Have you seen such a video mode?

Discussion of development of software for any "obsolete" computer or video game system. See the WSdev wiki and ObscureDev wiki for more information on certain platforms.
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Dwedit
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Re: Have you seen such a video mode?

Post by Dwedit »

Speaking of unconventional video modes or hardware, there's the FM Towns computer.
It can display a 640x480 monochrome Kanji layer on top of 320x240 256 color graphics.
Does this count as the "combined text and graphics mode" idea?
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Gilbert
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Re: Have you seen such a video mode?

Post by Gilbert »

I think the MVS/Neo Geo is even weirder though.
AFAIK it does have a tile map layer, but is only used for those "insert coin" and score text display, while its graphics is sprite only.
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aa-dav
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Re: Have you seen such a video mode?

Post by aa-dav »

Pokun wrote: Sat Mar 26, 2022 8:57 am The concept is very interesting. So the advantage is that you can either treat it as text mode or a bitmapped mode at any time? And the main disadvantage is probably that it requires enough VRAM for the whole screen (which is one reason text modes are used in the first place).
This idea is definitely for 16-bit systems like Genesis or SNES. Then you have enough VRAM for graphic mode, but want to keep advantages of tiled mode for game graphics. Text usage is cool feature, but is not killer feature. Smooth scrolling of text by 1000 lines per second is not seller of PC by itself. :)
Pokun
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Re: Have you seen such a video mode?

Post by Pokun »

Yeah well saving VRAM is far from the only reason to use a text mode, and there are many 8-bit systems as well that has enough VRAM for all characters on screen to be unique like the Sega Mark III and anything that uses the TMS9918A with 16 kB VRAM, as the Graphics 2 mode in that allows that many characters. Pixels are still ordered as 8x8 patterns instead of a single bitmap however.

By "text mode" I just meant the same thing as a tile mode, as in the opposite of a graphics or a bitmap mode, not necessarily for using it for actual text.
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