I can't still believe I have decided to put it here. Crystal Pixels is one of my programs I love the most. It is one of my first C++ programs, and I started coding it in 1994. It is old, and weird. Crystal Pixels is a microcosm, sort of old-styled wireframe virtual reality, rendered in shades of black and blue. I wanted to place it here before, but there was some work to do because the program was originarily written in italian, and had some code to be removed for controlling Sound Blaster cards in a crappy way that is no longer supported on 99% of PCs nowadays. If you are CAPABLE of liking Crystal Pixels, then you must be very similar to me. You wouldn't believe how much time, several years ago, I spent playing and coding Crystal Pixels. The program has a very complex history, where certain features were first added, then removed, where I was fighting with the old compiler because the code segment became too long (>64 Kb), and I didn't know, at that time, how to split it into multiple segments... {laughs} I still can't believe it's here, because it takes guts to present such a crazy thing. It also gave a name to my personal software house, Home Sweet Pixel. Yes, because one of the entities called "pixels" in this program, became like a home for me. "All alone in space and time, there's nothing here, but what's here's mine."

Update: after a few years, I've been wondering why the version provided above didn't in fact include the situation file where the original "Home Sweet Pixel" was built. Turned out, it's because while quickly translating the program to english, I had made its pixels' definition file incompatible with the original italian version. So, on January 25th, 2010, I've located the original italian version again, and decided to pack it up along with its source code, after placing it under GPL. The italian package has the disadvantage that everything, from comments in the source code to pixel definition keywords, is in italian. The most interesting advantage of it is that it spoils the original "Home Sweet Pixel", i.e. the thing that was originally called so. It can be downloaded below:

cd/zips/Alex/cryxtels (ita) (585 Kb)

The original version also provided some sound effects, but they aren't playable because, first, the required drivers were external to the program and under copyright of Creative, and second, they weren't found to be working in DOSBox, at least on my Vista installation. Yet, if you're really curious, they can be found in the following archive as VOC files. Probably most media players will be able to read them; personally, I have my system opening them with GoldWave, but probably WinAmp suffices as well.

cd/zips/Alex/cryxtels voc files (95 Kb)