Apogee's Hocus Pocus (parallax scrolling in 256 colors)
Matt Miller
Since I've been working on a 4-way smooth scrolling engine in mode x and
having all sorts of problems, I was amused to see the scrolling engine in
Apogee's latest and greatest--the parallax thing is real neat, and the
horizontal scrolling is smooth, but take a look at the vertical scrolling--
block by block!
Saidra
MAT...@CEDAR.GOSHEN.EDU (Matt Miller) writes:
>>Apogee's latest and greatest--the parallax thing is real neat, and
the
>>horizontal scrolling is smooth, but take a look at the vertical
scrolling--
>>block by block!
Yeah the vertical scroll could have been a one pixel scroll with a
little work. The engine definately seems fast though, probably runs
great on a 386sx 16.
sl...@cc.usu.edu
Oh, GIVE ME A BREAK! The horizontal scrolling is anything BUT smooth. What is
smooth? Smooth is when you use the pel pan register to move the display a
PIXEL at a time.
Joshua Jensen
Watch for Epic's upcoming Jazz Jackrabbit...
Adam Wiggins
>the
>>>horizontal scrolling is smooth, but take a look at the vertical
>scrolling--
>>>block by block!
>
>Yeah the vertical scroll could have been a one pixel scroll with a
>little work. The engine definately seems fast though, probably runs
>great on a 386sx 16.
I haven't played this one but I have played Duke Nukem II and
Halloween Harry, both by Apogee. Both have parallax scrolling in
256 colors, nearly full screen, and it seems pretty smooth to me.
But this isn't anything terribly new; hell, the cut screnes for Wing
Commander and Ultima 6 both had full screen, 256-color parallax
scrolling.
...Boone
Patrick E. Hughes
Now let's think this through...
Scrolling at 1 pixel/frame on a high-speed 60fps game would mean:
320pixels/60frame = >5seconds to scroll one screen length??
Wow, imagine it taking your little dude 5 seconds to walk from
left to right in this scroller! Boooringg.
Back to the basics here, is it fun?
--
Design, Development, and Custom Programming for Computer Entertainment.
dyst...@netcom.com "I play the game for the game's own sake."
(310)376-5431 Sherlock Holmes
Matt Miller
>> horizontal scrolling is smooth, but take a look at the vertical scrolling--
>> block by block!
>PIXEL at a time.
The horizontal scrolling is 8 blocks at a time, but consider that it
scrolls everytime you move. If it were less than that, the character
would move too slow. For all practical purposes, this is "smooth".
Especially when you've got a parallaxing background scrolling 4 pixels
at a time simultaneously.
>Watch for Epic's upcoming Jazz Jackrabbit...
game. :)
Saidra
(Patrick E. Hughes) writes:
>Now let's think this through...
>Scrolling at 1 pixel/frame on a high-speed 60fps game would mean:
> 320pixels/60frame = >5seconds to scroll one screen length??
> Wow, imagine it taking your little dude 5 seconds to walk
from
> left to right in this scroller! Boooringg.
>Back to the basics here, is it fun?
Hang on a second! If you could pull off a 1 pixel scroll, you would
notice the difference in smoothness! Even if your character moves at
8 pixels at a time the slowing down and speeding up could be done in
a 1 pixel increment to ease any choppiness whatsoever. In fact I did
a scrolling engine which was 1 pixel and it was gorgeous! Too bad it
was a direct video dump in mode 13h and crawled on anything less than
a 486 VLB. But still the 1 pixel scroll was very nice. One game
that does one pixel scrolling is Vikings for the PC. Very impressive
(also, this game appears to use a high scanning rate which could be
original Mode X or 320x240) and worth examining.
--Raoul Said
Your Name Here
>Hang on a second! If you could pull off a 1 pixel scroll, you would
>notice the difference in smoothness! Even if your character moves at
>8 pixels at a time the slowing down and speeding up could be done in
>a 1 pixel increment to ease any choppiness whatsoever. In fact I did
>a scrolling engine which was 1 pixel and it was gorgeous! Too bad it
>was a direct video dump in mode 13h and crawled on anything less than
>a 486 VLB. But still the 1 pixel scroll was very nice. One game
>that does one pixel scrolling is Vikings for the PC. Very impressive
>(also, this game appears to use a high scanning rate which could be
>original Mode X or 320x240) and worth examining.
It is fairly simple to do single pixel scrolling using a tiling system,
and a virtual screen 1 tile larger than your screen...Parallax would
probably give loads of hastle here. What I want to know though is
when scrolling the screen, if I achieve 1 pixel/frame it looks
gorgeous, but if things slow down to a point where things are updating
every 2 frames, then you I get a nasty shadowing/blurring effect.
I sync to the vertical retrace so thats not causing it.
Does anyone know what I'm on about? And is it possible to kill this
shadowing effect since I doubt I'll manage 1 pixel scroll/frame when
other things are added.
Steve.
Martijn Dekker
:
:>Hang on a second! If you could pull off a 1 pixel scroll, you would
:>notice the difference in smoothness! Even if your character moves at
:>8 pixels at a time the slowing down and speeding up could be done in
:>a 1 pixel increment to ease any choppiness whatsoever. In fact I did
:>a scrolling engine which was 1 pixel and it was gorgeous! Too bad it
:>was a direct video dump in mode 13h and crawled on anything less than
:>a 486 VLB. But still the 1 pixel scroll was very nice. One game
:It is fairly simple to do single pixel scrolling using a tiling system,
:and a virtual screen 1 tile larger than your screen...Parallax would
:probably give loads of hastle here. What I want to know though is
:when scrolling the screen, if I achieve 1 pixel/frame it looks
:gorgeous, but if things slow down to a point where things are updating
:every 2 frames, then you I get a nasty shadowing/blurring effect.
