Sprite Multicolor Multiplexer Experment

[peteym5]

I have been experimenting with player/missile graphics multiplexers to get more sprites on the screen. I manage to get 10 multicolor ones at 20 pixels tall just using players so they can only be 8 pixels wide. I did include setting the player double width and quad width for certain sprites. These may be use for a potential future game. I went through and drawn up some mythical monsters like Dragons, Spiders, Bats, Unicorns, Pegasus, Griffins, etc. I am consider making something that goes room by room (like 2600 adventure or NES Zelda) using Antic 4 mode for the walls and stuff in the rooms. I would like to build something original.

mc_spritedemo.zip

[snicklin]

This looks like a good, working sprite multiplexor, well done on that, it couldn't have been easy.

 

I think that with a multiplexor that the flicker isn't ideal but it does enable you to have some extra freedom over keeping the sprites on different horizontal rows. Is there a game type which could maybe *tend* to avoid flicker, though allow it when required?

 

Also, it would be nice if your main character could be kept constantly on but only the enemies flicker between themselves.

[tjb]

Well done! It looks great, very colorful.

 

tjb

[fibrewire]

There is something about great atari graphics like these that give me a pang of anxiety and panic. A true tell-tale sign of great game characters!

 

I vote for an original Zelda / Metroid / Mario

[Heaven/TQA]

any chance, Pete, to get send me the source code, would like to test that multiplexor in my Beyond Evil RPG.

[peteym5]

I have not decided on a final game design if the project goes forward. I may limit 4 or 5 monsters per screen with the character. Maybe use a sprite for an item your character has to get. I use a copy routine that copies all the sprite data to the pmbase memory area all at once. Looks something like this.

LDY #19

LOADPLYRADDR1L = *+1

LOADPLYRADDR1H = *+2

STORPLYRADDR1L = *+4

STORPLYRADDR1H = *+5

LOADPLYRADDR2L = *+7

LOADPLYRADDR2H = *+8

STORPLYRADDR2L = *+10

STORPLYRADDR2H = *+11

 

SPCOPYLOOP

LDA src00, y

STA PMv00, y

LDA src01, y

STA PMv01, y

LDA src02, y

STA PMv02, y

LDA src03, y

STA PMv03, y

...

...

LDA src18, y

STA PMv18, y

LDA src19, y

STA PMv19, y

DEY

BPL SPCOPYLOOP

 

The Addresses get modified elsewhere in the VBI routine before the loop is executed. With counting down and a branch, it can copy 10 multicolor or 20 monocolor sprites at once. The BPL can at most branch 128 bytes back and is the reason for one of the limits here. This loop has to be completed before the scanline reaches the top of the playfield or else some of the sprites get cut off.

Edited August 13, 2011 by peteym5

[Heaven/TQA]

and how is your multiplexor working? sprite sorting? and how do you flicker?

[Allas]

Awesome work!, thanks for take your time to design those detailed PMs. Great work engine!, great graphics!, great animations!

[+Philsan]

Awesome Peter!

[peteym5]

and how is your multiplexor working? sprite sorting? and how do you flicker?

 

The Flicker cannot be helped because as you know the Atari can only has 4 players and 4 missiles. Since we are combining groups of 2 for the 3rd color, we end up with 2 in one of the DLI zones. Which sprite number we start with increments every frame and when the start number reaches the number of sprites, it resets to zero. Within the sort loop, I increment the sprite number by 3 and decrement by 10 if greater that 10. So all the sprites get checked in an order like 0,3,6,9,2,5,8,1,4,7,0. Since we started with 0, it knows what value to end the loop at. It looks at the vertical position to determine which zone to put the sprite so the DLI routines know where to set the hoz position, color, and width. I use a 256 byte long table to quickly figure out which zone the sprite will start and end in. Since I have a DLI on every line, the table goes something like 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,etc. for areas out of the playfield, it is filled with a value greater than 128 so the negative flag is trigger and tells it to skip the sprite. When the sprite is used a flag is set so the next sprite will be set for player 2&3. If more than 2 sprites are on the line, the rest are not drawn for current frame.

