In the summer of 1994, I spent my summer vacation using my newfound knowledge of vector math to derive a set of three formulas that allowed the rotation of three non-coplanar unit vectors around their respective moving X, Y, and Z axes.

Back then, this was (at least for me) the-hottest-shit™ because the subsequent scalar multiplication of pre-recorded points in space, as well as the simple drawing of lines between these points using the graph unit, was indeed feasible even at 8Mhz on a PC. My very own 3-D engine. 🫡

This mathematical masterpiece took me six weeks of my life (and subsequently secured my math graduation) but was then completely overshadowed by another student who had typed a piece of assembly code from a magazine that displayed a realistic flame animation on the screen. 🔥

This life-changing defeat still haunts me to this day — a psychological damage that might explain quite a few things in my life 😄.

But what also remains is my love for the language we used to program all of this back then: Borland Turbo Pascal.

That's why I was so delighted about the release of Mad Pascal. What Tomasz Biela known as tebe6502 delivers here is a Pascal compiler that generates code for the Atari XE/XL, C64, Plus4, and outputs binaries compatible with Free Pascal. Nice one!

The only thing missing is my old code and the data array, in which I had the coordinates of a Tie Fighter whose dimensions I had measured by hand on graph paper … boy, times have changed.