Project Matteus - SGDK - Thundercats Intro

[matteus]

Figured I'd create a thread for updates I'm still progressing with the animation frames it is going to take me a LONG time to do this though.

It makes me wonder what might be possible with an anime artist who understands the palette restrictions

I will try and post an update video here from time to time

Starting with this one!

http://youtu.be/r-0WPdSoTNQ

[Stef]

You are redrawing manually each image of the video ??? That is insane !!
Indeed i have to admit that i never found the ideal tool for converting images in the MD format efficiently but still you have some tools to help you :

viewtopic.php?t=1473
viewtopic.php?t=1330
viewtopic.php?t=1392

The result won't be as nice that doing it manually but it will be a lot faster

[matteus]

You are redrawing manually each image of the video ??? That is insane !!
Indeed i have to admit that i never found the ideal tool for converting images in the MD format efficiently but still you have some tools to help you :

viewtopic.php?t=1473
viewtopic.php?t=1330
viewtopic.php?t=1392

The result won't be as nice that doing it manually but it will be a lot faster

Thanks Stef, I'd do things that way but I'm looking to create the nicest possible animation I can. I want to show that if animators had modern graphic tools back in the 80s/90s that they could have animate something on the MD that would look amazing.

[matteus]

I'm not sure how correct my calculations are feel free to correct them but...

8MEG = 1MB
32MEG = 4MB

Max standard cart size
4MB = 4096kB
4096kB / 16.875kB = 242.7259259259259 screens
Max frames: 243

Frames
1766 screens x 16.875kB = 29801.25kB
29801.25kB / 1024kB = 29.1027832MB

Summary
4MB cart can hold 243 frames of uncompressed animation at 216 x 160 resolution.

The Thundercats intro has 1766 frames of animation and requires approximately 29MB of space. You'd require a 232MEG cart to store the intro.

I'm going to go through and remove the duplicate frames to see how much of a reduction I can get, I doubt over 70% is possible though :\

[inu]

Couldn't the MD go up to 32MB with bank switching? Also wasn't 4MB the max without breaking Sega CD compatibility anyway?
Not sure if any emulators already support such a thing to test tho. Maybe Genesis Plus GX?

[haroldoop]

I guess from the discussion that the demo is using intra frame compression, that is, it's compressing each frame separately; using inter frame compression, that is, just storing the differences between each frame would probably yield better results.

About the bankswitching: well, by designing a custom bankswitching scheme, one can get access to as much memory as wanted. Of course, if using custom hardware is no concern, another possibility would be to simply stream the frames from an SD card; the Mega Everdrive seems to support that; no emulator currently supports that, though.

[inu]

About the bankswitching: well, by designing a custom bankswitching scheme, one can get access to as much memory as wanted.

Didn't SEGA have a bank switching solution available for game developers? I remember reading (wish i remembered which forum\post) it even works just fine with the 32X or 32X games.
The only developer that used it was CAPCOM tho, with their Super Street Fighter II.
So it's an actual official product, that wasn't explored very much due to the extra costs involved I guess.

Edit 1:
This was the first piece of documentation I came across that mentioned the game. http://emu-docs.org/Genesis/ssf2.txt
"A page is specified with 6 bits (bits 7 and 6 are always 0) thus allowing a possible 64 pages (SSFII only has 10, though.)", so yeah, 32MB.

While I'm not completely sure, think Genesis Plus GX (BizHawk\RetroArch) emulates this feature.

I just really want to see this project complete and in action, as it's looking pretty nice so far. It would suck to start cutting corners already.

Edit 2:
Oh, here we go: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/183877 ... try2309840
Should have guessed the info came from Chilly Willy.

[matteus]

This was the first piece of documentation I came across that mentioned the game. http://emu-docs.org/Genesis/ssf2.txt
"A page is specified with 6 bits (bits 7 and 6 are always 0) thus allowing a possible 64 pages (SSFII only has 10, though.)", so yeah, 32MB.

While I'm not completely sure, think Genesis Plus GX (BizHawk\RetroArch) emulates this feature.

I just really want to see this project complete and in action, as it's looking pretty nice so far. It would suck to start cutting corners already.

Edit 2:
Oh, here we go: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/183877 ... try2309840
Should have guessed the info came from Chilly Willy.

I'm very much in the hands of the sgdks limitations and 32MEG is the limit.

The sgdk comes with several compression options available but these come at the cost of processing power and fps. I will be looking into these but at the moment I believe there maybe a bug in the the batch tile conversion process, so I can't fully explore compression yet.

I've spoken to Stef and he will be checking if my hunch about a bug is correct and will correct it in the next sgdk version, if I'm right.

I can't praise Stef enough for his time and patience with me. As the sgdk evolves we'll hopefully see more and more people giving genesis programming a go

[matteus]

my maths was wrong!

Max standard cart size
4MB = 4096kB
4096kB / 16.875kB = 242.7259259259259 screens
Max frames: 242

[matteus]

my maths was wrong!

Max standard cart size
4MB = 4096kB
4096kB / 16.875kB = 242.7259259259259 screens
Max frames: 242

Not far from my estimate at all! You get a few more frames for your MEG it would seem I'm getting close to 300 without sound.

I've tried using flag 3 RLE (4bits RLE compression) in Rescomp and can't get a single screen to display, so I still can't test what the compression overhead on the frame rate will be yet.

The latest version of my ROM features: Play, Stop, Forward, Backwards for debugging purposes (I very much doubt I could get this working with sync'd sound).

I'm going to branch a new version of my code, add some visual controls and make a simple video interface to allow people to play with creating 15 colour FMV for the MD.

[Stef]

I've tried using flag 3 RLE (4bits RLE compression) in Rescomp and can't get a single screen to display, so I still can't test what the compression overhead on the frame rate will be yet.

Oh really ? the RLE compression should be fixed... what happen when you try to display RLE compressed image ?

[matteus]

I've tried using flag 3 RLE (4bits RLE compression) in Rescomp and can't get a single screen to display, so I still can't test what the compression overhead on the frame rate will be yet.

Oh really ? the RLE compression should be fixed... what happen when you try to display RLE compressed image ?

Hi Stef, I'll post a video tonight showing what I see

[matteus]

This project needs to evolve to cater to what I'm attempting to do I'm going to start looking into how I can produce animation effects via multiple sprites

[nolddor]

Hmmm Was the ROM uploaded in any place??

I cant find it anywhere.

[matteus]

Never uploaded the Rom. Only uploaded my starr mazer demo.