nesdev.org

It's basically down to how much math you need to do on the fly. Pilotwings probably needed a DSP-1 because it had to scale, rotate, and change perspective (X-axis rotation, ie: angling the camera up and down) based on control input, which seems like it would require real-time manipulation of HDMA ta...

What. You mean this was tried twenty years ago by a first-generation SNES demoscener? And it works ? (I assume that's what you mean by "perfectly still"...) I guess that's the takeaway - it works. And from your description, it seems to work well enough to enable what I want to do. If it's ...

Okay, I managed to get the data for both modes into VRAM at the same time without having to manually transfer all of it. Anyone who cares to can investigate why the DMA for the Mode 7 data doesn't work - I've tried writing out the method myself, and I still get nothing, or at most an array of pink d...

Is the 65816 going to run the game logic, or is it just going to sit there? Game logic, per the current plan. The bullet engine, collisions, and rendering are going to be plenty intensive by themselves, and I don't want to have to nerf the bullet patterns to fit extra logic into the GSU program (or...

Okay, I'm about to try to code a test ROM. Are there any tricky bits or gotchas I have to watch out for? Any way to get a 'maybe' out of this test? Or is it really as simple as loading VRAM and the relevant registers with the data for both modes and setting up an H-IRQ to write to $2105? If I can ma...

I'm not really complaining; it just seemed like a really odd place to put them... Perhaps it implies feature creep during the design phase...? Well, whatever. I'm certainly no chip designer. If it works, it works... ... Maybe I should start learning how to use interrupts so I can code a test ROM ins...

Or (it seems to me) you could use three 8 KB tables at the cost of some OAM reshuffling. Fill the unused table first, then fill one of the ones you just got through using and use it again. I suppose this would glitch if the frame rate dropped... The GSU in sprite mode has a 256x256-dot OBJ plane com...

Wait, what? See, that's the kind of thing it's easy to miss when you're trying to teach yourself something like this in a big hurry without any real pressure to use the knowledge right away... yeah, maybe I shoulda paid more attention in OAM class; this one's pretty basic... Still, it seems that a 1...

Anyway, doesn't the SNES have a windowing parameter that lets you set the right side of the screen to all black / BG off / whatever? Then you'd use sprites for the score only in that area. Yes it does. Two sets of L/R coordinates that can be changed between scanlines and applied to different layers...

This is a cool little program. Some real ear worms, a lot of which I haven't heard before. Waiting patiently for the new version... What the devil is going on with the bouncing arrows? Are they using uninitialized memory? Higan v094 accuracy core gives me different colours every time I boot it. Snes...

Perhaps the hardware you need is a Game Boy Advance, which has a 4x overdraw for sprites and the ability to rewrite OAM mid-frame. Yeah, but as far as I know nobody's ever said it was impossible to do this on the Game Boy Advance. This isn't some brilliant and original concept I'm trying to realize...

Pehaps you should post a screenshot of what you're wanting to do, so we can help you. Perhaps I should, now that I've mentioned the idea. And I appreciate your willingness to help. But I have a possibly irrational desire to keep this as far under my hat as I can for as long as I can. Part of it is ...

You can't change the colour of a tiled background with COLDATA; that's for the constant colour. You'd need to modify the CGRAM entries that your tiled background references. I'm not sure what the original game is doing, but I imagine that at most, changing COLDATA would affect the area where the sub...

You can definitely write to BGMODE in the middle of a scanline, but I don't know what the consequences will be, as I am too afraid to try it. Thanks for the response. Unless another heavy gun like nocash has been messing with this, I guess it's safe to assume no one knows. Though the fact that scro...

I can test things for you on my Super Power Pak and PAL SNES if there's a need to, but I can only do so if you give me a ROM. I know few things about the 65816 and SNES hardware, really so I can't code a demo myself. Thanks for the offer. I may take you up on it once I'm halfway competent at this m...