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Fix
Registered: Feb 2003
Posts: 54 |
Sprite Multiplexing - Myth Busted ?
Many many years ago when I first saw the amazing effect were you have more than 8 sprites at same time I were thrilled.
Don't have a clue who did the first spritemultiplex routine.
A master brain wizard who have found another cool bug in the vic ii chip.
Or maybe not ?
Some time ago I actually read whole my programmers reference manual, where I found an very interesting notice in the sprite chapter were they says it's possible to have more than 8 sprites at same time using advanced technics, and some pages later it does tell you how to do this effect with raster interupt waiting.
It does not exactly tells you how, but it tells you it can be done.
Some my thought here,
Then Commodore Did know this feature already from start ?
Is it a bug or a feature that the designers added ?
Is there other cool routines that actually Commodore knew and wrote about ?
Or is this already known for the last 15 years ? |
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H.O
Account closed
Registered: Oct 2002
Posts: 70 |
Quote: @H.O.: Flash _inc_ ? You must be kidding. And have you ever come across something like that from Sodan?
@rambones: Well, if you take multiplexing as reusing sprites later during the same frame, it is much, much older. What Ray did is throwing in some kind of sorting algorithm and sinus movement. Are there not older demos containing such enhancements?
Sorry, I meant Flash Cracking Group (or actually Flash) .
I have been emailing a bit with a former Flash Inc member recently, and my brain must have messed things up. |
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Bitrapper
Account closed
Registered: Nov 2004
Posts: 8 |
u can read about flash and 1001 crew and side and upper boarder here:
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/forums/?roomid=7&topicid=10907#13660
In The Final Edge the bordermonster himself, TSI (as he opened the C64 sideborder as the first person on earth) of the legendary 1001 Crew is referring to 'flash-baby' or 'the bitstoppers' as the ones first opening the upper- and lowerborder. Also, Honey of the 1001 Crew credits: "I think that was done by Flash (or at least someone from Germany).", for doing so, as you can read in the interview on C64hq.com (http://www.c64hq.com/index1024.php).
I hence reckon it is fairly likely Flash of Flash Cracking Group deserves credits for opening up the lower- and uppersideborder..
T. |
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Ben
Account closed
Registered: Feb 2003
Posts: 163 |
@HO: NP.. They would have loved it, though :)
@Bitrapper: Good to see you did find my post ;) |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086 |
even an old hungarian reference guide (the most used amongst hungarians) says something like: "there can be 8 sprites max onscreen, but using the vic's interrupt system it is possible to display more" no more no less.
The designers of VIC must have been 100% aware of the possibility of sprite multiplexing, no doubt. They must have know how the hardware works, that they have designed. Probably FLI, and opening the borders would suprize them, but not much. They know (knew) why and how those are possible, only they probably havent thought of the possibility of those tweaks. |
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
it is still quite unclear who did open upper/lower border first. the first demos i have which contain such a border routine are from december 1985, and one or two months before that holger gehrmann (later the boss of reline) published an article in the 64'er magazine. on the radwar disks i found code snippets which seem to be the code from that article, so maybe it was sent around this way and a month later the first demos used it. |
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
@Bitraper wrote:
"On that spec list, it claims that the the 64 can have '256
independently controlled objects, 8 on one line.' Why is this
important? It gives us a clue that the VIC-II designers figured people would and could use the interrrupts on the VIC-II to change sprite pointers"
is that quote exact? if not, maybe those 256 independent objects are the 256 characters in a charset. |
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
rambones wrote:
"The first sprite multiplexer, I think was made by Ray of Triton Technology."
nopes, triton tech did the first DYSP though. triangle invented DYSP but didn't actually do it :D |
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Bitrapper
Account closed
Registered: Nov 2004
Posts: 8 |
Quote: @HO: NP.. They would have loved it, though :)
@Bitrapper: Good to see you did find my post ;)
@ben:
no problem. i thought your posting makes a good sense.
so i posted it again with the link in here.
it was okay or? |
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
again the "256 objects but only 8 on a rasterline" thing: on another forum it was mentioned that the c64 sprite system was heavily inspired by the ti99/4 sprite system. that one could do 32 sprites (size 16x16) but only 4 on a rasterline, so basically it was doing hardware sprite multiplexing. maybe the c64 engineers thought that they rather save those transistors needed for hw multiplexing because they could use those transistors on other stuff and software can do the same but with far greater freedom. |
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Cruzer
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1048 |
how the fuck did they cum up with 256 sprites??!? |
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