40 replies to this topic

[opcode]

Out of curiosity, if you had to choose, what would be more important in a good arcade port for the ColecoVision, smooth scroll or arcade-like graphics? Lets suppose you cannot have both (what is almost always the case), would you prefer smooth scrolling but with severely downgraded graphics, or graphics that are almost arcade perfect but with "tile" scroll (like most Coleco games).

[NE146]

I dunno man.. I guess it's just something I'd actually have to "try" both versions before I could really make a concrete decision about I guess my first instinct would be to have non-scrolling but nice graphics and gameplay. But I'd also really be curious to see how a scrolling one with downgraded graphics would play as well

[Jess Ragan]

Yeah, you really can't limit yourself to one or the other. Some arcade games from the early 1980s don't scroll at all, in which case the point is moot and you can concentrate solely on the quality of the sprites. Other arcade games are largely dependent on scrolling, so it must be good for the translation itself to be accurate. If the scrolling isn't good, you get Time Pilot.

[Corby]

You have to have both! This is not out of greed. Its something these consoles lacked. They were never programmed to their full potential, but can do!

Edited by corbysatarigame, Sun Sep 20, 2009 8:29 PM.

[opcode]

Jess Ragan, on Sun Sep 20, 2009 7:58 PM, said:

Yeah, you really can't limit yourself to one or the other. Some arcade games from the early 1980s don't scroll at all, in which case the point is moot and you can concentrate solely on the quality of the sprites. Other arcade games are largely dependent on scrolling, so it must be good for the translation itself to be accurate. If the scrolling isn't good, you get Time Pilot.

Well, we can limit this discussion to games that scroll.
Time Pilot is an extreme of the spectrum of scrolling games, because the background is quite simplistic and could probably be smoothly scrolled even on the CV (other example: Rally-X). The other extreme is games like Xevious or Zaxxon, with very complex background graphics. Also, you shouldn't confuse tile scrolling with bad sprite animation, which is the case with Time Pilot. You can surely have games that scroll the background in 8 pixel increments yet the sprites could animate very smoothly and arcade-like.
What I am trying to gauge here is how important smooth scrolling is to CV users. So, for instance, going back to the Xevious/Zaxxon games, would you prefer to have those games scrolling smoothly even if that means the graphics would need to be severely downgraded, or would you prefer more faithful graphics that look very arcade-like on screenshots but scroll in 8 pixels increments?
BTW, have you checked your message box recently?

[Pixelboy]

It really depends on the game. For example, in doing a port of Bosconian to the ColecoVision, you'd need to have good multidirectional scrolling more than accurate graphics, because the proper "arcade experience" is linked to the movement across and around the game area. Same goes for a conversion of Super Mario Bros to the CV, where choppy horizontal scrolling would ruin the general feel of the game. And I'm not sure I would enjoy a "visually-arcade-accurate" version of Moon Patrol on the CV if it had choppy background scrolling.

On the other hand, for a port of Gauntlet to the CV, I would prefer good graphics over scrolling. Same goes for Gradius, where choppy scrolling is not that bad.

So really, it depends on the game.

[potatohead]

It is possible to degrade the graphics while scrolling?

This would require more code to manage the display, based on it's motion state, but hey! If the action is really good, maybe that's worth it.

[opcode]

Pixelboy, on Sun Sep 20, 2009 8:59 PM, said:

It really depends on the game. For example, in doing a port of Bosconian to the ColecoVision, you'd need to have good multidirectional scrolling more than accurate graphics, because the proper "arcade experience" is linked to the movement across and around the game area. Same goes for a conversion of Super Mario Bros to the CV, where choppy horizontal scrolling would ruin the general feel of the game. And I'm not sure I would enjoy a "visually-arcade-accurate" version of Moon Patrol on the CV if it had choppy background scrolling.

On the other hand, for a port of Gauntlet to the CV, I would prefer good graphics over scrolling. Same goes for Gradius, where choppy scrolling is not that bad.

So really, it depends on the game.

Ok, so choppy scrolling ok for Gradius but not for Moon Patrol or Super Mario... Do you mind explaining the logic or criteria behind it?

