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Stingray Account closed
Registered: Feb 2003 Posts: 117 |
FASTER 3D GRAPHICS
I've heard it said before that the way the VIC chip addresses memory (8x8 cells) makes it slower fo rendering graphics because of the extra calculations needed. So what way would you have had the Commodore engineers design an alternative addressing mode so that 3D graphics could be calculated quicker? I would realy appreciate your ideas on this. |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 5086 |
one more thing I forgot last time:
how about 2x2/4x4/8x8 modes ? we coders would love the hardware do these, instead of hacking the vic, and wasting cpu power :)
stingray, you havent responded my question, how colors would be defined ? ...16 shades of 1 color looks much nicer than "random" 16 color in any palettized order. |
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Stingray Account closed
Registered: Feb 2003 Posts: 117 |
I'm not sure about colors yet. I'm not even sure how I will design the circuitry for the colors yet, I'm guessing that VIC has an Op Amp and had different resistor values to give different frequencies for the different colors? I would like to have 256 colors available (but I'm not promising anything).
2x2, 4x4, 8x8? does that mean like doubling pixel size? |
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Cybernator
Registered: Jun 2002 Posts: 154 |
> 2x2, 4x4, 8x8? does that mean like doubling pixel size?
Considering _plain_ 2x2, 4x4 or 8x8, yes it's like doubling the pixel size.
@Oswald: What kind of VIC hacking do you need for 8x8? Chars are normally 8x8, rite? |
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JackAsser
Registered: Jun 2002 Posts: 2014 |
http://www.pepto.de/projects/colorvic/
This link describes the colors of the C64. At the bottom of the document is an email from the dude who helped design the color circuitry in the VIC2-chip. Check it out, it might give some hints. |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 5086 |
stingray: yep, 2x2 is a pixel sized 2 times as wide and 2 times as tall as the smallest possible one, and so on..
cybernator: yep 8x8 doesnt needs hacking, was just lazy to write "except 8x8.."
jackasser:damn, I wanted to point out that link aswell :) |
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Stingray Account closed
Registered: Feb 2003 Posts: 117 |
Thanks for the link. 2x2, 4x4 and 8x8, why would you want this? speed? effects?
Just incase you havn't noticed, I'm not in the Demo scene :)
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Graham Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002 Posts: 990 |
speed and memory efficiency. |
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Stingray Account closed
Registered: Feb 2003 Posts: 117 |
Thanks Graham. I had to give a preliminary demonstration of my 8051 hardware today (Final presentation will be in a couple of weeks). The cct is really low spec but should give you an idea of what I've got so far. The 8051 cct will be the basis of the C64 cct, just modified allot.
8051 GRAPHICS CARD SPECS
OUTPUT: PAL (none interlaced)
COLORS: 2 (B&W) Yeehhaaa
RESOLUTION: 320x200
GRAPHICS DATA: HORIZONTALY FORMATED
RAM: 8K
IC COUNT: 6 ICs (could be bought down to less but won't be)
LINES: 312
CYCLES PER LINE: 63
This graphics card is connected to an 8051 microcontroller board (with microcontroller, RAM, ROM, address decoder etc) to make a simple micro computer system. I have never heard of someone else interfacing an 8051 to a TV before, although maybe it's been done hundreds of times.
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Graham Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002 Posts: 990 |
i had a nice idea: if you have different color depths like 1, 2 and 4 bits per pixel, it would be very nice to extend the adress lines to the "bottom" (below A0) to have some kind of soft scrolling. |
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Stingray Account closed
Registered: Feb 2003 Posts: 117 |
I've been on holidays the last few days so I finally interfaced my graphics cct to my 64, now my C64 has a brand new graphics mode :) There is a small problem with the static ram that I still have to iron out, about 1 in every 1000 writes does a partial write (invalid data) to a random address as well as writing the correct byte at the correct address. But other then that it's working fine :)
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