Creating a raytracer for DOS, in 16 VGA colors

In this tool-assisted education video I create a raytracer from scratch.
The raytracer renders in 16-color VGA palette at 640x480 resolution.

List of programs written by me that made this video possible:
- ADLMIDI (This plays MIDI files through OPL3 emulation)
- JAINPUT (Japanese input editor)
- E.EXE (Full-screen DOS editor)
- SPCPLAY (This plays SPC files, which are SNES music), however see below
- New.php (With this I architected how exactly to input the code, where to resize the screen and where to scroll the window etc.)
- INPUTTER (This tool ensured that the plan is followed perfectly, given the time constraints)
- SPCtoMIDI (This converts log files created by SPCPLAY into MIDI files)
- Firstframe.php (This rendered the various effects at 11:10 to 11:54 , after which the real rendered frames were displayed verbatim. The slowness in the beginning was how the BC++ compiled program would have appeared, but it was simulated with this PHP program.)
- Animmerger (This ensured that the frames produced by Firstframe.php were indeed of the EGA palette and dithered the same way as the raytracing was)
- Hudmaker (This converts raw audio and video streams and overlays graphical items, like subtitles, into it, and sends result to encoder)
- Tile4 (This did the four-video inset at the end of the video. I got the idea from Freddy Wong (user:Freddiew).)

List of significant programs involved that were not written by me (all but BC++ are open-source):
- DOSBox and its associated utilities like "mount"
- FreeDOS command prompt
- Borland C++ compiler, Turbo Assembler, Turbo Link
- SNES9x (I used portions of SNES9x in SPCPLAY)
- MEncoder (Video+Audio Encoder; The video recorded by DOSBox was of varying FPS and of varying resolution, due to all the screenmode changes. With MEncoder I resampled them all into a common format, which was 3200x2400 120-fps RGB16 raw video.)
- Lzop (I compressed raw video streams with this for intermediate storage)
- GCC, GNU assembler, GNU gold (After verifying that the program _works_ on BC++, I compiled the _actual_ raytracer with this and did the actual rendering on a multicore Linux server, because raytracing is, well, quite slow)
- Imagemagick (This converted 16-bit PNGs into 8-bit ones)
- Audacity (I mixed audio tracks together with this tool)
- Sox (I may have used it to convert WAV from/to RAW)
- X264 (Video Encoder, used for the final encoding)
- Oggenc (Audio Encoder, used for the final encoding)
- MKVmerge (Video+Audio Multiplexer, used for the final encoding)
- HDPMI32 also makes an appearance in this video, but it's a decoy, as is ADLMIDI in this video. The audio produced within DOSBox was discarded, because it was choppy. I recorded and mixed the audio separately.

Source code links:
ADLMIDI: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/source/adlmidi....
JAINPUT: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/source/jainput....
Animmerger: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/source/animmerg...
Hudmaker: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/source/hudmaker...

• Category

  Education

[jorijndg]

What software did you use for compiling and such, the thing that looks like an ide, and what os?

[Bisqwit]

The compiler was Borland C++ 4.52. The IDE was an editor I created myself. The OS was DOSBox version 0.74.

[Cobblestoned100]

is this in realtime? great work!

[Bisqwit]

No part of this video is in real time, except around 11:11, and even that is a simulation. That said, the program renders exactly what it promises. Raytracing just is not usually very fast.

[vapourmile]

Very good. You're talented! Q. is the editor E.EXE both your own creation and the one which allows you to switch between PC/DOS and Commodore 64 looks, in DOS?

[Bisqwit]

Thank you! Yes, it is.

[adam10603]

programming lvl: mind blown

[Bisqwit]

Quite intentional! Thanks for the post.

[jorijndg]

Nevermind, I forgot the description

[moffmoff jr]

code lvls:

level:asian <---bisqwit!!!

level:god

level:demigod

level:boss

level:get a life

level:noob

[Loic Urien]

You're a great inspiration for me, thanks for all your vidéos ;)

And, by the way, I love the music ^^

[vapourmile]

Well done! Well done! Well done! :)

I admire what you have done here. Speaking as a programmer who began in 1981 you retain the old-school spirit of minimising interference between your program code and the hardware, and by using home-grown tools built around your own working methods. Very good! :)