[akator]

opcode, on Sun Sep 20, 2009 9:18 PM, said:

Pixelboy, on Sun Sep 20, 2009 8:59 PM, said:

It really depends on the game. For example, in doing a port of Bosconian to the ColecoVision, you'd need to have good multidirectional scrolling more than accurate graphics, because the proper "arcade experience" is linked to the movement across and around the game area. Same goes for a conversion of Super Mario Bros to the CV, where choppy horizontal scrolling would ruin the general feel of the game. And I'm not sure I would enjoy a "visually-arcade-accurate" version of Moon Patrol on the CV if it had choppy background scrolling.

On the other hand, for a port of Gauntlet to the CV, I would prefer good graphics over scrolling. Same goes for Gradius, where choppy scrolling is not that bad.

So really, it depends on the game.

Ok, so choppy scrolling ok for Gradius but not for Moon Patrol or Super Mario... Do you mind explaining the logic or criteria behind it?

I don't agree with a lot of the examples presented so far. IMO choppy scrolling in Gradius is not OK. Also, Bosconian's graphics are already pretty basic -- I wouldn't be happy to see them get worse.

I think this all depends on how far the compromises go in either direction. I would not be interested a ColecoVision arcade port that had great scrolling with 2600-quality graphics, regardless of how great the gameplay. I expect CV graphics to be better than the 2600 or Intellivision. I guess I'm just a graphics whore

[youki]

It really depends on game.

For instance a super Mario without scrolling at all will be very good.
But if you put a chunky scroll it will be bad.
if you put a smooth scrolling but poor graphic , it won't be good also because one big part that make the identity of the game is the graphic style here.

concerning moonpatrol, it is the opposite.
You can not remove the scrolling or you will be break the "feeling" of moon patrol.
the chuncky scroll won't be good too, to be enjoyable this game must be smooth.
Limited graphic and good smooth scroll is the better comprise here . (Matt Patrol on the coleco is a very good example of that).

You have to analyse each game to find what "makes" the game and what you can remove but still keep the "spirit".

But i think , in general Visual are more important than scrolling. And it is better to not have scroll than a bad scroll.

Of course, it depends of the speed of the scroll. If the scroll is very fast, a char by char scroll can be good enougth. Looks Ghost blaster for instance.
The result is nice because the action is fast. For a slower action it won't be good.

the game i'm working on "should" (at i least i hope being able to do that i want, first tests are promising..) have smooth scrolling and good graphics. But it is possible because it is not a port but an original game , i design the game acording to hardware limitation and software routines i managed to do.

Edited by youki, Mon Sep 21, 2009 3:52 AM.

[Pixelboy]

opcode, on Sun Sep 20, 2009 9:18 PM, said:

Pixelboy, on Sun Sep 20, 2009 8:59 PM, said:

It really depends on the game. For example, in doing a port of Bosconian to the ColecoVision, you'd need to have good multidirectional scrolling more than accurate graphics, because the proper "arcade experience" is linked to the movement across and around the game area. Same goes for a conversion of Super Mario Bros to the CV, where choppy horizontal scrolling would ruin the general feel of the game. And I'm not sure I would enjoy a "visually-arcade-accurate" version of Moon Patrol on the CV if it had choppy background scrolling.

On the other hand, for a port of Gauntlet to the CV, I would prefer good graphics over scrolling. Same goes for Gradius, where choppy scrolling is not that bad.

So really, it depends on the game.

Ok, so choppy scrolling ok for Gradius but not for Moon Patrol or Super Mario... Do you mind explaining the logic or criteria behind it?

Youki already explained it pretty well.

For Gradius, choppy scrolling doesn't really interfere with the general execution of the game, so I can live with it, and having better graphics certainly doesn't hurt.

For Moon Patrol, as youki said, the smooth scrolling is what makes the game enjoyable to play. If you use choppy scrolling for the backgrounds, it removes a lot of the magic of the game.

Super Mario is a whole different story. The player essentially controls the scrolling by moving Mario forward, so if the scrolling is choppy, that will necessarily interfere with the running/jumping physics and make the controls imprecise. Two minutes of that, and I'll be running back to the NES version.

And for Gauntlet, a CV version would necessarily be mostly tile-based to begin with, so choppy scrolling would be a necessary evil which I would gladly accept.

