this is all what you can see by now...
http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i135/hue75/NPCtest.png

Looks well, but so far I see only one character (2 sprites) per floor, so there's no artistic problem yet.

I cannot unveil too much, all I can tell you is that the option 2)
you mentioned (color sprite + black outline sprite) can be implemented
in many ways, and that the one we adopted exploits ALL the info
provided in S0 by the VDP.
Now you have all the pieces of the puzzle
the solution is for December 2007

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Quote: (What will be msx without sprite flickering?) A better machine! Nothing folklore, it's just darn irritating when sprites can't have black outlines on a colored background (like in MoG).

Only joking wolf... the msx sprite limit (msx 1 and 2) is IMHO the MOST limiting factor in making games for msx.

However, to achieve a not-so-disturbing 4 multicolor sprites on scan line a valid tecnique could be those in dvik sprite mux routine . Dvik manages a so-called logical sprites in a group of 4 so when the flickering occour you do not get strange orrible things on video, such as a half of sprite flickering and the upper part perfectly displayed...

Another good tecnique, (see ChoroQ) is to make use of two HW sprites per logical sprite one representing the even and one representing the odd planes, assigning the border outline to even planes and the sprite body to the odd planes.
This way when you have to do flickering, you have a frame with only the sprite border showed and another with only the sprite body showed. Because they are swapped at 25hz, the eye is not so disturbed from this.


Please look at choroQ, the main charater is a car with two sprites, one for body, the other for wheels: the first time i've played it i've almost not noticed flickering. I was so surprised of the result that i asked myself, " How could those people got five sprites on scanline without flickering?". Really the flickering were here, but almost invisible.

Try choroQ and let me know what do you think about this tecnique.

hmm.. I don't seem to have pudding for lunch, but in order to test the pudding, can you send it to my puddingbox?

(also couldn't spot it in the puddingarchive, unless I overlooked it ofcoz)

check mail...

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wolf_ 1) msx2 sprites are a bit better than those on msx1, but they are absolutely crap w.r.t. color management (it is a nightmare, more than 24 bytes of I/O each time, msx2 VDP designers should be hanged)

the problem is the same: they had to maintain the compatibility with the very poor msx1 vdp, so they do not replaced the old sprite engine, they only enhanced a bit the existing... IMHO the sprite engine should be totally redesigned in msx2 modes...

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2) in msx1 flickering can be controlled using S0 information on which plane is off

Also in msx2... but is constly..

In The Cure I just used all the sprites in the player and used tiles for enemies. Sure it is not as smooth but I doubt you can get 8 skeletons on one row and still make the flicker un-noticeable.
The thing I am currently working on uses the same apprough, but a improved. Jurky as hell, but who cares the stills are great.

One thing that bugged me a bit in The Cure was exactly the fact that with tile enemies you didn't have a real limit, as with sprites. when climbing stairs in VK there was usually a limit for those purple witches so there was a chance to actually reach the higher platform. But in TC they just kept coming and coming. So, in VK this sprite limit at least contributed to the gameplay/balance.

Well, you are right, I got a bit carried away there
I promise to pay a little bit more attention to that in future games.

@wolf: have you seen choroQ?

Quote:

Quote: (What will be msx without sprite flickering?) A better machine! Nothing folklore, it's just darn irritating when sprites can't have black outlines on a colored background (like in MoG).

Hey Wolf, what about the single color sprites in La-Mulana? Are those also irritating or did they choose better colors? (Thats the main problem with MoG imho).

pingpong: yes. Well, the trade-off for this technique is the slight flickering of course.

huey: the background of L-M is usually dark'ish, whereas MoG's background is very colored. A single color sprite could do well as long as they show-up clearly in front of the background. It's why lots of MSX1 games have a black background: so that a single color sprite looks ok.

Quote:

pingpong: yes. Well, the trade-off for this technique is the slight flickering of course.

Yes, but the flickering routine could be made better, refreshing at 25hz (i think it's not at 25hz on choroQ)

for me it's a lot better than making ENTIRE SPRITES DISAPPEAR. obviously you can only work with a maximum of 4 sprites/scanline (multicolored)

This tecnique could not be used (ARGH!) on msx2 with the or-ed color trick

It'll happen sometime after the TurboDuo version of Cave Story.

Porting a game that's as massive as La-Mulana is a lot of work, especially to a system where everything has to be in assembly.