An msx2 version in sc4 ? F3 already goes in scr4 when possible.
even if it keeps the same scr2 engine that updates tiles at each frame....

Actually fully exploiting the 128Kvram in msx2 is possible to store up to 8 banks of tiles

If we think to a fine scrolling game 8 banks open a lot of possibilities
with no effort you can scroll all tiles just swapping tile bank....

you get up to 256 different tiles on the screen and no CPU load!

PS
vscreen uses sprites for border masking, quite a waste of resources, as sprites are precious and limited
Using bank swapping among pre-rotated tile banks is a better solution even if it has limitations in the
color use due to colorclash
I propose to use for vertical scroll the HW register, and for horizontal scroll, bank swapping.

The main reason not to use pre rotated tiles is the limitations in the colors. Using the scroll register as vscreen does, you can have two tiles next to each other with different color. With pre rotated tiles, the colors of tiles next to each other need to match.

yes
but using sprites for making borders is such a waste !
With 16x16 sprites borders take 2 sprites per line and 20-24 (!!) sprites in the SAT
(assuming a score bar of 52-20 pixels)
You stay with 6 sprites per line and just 8-12 sprites on the screen

If you use 2 colors per line (mandatory in a msx2 game) you get only
3 sprites per line and just 4-6 sprites on the screen...

IMHO this is the main limitation in vscreen and one of the reasons of
its limited success (apart the fact that it needs asm skills)

even using adjust register there is the ability to swap on the fly the tiles bank without cpu load!

ok
but with adjust register you have to mask borders!
The other possibility is leave them unmaksed as in SM,
it can be an option, if the action is fast
after a while you get used and you do not note them.
You can consider it as a true possibility in those cases.

I think the penalty of needing to mask the borders has a much smaller impact on a game than the color limitations of pre rotated tiles.

You can compare the current GnG demo with the screenshot someone (I think jonemann) did that take full advantage of the MSX colors. I think for an MSX2 version its better to use real tiles and fully use the color options.

I guess its a matter of trade off. For some games it may be better to use pre rotated tiles and 8 sprites on a scanline. For most games I think the tile colors are preferred. In the rally game for example it wouldn't be possible to have side lines (unless they are more than 8 pixels wide).

I agree on the fact that rotating screen 2 tiles worsen the color clash limitation.
This can make art and tile design very frustrating...

Never the less, the best solution depends on the kind of game you have in mind.
If you can live with only 8-12 simple sprites or 4-6 composite sprites on the screen,
than you can use set adjust and border masking.

IMHO a racing game like F3 can have just 6 cars on the screen and 3 per line;
but a shot'em up should have more than this...

I wouldn't care about moving borders at all, as long as the game is fun

Quote:

PS vscreen uses sprites for border masking, quite a waste of resources, as sprites are precious and limited Using bank swapping among pre-rotated tile banks is a better solution even if it has limitations in the color use due to colorclash I propose to use for vertical scroll the HW register, and for horizontal scroll, bank swapping.

Actually I did some attempt of a racing game "a la Lotus F3" using the Vscreen engine a few years ago and it worked quite well. You can achieve the sprite masking on the border with only 4 sprites and moving those 4 sprites down every 32 lines, it's pretty fast and still leaves you a good 28 sprites to play with.

Screen 4 is also nice because you can use the extra VRAM to store the sprites pattern (can take a lot of space if you have many rotation steps)

Maggoo and dvik: maybe you 2 should contact each other? It sounds like you two could do a very nice job in making such a game a reality

Quote:

Maggoo and dvik: maybe you 2 should contact each other? It sounds like you two could do a very nice job in making such a game a reality

I don't have much time to code lately but I have found that quick test I made and the code that goes with it... Dun have a place to upload it right now but I'd be happy to share it.

Maggoo, there's always MRC you can ask ..

Off topic:
Maggoo, what is your current website ?
It seems that the ones I know about ( http://users.skynet.be/bk263586/ and http://vscreen.hypercu.be/ ) don't work anymore.