Hugi 7 Entry
============
Copyright 1999
by cptkirkjamest (Martin Lester)

Minimum requirements
--------------------

- IBM PC or 100% compatible
- Video card and monitor capable of 320x200x256 (MCGA)
- 386 DX

License and disclaimer
----------------------

You are free to distribute this program as you wish, as long as you charge no
more than a small distribution fee for it and it is distributed in an archive
containing these files:

- entry.asm  (NASM decompressor source code)
- entry.dat  (assembled entry.asm)
- entry.com  (compressed, image-viewing executable)
- packer.asm (NASM packer source code)
- packer.com (packer executable)
- readme.txt (this file)

It is, in effect, freeware.  I accept no responsibility for damage, mental,
physical, financial, spiritual or otherwise, arising either directly or
indirectly from the use of this program.  By running or using any of the
files distributed with the program, including the program itself, you accept
these terms.

Description
-----------

This program is an entry into the Hugi 7 size-coding competition.  It
compresses an MCGA image (320x200x256), including palette infromation, and
creates an executable which decompresses and displays the image.

About the demo
--------------

This demo was written using NASM.  You can leave entry.com by pressing any
key.  If you want to assemble the program from the source code, you must
first type this:

nasm entry.asm -o entry.dat

To assemble the decompression code, followed by this:

nasm packer.asm -o packer.com

To assemble the packer.  To create "entry.com", run "packer.com".  The
file "hugi.raw" must be in the current directory, as the packer uses this
file to obtain the image data.  If you want, you can change this line:

	db "image.raw",0

To this:

	db "hugi7.raw",0

Or something similar.

I was going to write a program that treated the image as a sequence of
bits, rather than a sequence of bytes, and looked for repeated patterns
of bits that occurred one after the other, (e.g. 101101101) repeated
patterns of bits with wildcards, (e.g. 10??10??10??) and repeated patterns
of bits that occurred in different places, (e.g. 101???101??101) but
decided not to when I realized that the program would take years to
execute.

Greetings
---------

Many thanks go to the following:

- Everyone who contributed to the PC-GPE.
- Draeden of VLA for his assembler tutorials.
- Denthor of Asphyxia for his VGA tutorials.
- Intel for providing excellent support for developers.
- The whole NASM team for their excellent assembler.
- The organiser of this competition.
- Gene Rodenberry for creating Star Trek.
- Linus Torvalds for Linux.
- Microsoft for creating MS-DOS.
- Kraftwerk for their music.
- The creators of xpilots.

Greetings go to the following:

- {^Access_Denied^}
- ViRii_P|-|ReAk
- tedstruk (a man of many aliases)
- All at alt.lang.asm.
- All at alt.music.kraftwerk.
- All at rec.games.computer.xpilot.

No thanks go to Bill Gates for his slow, unstable waste of resources that he
calls an operating system.

Good luck to everyone who entered!

Contact
-------

You can contact me at cptkirkjamest@geocities.com .