:I sync to the vertical retrace so thats not causing it.
:Does anyone know what I'm on about? And is it possible to kill this
:shadowing effect since I doubt I'll manage 1 pixel scroll/frame when
:other things are added.
:Steve.
:
everytime i read about 'smooth' scrolling on PC's i cant help wondering
why there is no hardware support for smooth scrolling (as the C64 has).
Same holds for hardware support for sprites (as the C64 has). Why is
that PC's (read: x86 machines) do everything on the CPU? never understood
that. Look at any other machine: you will find lots of chips which
do parts of the whole, therefore the CPU doesn't need to run 100 Mhz (or
what have you). Programming becomes more easy, your graphics faster,
your machine cheaper.
on hocus pocus: funny game, played it a few days ago. the smooth scrolling
is not smooth.
--
Martijn Dekker +----------------------------------------------+
University of Amsterdam | member of PFF-software developers |
department of Mathematics +----------------------------------------------+
mail: mde...@fwi.uva.nl, 2:280/706...@fidonet.org, 90:500/104...@nest.ftn
Adam Wiggins
>:>notice the difference in smoothness! Even if your character moves at
>
>:and a virtual screen 1 tile larger than your screen...Parallax would
>:probably give loads of hastle here. What I want to know though is
>
>why there is no hardware support for smooth scrolling (as the C64 has).
There is. Many games use it, such as The Lost Vikings, Goblins 3,
Lemmings 2, etc...the only problem is that you can only use it for
scrolling static backgrounds. We're speaking of parallax scrolling
which looks much nicer but is not at all static, and requires a lot
more memory space and is not supported specifically by the
hardware.
>Same holds for hardware support for sprites (as the C64 has). Why is
>that PC's (read: x86 machines) do everything on the CPU? never understood
*sigh* That's what makes them versitle. That's why they can both
play games and do serious work. That's why they became the
standard, depspite being inferior in all other ways.
>that. Look at any other machine: you will find lots of chips which
>do parts of the whole, therefore the CPU doesn't need to run 100 Mhz (or
>what have you). Programming becomes more easy, your graphics faster,
>your machine cheaper.
The PC was never designed for graphics or games in general. It was
designed to be a general purpose "serious" machine. It's just that
people wanted to play games without having to run out and buy a
whole new computer. Thanks to the flexibility of the periphrials,
pretty soon better graphics, sound, joysticks etc became availible.
>on hocus pocus: funny game, played it a few days ago. the smooth scrolling
>is not smooth.
Haven't seen it, but Apogee has rarely been impressive on the side
of programming incredible graphics.
...Boone
gg
>>Same holds for hardware support for sprites (as the C64 has). Why is
>>that PC's (read: x86 machines) do everything on the CPU? never understood
XGA has hardware sprites (64x64?), however, that standard really caught
on, and it was designed for a mouse cursor anyway (what a waste).
>*sigh* That's what makes them versitle. That's why they can both
>play games and do serious work. That's why they became the
>standard, depspite being inferior in all other ways.
Yuppers.
>Haven't seen it, but Apogee has rarely been impressive on the side
>of programming incredible graphics.
Let's just put it this way, I was impressed (for Apogee), when they
actually used a VGA fade on their intro "Apogee" with an earth screen
that loads up *EVERY* time (annoying). They're games entertain me
about as long as it takes me to download them.
--
/~~~\ g...@superdec.uni.uiuc.edu /~~~\
( gg ) cross your eyes and align the ( gg )
\___/ the two symbols. \___/
Erik Jose Garci
Your Name Here <S.Mar...@swan.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>It is fairly simple to do single pixel scrolling using a tiling system,
>and a virtual screen 1 tile larger than your screen...Parallax would
>probably give loads of hastle here. What I want to know though is
>when scrolling the screen, if I achieve 1 pixel/frame it looks
>gorgeous, but if things slow down to a point where things are updating
>every 2 frames, then you I get a nasty shadowing/blurring effect.
>I sync to the vertical retrace so thats not causing it.
>Does anyone know what I'm on about? And is it possible to kill this
>shadowing effect since I doubt I'll manage 1 pixel scroll/frame when
>other things are added.
>Steve.
>
You see this effect because of the way our eyes work.
Normally when we look at a moving object, we see it move continuously,
not at discrete steps. But when we look at a moving object on a video
screen, we only see it one frame at a time. So as long as the object
changes its position from one frame to the next, our eyes have no
problem with it. However, if the object does not change its position
on each frame, our eyes can have trouble maintaining the illusion of
continuous motion.
Most people do not even notice this effect. In fact, you can see it
every time you go to a movie. The film is projected at 24 frames per
second, but the projector light actually flashes 48 times per second to
avoid flickering. Since the light flashes twice on each frame, you
really see the same frame twice. This is usually not a problem. But
when things are moving quickly across the screen (during a pan for
instance), you can sometimes see a "double-image" effect. It looks
like the trailing edge of the object is lagging behind. You notice it
even more during stop-motion or computer-generated scenes that lack the
normal blurring produced by moving objects.
--
Erik Garci
ga...@cs.unc.edu
A.R. Brussee
>why there is no hardware support for smooth scrolling (as the C64 has).
>on hocus pocus: funny game, played it a few days ago. the smooth scrolling
>is not smooth.
To really establish the concept of smooth scrolling on the PC's check out
Jazz Jackrabbit from Epic Megagames (coincidentally programmed by me) and
Turrican 2 from Rainbow Arts. Both are not out yet, but in heavy beta
testing.
-Arjan Brussee
digital dimensions