Windows Software
Shhhh! Digital Media Old School
Scrolling Text and 2D Boids style Flocking Demo [2021]
I wrote this updated version of my very first scrolling text demo entry into the world of “underground” coding as an exercise to get me in touch with the character Zheng Ni Wong from my books and stories Butterfly Dragon and A Lady’s Prerogative III: Singularity. With Zheng Ni Wong being a computational biologist, I thought it would be neat to add the Boids-like fish, who follow a limited parametric design that yields their flocking behaviour. If you try this demo, when you move the mouse on screen, the fish will, if they’re close enough to it, try to follow it, though I gave them enough autonomy for it to be semi-reactive behaviour, following some ideas I tried to integrate into Zheng Ni Wong’s understanding of biological simulation.
Dirbs as I call this demo (a play on the word birds), is a graphics demo containing a very simple playfield using sprites and scrolling text that I modeled after the code I wrote about thirty-eight years ago (from 2026) that earned me a place in the coder scene back at that time. The original code was a cludge between Turbo Pascal/Turbo C, using fixed point math (most CPUs in those days lacked onboard floating point hardware, ie 386SX, the pseudo 32 bit/16-bit hybrid CPU, versus its more advanced 386DX counterpart).
There wasn’t any flocking simulation in the original old school demo I wrote back then, though AI programming for video games often yielded systematic behaviours, though it was Craig Reynolds who formalized this when he published his famous Boids paper[University of Toronto].
Craig created the early CGI effects for the Tim Burton movie: Batman Returns. My original graphics demo had a very cool sinusoidal scrolling text effect that I achieved with SIN tables quantized for accuracy on a 320×200 raster display (Mode 13h VGA).
It seemed very complex back then, but is very trivial now with all of the coding tools and APIs there are. I used GameMaker to write this modern version of the demo, so there was no having to hand craft a font grid and its corresponding masks like I had to in the old days, so that I could BLiT (BLock Transfer) the font sprites directly to screen memory (after restoring the background from the previous frame using the masks to reduce the total pixels written to the graphics hardware per frame) from the text string, via lookup tables. The original code ran with minimal math on the CPU, completely relying upon lookup tables, addition and multiplication. Calculating divisions back then was notoriously slow compared to addition/multiplication, hence everything was achieved via invert and multiply or in some cases, using lookup tables as in the case of Sin/Cosine values indexed by angle. All profiling back then was achieved through onscreen debug print lines and text file logs, which were then omitted in the final compilation (via conditional defines). There were few tools for instrumenting your code for performance measurement timers or statistics measurement for the execution time of function calls.
In all truth, it was a pain in the ass compared to what we have today, especially in terms of APIs, perhaps the single greatest software advance in history, aside from Lady Lovelace’s realization of the fact that the patterns used in weaving looms were actually the archetype for what would become the basis of all software programming.
Object orientation, event driven programming and modern integrated development environments are certainly up there in terms of advances, not to mention the very specialized development IDEs like GameMaker, Unreal Engine, Unity and one of my personal favourites, Delphi, given its long standing history, it essentially having originated as Borland Pascal, with support for object orientation, and a minimal system library. It eventually gained the addition of a Pascal based Windows Framework called VCL (Visual Component Library) which was a visual component based framework and direct competitor with both Visual Studio’s MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) and Visual Basic‘s ActiveX components.
However, Delphi had the advantage of being a native compiler, producing x86 machine code executables without heavy duty reliance on runtime dynamic link libraries. I find that both the modern versions of Visual Studio and Delphi are both excellent tools, and have so many new bells and whistles that there almost isn’t enough time to get to them all. Thank goodness for AI though, because it makes that process much easier. Also, keep in mind that many of these advances that we enjoy today were built originally on the back of Unix, Vax VMS and CP/M, all three of which serve as the foundation of all operating systems and the underlying programming languages that were used to write them, or that were bundled with them in the early days of ARPAnet.
With Regard To The Scrolling Text Component that is part of the JVCL Component Library
I wrote something else in Delphi that uses JVCL components that I use at home to identify my own computer, and Dirbs should not be confused with that. The original scrolling text demo I wrote back in the old days included many advanced graphics features (sinusoidal text and matrix based convolutions) that aren’t supported in the JVCL Scrolling text component.
So when I state that I wrote a scrolling text program years ago, I am not taking the credit for anything on the JVCL Delphi library and never have. I was talking about code that I wrote perhaps thirty-seven years ago, in the late 1980s/early 1990s while working for CS Computing, though during my lunch breaks.
Dirbs is a very basic update of what I wrote back then, that I whipped together in a modern coding tool. I could have spent a few more days researching how to use shader languages to implement convolutions, but I thought that the time I spent on it was enough to make my point.