 

    LDA SPRITENVERTPOS,Y
   BEQ SKIPSPRITE        
   TAY
   LDX DLI_TABZONE,Y
   BMI SKIPSPRITE
   STX FIRSTZONE
   ADC #21    
   TAY
   LDX DLI_TABZONE,Y
   BMI SKIPSPRITE
   STX LASTZONE
   LDA SPRITEUSE,X       
   LDX FIRSTZONE
   ORA SPRITEUSE,X
CHECK_SPRITE_1
   LSR
   BCS CHECK_SPRITE_2
   ..
   LDA SPRITEUSE,X       
   ORA #1
   ..
CHECK_SPRITE_2
   LSR
   BCS SKIPSPRITE
   ..
   LDA SPRITEUSE,X       
   ORA #2
   STA SPRITEUSE,X       
   DEX
   CPX FIRSTZONE....
   ..

 

I know people have other ways to indicated with sprites are in use and I am continuing to experiment with this thing.

 

You have to keep in mind I am showing the multiplexer at its max, all 10 sprites active. What I have in mind is only 4 or 5 monsters per room. Maybe have some monster types patrol its own quadrant of the screen.

[Heaven/TQA]

it is interesting. because my sprite multiplexor works in zones, too... i had done radix sort or ocean sort and then putting DLIs and setting shape etc. but never achieved the flickering as my ring buffer approach did not worked out... so I went to take soft sprites for Beyond Evil.

[Heaven/TQA]

Pete, the interesting is... what happens when sprite is "overlapping" a zone?

[snicklin]

I increment the sprite number by 3 and decrement by 10 if greater that 10. So all the sprites get checked in an order like 0,3,6,9,2,5,8,1,4,7,0. Since we started with 0, it knows what value to end the loop at.

 

Absolute genius algorithm here.

 

I was wondering how you'd cycle through the sprites.

 

 

 

[peteym5]

Pete, the interesting is... what happens when sprite is "overlapping" a zone?

 

It is always overlapping zones because the sprites are 20 pixels high and there is a DLI for every antic 4 line (8 pixels tall). What I did was fill the DLI zone table with the need values with the sprite info. When the sorting is done, the use table has to all zeroed for the next frame.

 

       LDX FIRSTZONE
PMLOOP1
       LDA SPRITE_HOZPOS,Y	
STA DLI_HOZSET1,X
LDA SPRITE_COLOR0,Y
STA DLI_COLORSET2,X
LDA SPRITE_COLOR1,Y
STA DLI_COLORSET3,X
LDA SPRITE_WIDTH,Y
STA DLI_WIDTHSET,X    
       LDA SPRITEUSE,X
ORA #2
STA SPRITEUSE,X
CPX LASTZONE
INX
BCC PMLOOP1

Edited August 14, 2011 by peteym5

[peteym5]

I did some optimizations to speed up what you see above. One is just store the sprite number source in the table and let the DLI load and set the registers.

 

 PMLOOP1
 TYA
 STA SPRITE_SOURCE1,X
 LDA SPRITEUSE,X
 ORA #1
 STA SPRITEUSE,X
 ..
 ..

DLI
 ..
 LDX SPRITE_SOURCE1,Y
 LDA SPRITE_HOZPOS,Y  
 STA HPOSP2
 STA HPOSP3
 LDA SPRITE_COLOR0,X
 STA COLPM2
 LDA SPRITE_COLOR1,X
 STA COLPM3
 ..

 

Some little limitations to this multiplexer are that 20 sprites can be done within the sprite image to PMBase area. To do more than 20 sprites, you will need to do something like this...

..replace..
 DEY
 BPL loopstart
.. with ..
 DEY
 BMI loopend
 JMP loopstart
loopend

Which now is taking up a few more clock cycles and more time to process.

Also all the sprite image source is best to come from the same "bank" if you want to use extended ram banks or 32k+ cartridge. Can do a single LDA #banknum, STA $D301/$D5xx before the loop. Carts with 8k banks can hold 204 multicolor sprite images at 20 pixels tall. A work around is to use RAM for extended sprites. The multiplexer itself has to copied to ram since it uses all self modifying code for speed.

 

I manage to get around 400 bytes of sprite data copied before the scanline reaches my intended playfield area. That is 200 pixel height for the multicolor sprites. I am doing the erase at the last DLI at the bottom of the Display List. The Sort and copy routine are done immediate VBI. I also use a custom NMI vector routine. So it requires a 64k machine with the 16k (12k) under the OS activated.

