With current mods (VBXE, etc.), is there a way to match NES (hardware/programming)?

[Blues76]

I hope I don't get banned for asking so many questions.

 

I was wondering if with some of the mods we have now, would this qualify to have a game at the quality (of course, someone would need to code it) at the level of Nintendo NES?

 

Programming/Hardware wise.

Edited November 6, 2020 by Blues76

[emkay]

VBXE is of course superior to the NES Graphics. 

[Blues76]

7 minutes ago, emkay said:

VBXE is of course superior to the NES Graphics. 

so, with VBXE (and maybe other mods), one could develop a game identical (or better) than NES?  (assuming one has the time)

 

I'm not familiar with the NES hardware (other than what I have read here and there) but their games were much better yet they were using a 6502 but I'm sure there were other chips there.

 

[popmilo]

Yes. It can imho. We have large cartridges now, blitter in vbxe runs at 14Mhz....

Just look at number of moving objects blitter can draw in this example. Imagine those are sprites in a game

 

 

 

[Rybags]

VBXE is more oriented towards bitmap where NES is generally towards tiles and sprites.

Though of course you can mix in Antic graphics and VBXE can use blits and has enhancements such as attribute maps and the extra colour bit.

The programming effort is likely a bit more on VBXE but the capabilities exceed that of a midrange Amiga.

But the CPU in stock form becomes a limiting factor.

[+Stephen]

3 minutes ago, Rybags said:

The programming effort is likely a bit more on VBXE but the capabilities exceed that of a midrange Amiga.

But the CPU in stock form becomes a limiting factor.

Toss in a Rapidus or Veronika and we've now got a smoking system!

[Blues76]

32 minutes ago, Stephen said:

Toss in a Rapidus or Veronika and we've now got a smoking system!

but the Rapidus wouldn't be needed to match it since NES wasn't using a 16 bit chip (right?), but I get what you are saying.

 

I have to know search what Veronika is.

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, Blues76 said:

but the Rapidus wouldn't be needed to match it since NES wasn't using a 16 bit chip (right?), but I get what you are saying.

 

I have to know search what Veronika is.

Correct - NES was 6502 based, the SNES was 65816 based.  Both of course, with much custom hardware for graphics and sound.

 

Veronika is a cart that plugs into any of the 8-bit machines.  It contains a 14MHz 65816.  Phaeron (Altirra author) has written a BASIC that uses it.  Very cool as it's portable.  Hoping to code for it someday.  trying to get to grips with some VBXE stuff lately.

[phaeron]

Despite running at 14MHz and having a blitter, VBXE has a memory bandwidth problem due to only supporting high color depths. With a 320x192 8-bit SR screen, it takes 25% of the total memory bandwidth in NTSC and 21% in PAL for a single read or write pass. This means that nothing more than just display and a single background blit per frame already takes 64-75% of the VBXE's total capabilities. This can be brought down a lot through hardware scrolling and intelligent redrawing, but that adds more work for the 6502. Most VBXE-based programs I've seen are also not great at keeping the blitter busy and tend to serialize the 6502 and blitter too much instead of running them in parallel, either due to waiting for blitter done too early or doing too much work on the 6502.

 

Veronica has a much faster CPU than the main computer, but is hamstrung by it not having any access to hardware -- it can only access local memory and is reliant on the main 6502 for I/O. This includes VBXE.

 

[drac030]

12 hours ago, phaeron said:

Veronica has a much faster CPU than the main computer, but is hamstrung by it not having any access to hardware

This is where Rapidus comes in: it has CPU yet faster than Veronica (20 MHz vs 14 MHz) and has access to hardware (incl. VBXE).

[+MrFish]

17 hours ago, Stephen said:

Toss in a Rapidus or Veronika and we've now got a smoking system!

 

...and you're also programming for a system that has a very small audience.

 

The VBXE + extended memory (U1MB in most cases) crowd would offer a much bigger target audience.

 

[Blues76]

16 hours ago, Stephen said:

Correct - NES was 6502 based, the SNES was 65816 based.  Both of course, with much custom hardware for graphics and sound.

 

Veronika is a cart that plugs into any of the 8-bit machines.  It contains a 14MHz 65816.  Phaeron (Altirra author) has written a BASIC that uses it.  Very cool as it's portable.  Hoping to code for it someday.  trying to get to grips with some VBXE stuff lately.

Do you know where can I get Veronika Cartridge?