Hello,

I played Vscreen the other day, and I was so amazed by the speed of the scroll.
Screen 4,
but 2 independant scrolls (foreground and background) is fantastic.

I know how to make a full screen scroll, but do you make 2 scrolls at the same time....????

Simple: Second scroll is a "fake"

It's made of a repeating pattern (1 char) being redefined in sync with the main scroll.

Something like this

AAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAA

You shift the GFX of the pattern A in any direction and voila, you got a second layer scroll

like the stars in level1 of spacemanbow !!??

do you see a way to do this in screen 5?

Yeah, except in Space Manbow I think may be using more than one pattern...

For Screen 5 it's possible also. Try the demo of "Total Parody" or simply ask Artrag how he does it

norakomi: *if* I would go as far as making a smooth shooter, like Space Manbow (or Hydefos), I would *always* pick screen 4. Screen 5 is nice for RPG's, Aleste-style shooters, Nyancle racing, Columns, etc. e.g. things that either don't move the whole screen, *or* only move the screen vertically. Screen 4 is fast because it's a pattern-mode.. you can update the whole screen per int if you want. This why Space Manbow (and Hydefos, Psycho World) move in two directions so easily and fast.
Because you use patterns in sc4, it's easy (because you've plenty o' time) to update some patterns to 'fake' multilayers. If done well, it does look impressive.. level 1 of Space Manbow is proof of that.

wolf_: what you tend to forget here, is that screen4 is a pain in the * to make proper drawings for. One really needs to be an graphics artist to actually produce something reasonable at all.

"SCREEN 4 -- Only for ambitious people[tm]"

@norakomi
Actually magoo's webpage has a nice example of 2 level scrolls (in sc5) from my (still) ongoing TP project.
If you like it, I can try to explain you the details, but keep in mind that multilayer scrolls in scr5 squeeze a lot the VDP and the Z80.

[D-tail]

And yet, Space Manbow's gfx belong to the best-ever on MSX ... it's not impossible to do anything good, but on the other hand, show me a scener who can do better, more innovative gfx on sc5. Just because sc5 offers more pixels for your money doesn't mean that creating gfx is easier.
But then again, what choice do you have? If you do an RPG, allright, pick sc5 then.. but for a smooth shooter, in which the whole screen is moving... what choice do you have?

wolf_, it is hard but not impossible, look at magoo's web page for my routines in sc5

i downloaded them and runned total.ldr,
but after the (cool wave-) intro (all done with r#23???),
the computer reboots....

but anyway,
could you reveal a bit about your way of multilayerscroll in screen5???

artrag: impressive! however, are you on full v9938-usage already? Because a game is obviously more than just a scroll-routine..

I revealed much more that a bit in
http://www.msx.org/forumtopic5032.html
moreover the sorces are in the package !
In any case as soon as I have time I can
explain all the trics in a forum.
Fee free to pose specific questions.

@wolf_
Not completely, but almost.
I have speare time for Z80 and v9938
the problem is that the z80 time is fragmented
and that the most of the VDP speare time
happens once each 16 frames (at pageswap).

The z80 time should be sufficient for sprite animation
and movement, the VDP time should be sufficient
for updating on-fly the sprite table and definitions.

The management of MSX music could be time critical,
thus I am going to develop only PSG efefcts
(for now, maybe on R800, in one, two years...).

Can it scroll any faster than this btw?

(the background layer wasn't very convincing btw )