Kid Icarus

[+Defender_2600]

1 hour ago, Cris1997XX said:

Or...you know, make an enhanced MARIA graphics chip with better 320 modes 😛

 

Maria has quite impressive performance for a home system designed in 1983. About 320C mode, you have available resolution of 320 x 224 pixels, 9 colors per scanline, 4 + 1 colors for sprite/tile with transparent from two palettes, from a palette of 256 colors. What home system released in 1984 can do the same? Of course the NES can't do that. The Atari ST has 16 colors with the same horizontal resolution (and lower vertical resolution) but is hardware 16 - 32 bit.

 

These days, 320 mode shouldn't be taboo, we have a good list of 7800 games using it admirably, many of these are the best games available on the system or the best third generation 8 bit arcade ports:

 

Asteroids Deluxe

AstroBlaster

Astro Fighter

Baby Pac-Man (maze)

CrazyBrix

Death Merchant

Defender (WIP)

Dungeon Stalker

Frenzy/Berzerk

Froggie

Galaxian

Graze Suit Alpha

Jacks or Better

Kiloparsec

Moon Cresta

Ms. Pac-Man 320

One on One Basketball

Pac-Man 320

Pac-Man Collection - 40th Anniversary Edition

Pac-Man Plus 320

Plink

Plumb Luck DX

Rikki & Vikki

Rip-Off

Scramble

Space Invaders

Tower Toppler

UniWarS

 

these 7800 games are all made in 320 mode.

 

Edited February 19, 2023 by Defender_2600

[Eagle]

20 minutes ago, Defender_2600 said:

These days, 320 mode shouldn't be taboo

But they are nightmare for drawing and cpu usage.

Below my latest attempt to use 320B (7 colours)

 

 

 

[Shawn]

On 2/18/2023 at 6:30 AM, splendidnut said:

Tell him to stop talking about it and go make a project with them.

You should get right on that! Sounds like a great idea! Problem solved. Case closed!

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

So ya, Kid Icarus. It's looking like it could and will be something special. Looking forward to watching it progress.

[+Yurkie]

I'm really looking forward to seeing this (CIB Atariage store)also.

[Ecernosoft]

On 2/18/2023 at 11:06 AM, Defender_2600 said:

 

When I have some time, the only thing I can do is a mockup with real 320C graphics, just to see how it would look. But you stick around, and keep practicing the code.

 

Thank you.

 

 

[Ecernosoft]

22 hours ago, Cris1997XX said:

Or...you know, make an enhanced MARIA graphics chip with better 320 modes 😛

[miker]

@Ecernosoft While you leaving, treat this project as you homework (and maybe therapy as well)...

[Cris1997XX]

44 minutes ago, miker said:

@Ecernosoft While you leaving, treat this project as you homework (and maybe therapy as well)...

You're kinda late to the party, mate

[miker]

@Cris1997XX Nonsense, just remained silent a bit.  

 

And returning to topic:

 

@saxmeister Great work! Please continue no matter which graphics mode you choose to.  

Edited February 20, 2023 by miker

[+Defender_2600]

Just as an exercise, a few days ago I was considering which direction to take to get a perfect replica of the playing field using 160 mode. The goal is to get the same tile map on screen as the NES version, not just to get a accurate port but also to simplify the conversion work, not having to redraw the levels and make changes to the game logic.

 

The NES version uses 16 tiles (16x16) for a total of 256 horizontal pixels. For the 7800 version in 160A mode, with 16 tiles (12x16) we get a total of 192 horizontal pixels, so it's not possible to have 16 tiles horizontally on the screen (with vertical scrolling in the game). If we use 16 tiles (8x16) we lose detail and get a total of 128 horizontal pixels, so a narrower playing field than the original.

 

Therefore, a good solution would be to use the 160B mode which allows us to have 16 tiles (10x16) for a total of 160 horizontal pixels. With 160B we can use indirect mode and have maximum flexibility with tile size, we don't even need to be locked to 10 horizontal pixels all the time.

