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cobbpg
Registered: Jan 2022
Posts: 52 |
Taking NUFLI one step further
I'm working on a new converter for creating images the C64 can display with as much freedom as possible: NUFLI Studio preview video.
The images are NUFLI with the sprite colour limitations lifted: all sprite colours outside the FLI bug area can potentially change in every row. While this is impossible in general due to CPU time limitations, the solution is to generate the speedcode that updates the registers ahead of time. The code generator can make informed decisions about dropping the least impactful register changes to fit everything into the available budget. In practice, most pictures don't require all the 10 possible colour updates on every scanline, far from it.
Another big innovation compared to Mufflon is the improvement in conversion speed. Lifting the sprite colour change limitations makes it easy to fully parallelise the brute force colour search step for each 48x2 pixel area (or 24x2 pixels over the FLI bug), and this allowed me to implement it as a compute shader. The whole process takes about 0.25 seconds on my three-year-old gaming laptop. Besides, when using the internal editor, only the affected areas are recomputed, and they can be previewed in VICE right away (note that the video shows some lag that's probably introduced by OBS somehow; it doesn't happen outside recording).
My hope is that making the feedback practically instantaneous (even when using an external image editor) opens the door for pixel artists to develop a much better intuition about this image format. Also, removing the limitation of only changing sprite colours every second row should make it a lot less frustrating to work with.
I'm not sure what to call this image format. This is 95% NUFLI, the only real difference is that the speedcode is also generated ahead of time (when run on NTSC, there's a patching step done by the displayer routine to make it work), so the files are 4096 bytes bigger (they load from $1000 instead of $2000, the rest of the structure is almost identical). I'm leaning towards "NUFLI2" to make it somewhat search engine friendly, but I'm open to ideas.
At the moment I'm in the process of writing a manual for the tool and a deep-dive article about the technical details. Hopefully neither of those will take too long! |
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Digger
Registered: Mar 2005
Posts: 448 |
Here's another great test case, would be interesting to see.
https://x.com/roramsay/status/1533154426403307522?s=46&t=dDGkSa.. |
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cobbpg
Registered: Jan 2022
Posts: 52 |
View in the converter with CPU usage breakdown (the picture is just 240x160 pixels, so I had to pad it):
Viewed in VICE:
I'm positively surprised how much of the checkerboard pattern got preserved. I expected worse. |
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Peacemaker
Registered: Sep 2004
Posts: 279 |
I prefer the original LN gfx styles. |
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Guinea_pig
Registered: Feb 2024
Posts: 5 |
I think this is awesome! If I weren't such a lamer, I'd immediately use it for a game. |
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Jetboy
Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 363 |
Quote: I think this is awesome! If I weren't such a lamer, I'd immediately use it for a game.
This mode is not very game friendly. It uses a lot of memory and rastertime, plus screen organisation is extremely inconvenient. Making a game using it for gameplay would be something that even top coders would struggle with, but i’m willing to hold your beer ;) |
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cobbpg
Registered: Jan 2022
Posts: 52 |
At least there's one game from the olden times that uses FLI during gameplay: Corx Rebel Racers. I wonder if there are any other examples that aren't modern homebrew productions. |
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Jetboy
Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 363 |
I recall Taboo was writting Tetris clone with fli graphics. I was shown prototype durring one of Elysium and Antia parties in Tarnów. I’m not sure if they released it in the end or not, and don't remember the title. Will ask Shogoon if he remembers any details. Then fli is much easier to work with than nufli. Block manipulation games are best candidate to be implemented |
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Acidchild
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 487 |
i guess you're thinking on this one: Orbits +P |
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Jetboy
Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 363 |
Quote: i guess you're thinking on this one: Orbits +P
Bingo! That’s the one. But i guess we are hijacking the thread. If we want to discuss more games i think we should make another thread. “Games that use FLI or other custom display modes” or something like that.
Btw. After examining some screenshots i’m not sure it is more than multicolour. Well, i was told it is FLI back then. It had wow factor for sure. |
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cobbpg
Registered: Jan 2022
Posts: 52 |
It so happens that I just released NUFLIX Studio 1.2. This version brings just a few small improvements. Check the changelog for details.
The most useful improvement is probably the converter's ability to detect some known C64 palettes, and the list can be extended by adding more VPL files. Also, there was an issue with the mouse position being scaled wrong on high-DPI screens that should also be fixed now. |
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