Programming Windows Screensavers – Agon Light Graphics Programming

I’m learning how to program the Agon Light, and as a project thought it’d be fun to try and program two of the classic Windows 3.11 screensavers – Mystify and Starfield Simulation.

My aim is not to simply program the Agon Light by cloning the Windows 3.11 screensavers, but to learn how to program the Agon Light at all. Ultimately I want to learn how to program games for the Agon Light.

I find it easiest to learn a new skill by having a small project to aim towards. It’s not very motivating following a set of documentation. There needs to be an end goal, it’s sort of like the difference between learning to drive by doing laps of a carpark, and learning to drive by getting out amongst the traffic.

In this video I learn how to program the Agon Light’s graphics system which is very similar to the BBC Micro’s graphics system. It uses a rather odd, but clever character control based graphics system. It’s like a mixture of ASCII control codes and a separate video subsystem.

Instead of directly writing to video RAM to draw things, the programmer sends ASCII control codes to the video hardware, giving it instructions.