+MrFish Posted November 26, 2018 Author Share Posted November 26, 2018 An adjustment to the outside edge of the air fins. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EnderDude Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 I like your idea, but would this work as a game with an acceptable frame rate, and not merely for stills? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted November 28, 2018 Author Share Posted November 28, 2018 (edited) I like your idea, but would this work as a game with an acceptable frame rate, and not merely for stills? Rybags had the initial idea from the technical side; I'm just seeing how it might look, so we can have some way of measuring the possible merits of the approach from a visual standpoint. It seems feasible, since only half as many scanlines need to be processed for the road; then it should provide some time for processing softsprites on the lines interleaved with them. The PM's would also only have half as many lines as the original. Also, using normal screen width (as opposed to the original, which uses widescreen) would also speed up processing. No way to know for sure without doing some hard calculations against the original or some basic tests, though. Edited November 28, 2018 by MrFish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 I like your idea, but would this work as a game with an acceptable frame rate, and not merely for stills? Short answer: No. The street is build on "same graphics" plus shifted scrolling and LMS every scanline. You'd have to build the "software sprites" and sorting routine for every possible curve arrangement. The game itself did well back in that days. But, if someone wanted to have better visual, the game would need a full rework of everything. The change from "background" for the street, to "PMg" for the street would solve it, but it isn't on the agenda by anyone Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted November 28, 2018 Author Share Posted November 28, 2018 Short answer: No. The street is build on "same graphics" plus shifted scrolling and LMS every scanline. You'd have to build the "software sprites" and sorting routine for every possible curve arrangement. Did you read the first post in this thread? No software sprites would be drawn on LMS shifted scanlines. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted November 28, 2018 Share Posted November 28, 2018 (edited) 'impossible emkay' always no... then if it happens it of course was always possible. I think maybe multiple personality involved... Edited November 28, 2018 by _The Doctor__ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted December 5, 2018 Share Posted December 5, 2018 OK, any chances to improve Pole Position this way, or should I consider that this thread was killed by some (somehow lame) joke? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted December 5, 2018 Share Posted December 5, 2018 'impossible emkay' always no... then if it happens it of course was always possible. I think maybe multiple personality involved... Don't you need a multiple personality to get it that way? Please give ONE example, where I turned my point of view by the given results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted December 5, 2018 Share Posted December 5, 2018 Did you read the first post in this thread? No software sprites would be drawn on LMS shifted scanlines. Sorry. I thought the scanlines had been a joke. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted December 5, 2018 Share Posted December 5, 2018 Btw: that idea , using "interlace for moving objects" isn't really new. This (of course unfinished) game demo, is rather impressive on a small PAL device. The bigger the screen , the more irregular it looks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted December 5, 2018 Author Share Posted December 5, 2018 Btw: that idea , using "interlace for moving objects" isn't really new. This (of course unfinished) game demo, is rather impressive on a small PAL device. The bigger the screen , the more irregular it looks. Yes, I've seen this from long ago. Impressive, if a little bit slow. It looks like they're using P/M's to mask off the background from the objects. I like how the score ends up being semi-translucent; kind of a useful side effect when masking isn't used. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted December 6, 2018 Share Posted December 6, 2018 Color helps a good deal. Interlaced black and white was an odd choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted December 6, 2018 Author Share Posted December 6, 2018 (edited) Color helps a good deal. Interlaced black and white was an odd choice. Not really odd. You get many luminance choices, which helps in creating shading. In GTIA 11 you've got lots of colors but a single luminance; so everything is either bright, dull, or dark in that mode. In GTIA 10 you can choose your colors, but it's limited to 9 total, because of the limitations on number of registers. So, GTIA 10 might look good color-wise, but it'd lose some shading effects over what we see here. It would be possible to mix modes, and have color objects and a grayscale background. Edited December 6, 2018 by MrFish 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted January 28, 2020 Author Share Posted January 28, 2020 (edited) Playsoft has been working on some demos using the idea proposed here. This one has two cars, and you can control the speed (forward and back) and steering using a joystick. [Note: Colors are for NTSC; so they look a bit weird in PAL.] road (1).xex Edited January 28, 2020 by MrFish 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted January 28, 2020 Share Posted January 28, 2020 That's fantastic work!!! Sure would like to see this get finished. