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Gunstar SNES, resized sprites or original sprites?

Apr 14, 2013 at 1:30:19 AM
marvelus10 (46)

( . ) Boobies ( . ) < King Solomon >
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Sorry I never noticed this earlier, it looks great, and seemed to play fine on my SD2SNES.

Keep up the good work, I look forward to following this project.

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Apr 15, 2013 at 3:14:55 AM
Luigi_Master (29)
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(Kevin McConnell) < Kraid Killer >
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Originally posted by: Enig

Originally posted by: Thunderblaze16

Many of you are forgetting that this is fucking Gunstar Heroes. The fact that it might be able to expand to another console is just plane badass.


Here's hoping someone will eventually fix the port of Thunder Force III and then port TFIV.



Funny you mention that.  I was wondering myself if a given game (such as TF3 or Gradius 3)  could be hacked to use the SA-1 chip.  While the SNES is more efficient than the Genesis, it's still slower in the long run, but that's where the SA-1 could be potentially useful, which will nearly triple the SNES' power.  Thunder Spirits is a gorgeous game for the SNES, but they didn't program it as well as it could have been.

Also, BioMetal is one interesting SNES shmup.  In addition to using 2 Unlimited's music, it's also one of the few SNES shooters that has TONS of bullets and ships onscreen and suffer little to no slowdown.  Was this an SA-1 game?  Cause if not, then they must've had some talented programmers for that.

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Apr 15, 2013 at 10:28:45 PM
Aaendi (0)

(Andy Koenigs) < Eggplant Wizard >
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Originally posted by: Luigi_Master

Originally posted by: Enig

Originally posted by: Thunderblaze16

Many of you are forgetting that this is fucking Gunstar Heroes. The fact that it might be able to expand to another console is just plane badass.


Here's hoping someone will eventually fix the port of Thunder Force III and then port TFIV.



Funny you mention that.  I was wondering myself if a given game (such as TF3 or Gradius 3)  could be hacked to use the SA-1 chip.  While the SNES is more efficient than the Genesis, it's still slower in the long run, but that's where the SA-1 could be potentially useful, which will nearly triple the SNES' power.  Thunder Spirits is a gorgeous game for the SNES, but they didn't program it as well as it could have been.

Also, BioMetal is one interesting SNES shmup.  In addition to using 2 Unlimited's music, it's also one of the few SNES shooters that has TONS of bullets and ships onscreen and suffer little to no slowdown.  Was this an SA-1 game?  Cause if not, then they must've had some talented programmers for that.
 
BioMetal does not use an SA-1 chip.

The funny part is that I know how BioMetal pulled off a ton of sprites without slowdown.  What I don't know is how everyone else fucked it up.


Edited: 04/15/2013 at 10:43 PM by Aaendi

Apr 16, 2013 at 12:07:55 AM
Luigi_Master (29)
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(Kevin McConnell) < Kraid Killer >
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Originally posted by: Aaendi

 
BioMetal does not use an SA-1 chip.

The funny part is that I know how BioMetal pulled off a ton of sprites without slowdown.  What I don't know is how everyone else fucked it up.


Is that so?  Then damn, color me impressed.  Other notable SNES shooters that have a fair bit of action with notable slowdown would be all three Parodius titles.  Hell, in the second one (Gokujou Parodius), one of the bunny girls will LITERALLY slow down the entire game when she's fully equipped and starts firing.  As for why, I guess it's because they decided that it wouldn't be worth the effort.  This is the same reason why the SNES has a comically large selection of RPGs.

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Apr 16, 2013 at 1:04:53 AM
Aaendi (0)

(Andy Koenigs) < Eggplant Wizard >
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Originally posted by: Luigi_Master

Originally posted by: Aaendi

 
BioMetal does not use an SA-1 chip.

The funny part is that I know how BioMetal pulled off a ton of sprites without slowdown.  What I don't know is how everyone else fucked it up.


