A mini poll:
Which features do you think the old TMS VDP lacks that if implemented would have greatly improved game quality (MAX 2 features)
Valid responses are for example: (HW scrolling, palette, fast vram, sprites)
In others words: Which is the main 2 major limits in TMS VDP that are a big problem in game quality?

speed, and sprites (more sprites per line and/or bitmap sprites)

Sprites and Palette. I wouldn't even mind a fixed palette again, but then one which has more dark shades and a few replacements:

Sprites-on-a-row should be vastly increased. I could say bitmap sprites or otherwise MSX2 sprites, but they'll have to be somewhere in VRAM which is 16KB atm. Perhaps I'd find it interesting to have an alternative tilemode in which each rect of 4x2 pixels has 2 colors and where each character has thus 8 such rects. Same amount of VRAM, but horizontally somewhat more options at the cost of vertical options.

The MSX1 VDP is late 70s technology, most features we'd want would be too costly.
But sure, I can dream:
sprites: more sprites per scanline, per-sprite hardware x/y flipping, 3 colours+transparent, sprite size of multiples of 8 up to 64*64, per-sprite option to have its priority under bg tiles
palette: see above + I want pink too , but I'd rather have palette RAM

Scrolling would be nice too, but not really possible with 16KB VRAM and Screen 2, and kinda useless without hblank interrupts (eg. statusbars)

It may be worth studying the C64 palette, seen by quite a few as the best fixed palette among the 8-bitters.

high res dot clk of 10Mhz for 80 colums text and 512x212 screen2
+1 for shades tones

First of all palette and second maybe....mmmm...hardware scroll registers.

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It may be worth studying the C64 palette, seen by quite a few as the best fixed palette among the 8-bitters

Are you kidding?

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The MSX1 VDP is late 70s technology, most features we'd want would be too costly. But sure, I can dream: sprites: more sprites per scanline, per-sprite hardware x/y flipping, 3 colours+transparent, sprite size of multiples of 8 up to 64*64, per-sprite option to have its priority under bg tiles palette: see above + I want pink too , but I'd rather have palette RAM Scrolling would be nice too, but not really possible with 16KB VRAM and Screen 2, and kinda useless without hblank interrupts (eg. statusbars)

And an ATI VIDEO CORE. PLEASE only two things

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And an ATI VIDEO CORE. PLEASE only two things

Ok, how about an ATI core with hardware nVidia compatibility

Quote:

First of all palette and second maybe....mmmm...hardware scroll registers. Quote: It may be worth studying the C64 palette, seen by quite a few as the best fixed palette among the 8-bitters Are you kidding?

I second that. The crappy c64 palette is the reason why all games look so bland. Throw in some NTSC signal and you're nearly on black and white.

1) Sprite mirroring.
Just a flag in the SAT to flip the sprite. This saves needed VRAM...

2) 3 colors per 8 pixels on a line Pattern mode.

These 2 must have been possible back in the days

how do you figure 2) ?

You'd have the normal tile and then another byte for the overlay pattern and another nibble for the color. That whole lot would take 4 bytes per line then. Sc5 is 4 bytes per line.. So you could as well have a color per pixel at the same cost ^_^

Umh, even a 128x192x4bit pixels take 12KB as the ungly screen 2

how about having 2 bitplanes - 2x screen 2 in overlay ? With the option of having sprites in front of or in between the two planes? (Like a poor man's V9990 P1 mode)

wolf, think this:

due to the fact that that the same line of 8 pixels in screen 2 has two possible
representations, there is at least 1 bit each 8 pixels that is wasted.

How use it ?

If you just assume that the first color nibble has to be lower than the second
Any violation can be used as a flag
If not, you can, e.g., take the colors of the line from a different palette