Vampire Killer | MSX Resource Center (Page 3/3)

Ambassador_ (10135)

26-12-2022, 20:55

PingPong wrote:

wolf_ wrote:

Personally I think I don't care much about a scrolling VK. It's not like the current VK is very annoying, neither are other page-per-page games like Metal Gear, Usas, Goemon and many others. Smooth scrolling becomes a bit of a thing for games that scroll by nature, yet do it in a jerky way because of limitations (Nem123ParoSala).

I think the tandy xt scroll is not at 1px steps. I clarify another time my question:
It is possible, using a crude VDP command to get a better result in terms of fps than tandy ?
For crude VDP command i mean a combined approach were:
- you do the main scroll with a single big hmmm copy command, scrolling the entire width of the screen minus 8px of the 'incoming' part (during the scroll)
- you draw the incoming part using some kind of vdp command or z80 to fill in the incoming part

from my estimations i figure that maybe one can reach 6-7 fps but i'm not able to estimate the tandy fps.

Not sure if your reply was actually a reply to the point I was making. The point I was making is that "scrolling" or "page-per-page" is part of the core game concept/design. If people make enhanced scrolling versions of Nemesis, then fine. But a scrolling version of VK, Usas, Goemon, Metal Gear and many other games, rather feels like turning the game into something that was never designed to be like that.

Par PingPong

Enlighted (4155)

26-12-2022, 21:00

wolf_ wrote:

Not sure if your reply was actually a reply to the point I was making. The point I was making is that "scrolling" or "page-per-page" is part of the core game concept/design. If people make enhanced scrolling versions of Nemesis, then fine. But a scrolling version of VK, Usas, Goemon, Metal Gear and many other games, rather feels like turning the game into something it was never designed to be like that.

No my reply was only focused in getting the same scroll features than others ports.
To be more on the context of your post i say that I think that a game should be more similar to the original by keeping all aspects, including the game mechanics (page flipping vs. scrolling) and vampire killer loose some kind of "fidelity" the we found in the original . Obviously this is my POV, quite different on what you exposed already

Par gdx

Enlighted (6429)

27-12-2022, 01:06

PingPong wrote:

look at nemesis or gradius, even if they were able to do fast scroll due to tile mode the number of scrolls x seconds is very low.

It's not true. The Blinking of sprites proves it's not slow.

PingPong wrote:

the screen size is not a critical factor here, the critical factor is HOW MANY TILES CHANGE between one "rendering" and the next. One could have a small screen size but with a lot of changes and perform worse than a bigger screen with a lot of unchanging areas.
this approach works fine only if the screen does not change at all in bigger areas, otherwise not.

I suggest you try. Show us your competence. ;-)

Par PingPong

Enlighted (4155)

27-12-2022, 19:42

Quote:

gdx wrote:

PingPong wrote:

look at nemesis or gradius, even if they were able to do fast scroll due to tile mode the number of scrolls x seconds is very low.

It's not true. The Blinking of sprites proves it's not slow.

the sprite blinking is not related at all with scroll speed. For example one can change the sat at every frame (50/60 times per seconds) and perform a scroll (=> nametable update) every 10 frames. So scroll is slow. looking at nemesis i do not see a lot of scroll.

Quote:

PingPong wrote:

the screen size is not a critical factor here, the critical factor is HOW MANY TILES CHANGE between one "rendering" and the next. One could have a small screen size but with a lot of changes and perform worse than a bigger screen with a lot of unchanging areas.
this approach works fine only if the screen does not change at all in bigger areas, otherwise not.

I suggest you try. Show us your competence. ;-)

There is no need to prove nothing. There are a lot of games that works like Ys. One example is valis.
There are levels when the scroll is more fast and parts where it is more slow, despite the fact that the screen area is the same. This is due to the number of tiles changing between one "frame" and the next, that means more or less vdp commands to execute.
It is a phenomenon that one could be seen in a lot of games, more or less.
The intro in valis II for example run a little faster than other levels. This is due to the more limited amount of tiles changing when scrolling.

Par gdx

Enlighted (6429)

28-12-2022, 01:45

PingPong wrote:

the sprite blinking is not related at all with scroll speed.

I'm talking about the number of frames. If sprites are not refreshed every vblank due to slowness, blinks become unbearable.

Par sunn

Expert (105)

28-12-2022, 09:08

https://www.msx.org/news/en/vampire-killer-to-castlevania-ms...

Par PingPong

Enlighted (4155)

28-12-2022, 12:46

No, sprite update could run at 60 fps in a independent way than the rest of the game. they run under interrupt at every VBLANK. There is nothing preventing this.
You can have the "game loop" running very slow and requiring 10 frames to complete and process sat updates at 60 FPS.
the slow scroll of nemesis like games is not due to slow execution it is mainly because if they were able to scroll at every VBLANK they got a scroll speed of 60 charaters/second, pratically TWO SCREEN per second, too fast.

It is true that sometimes nemesis game drop a frame working effectively at 30 fps but even with that speed scrolling 1 char at every VBLANK is extremely to fast. the scroll speed is slowed down for pratical reasons.
konami did some scrollers that works at high rate like road figher, but is this situation a high scroll speed is a requirement to emulate car driving speed.

Par SKiLLa

Expert (121)

29-12-2022, 20:35

Personally, I'd rather see a scrolling Contra version than VK