[Rika Chou]

[MoI]

I don't think grind rails would be a bad idea if used only a few times, akin to the twisting loops in Emerald Hill.

This post has been edited by MoI: 27 January 2009 - 03:58 PM

[Chimpo]

They're pathways.

The idea was to get rid of a bit of foreground so you can see more of the background.

This post has been edited by Chimpo: 27 January 2009 - 04:57 PM

[Cinossu]

• Back to top of the page up there ^

[Xeric]

[Stealth]

Fluid animation is nice, but don't get too carried away. We don't want to end up needing over a gig of free RAM just to store the global art (this includes the player sprites that're in an entirely different thread, and anything else)

[Cinossu]

Stealth, on Jan 28 2009, 01:15 AM, said:

Fluid animation is nice, but don't get too carried away. We don't want to end up needing over a gig of free RAM just to store the global art (this includes the player sprites that're in an entirely different thread, and anything else)

If they're stored as a palette'd art file, they aren't exactly going to take up that much more RAM.

[Stealth]

The term "art file" bothers me, since the sprites are stored individually, the file isn't loaded and stored in RAM verbatim. But each extra frame adds up, and the art is already stored 8bpp instead of 4, so each frame will take up twice as much space as anything in the Genesis games, and once loaded in during gameplay, they're certainly not compressed

[Chimpo]

Stealth, on Jan 27 2009, 05:15 PM, said:

Fluid animation is nice, but don't get too carried away. We don't want to end up needing over a gig of free RAM just to store the global art (this includes the player sprites that're in an entirely different thread, and anything else)

Wait, how gimped are we talking about here?

Will we not be able to reach the animation quality of the Sonic Advance games without needing a gig of ram?

[OSM]

Oh hell, if that's true I need to dumb down the poses by A LOT.

[Cinossu]

8bpp would mean 256 bytes for 1 frame. Let's say there's 11 items per character (10 rings, invincibility, speed shoes, normal shield, bubble shield, flame shield, lightning shield, super, random, 1-up, robotnik), meaning 2,816 bytes for all. With the spinning and fade per item, it's 16 frames each, meaning 45,056 bytes. Approximately 45kb of RAM for the "fluid" items.

While that's quite a large difference (1500% larger), I don't think we'll be pushing a gigabyte anytime soon.

Edit: Including each character's item multiples in there too (normal shield, 1-up) would mean 15 items (3,840 bytes), then 16 frames (61,440 bytes). Again, I don't see this adding too much overhead, to be honest.

Double Edit: If I've done the math wrong here, Stealth, please correct me. Each frame of animation for this is 16x16.

This post has been edited by Cinossu: 28 January 2009 - 05:30 PM

[OSM]

Well, that's a relief. I'll continue with the extra animations then.

[Stealth]

The math is right, and a gig is sort of an exaggeration just to illustrate my feelings on excess. Pushing like 32mb total RAM usage would be bad enough

[Overlord]

Stealth, on Jan 29 2009, 02:04 AM, said:

The math is right, and a gig is sort of an exaggeration just to illustrate my feelings on excess. Pushing like 32mb total RAM usage would be bad enough

There is a point where we realise that our PCs weren't made in 1996, Stealth. I see what you're getting at, and it's both admirable and I approve of it, but seriously? 32MB is like a tenth of what some modern games use, so I fail to see why even (picking a figure out of the air) 100MB of RAM usage for the final finished product would be the end of the world.

[Tweaker]

Overlord, on Jan 29 2009, 02:02 PM, said:

Stealth, on Jan 29 2009, 02:04 AM, said:

The math is right, and a gig is sort of an exaggeration just to illustrate my feelings on excess. Pushing like 32mb total RAM usage would be bad enough

There is a point where we realise that our PCs weren't made in 1996, Stealth. I see what you're getting at, and it's both admirable and I approve of it, but seriously? 32MB is like a tenth of what some modern games use, so I fail to see why even (picking a figure out of the air) 100MB of RAM usage for the final finished product would be the end of the world.

To be fair, I'd hardly consider 100MB appropriate RAM usage for a game whose precessors ran using... what, 16kb of work RAM? A 2D Sonic game—or any 2D platformer, for that matter—should not be taking such a ridiculous amount of RAM under any circumstances.

If the amount of RAM the game uses up is something we can control, then we should definitely try and do so. I'm all for fluidity in animation, but game performance is just as important.