Barone's Hacking Corner

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Originally Posted by Ryoandr

hey Barone, did you ever peek at some pseudo 3d games ? Like Space Harrier II, After Burner II, or even Panorama Cotton.
Because these always looked like a lost cause to me, when you factor the huge power gap between the arcade board and the MD. Always wondered if it was the best you could get out of the system.
I mentionned Panorama Cotton because the amount of stuff thrown in is pretty damn impressive.
not request anything, :p I just like exterior comments about game, code.

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No, I've never looked into those games.

But:
- Space Harrier II on the MD looks awful IMO. And it could've been better, maybe an 8 Mbit cartridge release in 1990 or so could have done the trick for it.
When you compare Space Harrier: Return To The Fantasy Zone on the Amiga 500 to Space Harrier II on the MD you can see that the Amiga game has far better animation for the most part (both videos are from real hardware):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWfWSsVptn4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srCLMqmAEMU

- After Burner games are just too much for the Mega Drive hardware IMO. The floor is filled with sprites on the arcade and this is enough to kill any chance of a proper port. The 32X version is the way to go in terms of cartridges.

Whoa, Amiga Space Harrier looks fantastic.
I'm curious, how more cart space would have enhanced SH2 outside of better zoom anims? The general movement feels sluggish and sprite animation can't change that ; or I'm missing something ?

My guess is that the dev team for Space Harrier II thought that making the game run at 30fps would blend the zooming animation together. Instead everything feels kinda choppy and uncomfortable.

The PC Engine version of Space Harrier has the same staggering zoom frames for sprites, except for a couple extra tiny ones that SHII features for several objects. Yet the PCE looks and feel much smoother. When you look at some of the sprite rips for SHII, you can see how well the better sprites are animated. If the game can be upgraded to 60fps movement, that alone would transform the game.

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

Yet the PCE looks and feel much smoother.

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Lined floor is easier to manage than checkered floor maybe ? Sure looks and feels way smoother.
Burning force also looks pretty sweet, but it doesn't do floor perspective changes.

Unless I'm mistaken, the checkered floor doesn't require many ressources (I guess it's line hscroll - for lateral perspective, some hblank trick for vertical stretching, along with some colors swapped during hblank for the checkboard).

The zooming would be smoother is more frames of animation were put into the card, but if all steps are transfered to VRAM, is VRAM big enough, and they are not, will the transfer of each frame be quick enough for the game to run at 60 fps ?

The checkered floor like Space Harrier has requires more VRAM AFAIK.

I don't know if the MD version even reaches 30 fps, it looks like 20 fps most of the time. It feels bad, I mean. I
The "scaling" for most of the objects and enemies seems to use quite less frames than the Amiga 500 game I linked, that's why I suggested that a bigger ROM could have helped. Usually bigger carts can compensate for the lack of RAM, at least to some extent.

The PC Engine version simplifies the floor, has a noticeable upper black border (where part of the HUD is located) and seems to have about the same frames of animation of the MD version; but it runs faster and thus the animation blends better; though I still prefer the looking of that Amiga 500 version for sure (even if ignoring the floor effect).


Burning Force does look quite smoother on the MD (comparing to SHII), however, the original game is quite less "heavy" in terms of sprite scaling than arcade Space Harrier to begin with. And it's not really fullscreen action either.

I checked the MD version (no dissassembly, just VRAM during game) : no hblank trick, the whole checkboard is in VRAM. So it's really VRAM-consuming (around 12 kB). I'd have thought hblank would have been more efficient. Ennemies frames are entirely loaded in VRAM before it appears and takes around 8 kB of VRAM.

And I've just watched the PCE version : yes, it requires less VRAM : in fact it requires none (simply change line color) :)
PCE version seems to have smaller sprites, which gives a cleaner aspect to the game (seems more precise).

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Originally Posted by tryphon

I checked the MD version (no dissassembly, just VRAM during game) : no hblank trick, the whole checkboard is in VRAM. So it's really VRAM-consuming (around 12 kB)

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So each checkerboard "perspective" angle is prerendered ? Wow that would explain why perspective changes feel so jerky.

Space Harrier II runs at 15FPS (・～・) (save for the palette cycling, which runs at 60FPS)

Honestly I get the impression that the game was originally intended to use the scaling hardware that ended up being removed, and if that required blitting from RAM into VRAM (like its Sega CD counterpart does), then that'd easily explain the intentionally capped framerate (as that's the rate Sega claims to be doable for blitting fullscreen images). Would have to check the code to be sure.

Also could very easily just be that the game is slow due to 3D calculations...

EDIT: oh yeah and the closest layer of sprites is actually drawn using scroll A (most 3D road games do this so they can have more stuff on screen). That probably isn't helping matters.

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Originally Posted by Sik

intended to use the scaling hardware that ended up being removed

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What? MD was originally designed with scaling HW?

I thought that was one of those things that were promptly taken out when 'porting' system-16, but don't quote me on that

i'm impressed with amiga version, is very fluid and well done to the system.

Barone you think that is possible improve md fps insue?

^I think it doesn't worth the trouble.

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Originally Posted by Barone

http://i.imgur.com/a2sEGS2.png
http://i.imgur.com/AMvGWCM.png

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This a capture from the PC version:
http://i.imgur.com/R8e0ApH.png

I noticed I still can improve it a little more, and I'll.

Is that Amiga Space Harrier a real, official version from bitd? That looks way too good to be true. It doesn't look like an ST port at all, like effort was put into it.

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Originally Posted by zetastrike

Is that Amiga Space Harrier a real, official version from bitd? That looks way too good to be true. It doesn't look like an ST port at all, like effort was put into it.

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Yep, Space Harrier: Return To The Fantasy Zone was released in 1989.