Edited August 16, 2011 by peteym5

[rsh]

On 8/13/2011 at 12:20 PM, peteym5 said:

I have been experimenting with player/missile graphics multiplexers to get more sprites on the screen. I manage to get 10 multicolor ones at 20 pixels tall just using players so they can only be 8 pixels wide. I did include setting the player double width and quad width for certain sprites. These may be use for a potential future game. I went through and drawn up some mythical monsters like Dragons, Spiders, Bats, Unicorns, Pegasus, Griffins, etc. I am consider making something that goes room by room (like 2600 adventure or NES Zelda) using Antic 4 mode for the walls and stuff in the rooms. I would like to build something original.

mc_spritedemo.zip 5.89 kB · 270 downloads

This is so Fantastic! Truly amazing! well done!  I'm still a little lost on the mechanics.  I want to do this in Action!  but I am a little stumped.  Does anyone have some simple code that does one sprite and couple colors.  Is it limited to graphics mode?    This should be utility library.  I find it amazing that even OSS back when Action! came out.  They did not provide some of the cool powerful routines from the already created assembler (written by OSS) from Basic XE (for example rget and print using) great tools.  Back then everyone did everything from scratch over and over again. 

[Preppie]

Fantastic bit of coding, more than I could dream of doing - but, I hate flicker    If you can design a game around the flicker limitations then you've hit gold.

[Mclaneinc]

Don't expect a reply, that user is banned....Long story...

[Preppie]

2 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

Don't expect a reply, that user is banned....Long story...

oh, didn't realise it was a necro

[shanti77]

http://peters-atari-games.000webhostapp.com/

 

[emkay]

11 hours ago, Preppie said:

oh, didn't realise it was a necro

Yeah, here at Atariage you have to be patient of some snakes.

As soon as you have your own opinon, some double tongued might attack.

But don't even try to defend, it will attack even more.

[+Stephen]

Some of us even graduate to the most excellent level of "envious snake" ?  There's a blast from the past.

[zbyti]

I'm not fully aware whats all about, plus a language barrier are involved, but... snakes are jesters?

[Gunstar]

21 hours ago, Preppie said:

Fantastic bit of coding, more than I could dream of doing - but, I hate flicker    If you can design a game around the flicker limitations then you've hit gold.

Actual use of this multi-plexer engine and it's evolution can be seen in games Video61 released. Secretum Labyrinth games, Zookeeper, Amokbots, and others. I reviewed several of them in issue 5 of EXCEL magazine a couple of years ago. Flicker never bothered me too much since we lived with it in many games on many 8-bit computers and consoles in the 80's, they all had some games pushing the sprite limits, regardless of sprite hardware from the 2600 through the NES and Sega Master system. These games are just par for the course for the amount of sprites (P/M's) used vs. hardware ability. Even some of the best multi-plexer engines still have flicker, like Crownland and Space Harrier. If you are an 8-bit Atari fan and want games with lots of sprites or Player/Missiles you better just accept it and enjoy the games. PAL systems always have to endure a bit more flicker due to the 50Hz refresh too, they flicker less on NTSC.

 

http://excel-retro-mag.co.uk/?v=7516fd43adaa

 

Here are a free game and demo released:

 

 

 

 

 

SLKG20160630.ZIP TmpstXtreem11.xex

Edited July 29, 2020 by Gunstar

[atari1byte]

On 8/13/2011 at 6:20 PM, peteym5 said:

Ho sperimentato con multiplexer grafici giocatore / missile per ottenere più sprite sullo schermo. Riesco a ottenere 10 multicolor a 20 pixel di altezza solo usando i lettori in modo che possano essere larghi solo 8 pixel. Ho incluso l'impostazione della doppia larghezza del giocatore e della larghezza quadrupla per alcuni sprite. Questi possono essere utilizzati per un potenziale gioco futuro. Ho esaminato e disegnato alcuni mostri mitici come draghi, ragni, pipistrelli, unicorni, Pegaso, grifoni, ecc. Sto pensando di fare qualcosa che vada stanza per stanza (come 2600 adventure o NES Zelda) usando la modalità Antic 4 per le pareti e le cose nelle stanze. Mi piacerebbe costruire qualcosa di originale.

mc_spritedemo.zip 5.89 Kb · 399 scaricati

Hello everyone!
how can i open the .xex file
Thank you all!