Outrun style road demo MSX2

Prophet (3659)

02-09-2022, 22:30

wolf_ wrote:

Would it be sacrilege to state that, no matter how hard you try, the MSX1/2/+ simply wasn't made for Outrun games?

Definitely it won't be easy. But it's not only the MSX1/2/2+. Almost every 8-bit machine will suffer to make good Outrun-style car racing games that look good.

Road Rash on the SMS looks good because motorcycles are narrower than cars, but if you check carefully, the cars in that game also don't look exactly great. IMHO, the cars on Hyper Rally look better.

Par wolf_

Ambassador_ (10109)

02-09-2022, 22:45

wimpie3 wrote:

How did they do it in WEC Le Mans? That one has hills and corners and trees... And it's MSX1...

It's either nice looking and slow, or ugly and fast. Wec Le Mans moves somewhat fast'ish, but at the cost of visual quality. The reason why Outrun worked, why it was a hit, was because it moved fast and looked nice. It was exactly that which made Outrun work. If your system can't do that combination, it won't be Outrun. Sure, it will be Hyper Rally or something, but not Outrun.

Still interested to see how far one can stretch the G9k for this genre...

Par mars2000you

Enlighted (6492)

02-09-2022, 23:13

What about the Turbo R in R800 mode?

Par hit9918

Prophet (2932)

02-09-2022, 23:26

Metalion wrote:

You need the full tileset available in order to draw in bitmap mode, because you never know where the road will be.

You think of rendering the road in a bitmap style, but better would be to render it charset style. The problem is that the algorithm is unknown.

Metalion wrote:

and now there's 4 tiles missing from the tileset!

You need to render the road with tile number allocation, too. You already did this with the gras, you started to allocate 0 1 2 3. And then also wrote those values in the nametable. So the nametable is no more like in BASIC.

And this went superfast, the screen was full of gras in no time.
And then a lot of the road too is 8x8 pixels the same gray, if this could go in only 1 nametable write, this is the dream.

The question is how to render the rest of the road.
Maybe 8 lines of the left side of the road. And 8 lines on the right side of the road. Just in those 8x8 pixel areas.
And then one knows how many 8x8 pixel blanks to put in between them.

Par Micha

Expert (103)

03-09-2022, 10:11

wolf_ wrote:

It's either nice looking and slow, or ugly and fast.

This is true if you calculate every image realtime.

The only way I see this can be done fast (60 fps) and nice-looking is to have a fixed charset and pre-calculate or pre-draw every possible frame and put those name-tables in (mega)ROM (e.g. 256 bytes for a 1/3 screen). Like Hyper Rally or Penguin adventure, but with many more pre-drawn frames (hundreds, or maybe even 1000). I'm sure this can lead to a super-smooth race sensation, even on MSX1.

Par Metalion

Paragon (1625)

03-09-2022, 10:17

wolf_ wrote:

Would it be sacrilege to state that, no matter how hard you try, the MSX1/2/+ simply wasn't made for Outrun games?

Of course not ... Like you said, the essence of Outrun is the combination of fast rendering and good-looking graphics (and I would add great music to that mix). If we cannot achieve that (within reason), than we've missed the point. I kinda dreamed about a good-looking Outrun on MSX2, and I'm trying hard, but if I have to conclude that it's not feasible, than it's OK.

But I have not given up yet.

wolf_ wrote:

I can't recall having seen a g9k attempt though...

This is where you are wrong. A short while after begining working on the V9938 version, I started working on the V9990 version (see pages 13 to 15 of this topic). And this one is also operational, but less developed than the V9938 one.

BUT (and this is where things begin to be interesting), I had used the exact same rendering engine (bitmap based) in the 2 versions. Now, trying to do a SCREEN4 version opend my eyes to the big theoritical advantages of using a tile mode, only to get stuck by the restrictions of the V9938. But the V9990 tile mode in P1 does not have these restrictions. So it kind of open new doors ...

Par wolf_

Ambassador_ (10109)

03-09-2022, 10:47

I knew you had something for g9k, but apart from those screenshots I can't recall having seen it all moving. Got a vid to show?

Par wimpie3

Champion (435)