🚀 go-pugleaf

Jeppe Øland (lejerbo@inet.uni-c.dk) wrote:
> >Well, the Sprite & Scrolling Engine I'm working on for the PC
> >obviously can't boast a character-mapped display and hardware sprites,
> >but it's about as close as you can get through emulation.  And what
> >about speed?  The demo I put out awhile ago with full-screen scrolling
> >and 8 fair-sized sprites bouncing around ran at a full 60fps on a
> >386sx20 with a 16-bit VGA.  Just think about how much time that would
> >leave on the average system.

> Ha - there's the problem again - 8directional scrolling can be done on 
> *ANY* pc - put a MCGA card in an old 4.77 MHz XT - and it'll *STILL* run 
> at 60fps! That's hardware panning for you! That just doesn't help much if 
> you want to do multilayer scrolling - I'd love to see your 386sx20 chug 
> along on a 4 layer scrolling background - you can even cut the 8 fair 
> sized sprites (ain't that a bargain)!

That's easy enough to do..  But you're missing the point...
The less updating you do to vram the more time you have for everything
else.  If you didn't notice, I was addressing the claim that the only
way to do platformers & scrollers was to use a console machine.. which
is simply not true.

Others have been able to do it (usually requiring video-local-bus for
full-speed).. but have rarely used the existing technology to its full
potential.  And those who have, understandably, don't feel like licensing
their many hours of work out to anyone.  I just want to see the
PC market competing with the console market for fast, smooth,
full-screen graphics (without requiring a Pentium)

[ Ian Ward | iward@chat.carleton.ca ] - all the usual disclaimers apply.