There have been some accusing me of taking the credit for the work of others, but that’s just not the case and never has been. I always give credit where its due and I have most of the skills I write about. I have coding skills. I have music skills (extensive piano and MIDI including having coded tools that extract SysEx and other low level data back in the old days). I have horse back riding skills. I have martial arts skills too. Keep in mind, I’m not a spring rooster anymore. I’m approaching sixty. I’ve had a lot of time to learn things, and I’ve rarely wasted my time.
It seems to me that sort of thing is a very common scam these days. When you don’t or can’t demonstrate yourself actually doing something, the assumption is that you can’t do it at all and are forced to pay someone else a sort of sponsorship, and if you don’t, you’re accused of taking it from someone else and the people doing this, making those claims are actually running the biggest scam of all, and using those claims in order to steal the efforts of other people. Scumbags for certain.
I always have time for the praise of creativity and ingenuity, the wellsprings from which comes forth all inspiration (dedication and perseverance assumed).
Regardless, here is the modern download though it is very basic compared to what could have been possible if I gave it few extra days.
For Linux and Mac users, this should run under CrossOver or WINE/WINESKIN.
DirbsRelease.exe
WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8/Win8.1/Win10 32-bit installer 1.4.1.144 Download
MD5 Checksum: EDA795CEC234D355E57701D2A5152C68
If you really like graphics demos, and you have an NVidia graphics card, I suggest that you check out their graphics demo archive.
Remember, a lot of the great graphics that you see today would not have been possible without the dedication and contribution of the demo and party scene [scene.org]. A lot of those coders went on to get hired by the hardware startups that created the hardware microcode that became the foundation of modern GPUs.
Shhhh! Digital Media NIC Nix
Nic Nix is a simple utility that I wrote that once installed, stays resident in your Windows tray area (bottom right). After configuring the utility, whenever you leave your computer idle for the time specified, Nic Nix will disable the network connections you select, and re-enable them whenever you use the mouse or keyboard. The interface is very simple and self explanatory, though only your internet connected network interface card NIC or WIFI, should be selected in the list. Its very handy if you’d prefer your internet to automatically be disconnected after a set amount of computer inactivity.
Current Version: Network Connection Scheduler 1.4.1.144
Latest Version
WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8/Win8.1/Win10 32-bit installer 1.4.1.144 Download
MD5 Checksum: B671D8CEB488872FF7AF910B1C696739
Shhhh! Digital IP Monitor
A very simple tool that allows you to track and log changes to your Public IP Address, which might occur if you’re on a provider that uses DHCP for your IP address allocation, or if someone is externally tampering with your IP address setup. Logs all changes and their time and date. It includes the Delphi source code too.
Updates
1.3.4.126
- Fixed http error message during minor OS http service interruptions (which are common)
- Logging now works correctly and log file can be found in Data directory off the install location
- Added menu elements for setting the update interval
- Removed Run On Windows Startup checkbox from interface
- Placed Windows Startup interface in menus
- Run on startup now operates correctly on program startup
1.1.3.144
- Added run at startup option
- Cleaned up credits
- Hovering over the IP Monitor tray icon shows public IP
- Various miscellaneous fixes
1.0.2.108
- Fixed error writing log to Program Files (x86) folder. It now saves the log to Documents\Shhhh! Digital IP Monitor
1.0.1.99
- Initial release
WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8/Win8.1/Win10 32 installer and application 1.3.4.126 Download
MD5: B24D6B7D6743E9C3A42E033D7B2C9F42
Font Spy
Font Spy is a Windows font browser I wrote that allows artists to preview fonts in their own words and work. The latest version of Font Spy is integrated into the latest version of Shhhh! For Windows (v1.0.108.144). As of this writing Shhhh! For Windows is not available for download. Perhaps in the future I’ll release it to the public, but until then you can use this standalone version of Font Spy.
WinXP/Vista/Win7/Win8/Win8.1/Win10 32-bit installer and application Download
A Lady’s Prerogative Skyrim Special Edition (v0.4.1)
This is a mod I initially created for Bethesda’s Skyrim which featured some of the spells and factions I’d designed for the A Lady’s Prerogative novels. I ended up developing the whole concept into a much more encompassing though still limited mod.
Since that time I’ve converted the mod for use in Skyrim Special Edition, even cleaning up some of the Night Wytch spells to work much better with the new graphics capabilities in the Special Edition.
Currently there are only a few spell books available at some of the vendors throughout Skyrim that will allow the player to learn some spells from the Order Of The Night Wytch.
Its not much, but was a great place to throw around some ideas about how something related to A Lady’s Prerogative could be implemented into an interactive format.
Enjoy!
Requires: Skyrim Special Edition on Windows. A Lady’s Prerogative Skyrim v0.4.1 Download
MD5 Checksum: 063BB2CEFD406146D63F1DAB02694C34
More to come…
Copyright © 2026 Brian Joseph Johns