This plasma routine is a simple sum of four sine waves. The sine values are stored in a table, not calculated realtime or anything silly; this is a port from ASM code I had lying around. Since the bitmap is colourspace-converted anyway, I could have used true-colour, but that would have slowed it down by a factor of 3. So I didn't. Various tricks have been used to speed up the code; what you're seeing is a 64 by 64 plasma, size-multiplied three times. For comparison, an identical routine, written in ASM and displaying a 320x200 image, gets over 30 fps on a 486-33. (And it might be 70fps. I haven't checked.)
Things to remember about Java, number one: it's an interpreted language. That means slow, slow, and slow. So don't try to write a demo in it, okay? Please?
Oh, finally, a little challenge: This code is quite probably very shit. After all, six hours ago I'd never looked at any Java source code or documentation... If anybody can be bothered, maybe wants some practice for their own Java skills - why not try to make a faster version of the same program. (4 sinewaves - 2 x and 2 y, 256-colour paletting, 64x64 size multiplied 3 times).
If you bother trying that, or if you want to make any comments about the program, get in touch. Thanks!
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