And there you have it.

[youki]

Quote

And for Gauntlet, a CV version would necessarily be mostly tile-based to begin with, so choppy scrolling would be a necessary evil which I would gladly accept.

For Gauntlet, i think it is the kind of game we can do without scrolling at all , it should be still enjoyable. (of course writing that i just realise it would enjoyable for the one player mode only...)

[Bruce Tomlin]

When I was working on my RPG stuff, I found that even 16-pixel scrolling wasn't as bad as I expected. Then I changed to 8-pixel scrolling, and it was completely acceptable. If the scroll rate is fast enough, 8 pixels can be just fine. I never bothered to change it when porting to Genesis. At 8 pixels per vblank wait (about 2 seconds for a 40 tile wide screen), it's pretty smooth.

Moon Patrol, as someone mentioned above, might count as not fast enough. I think I could live with the backgrounds doing parallax scrolling 8 pixels at a time, but the buggy might not go fast enough to do that with the foreground. A Super Mario clone might work well, especially if you only scrolled when he got out of the middle 1/3 or so of the screen.

Edited by Bruce Tomlin, Mon Sep 21, 2009 5:52 AM.

[opcode]

I would argue that with Moon Patrol the background is simply wallpaper (though not the moon surface, but the mountains and cities), while with Gradius the player interacts with the background in many ways.
But ok, how about games like Elevator Action, Zaxxon and Xevious?

Pixelboy, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 4:34 AM, said:

opcode, on Sun Sep 20, 2009 9:18 PM, said:

Pixelboy, on Sun Sep 20, 2009 8:59 PM, said:

It really depends on the game. For example, in doing a port of Bosconian to the ColecoVision, you'd need to have good multidirectional scrolling more than accurate graphics, because the proper "arcade experience" is linked to the movement across and around the game area. Same goes for a conversion of Super Mario Bros to the CV, where choppy horizontal scrolling would ruin the general feel of the game. And I'm not sure I would enjoy a "visually-arcade-accurate" version of Moon Patrol on the CV if it had choppy background scrolling.

On the other hand, for a port of Gauntlet to the CV, I would prefer good graphics over scrolling. Same goes for Gradius, where choppy scrolling is not that bad.

So really, it depends on the game.

Ok, so choppy scrolling ok for Gradius but not for Moon Patrol or Super Mario... Do you mind explaining the logic or criteria behind it?

Youki already explained it pretty well.

For Gradius, choppy scrolling doesn't really interfere with the general execution of the game, so I can live with it, and having better graphics certainly doesn't hurt.

For Moon Patrol, as youki said, the smooth scrolling is what makes the game enjoyable to play. If you use choppy scrolling for the backgrounds, it removes a lot of the magic of the game.

Super Mario is a whole different story. The player essentially controls the scrolling by moving Mario forward, so if the scrolling is choppy, that will necessarily interfere with the running/jumping physics and make the controls imprecise. Two minutes of that, and I'll be running back to the NES version.

And for Gauntlet, a CV version would necessarily be mostly tile-based to begin with, so choppy scrolling would be a necessary evil which I would gladly accept.

And there you have it.

[youki]

Quote

But ok, how about games like Elevator Action, Zaxxon and Xevious?

For elevator Action , i think we can remove totally the scroll without problem. You just change the page when you go down. (if you really want put a scroll , you couldput a scrolling while changing the page , but i don't really like this kind of scroll personnaly).

For Zaxxon, i would say a chunky scroll is not good at all . But having playing hours on the Coleco version when i was young , back in tilme i never found this scroll chunky however it is chuncky. so i guess it depends how fast the action is and on what your are concentrated when you play. If the scroll is chuncky but other animation sprites and other not, i think it is good.

Concerning Xevious , a chunky scroll would give something like "Knightmare" on MSX . I have to admit despite this game is great , the scroll annoyed me. i would preferred a kightmare without scroll. but in case of Xevious, you must have a scroll. In that game i think i would limit the graphics to have a smooth scroll , instead of having nice graphics and chunck scroll.

[Pixelboy]

youki, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 9:03 AM, said:

Quote

But ok, how about games like Elevator Action, Zaxxon and Xevious?

