how Road Fighter’s background is stored and displayed?

Champion (287)

05-05-2018, 11:06

i don’t know how far can i ask this here...

did someone analyze (specially from a disassembled code) how Konami’s Road Fighter’s “map” is stored and displayed?

i’m asking this because the tiles used there seems to be displayed in a quite unusual way, compared with other msx1 games from Konami

thanks!

By Sandy Brand

Master (157)

05-05-2018, 15:06

Define 'unusual'?

By nitrofurano

Champion (287)

05-05-2018, 21:19

not in a regular "grid" - for example, on Majou Densetsu 1 you have tiles in a 4x4 patterns (characters) regular area, and on Road Fighter you have in a [?]x8 proportional area (i might be wrong...) - take a look more carefully and you will figure out that easily as well

By hit9918

Prophet (2868)

05-05-2018, 22:29

one could do another level of the same thing
a meta char has 4x4 chars
a meta meta char has 4x4 metachars

By santiontanon

Paladin (850)

05-05-2018, 23:33

are you sure of that nitrofurano? I haven't looked at it for a while, but when I looked at it many years ago for the Road Fighter remake, it was a regular 8x8 grid.

By DarkSchneider

Paladin (881)

06-05-2018, 09:39

I think are 8x8 but due to the speed it seems smoother. Try to move slowly.

By nitrofurano

Champion (287)

06-05-2018, 17:01

@santiontanon not that sure as from someone deeply analyzing a disassembled code, but as analyzing the game map (stage 1 at least), and as these 8x8 metachars (as @hit9918 and @DarkSchneider mentioned) looks horizontally disaligned depending on each meta-metachar (23x8?) used - would be really great if someone could analyze the assembly code and share/confirm such information to us...

By DarkSchneider

Paladin (881)

07-05-2018, 11:04

It could be that some tiles are simply duplicated with that disalignment. Duplicating tiles is a very used resource on MSX1.

By santiontanon

Paladin (850)

07-05-2018, 21:25

I just checked the video memory when running the game, and these are the tiles. I didn't check the assembler code, but this is strong evidence it's just a standard 8x8 grid. For the road borders, there are tiles shifted pixel by pixel, which is what DarkSchneider is saying about duplicated tiles with disalignment, but for the rest of elements, it's just an 8x8 grid.