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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2839 |
Holy Grails
I've been wondering about them, with some having been finally discovered, others not yet, and some probably going to remain in the realm of the impossible forever.
I'm speaking of things like:
- 320x200x16 graphics without restrictions
- Crash-free all-direction hardware scrolling
- Digi replay of 8-bit samples at one register write per sample and without requiring cycle accuracy
on standard vanilla hardware, of course.
Some examples of discovered grails are:
- Cube rotating at 50 fps about 3 axes
- The 9th sprite (with some restrictions)
- On-the-fly standard GCR block read+decode+checksumming
As for definition, they all satisfy some measure of being perfect or optimal or being possible after all, with no further improvements required, possible or necessary. But i'm not so sure if that definition holds water with regard to some of the examples i listed. :D
The question is, what other Holy Grails are there, already discovered or still elusive?
What are your pet grails you've been chasing after for decades or have found eventually? :) |
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Glasnost
Account closed
Registered: Aug 2011
Posts: 26 |
I would add to the holy grails...
Rotating rasterbars (HCL)
Safe VSP (LFT)
Effectwise there are quite some both realised and unrealised..
I have been chasing one for a long time :) |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11114 |
i wouldnt call rotating color cycling "rasterbars", but ok :)
true vertical rasterbars (in arbitrary colors) would be another. xbow found the closest (quite awesome) cheat i think. |
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ptoing
Registered: Sep 2005
Posts: 271 |
Quote: imho 8 bit digi replay was one of them, and got found. same goes for nufli, they are as good as it gets, and even in their todays form they were considered impossible for decades.
let me add a new one:
- realtime 3d world at bearable speed. Andropolis kind of managed it.
NUFLI being "as good as it gets", is probably true, but sad imo, because it is not a fun mode to work in at all.
I don't think anything approaching 320x200x16 without restrictions is even remotely possible. |
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Copyfault
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 466 |
A really interesting topic;) Let's see what people are willing to reveal.
Looking at the inital list, I think that
Quoting Krill...
- Crash-free all-direction hardware scrolling
is more or less covered by lft's work on vsp's.
Being a gfx-mode-fanboy, I got stuck at
Quoting Krill...
I'm speaking of things like:
- 320x200x16 graphics without restrictions
This could easily be divided into "subgrails" (or better "derived" grails;)), like
- "UFLIMAX" (as it was called in some thread once): 6 Sprites over FLI full 200 Rasterlines (+ interlace)
- FLI with open SB
- full HCB including the FLI-bug-columns
Those do not aim for a complete fullscreen fullcolour pixelmode; but for me, these are still gfx-mode grails (spend some time on them (among other modes), but I'm not quite *there* yet). |
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Copyfault
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 466 |
Quoting Cruzer7 sprites over FLI.
For NTSC: yes sure, let's take Ninja's routine
For PAL: SW-Sprite for teh win :)
Hmm, guess one can "prove" that 7 HW-Sprites over FLI is impossible... then again, what's the number of FLI-lines we're talking about ;) ? |
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Copyfault
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 466 |
And the incredible
- full screen AGSP !including the Linecrunch-area!
should definitely be added to the list of found grails. Did not take a closer look on how it works, but I guess making it cooperate with MC mode could also be somewhat hard.
Last (but not least), there are still some games that were initially done on cart for which no pure disk version exists (Prince of Persia comes to mind). But I guess this is not the type of grails that's been asked for here, right? |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2839 |
Quoting Oswaldimho 8 bit digi replay was one of them, and got found I have it on good authority (Hi Algorithm!) that a method to replay 8-bit samples with one write per sample and without stable raster requirement has not yet been found. 8-bit samples have existed using the PWM method for a long time, but only Soundemon's method made them sound good. :)
And for NUFLI et al., what ptoing says. Maybe there's still some wiggle room between that and the holy grail.
Safe VSP, well, it comes with a lot of restrictions which make it pretty unfeasible.
Quoting Copyfault- full screen AGSP !including the Linecrunch-area Where was that? I seem to have missed this demo.
And a 64K disk version of Prince of Persia would pretty much qualify for a holy grail. :) |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5017 |
imho 8 bit PWM was like 256 (136) colors with interlace or dither. no1 ever took it seriously.
for me stable raster requirement doesnt cancels it, as a way to have 8 bit samples. Wonder why is it a deal breaker for you ? next up: side borders arent really removed until no stable timing is needed ? :P ;) |
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 702 |
Quoting KrillQuoting Oswaldimho 8 bit digi replay was one of them, and got found I have it on good authority (Hi Algorithm!) that a method to replay 8-bit samples with one write per sample and without stable raster requirement has not yet been found. 8-bit samples have existed using the PWM method for a long time, but only Soundemon's method made them sound good. :)
Mahoneys method does allow single write to d418 (as well as censors d404 method, but both these require translation to the required values to output unless the actual sample data is pre-encoded with the data from the tables. In some cases (e.g mixing) this is not feasible. Holy grail would be single write, less jitter sensitive and without translation table. (I guess 4bit d418 is one ($00-$0f)) but higher bit resolution would be nice :-) |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11114 |
Quote:imho 8 bit PWM was like 256 (136) colors with interlace or dither. no1 ever took it seriously.
the censor guys (and perhaps not only them) would probably disagree with that |
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