Wolf, don't forget that Manbow 2 is not in a pattern mode, but in screen 5. And it's damn smooth and has loads of big stuff as well, including huge enemies.
manuel: what are these large enemies made out of? A group of sprites? Or a large block-copy? In the latter case: is this large block-copy going *over* a textured background? If not: a large enemy is just a big 'screen' which moves because the screen moves.
Correct. that large plane was just 'the map', I even guess that the motors that were shooting bullets were technically the actual enemies there, the 'continuity' of the level were those clouds..
Anyway, it all comes down to:
- in screen 5 you can move the screen as a whole, and the rest will have to be sprites
- in screen 2/4 you can move any part of the screen in any direction in tile-steps
As for shooters like nemesis, when the map (the 'wall'-tiles) itself changes then you'll be using tiles. E.g. those green plants in nem2level2, the stages/blocks/whiteplatforms in nem2level3, the sun flames in nem3level1, the scars in salamander level1 etc. etc. If nothing of the map is visually and physically changing (Manbow 2, airplane in aleste2level2, etc.) then you can use a bitmap screen.
Anyway more room in rom could allow a true msx2/msx1 game
(even if the competition is going to evaluate only the msx1 specs)
Games like Kings Valley, with no or limited scroll among rooms,
could be easily adapted to have two graphic rendering modes.
Just a matter of doubling the code that builds the screen, the rest
can stay with minimal changes.
Caos Begins, is a clear example: an msx2 version would need only
few touches (and more artwork and a larger ROM natuarlly).
My idea is also the the storage of the gpx can be limited by resorting
to some trick that build the screen5 "tiles" (or 8x8 blocks) as a difference
wrt the screen 2 tiles.
I know, the result is not the best for an msx2, but far better than
simple palette adjustments.
I've thought about building sc5 tiles based on sc2 tiles, but in the end I kinda dropped the idea. Sc2 has 2 bytes per line, sc5 has 4 bytes per line. The difference is thus 2 bytes. Even if you'd be able to somehow add 2 bytes to the sc2 tile to uplift it to bitmap sc5, it'd still double your gfx data. As for KV2: this is one of the few popular games I know where a sc5 version of a sc2 game actually works without concessions..
