well, using r18 in scr4 implies that you waste a lot of sprites for border masking
(if you want to mask them, naturally)
in any case using r18 and multiple tile banks can be used for multiple parallax scrolling
and animated objects

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Why not just do the game on MSX2, screen4? Same speed as screen2, same implementation and with 8 sprites per line... would make things easier, not to mention less flickery

Why? You know why! We love our old MSX1s!

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In any case where is the challenge ?

The challenge is porting the whole game for MSX

Don't get me wrong, but it's a lot of challenge just to make a complete working version of the game!

Coding an engine that "can do it" it's a small step in the whole process, you still have to reproduce game logic, music, sounds, graphics...

...And the greater challenge of all, overcoming the boring parts that every project has - and that's what kills almost all the unfinished ones

And as for MSX1: I just sense this game could be much better on MSX2 than on MSX1 (graphically wise). And two things I always hated on MSX1 (some even on MSX2) games: color clash and sprite flickering

But anyways, it's up to whoever develop this

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And as for MSX1: I just sense this game could be much better on MSX2 than on MSX1 (graphically wise).

Of course, and on a Playstation 3 it would be a lot better than on MSX2

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...And the greater challenge of all, overcoming the boring parts that every project has - and that's what kills almost all the unfinished ones

This is always the biggest challenge and as you said, there is a of course a lot of other parts to the development than the gfx engine. I think its possible to do a good port to MSX1 though and that is very exciting My guess is that there will be an MSX2 port eventually as well and it will most likely have nicer gfx than the MSX1 port but as ARTRAG said, where is the challenge

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And as for MSX1: I just sense this game could be much better on MSX2 than on MSX1 (graphically wise). And two things I always hated on MSX1 (some even on MSX2) games: color clash and sprite flickering But anyways, it's up to whoever develop this

in that case develop c64 sw ...

(I hate very fat pixels, so i develop msx sw.)

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My guess is that there will be an MSX2 port eventually as well and it will most likely have nicer gfx than the MSX1 port but as ARTRAG said, where is the challenge

Well, do not over estimate msx2:

Requirements as : Screen 5 mode, omnidir scroll, no too much sprite flickering and some animated object with sw sprites are not SOOOO EASY to achieve on a msx2 v9938 based.

I agree with you that having the ability to 'circular scroll' horizontally ( v9958 like ), will make the game only a matter of game logic, because in this way i could totally eliminate hw sprites (the vdp is fast enough to manage sprites if we do not require other bitblt operations used in scrolling).

This allow us a giant, more detailed sw sprites...


In that case i say: 'Where is the challenge?'

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well, using r18 in scr4 implies that you waste a lot of sprites for border masking (if you want to mask them, naturally) in any case using r18 and multiple tile banks can be used for multiple parallax scrolling and animated objects

THE ANSWER IS NOT!

is posible to use r18 and NOT TO WAST any SPRITE FOR MASKING PURPOSES.

you only needs 48 tiles reserverd for the mask

those tiles will be at the edges left and right

only will be to redefine its patterns according of what is suppose to be in the borders.

in math

48 x 8 = 384 bytes (7 frames of 8)
48 x 16 = 768 bytes (1 frame of 8)

becuase normally you will be redefining the pattern part....
and when changes the tile to show cutted you will to redefine also the color definition.

Now, there is one thing.....

This method is not perfect because you aren't in that way doing a BLACK border.....

But to minimize the visual effect you can set the backcolor of those tiles allways black... so the borders will have only the graphics part of the "1" (at pattern) that in Gng is that way anyway.

The effect will be seens like a "darkness" at the borders like the graphics being dissapearing.... very nice....

so that way you can to have a black border but with an edge where the graphics are dissapearing....

Now, defining more.....

48 x 8 = 384 bytes (7 frames of 8)

(adding that one frame of eight is needed to scroll the name-table)
48 x 16 = 768 bytes + 720 = BIG TOTAL 1488 bytes to write (1 frame of 8)

those numbers are low, doable, and greats.

and to FREE the sprites!.......

donate for SAVE THE SPRITES CAMPAIGN, BECAUSE THEY WANT TO BE THE FIRST CHARACTER!!!!.

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Now, defining more..... 48 x 8 = 384 bytes (7 frames of 8) (adding that one frame of eight is needed to scroll the name-table) 48 x 16 = 768 bytes + 720 = BIG TOTAL 1488 bytes to write (1 frame of 8) those numbers are low, doable, and greats. and to FREE the sprites!....... donate for SAVE THE SPRITES CAMPAIGN, BECAUSE THEY WANT TO BE THE FIRST CHARACTER!!!!.

i'm so affected...

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you only needs 48 tiles reserverd for the mask

Actually you most likely need less border tiles since some will be the same. Worst case is of course 48 but I'm quite sure that most game gfx won't require 48 unique border tiles.

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Quote: you only needs 48 tiles reserverd for the mask Actually you most likely need less border tiles since some will be the same. Worst case is of course 48 but I'm quite sure that most game gfx won't require 48 unique border tiles.

surelly is less... becuase I did the calculations thinking in FULL SCREEN SCROLL.

And about saving tiles because some of they can be repeated.... I thinks that will be faster to use all tiles anyway than doing the checks to seek repeated tiles.... all a search just to save 8 bytes to be write.... and as the worst case is to use all the tiles, that means that anyway you needs to reserve the 48 tiles anyway and you can't use they for other purposes...

BTW, does anyone know of a map of GnG other than the speccy one? The speccy one is quite far from the original.

@dvik

go here

http://www.adam.com.au/therevills/GnG.html

if you download this game (remake for pc) you also get .map files for the first 4 level, but you need to understand the map format

ps= graphics is almost the same achievable on msx....

I have the game actually and its a really nice remake. I thought the .map files were some binary format. Are they possible/easy to decode?

I guess what I really want is a big png of the entire game. There is one for the spectrum port but that port is not so interesting.