@@MaxOakland It was used a lot. The thing to understand with programming these old systems is that you have an economy; a finite set of resources that you can use, and re-use at the right times. For example, once a line containing sprites are drawn, the sprite can be re-used again by doing the appropriate copper list changes. These can be handled for you by the operating system using the VSprite GELs. You also can use the blitter to quickly animate large objects on the playfield, either directly via the hardware, or by using the BOB GELs. In my case, I understand explicitly how much DMA time I have, because I know how much cycle time a 16 color playfield takes to fetch, and I know that I can get all of my objects on screen using four sprites (Pacman, Blinky, Pinky; Inky), and one Bob (Clyde).
@@MaxOakland No. Because I can't guarantee vertical separation between the fruit and other objects, while maintaining the color palette for all the sprites on a line. It would be much more sensible to use a Bob (Blitter OBject) A BLiTter is a hardware circuit that does BLock Transfers of data from one part of memory to another. It's called a Blitter because the original software function which implemented this on the Xerox Alto was called BitBlt(). The Blitter in the Amiga can quickly move large portions of data from one part of CHIP (an area of memory that the custom chips can access) memory to another, while also doing logical transforms on it, such as compositing. The Blitter circuit in the Agnus chip can work much faster than the 68000 can in doing the same memory copy operations, so it is commonly used on the Amiga to do large blocks of animation using the playfield.
Its ironic, the sprite hardware approach (full height fixed width) is what Atari sued Jay Miner over infringement on work done for the 400/800 in player-missile graphics. That it was the same engineer didn't keep it out of dispute. So after the video I'm going to review De Re Atari just for amusement.
What are the rules about 16-color sprites?
Could you use 16-color sprites to cover all the colors?
you have half as many 16-color sprites, because two sprites are slammed together to produce the needed bitplanes.
@@tschak909 So you only get 4 sprites!? That's crazy. I can't imagine that mode was used too often
@@MaxOakland It was used a lot. The thing to understand with programming these old systems is that you have an economy; a finite set of resources that you can use, and re-use at the right times.
For example, once a line containing sprites are drawn, the sprite can be re-used again by doing the appropriate copper list changes. These can be handled for you by the operating system using the VSprite GELs.
You also can use the blitter to quickly animate large objects on the playfield, either directly via the hardware, or by using the BOB GELs.
In my case, I understand explicitly how much DMA time I have, because I know how much cycle time a 16 color playfield takes to fetch, and I know that I can get all of my objects on screen using four sprites (Pacman, Blinky, Pinky; Inky), and one Bob (Clyde).
@@tschak909 Two questions
1. Would you use a sprite if you were making Ms. Pac-Man (for the moving fruit)
2. What exactly is a blitter?
@@MaxOakland No. Because I can't guarantee vertical separation between the fruit and other objects, while maintaining the color palette for all the sprites on a line. It would be much more sensible to use a Bob (Blitter OBject)
A BLiTter is a hardware circuit that does BLock Transfers of data from one part of memory to another. It's called a Blitter because the original software function which implemented this on the Xerox Alto was called BitBlt().
The Blitter in the Amiga can quickly move large portions of data from one part of CHIP (an area of memory that the custom chips can access) memory to another, while also doing logical transforms on it, such as compositing.
The Blitter circuit in the Agnus chip can work much faster than the 68000 can in doing the same memory copy operations, so it is commonly used on the Amiga to do large blocks of animation using the playfield.
Its ironic, the sprite hardware approach (full height fixed width) is what Atari sued Jay Miner over infringement on work done for the 400/800 in player-missile graphics. That it was the same engineer didn't keep it out of dispute.
So after the video I'm going to review De Re Atari just for amusement.