Stuff that's still missing

[emkay]

Copied from the other thread :

 

 

About "Gr.1 and Gr. 2" depending on their nice effect to save a lot of CPU time, they were often used for Basic games.

 

 

 

Using them in their limits o 64 Bytes, one could do a screen , using one charset every charmode line, you could do very interesting effects, creating a bitmap screen with interchangable colour blocks. Possibly the best mode for some Ego shooter. The non linear mode may cost some additional CPU cycles, but the mode will save even more, for "3d" calculations.

 

Could you imagine the possibilities there?

 

 

Creating some more working screens there in basic might be useful. But some "G2F" for those modes could help to give better impressions. Particular in demos, those modes could be used to have digisound + animations while loading from disk , or general transition FX could be done with low CPU and RAM usage.

Yeah, I posted that video some more times before, but I don't see reflections in interest

What you don't see is that even using Basic and huge animations, the charset is copied from ROM to RAM in the background, to have the charset animations at the end of the small demo.

 

Ever imagined some Bitmap with 4 color matrix overlay animations and stuff?

Edited January 30, 2017 by emkay

[José Pereira]

I already propose a game based on a ZX's LumASCII:

 

Because we can't/not much ways of colourings on hi-res then on A8 we can use GR.1 on the playing area and Gr.0 for the top panel/scores&energy and then our guy could use PMGs but sadly and once again no-one got it : http://atariage.com/forums/topic/208115-spectrum-lumascii/?hl=%2Bgr.1&do=findComment&comment=2686507

 

-> Only PFs / Only PMGs:

-> The game will look like this:

Edited January 30, 2017 by José Pereira

[José Pereira]

On A8 we have 40Bytes width that gives some more wide though not 32chars visible but only 20 but to look better and because of the 2:1 ratio we could also give some more charlines to the playing area (maybe 26charlines + 2 for the panel gives 28 and that with 1blank at the top and another at the bottom still be seen even for NTSC people)...

Edited January 30, 2017 by José Pereira

[emkay]

On A8 we have 40Bytes width that gives some more wide though not 32chars visible but only 20 but to look better and because of the 2:1 ratio we could also give some more charlines to the playing area (maybe 26charlines + 2 for the panel gives 28 and that with 1blank at the top and another at the bottom still be seen even for NTSC people)...

And, not to forget, there is still the full PMg available, still possible to add not just an overlay, but to create elements on the Screen, using Players and Playfield colors together. Creating games that way could result in surprising graphics.

Well, using G2F allows to have all possible colors and details for fixed graphics.

Designing Gr.1 or Gr.2 that way, could help doing gamescreen examples and also result in workable demos.

With some deeper coding , probably a real "Test Driver" , "Out Run" a.s.o. will get a real point.

[José Pereira]

That isn't there any PMG overlay it is a simple PF0->PF3 64chars charset using original A8 own GR.1 font for the game area and also original GR.0 font for the top scores/lives/energy, nothing more than our guy is made with 4 PMGs. It doesn't use PFs, is totally made of and only with PMGs in multicolour mode and in A8 we could even get the hardware horizontal scrolling that the ZXs don't have in they move in char steps.

[popmilo]

Would feel very good to find a nice use for one of those neglected modes.

 

Rough calculation of mode 6 vs mode 4 for example shows that you save around 4300 cycles (for 25 char rows).
Thats +15% cycles per frame in best case (not counting adding PM for extra colors for example).

 

Big plus is free cpu cycles in "bad lines". That could be usefull for sample playing...

Another plus is 50% less bytes to manipulate on screen.

 

On the other hand you loose lot of color freedom per pixel (yes I just called having 4+1 colors per line "freedom" ).

 

Don't know how would 3d view look with it ?
Only example of similar graphics mode looks something like Intellivision (and that is with PM expanded underlay for one out of two colors background change per char).

 

 

I'm not saying impossible or not usable, just that I can't "see it" right now....

@Emkay, if you have better example of how you imagine 3d view please share...

 

Maybe you're thinking on something like Doom on ZX Spectrum ?

 

 

[emkay]

I'm not saying impossible or not usable, just that I can't "see it" right now....

@Emkay, if you have better example of how you imagine 3d view please share...

 

Maybe you're thinking on something like Doom on ZX Spectrum ?

 

Very close. But we weren't restricted to just the fixed charset . To make a demonstration screen in Basic is a little off, as DLIs would be needed. But, as you see in my little video, you can get the missing colors by PMg . Parts of the screen still could get 4 colors per object. The most relevant reason is the gain of CPU and GFX speed.