Console sprite hardware/animation vs Amiga/other home computers

[Solo Kazuki]

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Mod note: Due to this thread being created from moved posts from the Metro Siege thread and then being merged with some other posts, a few posts may seem misplaced to the reader.

Be sure to read post #8 first:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...75#post1414575
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@Roondar

Where did You get that SF2 needs 4.3MB since it could fit on 3 floppy disks?

Quote from Psygore for WHDLoad version:

The game originally came on 4 disks. This seemed a little strange
to me, so I checked it out, and now it is installed as REAL files
because there was a lot of wasted disk space.
Had the programmer bothered, then I imagine it would have fitted on
three disks with ease

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Solo Kazuki

@Roondar
Where did You get that SF2 needs 4.3MB since it could fit on 3 floppy disks?

I didn't do a massive analysis. I simply took the disk space available and divided it. This seemed reasonable to me as I don't know how efficient any of the versions is stored to their target media (as in, the console version could well also contain inefficiencies).

The uncracked A500 version I saw came on five disks. 880*5=4.400KB. I decided to not use the 6 disk AGA version as the benchmark, even though it would've been a better fit to the SNES as I didn't want to come across as trying to make the game as big as possible.

Anyway, I don't think this is the place to really discuss this issue (i.e. why console games pretty uniformly are smaller than Amiga/ST games) so I'll stop now

[Solo Kazuki]

What 5 or 6 disks? Street Fighter II was originally on 4 disks and could be on 3? Are You sure You not mistake it with Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers? But SSFII:TNC ROM have 4MB on SNES...

[roondar]

Could be, but like I just said I'm not going to post about this any more as I don't think it's on-topic.

The point never was about SFII to begin with (that was just one of my two examples which you've now pointed out was incorrect), it was meant as a general observation.

[Solo Kazuki]

I don't mean to do OT, but it's about that Your observation is wrong. It can have less kilobytes since there is different method for handling data, but for sure difference is not that big that You said.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Solo Kazuki

I don't mean to do OT, but it's about that Your observation is wrong. It can have less kilobytes since there is different method for handling data, but for sure difference is not that big that You said.

My wrong observation about SFII is really irrelevant for what I was trying to say. I could very easily have picked different games, these were just the first two I thought of. There's plenty of examples here. And that is the last I'm going to say about it, this has already taken up far too many posts.

Let's please get back to Metro Siege.

[Retro1234]

although in general consoles or Arcade games didn't break sprites into small pieces it is interesting Amiga SF2 is shit and takes 4 disks, apparently could fit on 3 but with a backup device for SNES or Mega Drive the game fits on 2 Disks and is nearly Arcade.

There are other console games though that fit on single floppy or only fill half/quarter and are Arcade perfect compared to Amiga, so there is something there that no-one seems to be able to explain.

[roondar]

Over in the Metro Siege thread, I got involved in a rather off-topic discussion about consoles and sprite animation.

Because I think that there is something worth discussing here, I've decided to make a new thread rather than keep filling the Metro Siege one with off-topic stuff.

My point in that thread was about how consoles managed to have smaller games (not always, but frequently) than their Amiga/other computer counterparts even though the console versions often showed more animation frames and/or bigger objects. My guess was that Amiga/computer games tended to use complete sprite objects (i.e. one big image per sprite frame), while consoles may make use of partial sprite objects (8x8 tiles to be precise).

With that in mind I wonder: was partial/tile animation used in console games?

It seems likely to me as console games already break up their sprites into 8x8 tiles when they're stored in memory (for example see here: https://medium.com/@megacatstudios/s...a-e14093f71a33 about 2/3rd of the way down)

Does anyone have some insight on this and were there Amiga games did cut up their sprites into smaller sections for animation?

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

although in general consoles or Arcade games didn't break sprites into small pieces it is interesting Amiga SF2 is shit and takes 4 disks, apparently could fit on 3 but with a backup device for SNES or Mega Drive the game fits on 2 Disks and is nearly Arcade.

There are other console games though that fit on single floppy or only fill half/quarter and are Arcade perfect compared to Amiga, so there is something there that no-one seems to be able to explain.

The reason is mostly that the console is building the sprites from tiles. If you convert SF2, it will be more than 3 disks.

On X68000, SF2' is 4 disks, sized each 1.2mb, and the data files are crunched.

[Retro1234]

I think that's only NEO-GEO I can't find any evidence SF2 was like this?

