🚀 go-pugleaf

In a previous article, warwick@cs.uq.oz.au (Warwick Allison) says:

>A while back I said that bit-plane modes are better than the word-per-pixel
>modes, for speed of sprite drawing, and TrueColour (word-per-pixel) would
>be best used just for title screens.  bzzt - I was wrong.
>
>
>I did some calculations and coding on the weekend, and it turns out that
>TrueColour (word-per-pixel) is actually VERY good for games.  I expect
>that a game using the Falcon 320x240 truecolor mode will be around twice
>the speed of the same game written on an ST using Low resolution, simply
>due to the CPU speed.  And a LOT prettier (65536 colours vs. 16).
>
>    ie. drawing sprites in TrueColour is as fast as drawing them
>        in 4 bitplane mode.  
>
>Plus, sound processing will have a MUCH lower cpu overhead on the Falcon,
>so games will gain speed there (and sound a lot better!)
>
>The reason why TrueColour is so good for games is that no shifting is
>required, plus only the area actually drawn on needs to be accessed (and
>hence stored for wiping purposes).
>
>
>--
>Warwick


But STILL, the Falcon030 needs more than 1 Meg for these TRUE COLOR
video or they won't even be used.

So what does all this mean now?  The games will run somewhat faster
than we thought in true color mode.  But, a graphics coprocessor would
still be necessary for rotation, 3-d imaging, scaling, etc.
Because you don't want to have to write these routines into your
game which will not only take up more memory, but also more speed.

>

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