i've played undeadline on a plain msx2. When there are a large number of sprites on screen (not only when the 8 / row sprite limit is reached) the game slow-down.

I cannot understand why writing 128+512 bytes on the worst case could slowdown the game.

Plus on the turboR the slowdown should not be more noticeable? outs to vdp are more slow...

I think there is a bad coding, and it's not a question of VRAM input/output the main reason of the slowness
or i'm wrong?

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Plus on the turboR the slowdown should not be more noticeable?

good question, i was wondering the same. Does anyone have a turbo r ?
^__^
would you like to test undeadline on it ? and tell us if there is a slowdown when there are a lot of sprites in screen ?

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I think there is a bad coding, and it's not a question of VRAM input/output the main reason of the slowness or i'm wrong?

no your not wrong !!
It is bad coding.
A while ago i started making changes in the program, also because i wanted to speed up the game.
the game ran smooth when I disabled the music & sfx routines

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Quote: Plus on the turboR the slowdown should not be more noticeable? good question, i was wondering the same. Does anyone have a turbo r ? ^__^ would you like to test undeadline on it ? and tell us if there is a slowdown when there are a lot of sprites in screen ? Quote: I think there is a bad coding, and it's not a question of VRAM input/output the main reason of the slowness or i'm wrong? no your not wrong !! It is bad coding. A while ago i started making changes in the program, also because i wanted to speed up the game. the game ran smooth when I disabled the music & sfx routines

I know on tr there is no slowdown. But are the sound effects or music routine so much cpu intensive ? strange. Would be fine to test in psg-only mode...

i dont think the sfx and music are that cpu intensive,
its just that the whole game is cpu intensive,
and when you leave the sfx and music out,
then the game runs smooth.

Would be interesting to see if and where things can be optimized. GuyveR, for instance managed to squeeze a whole lot of performance boost out of the Kinrou5 driver for use in GuruLogic. I don't know how well things were coded @ T&E Soft's, but if it can be done... IPS patch anyone?

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i dont think the sfx and music are that cpu intensive, its just that the whole game is cpu intensive, and when you leave the sfx and music out, then the game runs smooth.

@norakomi: have you and idea of what kind of algorithm the game use to manage sprite flikering?
If they use a circular list then my be somewhat inefficient because rotating sprites would also affect the color attributes table of sprite that is 16 bytes for each sprite

I've done another test: i'm not sure, but appear that the flickering routine starts when there are a number of sprites on screen, not when the vdp signals an overflow condition. In this way it's more complicated to find where the problem is.

Just out of curiosity, what is the "Kinrou5 driver"??

Kinrou5 is a music format (MML, as far as I know). Can be made with MuSiCa. I recall now, I've got tons of this great music (Japanese scene (pre'95) music) lying around on my HDD somewhere. I really should connect my MSX sometime again, for good old time's sake ^_^

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Just out of curiosity, what is the "Kinrou5 driver"??

just a curiosity, what does have to do with the undeadline game?

Not much, I think. But the Kinrou5 driver was pulled into this discussion because of similarities in performance gain. Probably T&E Soft used a proprietary sound driver for their Undeadline musics and sounds.

Could Undeadline's soundtrack by chance have been edited/created using Musica?

If we can trust the staffscroll, the music was "arranged" by someone. (Forgot to add the flash powder to my photographic memory)

@D-Tail: Do any of those songs have titles like "YOAKE 2", "HECTOR87", "MADNESS", "MISSING LINK"?
Been looking for (working versions of) those for a long time.
Great songs!!!

It is very unlikely that the Undeadline soundtrack was composed in Musica (ASCII), I expect T&E Soft to have used in-house tools. Still, that does not change a fact that FM/PSG replay routine might be suitable for some serious optimization.

Well, on what platform or using which program the music is "composed" is a totally different story.
For all I know, the music was composed by a new age Japanese hippy outing his first cry out to the world or some misanthropic Russian guy who lives in a cave.

It was a mere loose speculation about the file format of the bgm's.
Why exactly would it be unlikely for T&E Soft to have used Musica?
If I'm not mistaken, this program has been professionally used for development of MSX software in Japan, besides mainly Synthsaurus perhaps.

AFAIK, the music was not originally conceived for the MSX system; maybe not even especially for the Undeadline game.

Althought I suspect the "arranging" (which the staffscroll refers to) may have been a rehash from a PC-9800 soundtrack.
It could have been a raw data conversion and additional modification, as well as a total re-arranging from scratch from some "original" songs.

Anyway, didn't mean to get off-topic like this...

But maybe finding out how the data is stored is the key to resolving the Slowing-Down Mystery!

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Why exactly would it be unlikely for T&E Soft to have used Musica?

Hehe, that's because those two companies were/are opponents on the software/games market. I'll browse through my music section sometime... I hope I can help you!