Level
a new demo for 8bit Atari XL/XE
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Hey,During the weekend there was a demoscene Lost Party 2026 in Poland and demo-group Agenda released there a new demo for Atari XL/XE. The demo is using PAL blending graphics mode (not frame blending) to increase perceived number of colors. The link is to WASM emulator (AltirraSDL) with enabled CRT effects to get it closer to how it looks like on a real hardware. Demo requires 320KB of RAM for preloading purposes only (no effect requires more than 64KB of RAM) - on Atari, in contradiction to, Commodore 64 you cannot do well parallel loading to playing demo effects.Happy watching and feel free to ask any questions.
HN · launched Jul 13, 2026 · 6 upvotes (top 71%) · 0 views
Niche: game console homebrew tools · 180 launches, 6 in the last 7 days ▼ -40% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Media & entertainment
- Dev tools
- B2C
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 180 launches in game console homebrew tools →
Could you build this?
No Writing an 8-bit Atari XL/XE demoscene production requires cycle-exact 6502 assembly, deep hardware exploitation of the ANTIC and GTIA chips, and esoteric video signal blending techniques.
What it would actually take: Developing this requires low-level 6502 assembly language mastery and intimate knowledge of Atari 8-bit hardware quirks, specifically timing beam races and manipulating the GTIA/ANTIC registers to achieve PAL color blending beyond standard hardware palettes. The developer must write custom tracker music routines, crunchers, and cycle-exact display lists within tight memory constraints (under 320KB/64KB). Finally, testing requires real CRT monitors and cycle-accurate emulators like Altirra.
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Competitors
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Attention rank: #221 of 293 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 243 days after the earliest competitor.
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