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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2980 |
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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ptoing
Registered: Sep 2005
Posts: 271 |
I don't think that memory is the bottleneck here, more like the processor architecture and stuff like badlines.
But I am not a programmer, just a somewhat technically minded artist. But just to look at NUFLI, in the main area (everything apart from the first 3 char columns and the last column), you can ONLY have 3 colours per 8x1 at most. In the last column you can only have 2, and in the first 3 you can sometimes have more than 3.
That is still pretty limited overall, esp since one of those colours is restricted to change only every 48 pixels and has widepixels. |
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enthusi
Registered: May 2004
Posts: 677 |
A 320x200 x 5 (colors) would be sweet already.
Or even 4 colors. |
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ChristopherJam
Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 1409 |
Quote: A 320x200 x 5 (colors) would be sweet already.
Or even 4 colors.
Well, Hi5 gives you 96x200x5 colours..
(almost - you have to choose a pair from the 5 that never share a 2x1 cell) |
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ptoing
Registered: Sep 2005
Posts: 271 |
Well, with screen covering x-expanded hires sprites you can have MCOL + 1 extra colour (or more if you want different sprite colours in different 48 pixel wide columns or something), so that is 160x200. Might be widepixels, but still higher res than 96x200. |
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Conjuror
Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 168 |
My personal holy grails were to create both the cylinder scrollers from the Amiga North Star Mega Demo II and the Amiga game Sword of Sodan intro's full screen width and height multi colour bitmap tech-tech. Can I just say Achievement unlocked! |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5094 |
Quote: Well, with screen covering x-expanded hires sprites you can have MCOL + 1 extra colour (or more if you want different sprite colours in different 48 pixel wide columns or something), so that is 160x200. Might be widepixels, but still higher res than 96x200.
used in desert dream before the rotzoom picture :) |
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Stone
Registered: Oct 2006
Posts: 172 |
For me what always seemed like an impossible dream was to have a perspective correct Star Wars scroller running at 50 fps, but once I figured out a way to do it, it didn't seem such a big deal after all. |
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Copyfault
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 478 |
Quoting Oswaldused in desert dream before the rotzoom picture :) Checked this out lately after reading your post! Seems the mode you're using in this pic handles a mixture of Hires- and MC-Sprites, some x-expanded, some not.
This explains why this picture looked so great in the demo! |
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Copyfault
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 478 |
Quoting TrashQuoting KrillWhere was that? I seem to have missed this demo
Rocketry Thanks for pointing. Wanted to give the link in this very moment but - voila, it's already there.
That's the C64-scene :) |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5094 |
Quote: Quoting Oswaldused in desert dream before the rotzoom picture :) Checked this out lately after reading your post! Seems the mode you're using in this pic handles a mixture of Hires- and MC-Sprites, some x-expanded, some not.
This explains why this picture looked so great in the demo!
ah, I was not directly involved with this part, all I remembered is the idea to cover it with x-expanded hires sprites. the goal was to make it look better, but memory efficiently (no fli). then the guys took this even further (clarence+leon) |
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