For elevator Action , i think we can remove totally the scroll without problem. You just change the page when you go down. (if you really want put a scroll , you couldput a scrolling while changing the page , but i don't really like this kind of scroll personnaly).

For Zaxxon, i would say a chunky scroll is not good at all . But having playing hours on the Coleco version when i was young , back in tilme i never found this scroll chunky however it is chuncky. so i guess it depends how fast the action is and on what your are concentrated when you play. If the scroll is chuncky but other animation sprites and other not, i think it is good.

Concerning Xevious , a chunky scroll would give something like "Knightmare" on MSX . I have to admit despite this game is great , the scroll annoyed me. i would preferred a kightmare without scroll. but in case of Xevious, you must have a scroll. In that game i think i would limit the graphics to have a smooth scroll , instead of having nice graphics and chunck scroll.

For Elevator Action, I could live with a tile-aligned 8-pixel vertical scroll. It shouldn't impact the flow of the game too much.

Zaxxon is a special case for me: I am used to the choppy isometric scrolling of the CV version so much that when I play the real arcade game, I feel like I'm flying out of control into enemy territory because of the smooth scrolling! So if someone made a new CV version of Zaxxon with smooth isometric scrolling, I don't think I would be interested.

For Xevious, chunky scrolling would be acceptable, I guess, since there's little interaction between the player's ship and the background, aside from dropping bombs. But that's one game that I would prefer to see released for the V9958-equiped CV2.

[youki]

Quote

For Xevious, chunky scrolling would be acceptable, I guess, since there's little interaction between the player's ship and the background, aside from dropping bombs. But that's one game that I would prefer to see released for the V9958-equiped CV2.

Like that...

[opcode]

Elevator Action would look like this...
Elevators would move smoothly for sure, but the building... it is possible that 4 pixels increments scroll would be possible, but I would need to give it some further thinking to see if the tile table would fit.
Now Zaxxon... that is a strange game. Did you know that the actual graphic data isn't how it looks on screen? The actual graphics are horizontally flat (just like Gradius lets say), and then the arcade hardware creates the isometric view (with that 45 degrees window on screen). Pretty cool, but makes a good port really hard to accomplish (but not impossible).

Attached Thumbnails

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[Pixelboy]

opcode, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 11:29 AM, said:

Elevator Action would look like this...
Elevators would move smoothly for sure, but the building... it is possible that 4 pixels increments scroll would be possible, but I would need to give it some further thinking to see if the tile table would fit.

How about having two 256-tile pattern tables in VRAM, one at 0000h and the other at 2000h, and having the VDP going back and forth between the two? That should work for a 4-pixel increment system...

[opcode]

Pixelboy, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 12:36 PM, said:

opcode, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 11:29 AM, said:

Elevator Action would look like this...
Elevators would move smoothly for sure, but the building... it is possible that 4 pixels increments scroll would be possible, but I would need to give it some further thinking to see if the tile table would fit.

How about having two 256-tile pattern tables in VRAM, one at 0000h and the other at 2000h, and having the VDP going back and forth between the two? That should work for a 4-pixel increment system...

That would require graphics I, which, as you can see from the mockup, wouldn't work with EA. The other thing is that your system wouldn't work even in Graphics I because you are assuming that a tile is shifted alone when in fact it is shifted in different combinations with the tiles above and below it. Not trivial. Games like Matt Patrol and Jungle Hunt can afford smooth scrolling because their background graphics are limited to small blocks and deterministic. It isn't the case with EA most of the time... or Zaxxon, or Xevious...

[Pixelboy]

opcode, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 1:06 PM, said:

Pixelboy, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 12:36 PM, said:

How about having two 256-tile pattern tables in VRAM, one at 0000h and the other at 2000h, and having the VDP going back and forth between the two? That should work for a 4-pixel increment system...

That would require graphics I, which, as you can see from the mockup, wouldn't work with EA. The other thing is that your system wouldn't work even in Graphics I because you are assuming that a tile is shifted alone when in fact it is shifted in different combinations with the tiles above and below it. Not trivial. Games like Matt Patrol and Jungle Hunt can afford smooth scrolling because their background graphics are limited to small blocks and deterministic. It isn't the case with EA most of the time... or Zaxxon, or Xevious...