 

For the sprites we can use the 160A mode, 12x16 for the player and 12x16 or 8x16 for the enemies, depending on the original size.

 

There is enough empty black space and few sprites on screen so I think with well optimized code it is possible to use 160B mode for tiles. If it can be useful, I enclose the conversion of the 160B graphics of the first level.

 

 

NES  VS  7800  -  real Pixel aspect ratio (PAR):

 

 

7800  -  Square pixels:

Edited February 22, 2023 by Defender_2600

[Cris1997XX]

3 hours ago, Defender_2600 said:

Just as an exercise, a few days ago I was considering which direction to take to get a perfect replica of the playing field using 160 mode. The goal is to get the same tile map on screen as the NES version, not just to get a accurate port but also to simplify the conversion work, not having to redraw the levels and make changes to the game logic.

 

The NES version uses 16 tiles (16x16) for a total of 256 horizontal pixels. For the 7800 version in 160A mode, with 16 tiles (12x16) we get a total of 192 horizontal pixels, so it's not possible to have 16 tiles horizontally on the screen (with vertical scrolling in the game). If we use 16 tiles (8x16) we lose detail and get a total of 128 horizontal pixels, so a narrower playing field than the original.

 

Therefore, a good solution would be to use the 160B mode which allows us to have 16 tiles (10x16) for a total of 160 horizontal pixels. With 160B we can use indirect mode and have maximum flexibility with tile size, we don't even need to be locked to 10 horizontal pixels all the time.

 

For the sprites we can use the 160A mode, 12x16 for the player and 12x16 or 8x16 for the enemies, depending on the original size.

 

There is enough empty black space and few sprites on screen so I think with well optimized code it is possible to use 160B mode for tiles. If it can be useful, I enclose the conversion of the 160B graphics of the first level.

 

 

real Pixel aspect ratio (PAR):

 

 

Square pixels (Zoomed):

 

 

Square pixels (native resolution):

 

The graphical conversion looks great! It's a tad squished, but I don't mind it. Do you think we can spruce things up with the tiles using those extra colors?

Edited February 21, 2023 by Cris1997XX

[+Defender_2600]

1 hour ago, Cris1997XX said:

The graphical conversion looks great! It's a tad squished, but I don't mind it

Do you mean horizontally? In the end, PAR is a bit indicative, there will be small differences on each CRT, but still both systems tend to completely fill the 4:3 screen.

 

 

NES  VS  7800  -  real Pixel aspect ratio (PAR):

 

 

1 hour ago, Cris1997XX said:

Do you think we can spruce things up with the tiles using those 16 extra colors?

The NES can only use 4 palettes (2bpp) for tiles, therefore a single 7800 palette (4 bpp) can cover all 12 colors of the original NES level, while the second 7800 palette (or both palettes) can be used for the sprites.

 

However, while each NES tile is limited to 3 colors (2bpp), with the 7800 palette (4bpp) we can also use all 12 colors in a single tile. So yes, there is a good space to improve the graphics (already a couple more colors per tile make the difference). I'm also taking a look at this option, maybe I'll share some alternative graphics in a second moment.

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by Defender_2600

[Ecernosoft]

On 2/19/2023 at 9:44 PM, miker said:

@Ecernosoft While you leaving, treat this project as you homework (and maybe therapy as well)...

yeah....... I will. I really messed up here.

 

Like. Really. badly. 

Sorry guys. 

[Greg2600]

The mockup/POC looks really cool!  I don't really have a preference 160/320 although I would always vote for the better performing option.  Gameplay over graphics, that's what I always say.  I think the 7800 GameDrive will have quite a bit of "extra" horsepower (he mentioned "bankset mapper (homebrew) and also 1MB SuperGame"), so I'm not sure if that could run 320 mode properly a la the doomed 7800XM?

[+saxmeister]

On 2/14/2023 at 8:58 PM, Trebor said:

 

Yes, please:

That looks so good on a CRT. I miss mine. I really wish I still had a good, high-quality CRT for gaming.