[ICEknight]

SoullessSentinel, on 18 October 2014 - 04:09 PM, said:

ICEknight, on 18 October 2014 - 01:44 PM, said:

MainMemory, on 17 October 2014 - 11:59 PM, said:

Yeah but the problem with 32X graphics is that they don't work like MD sprites, they can only be either in front or behind all of the MD's graphics, meaning if you want Sonic to appear between the foreground and background, like when he goes through a loop, you'd have to cover him up with sprites on the 32X side.

Wait a minute, could this be why they entirely removed the loops from Chaotix? :O

I'm still trying to decide on the best way to approach this in my port of Sonic to 32X. I don't think this is the reason loops were removed from Chaotix though, simply because I recall there are places in the game where the player appears between layers.

I've been watching a walkthrough of the game and the only places where the player sprites go behind a piece of foreground are the fake walls that turn "translucid", and the big entrances to the tubes, which are obviously sprite-based objects and sometimes move out of place depending on the scrolling, and also a couple of columns and doors in the hub area, which I guess are also sprites. The other place where the characters can go behind the foreground is when they get automatically transported to a different place in Marina Madness, but they go behind every single piece of background when that happens.

I can't believe the 32X couldn't handle such a simple thing and now I can't unsee how no foreground elements can overlap them (something that could be done since Kid Icarus on the NES, I think?)... However, since this was built from Sonic Crackers and that one did have overlapping foreground elements, I wonder if the levels in Chaotix do as well.

[Clownacy]

Didn't the 32X just grab the finalised Mega Drive image straight from the output port? I can't imagine how the 32X could do anything more in that case.

[Sodaholic]

I know nothing about how the 32X draws sprites, whether tile or bitmap based, or if it's anything like Doom where transparency doesn't exist but rather you only have solid color info while defining the shape it sits in.

Is it possible to have a transparency mask to delete parts of the sprite? I don't see why there couldn't be a dedicated "this is what we actually show" part of the VRAM, copying the unmodified sprites there as-needed while overwriting select pixels as index 0. I assumed this is what was already happening in Chaotix, but I guess not.

[KingofHarts]

IIRC there is a Sonc 1 to 32X port also... and he seems to handle loops fine there. I'll say this. Play Sonic Classic Heroes with at least 2 characters in Chaotix mode, and you'll see why they removed the loops. XD

[flamewing]

KingofHarts, on 18 October 2014 - 08:28 PM, said:

IIRC there is a Sonc 1 to 32X port also... and he seems to handle loops fine there. I'll say this. Play Sonic Classic Heroes with at least 2 characters in Chaotix mode, and you'll see why they removed the loops. XD

And this is using a completely different and much less restrictive code for the energy bands than what is present in Chaotix.

More on topic: there is (was?) a project to use the 32x's twin SH-2 CPUs to make a software VDP for the 32x; it is called SuperVDP. Of course, it ends up being only 30fps, but with 256 colors; so it might be workable for a Sonic game.

[ICEknight]

KingofHarts, on 18 October 2014 - 08:28 PM, said:

IIRC there is a Sonc 1 to 32X port also... and he seems to handle loops fine there.

But (if I remember correctly) it's using the Mega Drive for showing the sprites, so that doesn't count.

I assume that Chaotix is not using the 32X for the main characters just so they have a few more shades, but also to have all the Mega Drive palettes available for more colorful backgrounds. This also means that they couldn't get the add-on to show both the characters and the backgrounds, for some reason.

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 18 October 2014 - 09:25 PM

[muteKi]

KingofHarts, on 18 October 2014 - 08:28 PM, said:

IIRC there is a Sonc 1 to 32X port also... and he seems to handle loops fine there. I'll say this. Play Sonic Classic Heroes with at least 2 characters in Chaotix mode, and you'll see why they removed the loops. XD

Yeah, I remember at least once in Chaotix protos having gotten stuck in the loops in Speed Slider. Plus, the less said about the carnival level in Crackers and its inconsistent plane-switching the better.