Hardware pushed to the limits according to Sega-16 members

[synbiosfan]

I'm not sure if I'm surprised or not to see no mention of Pier Solar.

[MathUser]

Red alert is actually a cartridge with a little FMV. The FMV is just red and black so it's not big deal tho. Also Earnest evans has sprite rotation, but in a totally unatural looking way.

[Sik]

Though admittedly with the Atari 2600 it's a lot about how clever you can be.

[goldenband]

Solaris often gets cited as the big tour de force for classic-era Atari 2600 software:



Homebrews, of course, push the Atari 2600 well beyond that, and most of them don't use extra on-cart processors like the DPC:

[Robotwo]

Red alert is actually a cartridge with a little FMV. The FMV is just red and black so it's not big deal tho. Also Earnest evans has sprite rotation, but in a totally unatural looking way.

If you're talking about Mega Drive/ Genesis games, I'm pretty sure you mean Red Zone, not Red Alert.

While it does have a very fluent intro animation there's lots of other parts of the game that's really impressive too, like the indoor sections with the really great perspective shifting and the outdoor sections with the rotating map.
All while blasting some of that symbolic Jesper Kyd music.

[segarule]

While it might've not been perhaps "pushing" by most definitions.
Aladdin on the Master System did an amazing job with its parallax, even going as far as to having animated sides of the buildings, changing perspective as you move along.

This was only used in the first two levels though, skip along to 1:20.

Sadly the US sms players dont had knowledge about Aladdin. I like more the cutscenes.
I guess that not pushed the hardware limits but have beauty graphics:



Skip to 23:15.

[Gogogadget]

For the Amiga, does Chuck Rock 2 count? It doesn't have giant Amiga borders, and plays music and sound effects at the same time.

Game is pretty average though.

[Kamahl]

I wouldn't so much say it pushes the Amiga, it's more a good example of what should have been expected from the rest.

[Kamahl]

Not so much pushing a system to the limit, but pushing a technology in ways most sucked at:





Atmospheric is a word I rarely associate with FM based music.

[magicalsoundshower]

On the technical side, I find Chuck Rock 2 a bit bland as it hardly seems to replicate any of the neat graphical trickery present in the Mega Drive/Genesis version. Also, the graphics kinda look worse than the first game in places due to the massive amount of dithering they throw around.

Level-design-wise, I find it's among Core's best work when it comes to platformers, though. It has great variety and a couple gameplay gimmicks to keep things fresh through the entire game. I used to be a big fan of Core's platformer output, but I still have to admit that gameplay-wise, many of their offerings were a bit on the kinda boring side.

[Kamahl]

Chuck Rock two is their best 2D platformer, could have been Wolfchild but the broken werewolf mechanic ruins that one.

[tomaitheous]

I'm looking at that and...

...

...

...OK, I freaking give up, how the hell do they ensure they won't run out of tiles?

SMS tilemap can address up to 512 tiles. If there are 20 lemming, needing 8x16 reserved tile space.. that's only 40 unique tiles at the most. Completely doable on the SMS. And less if they share overlapping tiles.

[segarule]

How many tiles can we have?

In the most typical VRAM layout, 14KB of the total 16KB is available for tiles; that is enough space for 448 tiles. (With some tricks you can get space for a few more.)

http://www.smspower.org/maxim/HowToProgram/Tiles

[tomaitheous]

How many tiles can we have?

In the most typical VRAM layout, 14KB of the total 16KB is available for tiles; that is enough space for 448 tiles. (With some tricks you can get space for a few more.)

http://www.smspower.org/maxim/HowToProgram/Tiles

I just stated what the max tiles are; 512 (tilemap tile entry is 9bits). The tilemap can address all of vram, regardless if a portion of that is being used by the tilemap and SAT.

The screen display (or name table) is a 32x28 table, each entry comprising a
16-bit value which define the contents of each tile position on the screen.
The bits have the following meaning:

  bit 15: unused
      14: unused
      13: unused
      12: when set, tile is displayed in front of sprites
      11: when set, display tile using sprite palette rather than tile palette
      10: when set, flip tile vertically
       9: when set, flip tile horizontally
     0-8: tile definition number to use (0..511)

0-8: tile definition number to use (0..511)

[segarule]

You are correct and according with same document was said:

The screen display (or name table) is a 32x28 table, each entry comprising a
16-bit value which define the contents of each tile position on the screen.
The bits have the following meaning:

bit 15: unused
14: unused
13: unused
12: when set, tile is displayed in front of sprites
11: when set, display tile using sprite palette rather than tile palette
10: when set, flip tile vertically
9: when set, flip tile horizontally
0-8: tile definition number to use (0..511)

Alternatively, bits 0-7 can be thought of as the first byte of the pair, and
bits 8-15 as the second byte.


But Talbot completed:

The tile number is effectively multiplied by 32 by the video hardware to
provide the VRAM address of the tile definition to be displayed. Note that,
since the name table and sprite info table occupy the top section of VRAM by
the default memory mapping, it is not possible to use tile numbers above 447.
Any attempt to plot these will result in a graphical mess defined by the
current contents of the name/sprite tables!

http://www.smspower.org/uploads/Development/richard.txt

How many tiles was used in lemmings?