🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <kennehra.718319025@craft.camp.clarkson.edu>, kennehra@craft.camp.clarkson.edu
 (Rich"TheMan"Kennehan) writes:
|> 
|> 
|> I think that you could make MILLIONS if you designed a "sprite engine"
|> for the IBM that is basically a video card like VGA that allows you
|> to manipulate sprites (I mean BIG sprites, like on Street Fighter 2)
|> I've come up with a couple of algorithms written in turbo pascal that
|> simulates the type of sprite graphics used in NES and SNES games that
|> uses a tiled background with sprites, but the refresh rate is like
|> 8 seconds.  (unoptimized, pure pascal code, no assembler)

In my system designs I like to put as little strain on the CPU as possible,
and try to coprocess my way to speed.  For example, I have played with
designing a video card for high-res (say, 1280x1024 or so).  I kept going
back to the idea of simply parallelling graphics memory and handling
hardware, and only putting it all together at the output!  This way, all
the high-speed high-expense components are limited.

Never mind that I never actually implemented anything.  What can
I say, I kept getting distracted by other interesting ideas!
  
|> Ive told people about my idea of designing a sprite engine, but they
|> all said that it would'nt work because they say that the people who 
|> play IBM games
|> don't like arcade style games and that they like to think.

I try not to make it a habit to listen to too many people.  I'd build one,
make some apps for it, and then show it off to see how people react.  MY
biggest problem is art.  All these games and things have wild and funky
backgrounds, neat full-screen scenes, and nice little "sprites" that look
great.

So what did I do?  I went into an icon editor, and took a look at some
of the icons, maybe try my hand at editing a few.  I found that the icon
editor displayed two views of the icon:  blowup and normal size.  I found
that the normal size icons I looked at looked great, but when they were
blown up they looked like colored static!  I could see that each blown-up
pixel corresponded to a tiny pixel in the actual image, but apparently
I can't process the blown-up image!  I could come up with game after game
after game, it's just that the only way I know to get nice graphics is to
swipe 'em from other, more talented, people!

|>  If I had
|> the technical knowledge in Electrical Engineering I'd build one JUST
|> TO SHOW EM!!!

That's a tough one to answer.  I certainly have the technical knowledge, no
problem there.  I also have access to large quantities of data books.  I guess
it's just a question of putting together some kind of coherent system.  Perhaps
we should talk on e-mail about a design...

|>  I think that there is a HUGE market for arcade style
|> games on the IBM and if anyone wants to get together and try to build
|> a "sprite engine" Please let me know!!!

Let's talk!
 
--Rob!