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwilove Posted January 28, 2020 Share Posted January 28, 2020 Maybe something to consider - if doing a game - is the possibility of including more in the way of animation or animation effects. The speed of which - framerate as such - need not be fast at all. At it's proper speed to be seen to be noticed. Harvey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted January 28, 2020 Share Posted January 28, 2020 On 11/25/2018 at 12:33 AM, MrFish said: It'd be nice if the source code was available for the Atari 8-bit version. Sorry... I unfortunately do NOT have any sources to 5200 or 800 Pole Position. I only have the sources to 2600 Pole Position, which is of no help for this ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted January 28, 2020 Author Share Posted January 28, 2020 5 hours ago, Stephen said: That's fantastic work!!! Sure would like to see this get finished. Playsoft strikes again! There's no goal to create a full game, ATM; but he is looking into the viability of the idea beyond what's seen here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted January 28, 2020 Author Share Posted January 28, 2020 2 hours ago, kiwilove said: Maybe something to consider - if doing a game - is the possibility of including more in the way of animation or animation effects. The speed of which - framerate as such - need not be fast at all. At it's proper speed to be seen to be noticed. This technique does open up the possibility for multi-color road signs with text, and higher resolution explosions -- two of the more dull aspects of Atari's 8-bit Pole Position. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted January 28, 2020 Author Share Posted January 28, 2020 2 hours ago, Curt Vendel said: Sorry... I unfortunately do NOT have any sources to 5200 or 800 Pole Position. I only have the sources to 2600 Pole Position, which is of no help for this ? Yeah, too bad. Playsoft was looking at the 2600 sources, but said they were sparsely commented; although, apparently someone else had taken the time at some point to beef up the comments; and he has that version for possible future reference (not needed for what he's done so far, which he was able to figure out by other means). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted January 28, 2020 Share Posted January 28, 2020 I disassembled the ROM 10 years ago for @Rybags who was looking at things like VBXE and digital sound enhancements. PolePosSrc.zip 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R0ger Posted January 28, 2020 Share Posted January 28, 2020 How does it work ? I can see the cars are combination of PMG and field graphics, so it must be some kind of soft sprites. But it's too fast for that ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted January 28, 2020 Share Posted January 28, 2020 Cars use all the Players in multicolour mode, missiles are the signs. The track and lines are by playfield - there's a prerendering of it with LMS per scanline used to coarse shift the road. A DLI kernal occupies much of the screen, fine scrolling tunes the road/line position and colour changes are done in the kernal as well as table based pos and size for the PMGs. As such the game leaves no resources free for any extra details. The missiles are way too chunky to add details to signs. You'll notice there's never more than 2 cars at any given vertical position since 2 Players are used per car. The benefit of such as kernal idea to do an interleaved set of graphics is that for it's part there's not really any extra CPU consumption. And doing cars as playfield could probably be rendered without a huge extra expenditure. One car can be always rendered at a byte boundary with HSCROL to fine tune it, then the other car rendered with shifting calculations according to what's already there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted January 28, 2020 Author Share Posted January 28, 2020 5 hours ago, R0ger said: How does it work ? I can see the cars are combination of PMG and field graphics, so it must be some kind of soft sprites. But it's too fast for that ? The cars aren't moving yet; although they seem to be... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R0ger Posted January 28, 2020 Share Posted January 28, 2020 (edited) 3 hours ago, MrFish said: The cars aren't moving yet; although they seem to be... But the background is moving ? One of them has to be redrawn. Edited January 28, 2020 by R0ger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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