NES programmers does it better? (ehi hit9918 what do you think?)

Prophet (2781)

16-04-2016, 21:02

PingPong wrote:

the nes have about the same sprites/scaline limits of msx2 sprites. plus the sprites are only 8 pix wide.
however i've observed that nes flickering routines performs better than msx ones, flikering is less disturbing.
Maybe that nes programmers does sprite mux routines better than msx one?

Are you sure? I think you haven't played enought NES games , the flickering is really terrible in a lot of games.

Van PingPong

Prophet (3586)

16-04-2016, 21:15

AxelStone wrote:

PingPong wrote:

the nes have about the same sprites/scaline limits of msx2 sprites. plus the sprites are only 8 pix wide.
however i've observed that nes flickering routines performs better than msx ones, flikering is less disturbing.
Maybe that nes programmers does sprite mux routines better than msx one?

Are you sure? I think you haven't played enought NES games , the flickering is really terrible in a lot of games.

look at castlevania

Van Hrothgar

Champion (479)

17-04-2016, 10:34

You're already mentioning that sprites are always 8px wide on NES, and IMHO that's a huge benefit. On MSX a 2px bullet will take 16px sprite width, a 24px wide character will take 32px. Due to this, the point where things start flickering may be reached a bit earlier on MSX.
Smart mixing of hardware and software sprites may put MSX2 clearly back in the lead, but has its own set of challenges...

Van hit9918

Prophet (2897)

17-04-2016, 15:41

Well which games do you have in mind.
The only thing I remember is undeadline.
I suspect it avoids colorcopy totaly and then got fragmentation bubbles in the SAT and needs a new SAT and flicker.
It flickers while 9th sprite is not hit!
The issue can be solved with C mirror bytes engine and then more MSX1 style coding.

NES gradius has more sprite flicker than MSX1.
the background colorRAM is on a 16x16 pixel basis, player bullets are sprites.
and somehow all tanks too are sprites. maybe issues with the max 4 palette sets of the background.

the NES has colorsprite masses similar to MSX2.
but when one saw MSX2 do the SNES style mario... the NES sprites too got those 4 palette sets, a harsh limitation.
I find comparison NES vs MSX1 more interesting.

Van syn

Paragon (2003)

17-04-2016, 16:05

Hrothgar wrote:

You're already mentioning that sprites are always 8px wide on NES, and IMHO that's a huge benefit. On MSX a 2px bullet will take 16px sprite width, a 24px wide character will take 32px. Due to this, the point where things start flickering may be reached a bit earlier on MSX.
Smart mixing of hardware and software sprites may put MSX2 clearly back in the lead, but has its own set of challenges...

How does that affect flicker? Flicker = due to too many sprites per horizontal line

For example 1 hero sprite with 2 enemies and 1 bullet. = 3x 24 pix wide character + 1x 2 pix bullet =
on nes: 3 times 24/8 = 3x3 sprites + 1 bullet = 10 sprites
on msx2: 3 times 24/16 = 3x2 sprites + 1 bullet = 7 sprites

Assuming 8 sprites per line limit, who will flicker and who will not?

Van hit9918

Prophet (2897)

17-04-2016, 17:36

the thing is that in a practical comparison the MSX2 has 4 colorsprites.
then the NES has the advantage when doing 24 pixel wide things.
but if pixeling allows making 24 pixels wide out of 2 mono sprites then MSX2 has the edge.
a color ball could have one color on the left side, another on the right side, a highlight in the middle.

Van syn

Paragon (2003)

17-04-2016, 18:22

oh right how many colors can NES sprites be? I looked on various sites it seems 3 + 1 transparant so basically 3 (correct me if I am wrong).

For msx you need 2 sprites for 3 colors sprites per line

in the above example this will be 14 sprites needed, meaning the NES has an edge over the MSX .

BUT with 16x16 hardware sprites instead of 8x8 the nes would have only needed 7 sprites to display 3 x 24pix wide multicolor sprites and a multicolor bullet compared to 10 times 8x8 so I really dont see an advantage of having smaller sprites.

I guess the difference is just the max colors per sprite that makes the difference.

Van hit9918

Prophet (2897)

17-04-2016, 20:13

a NES sprite has 3 colors + transparent. and there are 4 such palette sets of 3 colors that one can pick from.
the same sheme as on the background layer.
there even is a separate palette for the sprites. but with the palette sets it makes less than it sounds like.

Van PingPong

Prophet (3586)

17-04-2016, 22:05

Hrothgar wrote:

You're already mentioning that sprites are always 8px wide on NES, and IMHO that's a huge benefit. On MSX a 2px bullet will take 16px sprite width, a 24px wide character will take 32px. Due to this, the point where things start flickering may be reached a bit earlier on MSX.
Smart mixing of hardware and software sprites may put MSX2 clearly back in the lead, but has its own set of challenges...

on the other hand a sword wide 16 pix take on nes two sprites and on msx a single one...
no i was referring not to tech hw limitations, but instead about the goodness of algorithms employed on both platforms to overcome the limits

Van Grauw

Ascended (9487)

17-04-2016, 22:14

I don’t know anything about the NES or even that much about sprites on MSX (soon I will do some experiments… ), but maybe the sprite attribute table etc. was arranged differently making it easier to cycle sprite flickering in a good way…?