I do not see why it wouldn't work with graphics 2. This is vertical scrolling we're talking about, so using one half of one tile and the other half of the tile below it shouldn't be a problem. The only possible problem I see is not having enough tiles to cover everything, which is something that needs to be verified. The display engine would certainly not be trivial to design, but if it works out, the implementation should be straightforward...

[youki]

Quote

Now Zaxxon... that is a strange game. Did you know that the actual graphic data isn't how it looks on screen? The actual graphics are horizontally flat (just like Gradius lets say), and then the arcade hardware creates the isometric view (with that 45 degrees window on screen). Pretty cool, but makes a good port really hard to accomplish (but not impossible).

Very interresting indeed!. So you know now what to do... include this kind of hardware in your OM!!

Concerning EA , I do not see why it wouldn't work with graphics 2 too.

[opcode]

Pixelboy, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 1:14 PM, said:

opcode, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 1:06 PM, said:

Pixelboy, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 12:36 PM, said:

How about having two 256-tile pattern tables in VRAM, one at 0000h and the other at 2000h, and having the VDP going back and forth between the two? That should work for a 4-pixel increment system...

That would require graphics I, which, as you can see from the mockup, wouldn't work with EA. The other thing is that your system wouldn't work even in Graphics I because you are assuming that a tile is shifted alone when in fact it is shifted in different combinations with the tiles above and below it. Not trivial. Games like Matt Patrol and Jungle Hunt can afford smooth scrolling because their background graphics are limited to small blocks and deterministic. It isn't the case with EA most of the time... or Zaxxon, or Xevious...

I do not see why it wouldn't work with graphics 2. This is vertical scrolling we're talking about, so using one half of one tile and the other half of the tile below it shouldn't be a problem. The only possible problem I see is not having enough tiles to cover everything, which is something that needs to be verified. The display engine would certainly not be trivial to design, but if it works out, the implementation should be straightforward...

If you have two pattern tables one at 0000h and the other at 2000h where are you going to place the color table? Also, you cannot have 256-tile pattern tables in GII (that is actually possible using mask bits in the base registers, but that sometimes affect sprites, and aren't recommended. Furthermore, in GII both pattern and color tables can be placed only at 0000h or 2000h, so if pattern is at 0000h, color must be at 2000h)

[Pixelboy]

opcode, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 1:39 PM, said:

If you have two pattern tables one at 0000h and the other at 2000h where are you going to place the color table? Also, you cannot have 256-tile pattern tables in GII (that is actually possible using mask bits in the base registers, but that sometimes affect sprites, and aren't recommended. Furthermore, in GII both pattern and color tables can be placed only at 0000h or 2000h, so if pattern is at 0000h, color must be at 2000h)

Ah, okay, I thought it was possible to set the start of the color table elsewhere in VRAM. I stand corrected.

[opcode]

Pixelboy, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 1:48 PM, said:

opcode, on Mon Sep 21, 2009 1:39 PM, said:

If you have two pattern tables one at 0000h and the other at 2000h where are you going to place the color table? Also, you cannot have 256-tile pattern tables in GII (that is actually possible using mask bits in the base registers, but that sometimes affect sprites, and aren't recommended. Furthermore, in GII both pattern and color tables can be placed only at 0000h or 2000h, so if pattern is at 0000h, color must be at 2000h)

Ah, okay, I thought it was possible to set the start of the color table elsewhere in VRAM. I stand corrected.

Yep, unfortunately we cannot use that. But it would have been very useful if TI had included an extra mode like that...
But as you said, perhaps with some smart tile table definition we could reach a good compromise and have 4 pixels scroll. We can try that next year, the game code looks simple.
You know, there is a couple of games that I keep planning to port, but never really start because they present some very challenging dilemmas.
- Galaga - graphics over gameplay, gameplay over graphics, not to flick and go monochromatic and to flick and go multicolor, that is the question...
- Moon Patrol - Smooth scroll with simpler, less colorful graphics x choppy scroll (at least for the background) with arcade-like graphics. There are other challenges too, like reduce general sprite flickering using bg graphics as sprites and such. Moon patrol is my all time favorite arcade game, I still need to take the courage to start it.