Is that so?  Then damn, color me impressed.  Other notable SNES shooters that have a fair bit of action with notable slowdown would be all three Parodius titles.  Hell, in the second one (Gokujou Parodius), one of the bunny girls will LITERALLY slow down the entire game when she's fully equipped and starts firing.  As for why, I guess it's because they decided that it wouldn't be worth the effort.  This is the same reason why the SNES has a comically large selection of RPGs.

I wonder why Konami thought that 16-bit arithmetic wasn't worth the effort, but 32-bit arithmetic was, despite the fact that 32-bit arithmetic takes longer to write.  If you have a CPU with a single 16-bit accumulator, what's the point of bogging yourself down, juggling 2 words with 1 accumulator?

Apr 16, 2013 at 1:32:58 AM
Luigi_Master (29)
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(Kevin McConnell) < Kraid Killer >
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Originally posted by: Aaendi

I wonder why Konami thought that 16-bit arithmetic wasn't worth the effort, but 32-bit arithmetic was, despite the fact that 32-bit arithmetic takes longer to write.  If you have a CPU with a single 16-bit accumulator, what's the point of bogging yourself down, juggling 2 words with 1 accumulator?

I dunno, I wish I was a programmer.  It's probably for the same reason that Contra Force slows down all the time.  Unless the "AI Routines" hogged up that much resources, previous Contra games were capable of far more action onscreen with very brief slowdown, should it occur.  They probably programmed the game first, and then decided to skimp out on the optimization, since they figured "who cares?  It's not like they can do anything about it".


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Apr 16, 2013 at 6:58:55 AM
Aaendi (0)

(Andy Koenigs) < Eggplant Wizard >
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It actually takes more effort to program a game the way Capcom and Konami did, than to program a game the efficient way the creators of BioMetal did, not the other way around like most people would expect.

Apr 16, 2013 at 7:06:38 AM
SegF4ult (0)
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(Xander ) < Little Mac >
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Originally posted by: Aaendi

It actually takes more effort to program a game the way Capcom and Konami did, than to program a game the efficient way the creators of BioMetal did, not the other way around like most people would expect.
You're saying that it takes more effort to get a game to run sub-par than it is to do it right?
I'm amazed and intrigued. Could you share a bit more of your knowledge on these things?

Apr 16, 2013 at 10:25:02 AM
DoNotWant (1)

(Ham Sammich) < Eggplant Wizard >
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Originally posted by: SegF4ult

Originally posted by: Aaendi

It actually takes more effort to program a game the way Capcom and Konami did, than to program a game the efficient way the creators of BioMetal did, not the other way around like most people would expect.
You're saying that it takes more effort to get a game to run sub-par than it is to do it right?
I'm amazed and intrigued. Could you share a bit more of your knowledge on these things?

I think most people didn't use the program bank register and the data bank register in the 65c816 CPU, which would slow things down.
And as Aaendi already said, Konami used 32-bit arithmetic with 16 bit registers, when 16 bit would have been just fine in most, if not all cases.
Also, if you do things in a slow way, it will be harder to get a lot of moving stuff on screen, in some cases impossible.


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Apr 16, 2013 at 1:20:45 PM
Aaendi (0)

(Andy Koenigs) < Eggplant Wizard >
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object_collision:

lda !x_position
sec
sbc !x_position+$0000,x
cmp !width+$0000,x
bcc check_y_collision
clc
adc !width
bcc no_object_collision

check_y_collision:

lda !y_position
sec
sbc !y_position+$0000,x
cmp !height+$0000,x
bcc object_collision_detected
clc
adc !height
bcc no_object_collision

object_collision_detected:
lda #$0001
rts

no_object_collision:
lda #$0000
rts

Here is the collision detection routine I use.  Sweet, simple and to the point.  Direct Page points to one sprite slot, Index X points to the other.  First it checks if the objects overlap on the x-axis, then it checks if they overlap on the y-axis.  If they overlap eachother on both axis, then collsion has occured.

