Graphic conversion for any 256x192 into MSX1 graphics (Source code in Blitz Basic).

Prophet (2134)

15-07-2019, 22:34

PingPong wrote:

the z80 could push around to 220KB / seconds to VRAM, and because a screen 8 picture is 54KB i can say you can do a full video animation at 4FPS.
In reality things are different, my math does not take in account the time needed to load or decrunch picture data from a media so forget a video at 4FPS in screen 8

But you dont need full screen. from my rough guess only 1/4 of the screen needs to be updated. Also i think this is 16 colors mode of the cpc so you need screen 5 (for the color change of the car). That alone means you have by your calculations 4x4x2 = 32 fps

I guess they use palette splits to allow palette animations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-aQvP7CUAI

(this is what grauw said earlier)

Grauw wrote:

Lastly, since we have 16 colours at our disposal in screen 5 and the 3d model only uses 4, we can OR two frames together and then draw at only 30 fps and show every 2nd frame with a simple palette swap.

Van santiontanon

Paragon (1831)

15-07-2019, 22:57

I'm also very optimistic about the type of things that can be done. Some neat ideas there Grauw! (in particular the one about the 4 or-ed colors to do consecutive frames with palette animation is very cool!). Another example for being optimistic, is that even if I am reasonably happy with the multidirectional scroll in XRacing, I just learned a few days ago of some configuration option I wasn't aware of in the MSX1 VDP to share pattern/attribute tables across banks, which would have allowed me to do either pixel-by-pixel scroll (it's currently in increments of 2 pixels), or add much more graphic variety to the game! (see this video, in Spanish though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl8eNAnBEII&t=0s). So, I think we have not reached the limits of the hardware. Not even by far!

Too many projects in the pipeline to try to do this now (and I'm also not very familiar with the MSX2 hardware), but someone should definitively try to do an Outrun-like for MSX2.

And going back to the image/video conversion topic. @LeandroCorreia yeah! you are right, we could have some type of Penguinn Adventure-style loop that mimicks moving forward, but much more realistic! The current algorithm I use is very limited actually, and can be improved in many ways to display more complex videos. For example, I use a fixed pattern table. But one could conceive of allowing a small number of patterns to be updated in each frame (a small number, so we can keep the video at 60/30 fps), which would allow for more complex videos to be displayed.

Van LeandroCorreia

Paladin (963)

15-07-2019, 23:24

santiontanon wrote:

And going back to the image/video conversion topic. @LeandroCorreia yeah! you are right, we could have some type of Penguinn Adventure-style loop that mimicks moving forward, but much more realistic!

Penguin Adventure is a sort of FMV game. The only difference is that they did not have the tools we have nowadays.

Van Grauw

Ascended (10820)

16-07-2019, 23:15

santiontanon wrote:

I just learned a few days ago of some configuration option I wasn't aware of in the MSX1 VDP to share pattern/attribute tables across banks, which would have allowed me to do either pixel-by-pixel scroll (it's currently in increments of 2 pixels), or add much more graphic variety to the game! (see this video, in Spanish though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl8eNAnBEII&t=0s). So, I think we have not reached the limits of the hardware. Not even by far!

I’m trying to watch it with auto generated subtitles auto translated to English but that’s not really working out very well… :) I know the effect it shows, but still it seems like an interesting watch and it would be great if it would be subtitled in English!

Van santiontanon

Paragon (1831)

16-07-2019, 23:13

It's basically translating to Spanish what is covered in this blogpost (in Brazilian), so probably the easiest way is to Google translate the Brazilian original : https://giovannireisnunes.wordpress.com/2018/06/01/as-sete-f...

Van Grauw

Ascended (10820)

16-07-2019, 23:55

Thanks, that works I guess . I still think it looks like a nice video!

p.s. Note that afaik mirroring the pattern table on Texas Instruments VDPs reduces the nr. of sprites from 32 to 8, and does not work at all on Toshiba VDPs. It works without issues on Yamaha VDPs.

Van santiontanon

Paragon (1831)

17-07-2019, 07:10

oh, really?! damn, the incompatibility is a bummer! I might have to reconsider using it then... oh well, at least I'll think about it. Is there a way to detect via software if we are in a Toshiba VDP? In that way we could exploit the mirroring if available, and have a lower-quality effect if not available, but at least the game would work.