethalguitar.wordpress.com/2023/11/04/duke-nukem-1s-tile-rendering/) - A much more detailed overview on the EGA drawing pipeline and how it was used effectively for platforming games
Why are, like, half these examples id Software games?:
Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash (https://www.phatcode.net/res/224/files/html/index.html) - This book not only has a lot of incredible detail about the x86 processor, the DOS platform, and how these EGA and VGA modes work, but the author also worked on the Quake engine, and his earlier articles helped John Carmack make games like Commander Keen run so smoothly. Even if you're not going to write low-level code for retro machines, the first three chapters are a fantastic read for any software developer who gets caught up in prematurely optimizing anything (code, date, features) at any level of the process. Highly recommended.
Credits
Music:
"Show Your Moves" by Kevin MacLeod
https://incompetech.com
CC-BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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March 28, 2024 Trying out my weird Amiga joystick - 3/28/2024, 11:16:02 PM
I made a joystick! It works on the Amiga and it's real weird. Let's try to play some games with it.
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February 04, 2024Viewing Amiga images on a DOS PC without conversion? Let's find out how!
Young Topaz has an IFF ILBM image he wants to show his dad, but his dad's on his PC. Learn about what it takes to write a simple IFF ILBM reader for DOS.
Mastodon: https://oldbytes.space/@TopazRabbit
Website: https://theindustriousrabbit.com/
RSS: https://theindustriousrabbit.com/index.xml
Donate: https://ko-fi.com/topazrabbit
References
Source Code:
Hackerbun Gitea (https://code.hackerbun.dev/TheIndustriousRabbit/iff-ilbm-on-pc-vga) - All code used in this video
IFF Files:
"ILBM" IFF Interleaved Bitmap (http://www.etwright.org/lwsdk/docs/filefmts/ilbm.html) - The original IFF ILBM document from Electronics Arts and Commodore
PC Development:
Open Watcom 2.0 (https://open-watcom.github.io/) - The C compiler I used for my PC development
David Brackeen's 256-Color VGA Programming in C (http://www.brackeen.com/vga/basics.html) - The source for all my VGA learnings
Ralf Brown's Interrupt List (https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/files.html) - More info than you could ever want about every PC interrupt
Credits
Music:
"Werq" by Kevin MacLeod
https://incompetech.com
CC-BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
"Onion Capers" by Kevin MacLeod
https://incompetech.com
CC-BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Sound Effects:
Light Switch by TimoSchmied
https://freesound.org/people/TimoSchmied/sounds/530973/
CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Male Gasp 1.wav by jawbutch
https://freesound.org/people/jawbutch/sounds/344407/
CC0 1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
Fast Typing on Mechanical Keyboard by HeinzBBQ
https://freesound.org/people/HeinzBBQ/sounds/502653/
CC0 1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
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November 02, 2023 Hop to the Top: Bunny's Revenge -- The Stream Test Stream!
I play through a bunch of Hop to the Top: Bunny's Revenge and bounce between streaming providers while I get Owncast working. Now that my Twitch- and YouTube-free streaming setup is worked out, expect a full live stream of HttT:BR for realsies!
Download the game and see high scores here: https://rabbit.robsmithdev.co.uk/
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FAQs about The Industrious Rabbit:

How many episodes does The Industrious Rabbit have?

The podcast currently has 28 episodes available.