johannesmutlu Posted May 30, 2021 Share Posted May 30, 2021 Somebody reviewed luchtenstein 3D demo(wich is in reality a cover up of wolf3D) running on the lynx,while it has only 2 levels,but it does show what the lynx is capable off, HOWEVER, he did mention that bigger levels aren’t possible on the lynx due it’s limited ram, but i was thinking, how about deviding giant levels into sections of 32KB by refreshing the ram halfway trough once you reached a certain point section in a level and then load the second section of it and so forth, now to avoid that your progression in the first section of a level get’s lost,the game should remember your first section by storing it into it’s own ram, the same means to section 2 and so on,and when you walk to the first section into a level , then it should reload in the first section of that level by erasing the second section of it,and so it,so the game must be also capable to switch back and forth into the first and second section etc,,, of a level while still (temperatury) remembering your progress,this way we might be able to overcome that 64KB limitation of the lynx by adding virtual work ram into the game, so if a wolf3D is 256KB big in size,it should be slit into sections of (let’s say) 6 including your prgress data and then keeping exchanging that data from 64KB work ram of the lynx, this way we could in theory create larger more biggers levels then what the atari lynx is normally allowed us to do?,just may,i believe that games such as super mario 3 on nes works similar that way trough the mmc3 chip wich contains 8KB of extra ram above the nes’ses 2KB of ram in order to exchange & swap data in and out on the fly from 8KB into the 2KB work ram, in order to get around that 2KB limit, i suppose?? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
42bs Posted May 31, 2021 Share Posted May 31, 2021 10 hours ago, johannesmutlu said: Somebody reviewed luchtenstein 3D demo(wich is in reality a cover up of wolf3D) running on the lynx,while it has only 2 levels,but it does show what the lynx is capable off, HOWEVER, he did mention that bigger levels aren’t possible on the lynx due it’s limited ram, It is a question of organization. The Lynx cards can be w/o problem 512KBytes large. Larger ones with some logic on the card (like the SDCard cards). _But_ who or how many gamers will going to pay 80 or more Euros for such a game? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johannesmutlu Posted June 1, 2021 Author Share Posted June 1, 2021 18 hours ago, 42bs said: It is a question of organization. The Lynx cards can be w/o problem 512KBytes large. Larger ones with some logic on the card (like the SDCard cards). _But_ who or how many gamers will going to pay 80 or more Euros for such a game? It’s true that there’re 512KB rom lynx games, but the idea in this topic was to virtually increase the 64KB ram of the lynx to allow biggers levels to be possible on lynx, now to your question, Am afraid only diehard gamers will spend $80 for (retro) games,unlike regular consumers wich absolutely wouldn’t do that,especially those casual games, i as a retro fan will do that if it became my most wanted most have game? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
42bs Posted June 1, 2021 Share Posted June 1, 2021 (edited) 4 hours ago, johannesmutlu said: It’s true that there’re 512KB rom lynx games, but the idea in this topic was to virtually increase the 64KB ram of the lynx to allow biggers levels to be possible on lynx, I think 64K are a lot for one level. I remember Spindizzy on the CPC464 which had a huge map in roundabout 50k (they did use nearly _all_ available RAM and overwriting even BASIC memory). So I think it is a matter of how you describe the map the most efficient way and do a clever overlaying/loading of assets. Edited June 1, 2021 by 42bs 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordKraken Posted June 1, 2021 Share Posted June 1, 2021 @johannesmutlu I'll +1 42bs. The lynx resolution is pretty low, so it's fairly easy to dynamically stream data from the cartridge to create huge detailed map, that's what we do on Odynexus. The limiting factor then is the cartridge size. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laoo Posted June 1, 2021 Share Posted June 1, 2021 (edited) Frankly, the only limitation here is the limited understanding how Lynx internals work and of overall game developing techniques of this "somebody" that claimed the statement that 64kB of RAM prevents from introducing bigger and/or more levels in games. I see no practical benefits from the ability to stream out memory to some backup storage as mutable data are usually very small. The majority of consoles form the 80-ties had very little RAM but multiple times more ROM. Even Sega Megadrive with powerful 68000 on board had only 64kB of RAM. Edited June 1, 2021 by laoo 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agradeneu Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 (edited) On 6/1/2021 at 10:04 AM, laoo said: Frankly, the only limitation here is the limited understanding how Lynx internals work and of overall game developing techniques of this "somebody" that claimed the statement that 64kB of RAM prevents from introducing bigger and/or more levels in games. I see no practical benefits from the ability to stream out memory to some backup storage as mutable data are usually very small. The majority of consoles form the 80-ties had very little RAM but multiple times more ROM. Even Sega Megadrive with powerful 68000 on board had only 64kB of RAM. I always thought the RAM is pretty sizable for a 80s handheld console with that resolution and 4 bit color depht. The C64 has 64Kbyte too and the SNES has 128 Kbyte (but needs to handle much bigger data). Edited June 4, 2021 by agradeneu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sage Posted June 4, 2021 Share Posted June 4, 2021 1 hour ago, agradeneu said: I always thought the RAM is pretty sizable for a 80s handheld console with that resolution and 4 bit color depht. The C64 has 64Kbyte too and the SNES has 128 Kbyte (but needs to handle much bigger data). indeed, but you have large screen (8k each), thus double + collision buffer reduces that already by 24k. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johannesmutlu Posted April 25, 2022 Author Share Posted April 25, 2022 On 6/1/2021 at 8:56 AM, LordKraken said: @johannesmutlu I'll +1 42bs. The lynx resolution is pretty low, so it's fairly easy to dynamically stream data from the cartridge to create huge detailed map, that's what we do on Odynexus. The limiting factor then is the cartridge size. Wooow,that game oddynexus looks pretty cool? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyprian Posted April 28, 2022 Share Posted April 28, 2022 On 6/1/2021 at 10:04 AM, laoo said: The majority of consoles form the 80-ties had very little RAM but multiple times more ROM. Even Sega Megadrive with powerful 68000 on board had only 64kB of RAM. that's another story, Atari 7800 or MegaDrive had ability to add external ROM or RAM mapped directly to the CPU address range. In case of Lynx, the Cartridge ROM is just a streaming device like a tape/fdd. Would be cool to have a solution where the CPU has direct access to more than 64kB RAM, banked like in Atari 800 XL or Atari 7800. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sage Posted May 3, 2022 Share Posted May 3, 2022 nice idea, but i miss the case where it is really needed. as longs as you cannot trick the custom chips to use it, it does not give you much advantage. managing the video to a differnt "bank" would already give you 16km more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyprian Posted May 3, 2022 Share Posted May 3, 2022 actually the CPU is in the custom chip, therefore if it can see an additional ram, then the custom chip also. I don't know whether would be easy to add an access to a different bank to the Mikey (cpu) and the Suzy (graphics). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
42bs Posted May 3, 2022 Share Posted May 3, 2022 Actually, Suzy 'sees' only RAM. Bank switching applies only to Mikey, more exact, the CPU. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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