Very nice in theory, but I highly doubt the TMS could cope with that with its current performance power, and there *are* situations in which foreground and background colors really could have a meaning to a game, tho this is prolly rare.

I would like to have 4 colors per character. Instead of using 6KB for 1bpp characters and 6KB for color assignment as in screen 2, simply use all 12KB for 2bpp characters. Splitting the screen up into three character sets could be optional as well, so really just 4KB for 256 characters. Then it needs a palette, with at least 4*4 colors for the background (like the NES) and the first 64 characters in the set could use the first 4 colors, characters 64-127 would use colors 4-7, etc. And with more than 15 available colors the sprites wouldn't have to use the same colors as the background (see those unused bits in the color byte in the sprite attributes table)

scrolling would be nice too...

wolf, I do not think this would be so difficult to be done,
anyway
another really important feature missing in screen 2 is the
possibility to use the s.c. hybrid modes having the possibility of
relocating the tilest freely in the vram.

Actually the VRAM can hold up to 4 complete tilesets
let's say 3 tileset plus sprites and the rest

Having only one active tileset, why we cannot swap freely among
the available tilesets already in vram?
Why we cannot point the tilesets freely in vram?

This would help a lot games, for scrolling and animations.

if i am not wrong tms9918/29 has surimpose line out(Y*) it is then possible to have to vdps whose video are surimposed are even aded/mixed for more color tones
This means also twice the number of sprites...
In the msx io table the second vdp in already specified at 0x90 and 0x80 base address.

yes, this is also how VDU works

Quote:

Having only one active tileset, why we cannot swap freely among the available tilesets already in vram? Why we cannot point the tilesets freely in vram? This would help a lot games, for scrolling and animations.

I agree with you artrag: little things in vdp that could made a big difference.
For example also the pattern/color table: why must be fixed to 0 or 8KB the start address? Let the programmer move freely in memory to achieve tricks. If a programmer is so stupid to overlap patterns with color data is another story.
Even take into consideration that on screen 1 pattern tables are more fine grained.

1) Since the eighties I have wished the same as every MSX owner: MORE visible sprites per row. MSX should have at least MSX2´s eight per row. Thought even 8 is not enough to make flickery free game when making games with many big sprite-characters in same row, like Deathwish 3. Surely most companies liked to port games from Spectrum as MSX didn´t have more than just 4 sprites per row. I think sprites could still be monochrome (thought C64´s multicolour sprites with halved resolution would be nice to have) and 32 16x16 sprites are enough as long as it is possible to show more than just 4 sprites per row. But I understand that in the end of the seventies TMS´ 4 sprites per row were really enough for ANYTHING!


2) I think screen 2 IS enough to make wonderful looking games as long as we can have more than 4 sprites per row. But anyway it would be nice to have one more screenmode, which has more colours at cost of resolution, like Amstrad and Commodore 64 have. But when thinking more "serious" use of MSX, not just gaming, instead of more colours, MSX should have had monochrome 80 column screenmode like Spectravideo SVI-738 X´Press has. People who were buying computers for business use, didn´t do anything with MSX´s poor 40 column text mode and bought better machine instead.

As i see, sprites enhancements are the most desired feature:
What i'm asking myself is: the msx engineers used tms when creating msx1: there wasn't another commercial chip available in those days with a great sprite handling?
Why texas instruments never create a successor for TMS?

(Please do not see the Commodore VIC-II: who created it said that the sprites idea in VIC was taken from TMS)
Anyone knows about this issues?

Quote:

2) I think screen 2 IS enough to make wonderful looking games as long as we can have more than 4 sprites per row. But anyway it would be nice to have one more screenmode, which has more colours at cost of resolution, like Amstrad and Commodore 64 have. But when thinking more "serious" use of MSX, not just gaming, instead of more colours, MSX should have had monochrome 80 column screenmode like Spectravideo SVI-738 X´Press has. People who were buying computers for business use, didn´t do anything with MSX´s poor 40 column text mode and bought better machine instead.

I tend to agree to this, but instead of many more sprites on a row, add that nice multicolor OR attribute thing and a palette. In other words, screen 4

Quote:

2) I think screen 2 IS enough to make wonderful looking games as long as we can have more than 4 sprites per row. But anyway it would be nice to have one more screenmode, which has more colours at cost of resolution, like Amstrad and Commodore 64 have. But when thinking more "serious" use of MSX, not just gaming, instead of more colours, MSX should have had monochrome 80 column screenmode like Spectravideo SVI-738 X´Press has. People who were buying computers for business use, didn´t do anything with MSX´s poor 40 column text mode and bought better machine instead.