Yes x68000 was arcade perfect but much better hardware but more talking about the size of console Roms - SNES and MD.

[Retro1234]

it doesn't show any sprites being broken down into tiles? only the game backgrounds etc

it's more the other way round if Amiga wanted to replicate console games like Sonic it would have to break the sprite into tiny pieces.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

it doesn't show any sprites being broken down into tiles? only the game backgrounds etc

it's more the other way round if Amiga wanted to replicate console games like Sonic it would have to break the sprite into tiny pieces.

Err, it actually does show that. I'll quote the relevant parts from that post here:

Originally Posted by near the top

Tiles for a sprite rendered in normal format (4x4 tiles)

• Draws sprite tile graphics
• Internally, sprites are rendered in reverse order; i.e., each column of tiles is rendered by rows
• Sprites are positioned in a virtual 512x512 px space, with coordinate (128,128) being the top left corner of TV display.
• Genesis can display up to 80 hardware sprites on screen at once
• Genesis can display ~20 sprites on the same scanline, before sprite overflow issues occur and sprites are not displayed
• For hardware sprites, sprite sizes are limited in size to (w x h) sizes, where w is width, and h is height, where each dimension is 1–4 tiles.
• Sprites larger than hardware sprite sizes can be obtained by using multiple sprites
• Like with planes, the tiles for sprites can have a low or high priority. Low priority sprites are displayed behind high priority tiles in other layers. (It’s a little more complicated than this, but this is the basic concept in a nutshell)

Originally Posted by about 2/3rd down

Sprites for the Sega Genesis are defined as images with a size of ( w x h), where w is the width in tiles, and h is the height in tiles, where each dimension can range from 1–4 tiles. Each sprite can use only one palette line at a time. Hardware sprites can have a max size of 4x4 tiles.

This might be written a little bit nebulous, but it does just mean that sprites are just collections of tiles on the Mega Drive.

[Retro1234]

https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Doct...me_in_2019.php

Ok this site does say they are split but its more multiples of 8 for 16bit consoles and with backgrounds you could re-use multiple tiles but more characters it didn't save any memory most of the tiles couldn't be used again. unless there's a rip of the graphic data etc with the character map if you want to call it that I see no proof that it saved any frames.

[Retro1234]

4x4 tiles that could be 32x32 pixels each and can't be mixed and matched size wise.

Static pictures/photos had to displayed in a similar manner it rarely saved any memory if at all the tiles weren't rescued in effect they were just one big sprite.

in a way the Amiga had an advantage if could display Sprites/Bobs of different sizes and shapes.

see if you can find a sprite sheet for such a console game so we can see.

[roondar]

Right, like I said in my opening post of the thread - the question is if it was used this way or not and what that would achieve.

Also: it's not about proving anything, it's about trying to answer the question why console games tend to be smaller. I merely pointed to a possible solution. One that seems to me to be quite reasonable.

[Retro1234]

fair enough, afaik ripping console sprites is usually done by screenshots so if you can find some sprite editor of ripper etc for console could be interesting.

don't some of 8bit emulators let you view the sprites etc ?

[roondar]

What we'd really want for this is something that shows the internal VRAM memory as well as the sprite lists/object lists that assign the tiles to sprites. It probably exists for most consoles.

[Retro1234]

I wouldn't be surprised if someone has done it, console game hacking is quite advanced editing maps, graphics etc the info must be out there.

I do have some console pages I download ages ago but not sure there is anything relevant there, ill have a quick flick through later.

[Retro1234]

There is this site from the SF2 hit box thread
https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=33039

in test service mode or something

"There are 4 modes in the Object Test, NORMAL, EDIT, CATCH, and an unlabeled mode I'll refer to as "CATCH2".
NORMAL offers the basic animation viewer as well as tile data for each animation frame."

edit: theres also this and that but its not clear if it saved any memory i.e frames could be reused etc

http://info.sonicretro.org/SCHG_How-...onMapEd/Part_2

https://16bitgamer.canadian-forum.co...raphic-messing

[Retro1234]

Thinking about it they must reuse the tiles in some games and a game like Street fighter2 large parts of the body are reused.

https://segaretro.org/images/thumb/e.../600px-Tlp.png


But Would this have any benefit for a game like Metro City on Amiga?

lots of smaller Bobs would probably be slower

and what the Metro City team are doing now seems like a better solution, 16*16 tiles etc seem less likely to align for character and would create more files?