If you look at the collision detection routine found in your average SNES game, it is much longer, and more complicated.

Apr 16, 2013 at 7:06:02 PM
Luigi_Master (29)
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(Kevin McConnell) < Kraid Killer >
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I'll take your word on that, since I'm not programming inclined. I seriously wonder what Gradius 3 did in order to have such tremendous slowdown. Sure, it's one of the first SNES games ever programmed, but it's still pretty bad.

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Apr 21, 2013 at 11:13:46 PM
Aaendi (0)

(Andy Koenigs) < Eggplant Wizard >
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Improvements:

-no more black bars (full 256x224 screen)
-multidirectional shooting
-improved AI


Edited: 04/21/2013 at 11:19 PM by Aaendi

Apr 21, 2013 at 11:59:25 PM
DoNotWant (1)

(Ham Sammich) < Eggplant Wizard >
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Hmm, in BSNES, the character just keeps going to the left, and in SNES9X you never know if you will shoot or not when pushing the shoot button(if you don't shoot the gun will be visible, when shots actually come the gun is not visible)

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Apr 22, 2013 at 1:27:09 PM
Aaendi (0)

(Andy Koenigs) < Eggplant Wizard >
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What versions of BSNES and SNES9x are you using?  If they are older releases, try using a later release.

Apr 22, 2013 at 3:28:34 PM
DoNotWant (1)

(Ham Sammich) < Eggplant Wizard >
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Downloaded the latest version of higan, works great!

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Apr 23, 2013 at 11:42:31 PM
Aaendi (0)

(Andy Koenigs) < Eggplant Wizard >
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More stupidity from Sega-16

"Oh, Gunstar Heroes. There's a ton of stuff in that game (or any MD game with decent -let alone heavy- optimization around the hardware's strengths) that couldn't be done as well on the SNES . . . or at all in some cases. (it definitely won't be able to pull off sprites in the same way without more flicker/tearing, and resolution will be lower) And on vanilla SNES hardware, there's even more than you'd probably have to compromise, and even more if you limited ROM size, and even more still if you limited ROM speed. (3.58 vs 2.68 MHz makes a real difference)"

God, do these people EVER look at a fricking programming manual?  They keep complaining about a CPU they know absolutely nothing about.


Edited: 04/23/2013 at 11:46 PM by Aaendi

Apr 24, 2013 at 12:39:51 AM
Thunderblaze16 (76)
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(Piero ) < King Solomon >
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It's not far from the truth though. I remember reading an article interviewing the makers of Gunstar Heroes and there was a part where they said how the snes was just a nightmare to deal with, being more complex. Having more limited options on how much they can put on screen than on a Sega Genesis.

I still want to see if you can pull this of though.

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Apr 24, 2013 at 4:14:10 PM
Aaendi (0)

(Andy Koenigs) < Eggplant Wizard >
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The 65816 asm language is annoying to program, and the graphics chip is more complicated to use, but getting a lot of moving objects onscreen is nowhere near as difficult as the Sega-16 members think it is.

Moving a sprite is basically just adding the horizontal speed to the x position, and adding the vertical speed to the y position, every frame. Gravity is just adding a constant acceleration to the vertical speed. Yet, the Sega-16 members think that these kind of things take thousands of cycles to do.

Apr 24, 2013 at 8:27:06 PM
Shiru (0)

(Shiru Shiru) < Meka Chicken >
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Many people just don't understand that old consoles didn't have a raster buffer that most of computers had and have, so drawing a sprite is just a matter of putting few bytes into sprite list rather than manually transferring all graphics data from ROM to VRAM every time when a sprite needs to be drawn.

May 5, 2013 at 12:02:47 AM
Aaendi (0)

(Andy Koenigs) < Eggplant Wizard >
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This new release is showing off two things at once.

1) Resized Sprites
2) The first software rotated sprite running on SNES stock hardware ever! (though I had to include a loading time in order to do so)


Edited: 05/05/2013 at 12:03 AM by Aaendi