Quote:

I tend to agree to this, but instead of many more sprites on a row, add that nice multicolor OR attribute thing and a palette. In other words, screen 4

D-tail, are you talking about sprites or about screen mode things? (I am sorry, cannot remember all MSX2 charasteristics properly...)

Quote:

As i see, sprites enhancements are the most desired feature: What i'm asking myself is: the msx engineers used tms when creating msx1: there wasn't another commercial chip available in those days with a great sprite handling? Why texas instruments never create a successor for TMS? (Please do not see the Commodore VIC-II: who created it said that the sprites idea in VIC was taken from TMS) Anyone knows about this issues?

One possible reason why texas instruments never created a successor for TMS could be their engineers and/or bosses may have thought their product is good enough already! Maybe not, but it´s possible! Or maybe they didn´t care too much about what they were doing after creating TMS?

Could we have here "complete" list of commercial chips of those days which can handle sprites?

MSX and samelike computers had TMS.

Commodore (64) had VIC-II.

Atari had.. oh, sorry cannot remember surely it´s name anymore.. I think player-missile graphics were controlled by Antic & CTIA chips? anyway, at least Atari´s computers (was it 600 or 800 which had sprites) had player - missile graphics. Missiles are bit strange but very intesting thingies... as they are ONLY 2 PIXELS WIDE!!!! but they are hundreds of pixels tall!!!! (taller than Y coordinates, so part of missile is hided all the time!!) Missiles can prove easy way to make vertical scrolling!

Videogames also had sprites or sprite like things.

Philips Videopac G7000 (Odyssey2) was very interesting machine as it had 4 sprites + ability to use it´s ROM characters just like flicker free sprites!!! Imagine you could use MSX´s characters (alphabets, numbers etc..) just like sprites!!!!!

Some history facts of contemporary VDPs:

- The Atari Chipset was designed by Jay Miner about 1977-1978, the Atari 400 was launched in 1979. It was the prototype of the future Amiga chipset.
- The 6560 VIC-I chip was created in 1978; but not used until 1980 in the VIC-20.
- Texas developed the TMS9918 during 1978, launching the TI-99/4 in 1979. The A revision, the one present in MSX computers, was finished during 1980. The TI-99/4A was launched one year after.

I'm not counting the other popular CRT controllers as the Motorola's 6847 (Tandy) or 6845 (Acorn, Amstrad).

Keeping in mind all of that and all the TMS9918 drawbacks, I believe that it's a really good VDP for its time (1980). Of course in 1982 was aging badly...

Quote:

One possible reason why texas instruments never created a successor for TMS could be their engineers and/or bosses may have thought their product is good enough already! Maybe not, but it´s possible! Or maybe they didn´t care too much about what they were doing after creating TMS?

I really believe that Texas dumped all their computer investments after the crack of its TI-99/4A production line. Although more VDPs came out of the brains of TI engineers (the TMS3556 for example), there was no more interest on create their own computers.

You see, MSX could use the SMS VDP, which - although not suitable for a computer (but suitable for a videogame) has very nice sprites and even split screen by hardware! That technology was available when MSX1 was launched, but unfortunaly we were presented with msx1 vdp

I think the main reason a VDP with faster VRAM access and more sprites wasnt used was just that: MSX wasnt ment to be a video-game, but a computer!

Well known main reason is that better VDPs cost more money = LESS PROFIT! And it´s well known fact japanese wanted to make ChEaP computer for EVERYONE!!!! And to make cheap computer for everyone, you must carefully select parts to prevent overpricing. If they had selected more pricey parts to MSX, resulting computer would have been costed MORE and that means less people have possibility to buy MSX = BAD for Nishi´s world conquering ideas!

Someone may say, if japanese just had used SMS or MSX2 technology for MSX and mass produced it enough, prices could have been low enough, but then you forget the fact that MSX was mass produced computer already! And it took about TWO YEARS to mass produce enough MSXs to sell them to Europe and USA, and still they were NOT the cheapest computers around when they arrived to Europe!!!! Not even japanese used OLD seventies technology for MSX to cut manufacturing prices.... now imagine how much MSX would have costed if japanese had used modern technology?

If Japanese just had used SMS or MSX2 technology for MSX in 1980,
now, in 2008, we would have jet MSX computers (maybe MSX8) instead
of Playstations and Xboxes.

Commercially, TMS VDP and low (and hard to locate) RAM killed the MSX1.
(SW tended to use less resources to widen the possible user base)
The average MSX1 was outdated wrt competitors already in 1982.
(C64 had better graphic, due to scrolling and to the default 64Kram,
sorry, I'm just honest).

MSX2 arrived too late and with too few improvements to allow MSX win
its battle.
(no HW scrolling, only 3,5MHz...)