It's downright vexing how good MSX artists were at designing for 9918 graphics

[+OLD CS1]

20 minutes ago, acadiel said:

From what I heard, the Z80 and TMS9918 woodgrain prototypes that were made ran circles around the 9900.  They only exist in memories at this point.

Would not surprise me, considering the practical examples which exist.

[Elia Spallanzani fdt]

https://mobile.twitter.com/CollectorVision/status/1514319821470527489

[Willsy]

2 hours ago, Elia Spallanzani fdt said:

https://mobile.twitter.com/CollectorVision/status/1514319821470527489

OMFG

[PeteE]

On 4/13/2022 at 11:42 PM, Elia Spallanzani fdt said:

https://mobile.twitter.com/CollectorVision/status/1514319821470527489

I was wondering how they produced the graphics, whether it was manually dithered by hand, or produced using an algorithm... I found my answer in the dracula development thread ?

[Tursi]

They're pretty impressive graphics, eh? A nice approach to the problem!

 

I'm less sure how I'm going to compress them...

 

[Elia Spallanzani fdt]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Indie_RetroNEWS/status/1519982924115890176

[Geoff Oltmans]

On 2/9/2022 at 11:11 AM, pixelpedant said:

It will always be my position that the TI-99 was a marketing, manufacturing, distribution and financial mess which computer enthusiasts are insistent on explaining in terms of individual architectural and design decisions, because these interest them far more than any of the things that actually made its long term success impossible.  And because these allow for an appealing (but make-believe) storyline in which there was one critical engineering decision which, were it not for that, might have seen the platform achieve enduring success. 

 

The 99/4 barely achieved anything that could be called mass-production and mass-market distribution in its first year.  The release of its most critical supporting products (PEB expansion, Extended BASIC, Editor/Assembler, Mini Memory) saw chronic delays and disastrous supply issues.  None of those must-have upgrades were released to the mass market until over two years after the TI-99 debuted, and even then, not in sufficient quantities. 

 

People want to explain the poor sales of and lacking interest in products and solutions you literally could not buy in terms of whether the system used one chip or another, or used one memory architecture or another.  And it's downright silly. 

 

The TI-99 was a development, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, and (in the end) financial mess which you cannot "solve" by replacing one chip with another chip, as appealing as that idea might be. 

 

In any case, we can be thankful that the system is as "weird" as it is today.  Because in the end, that's what makes it interesting. 

I'm a little late to this party, just having reacquired a 99/4A system (it was my first "real" computer growing up), I think you hit the nail on the head on a number of problems. I think design decision wise it's pretty astounding how much money they designed into the system relative to its peers. The casework for the 99/4A couldn't have been cheap for one, and two the PEB chassis is equally spendy for not much benefit. Seems to me that they could have designed a whole combination 32K ram expansion, serial/parallel interface, and disk controller for about the same money they'd have had tied up in the PEB costwise.

 

But, I love the system all the same, quirks and all as you say.

[Elia Spallanzani fdt]

https://mobile.twitter.com/TLtwg/status/1534836169170722816

[+dhe]

With the recent discussions of 9938 programming - was there any stand out games for MSX using the 9938/9958?

[palmheads]

56 minutes ago, dhe said:

With the recent discussions of 9938 programming - was there any stand out games for MSX using the 9938/9958?

Looks like some impressive games made for MSX2 & the 9938
https://www.blockfort.com/game-lists/msx2/

 

[Elia Spallanzani fdt]

 

[retrodroid]

On 2/27/2022 at 11:39 AM, PeteE said:

So I discovered that some of my favorite interlaced-style bitmaps were, in fact, converted using a program, made by a person in this MSX forum thread.  I converted some of his examples into a viewer program cartridge, as well as some from the previous linked gallery, so you can see for yourself on CRT.

 

bitmap18.bin 64 kB · 24 downloads bitmap28.bin 64 kB · 28 downloads

Just discovered this thread. I find the ability of 8-bit graphics artists to turn the limitations of the hardware into a kind of strength in their graphical design fascinating.

Of the examples in these roms you posted, most of them appear to be generated algorithmically via the horizontal dithering technique.  While these are interesting in their own right, and certainly "functional", I find the hand-crafted art far more appealing (never been a huge fan of dithering).

 

The sample "ORB" from bitmap28.bin is absolutely incredible work. Do you have any idea where it came from (game, demo, etc.)?

Here's a photo off my multi-sync arcade CRT running MiSTeR:

 

Edited March 11, 2023 by retrodroid

[HOME AUTOMATION]

...Selfie, done right!!!

[PeteE]

2 hours ago, retrodroid said:

Just discovered this thread. I find the ability of 8-bit graphics artists to turn the limitations of the hardware into a kind of strength in their graphical design fascinating.

Of the examples in these roms you posted, most of them appear to be generated algorithmically via the horizontal dithering technique.  While these are interesting in their own right, and certainly "functional", I find the hand-crafted art far more appealing (never been a huge fan of dithering).

 

The sample "ORB" from bitmap28.bin is absolutely incredible work. Do you have any idea where it came from (game, demo, etc.)?

 

 

Yeah, I found the dithering algorithm later, and similar to you, felt that it was less impressive than hand-dithered artwork.

 

The Orb image I found here with the caption "Ys1 MSX1 alternate title image by やぢお".  Seems to be based on the title image from Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished

 

Edit: This tweet thread seems to indicate the pixel artist of the image.

Edited March 11, 2023 by PeteE

[+dhe]

I happened upon this video about graphics modes:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_npoLYb_62U

 

For the Coleco Vision there is a Smurf game that use multicolor mode.

The is a racing game that uses text mode.

 

ColecoVision has Gorf!