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Post by Arkhan on Nov 12, 2019 21:11:43 GMT
it wouldn't be anything to really utilize the Super Grafx. So, right in line with the rest of the SuperGrafx library? There's more letters in SuperGrafx than there are games in the library. lol fuck.
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Post by DarkKobold on Nov 12, 2019 23:11:51 GMT
it wouldn't be anything to really utilize the Super Grafx. So, right in line with the rest of the SuperGrafx library? There's more letters in SuperGrafx than there are games in the library. lol fuck. And ironically, its most expensive title is the 2nd worst on the system. 1941 Counter Attack is pretty bland, but Battle Ace is abysmal.
G&G is spectacular and Aldynes is gorgeous. Keith Courage 2 isn't bad.
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Post by Arkhan on Nov 13, 2019 0:10:06 GMT
Alydnes has great music!
the gameplay is about on par with literally any other shooter though. Was pretty disappointed in that one.
G&G is never spectacular. Its always a frustrating bastard, but the SGX one has the best tunes.
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Post by DarkKobold on Nov 18, 2019 17:28:55 GMT
Speaking of Turbo Taps - I discovered a "glitch" in HuC. If a Turbo Tap isn't connected, the joypad will read the first joypad for every single player.
I know it's possible to avoid this - Dungeon Explorer doesn't do this.
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Post by elmer on Nov 18, 2019 20:45:33 GMT
Speaking of Turbo Taps - I discovered a "glitch" in HuC. If a Turbo Tap isn't connected, the joypad will read the first joypad for every single player. I know it's possible to avoid this - Dungeon Explorer doesn't do this. There is no way to know (with any certainty) if a Turbo Tap is being used until a button (or d-pad) is pressed on one of the joypads. When that happens, you can check to see if that same button has just been pressed at exactly the same time on another pad ... in which case you've got a mirroring of the pads, and you can figure out if the player has either no Turbo Tap, a 2-position tap, or a 3-position/5-position tap attached. That's generally seen as a "game" issue to detect, and not an "engine" issue, and it's one of the things that a game usually does when someone presses "RUN" on the game's title screen. Sure, I/we could potentially do the detection inside HuC the first time that a button is ever pressed, but that can have its own issues. Anyway, HuC doesn't do that ... so it's currently up to you.
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Post by DarkKobold on Nov 18, 2019 22:02:32 GMT
Speaking of Turbo Taps - I discovered a "glitch" in HuC. If a Turbo Tap isn't connected, the joypad will read the first joypad for every single player. I know it's possible to avoid this - Dungeon Explorer doesn't do this. There is no way to know (with any certainty) if a Turbo Tap is being used until a button (or d-pad) is pressed on one of the joypads. When that happens, you can check to see if that same button has just been pressed at exactly the same time on another pad ... in which case you've got a mirroring of the pads, and you can figure out if the player has either no Turbo Tap, a 2-position tap, or a 3-position/5-position tap attached. That's generally seen as a "game" issue to detect, and not an "engine" issue, and it's one of the things that a game usually does when someone presses "RUN" on the game's title screen. Sure, I/we could potentially do the detection inside HuC the first time that a button is ever pressed, but that can have its own issues. Anyway, HuC doesn't do that ... so it's currently up to you. Ah, gotcha. That is a really easy fix early on, like you said. Just check and make sure that the button presses of all 5 pads isn't the same, and then turn off multiread. Or I guess, the other option is to just "not care." I figured since there was a 3/6 button detect, it'd be possible to determine if a multitap was hooked up.
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Post by dshadoff on Nov 18, 2019 23:31:30 GMT
If I wanted to implement this, I would compare pad #5 against pad #1, when Run is hit. Check the joytrg, which indicates that it is a new press. There is virtually zero chance that a fifth joypad is connected, let alone hitting Run atvtje aame moment as pad #1.
EDIT: There are times when a game wants to know whether a tap is connected (i.e. in order to offer multi-player options or not); normal behaviour is to check the values across controllers, to see whether they are equal, and form conclusion about whether multiple players are available.
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Post by dshadoff on Nov 23, 2019 18:47:23 GMT
Hold on, are you sure? ... Does the TurboTap really gate that signal onto the attached pads ... that would be really interesting! Yep, it does.
This post got me thinking about whether the MB128 (or Save-kun) passes through the signalling information when communcation is directed at the memory device rather than joypads... I did precisely the test above (jam some LEDs into the controller socket), and determined that SEL and CLK are pass-through on both Save-kun and MB128 during memory read and write operations, regardless of whether the joypad return values are actually relevant.
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Post by Black_Tiger on Nov 23, 2019 19:53:23 GMT
Have fun exploring the possibilities of the SuperGrafx, it's quite a nice boost over the base PC Engine. You guys are doing a lovely job of pushing the limits of both pure-HuC, and the techniques that are built into it, and Catastropy is looking absolutely great ... but please don't think that you're really pushing the limits of the PC Engine yet, because you've still got quite a way to go, and this is only your first PCE project. The limit I'm specifically speaking of is 256 sprite pixels per scanline. Sprite drop is limiting me more than anything. That said, if I ported Catastrophy to the SuperGrafx, it would just be for a laugh, and to massively increase the enemies on screen. It wouldn't be anything to really utilize the Super Grafx.
Sorry if you've already mentioned it, but are you able to use 8 pixel wide sprite sizes in HuC?
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Post by elmer on Nov 23, 2019 20:23:11 GMT
Sorry if you've already mentioned it, but are you able to use 8 pixel wide sprite sizes in HuC? The hardware sprites are multiples of 16x16 pixels, up to 32x64, and AFAIK that's what HuC supports. I don't believe that there's any support for 8x8 pixel sprites, since the hardeware can't use them.
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Post by dshadoff on Nov 23, 2019 21:15:52 GMT
Well, you can always use a 16x16 pixel sprite with only 8x8 pixels in active use; that happens all the time. But there's no savings or specialization for that size.
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Post by turboxray on Nov 24, 2019 0:12:01 GMT
Well, you can always use a 16x16 pixel sprite with only 8x8 pixels in active use; that happens all the time. But there's no savings or specialization for that size. Unless you flip every other one, so that only 8 pixels overlap and not the full 16 (vertical) on a given line.
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TailChao
Gun-headed
I Must Eat Muffin Gear.
Posts: 68
Fave PCE Game Overall: Bonk's Adventure
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Post by TailChao on Nov 24, 2019 15:56:39 GMT
There are times when a game wants to know whether a tap is connected (i.e. in order to offer multi-player options or not); normal behaviour is to check the values across controllers, to see whether they are equal, and form conclusion about whether multiple players are available. A good place to do this is usually your title screen, specifically if you have a "PUSH RUN TO START" prompt. Capture the entire scan chain there and try to guess what's connected. Chances of a player releasing the button mid-scan are pretty low.
It'd also be possible to look for the fixed "0000" read behavior after the entire tap's chain has been read, assuming it's more reliable than I saw in my tests.
Edit : START RUN, been using the wrong controllers for too long.
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Post by Black_Tiger on Nov 24, 2019 17:18:16 GMT
So the 20 year old internet factoid about how developers figured out how to do 8 pixel wide sprites is just an urban legend?
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