18 hours ago, Lorin Millsap said:
Nope. VERA is complete. The spec is set. Only bug fixes if there are any here on out.
oh, I like that answer even more!
So figure out the workaround. Part of the charm is to figure out the solution. Drop your resolution, drop your color depth. Figure something out. You make it work. You aren’t getting more VRAM. Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkWell ... After careful consideration, I really think that the available VRAM in the VERA is underscaled, according its resolution and color depth capabilities. I'm sorry to say that. I'm trying to load in a resolution of 640x480 screen 24 different sprites in 64 x 64 x 4BPP. I need 49.152 to store the data for these sprites. No problem for the CX16 RAM banks, where there is 512KB of ram available, so this can easily fit in a RAM bank. But in the vera, this is an issue. That is 3/4 of a VRAM bank in vera. So I have only 64KB left practically of VERA VRAM. If I need to add then other animated sprites, then the VRAM really becomes too small. 128Kb is not enough. I know the answer: you can scale up the screen, or, you can reduce the sprite resolution. I know, I tried first to load 24 sprites of 64x64 resolution in 8BPP. For that, you need 98.304 bytes. That is 2/3rd of the VERA VRAM! The issue is that the VERA cannot do direct addressing in the RAM banks of the CX16 itself, but through "ports" ... - One always need to copy the data into the VRAM. That drastically slows down speed in games! - One cannot load a nice tile base of let's say 48 tiles in 32x32 + 64 animated sprites of 64x64 resolution. Impossible in terms of memory, but also impossible to make games smooth. I know this message is a bit of a pain. Sven
1 minute ago, Lorin Millsap said:
So figure out the workaround. Part of the charm is to figure out the solution. Drop your resolution, drop your color depth. Figure something out. You make it work.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Hello Lorin,
I'm afraid it will be a showstopper for many. And I do understand the issue, when the team is already moving foward into production with the third prototype, after the issues were fixed with the 2nd prototype.
The VERA made my blood go faster, having seen the modes and the 640x480 resolution, but once I started to really use it in the emulator, I noticed that memory availability and memory addressing is going to be really a limitation and it really locks down on the possibilities.
Check out the attached program. Please consider carefully the feedback of your users.
Sven
Space.prg
Space.c
18 minutes ago, Lorin Millsap said:
To me the solutions are obvious. Firstly drop your resolution. Use 320x240. Secondly since your resolution is lower, drop the sprite size too. It is for you to work around the hardware limitations, not for the platform to move the goalposts for you.
You keep wanting more VRAM. I’m telling you that it can’t be done in this iteration and isn’t going to happen. You say you understand why. I don’t think you do. Say we wanted external VRAM. Ok. Doing that requires more pins than we have. How would you connect it? We don’t have the pins. Even if we did have the pins now you have to deal with timing, which means you cant just use any RAM. You either need very fast SRAM which is expensive, or DRAM with the refresh circuitry. Now all the sudden the VERA costs more than the original goals for the whole project. Now you start to understand why similar projects are in the $500-$1000 price range. I think dealing with a few hardware limitations is better than dealing with an expensive but obscure hardware platform.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
2 minutes ago, Guybrush said:
@svenvandevelde I would just like to say that even the Amiga and Atari ST games were 320*200 or something similar. So were most the PC games well into the 90's. Commander X16 is an 8-bit computer, and those were 16 or even 32-bit.
Use the 320*240 mode for games (or software in general) with loads of colors and sprites.
Use the 640*480 mode for GUI applications or with 2 or 4-bit color.
If you want more memory, fork the emulator, it should only be a couple of changes.