Hi-Res MD animation demo

[TmEE co.(TM)]

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/21/ ... /HIRES.RAR

Run without filters and above 320x240 window to see the higher res. Meant for 50Hz, as you won't get 320x480 in 60Hz.

I want to do some more examples, but I don't know where I could find some nice long at least 100 frame GIFs or something...

I also have no idea who made that animation, all I know is that I got it in "Count to 15000!" thread on sega-16 (its an evolution to "Count to 5000!" thread )

enjoy

[HardWareMan]

You might be already seen my videos. Unfortunaly, it's works only on GENS. It was long time ago, I didn't tests on real hardware. Anyway, it use some interesting things. At least this one does.

[TmEE co.(TM)]

You have so much nice things there, I only knew your music rips...... Your video is really nice, though the point of my thing is the 320x480 resolution without line doubling
Its difficult to do something in 320x480 because the frame is much bigger than VRAM and you need to optimize thigns enough so you can fit 2 frames into VRAM because you need to do double buffering as you're not able to transfer enough data in a frame to cover all of the previous thus you'll get lovely garbage (at least with my tile optimization setup ).

...and you have awesome music taste, as least when it comes to the True Sound Player

[HardWareMan]

You have so much nice things there, I only knew your music rips...... Your video is really nice, though the point of my thing is the 320x480 resolution without line doubling

Yeah, it was inspiration from Sonic 3D Blast intro.

Its difficult to do something in 320x480 because the frame is much bigger than VRAM and you need to optimize thigns enough so you can fit 2 frames into VRAM because you need to do double buffering as you're not able to transfer enough data in a frame to cover all of the previous thus you'll get lovely garbage (at least with my tile optimization setup ).

Agree. Tile packing reduces size. And ROM is not rubber - you can't cram into it large amount of data.

...and you have awesome music taste, as least when it comes to the True Sound Player

It was KOTO - Minoan War from Masterpieces album.

[LocalH]

You have so much nice things there, I only knew your music rips...... Your video is really nice, though the point of my thing is the 320x480 resolution without line doubling
Its difficult to do something in 320x480 because the frame is much bigger than VRAM and you need to optimize thigns enough so you can fit 2 frames into VRAM because you need to do double buffering as you're not able to transfer enough data in a frame to cover all of the previous thus you'll get lovely garbage (at least with my tile optimization setup ).

I don't know how it works on emulation, but I know on hardware you can use interlace mode 1 and "fake" higher resolution by changing the data for each field. Might be worth trying for this demo.

[TmEE co.(TM)]

The interlace mode 1 which does not increase vertical res is not much of use, it does work though. I added an option on my MD game in progress to enable it, perhaps some modern TV will show a bit better image then.... who knows

[HardWareMan]

When interlace mode used, you can do half-screen update without artefacts: while one half is being drawed, second half can be updated.

[TmEE co.(TM)]

The problem is that both fields would look into same place for data and when I update things, I will mess up current field. If both flieds use different data, I am in the same position as I am in now.

It was KOTO - Minoan War from Masterpieces album.

I knew it, its such a great song. Koto, Laser Dance, Cyber People, Hipnosis are few of my favs... spacesynth FTW

[LocalH]

The problem is that both fields would look into same place for data and when I update things, I will mess up current field. If both flieds use different data, I am in the same position as I am in now.

You're already double buffering, right? That's what you'd have to do to update each field separately, since you'd have to swap buffers for the new field anyway. The only snag is that I don't know if it's possible to programmatically determine whether you're on an upper or lower field. This might not be such an issue unless the user resets the system, at which point you might get swapped fields (because you assume the power-on state but the system was reset on the other field).

This also might make it possible to more easily get 50/60fps, depending on the animation data itself. You could also have elements that are lo-res to save on VRAM transfer if you don't care to stay at 25/30fps (if the data doesn't change between fields, don't upload that tile).

I've been playing around lately and I'm wondering what the real use of interlace mode 1 is - no commercial games use it, and on the homebrew front it's not 100% that a ROM will work in interlace 1 just because it works in non-interlace - if you busywait instead of using Hints, interlace 1 will break you (I have tested this by hacking my First Time Out demo, I just get a solid white background with two lines of text). Perhaps Sega used it internally when making video of games for press purposes? It's technically "illegal" to record noninterlaced video on most videotape formats, and so for making commercials one would require interlaced video.

[HardWareMan]

The only snag is that I don't know if it's possible to programmatically determine whether you're on an upper or lower field.

There is ODD/EVEN flag in status word of VDP. Also, it can be assumed as LSB of Y coordinate in interlaced mode.

[TmEE co.(TM)]

Only real problem with hires mode is that uncompressed frame is bigger than VRAM, 75KB. All tile data takes 2x as much room too. That demo was possible only because I could get each frame 85% smaller (you can see the amount of same data in there). I'm not really going to make things any complex than they already are, I just wanted some simple hires stuff to happen, hehehe