gaming system with most choppy scrolling?

[s2325]

for me:
1. MSX
2. Apple IIe
3. Amstrad CPC

any more?

[john4p]

Atari ST

[drHirudo]

Originally Posted by s2325

for me:
1. MSX
2. Apple IIe
3. Amstrad CPC

any more?

1. IBM PC XT - I remember Rick Dangerous and Golden Axe on my Turbo-XT.
2. TRS-80 also known as Trash-80 blocky graphics and no hardware scroll.
3. ABC-80 - Advanced BASIC computer.
4. AGAT - Apple II clone but slower.

The Apple IIe did not have much games doing scroll.

[Retro-Nerd]

ZX Spectrum.

[TCD]

MS-DOS 286 PC and Atari ST

[Galahad/FLT]

Got to be ST and Spectrum surely.

[Photon]

Well, MSX had 8-pixel step scrolling horizontally, and 1px vertically. But scrolling the whole screen usually left no time for any game of sorts, even at 25 fps! Unless it was like some cartridge games that had a blitter of sorts. Its predecessor, Spectravideo 328, was better in that respect, the video was mapped onto the main memory.

Lots of home computers had char scroll only, of course, and many no scroll register. Which meant few scrolling games, if any. It would be cool to find out the exceptions on each of those platforms!

[MazinKaesar]

I only remember old DOS games, the were really creepy for scrolling.

[discomeats]

no blitter in msx1, and no scrolling at all

any single pixel scrolling is extreme pattern abuse

unless it's msx2 which had vertical scrolling but no horizontal for some silly reason reason and a blitter

I dunno anything about the SV-328, but if it had the vdp memory mapped into main memory that could have been interesting to play with, still it's a 1976 video chip, one can't expect miracles

[s2325]

here you can see the beauty of MSX scrolling http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8tkNTkFAPvQ

[Retro-Nerd]

Space Manbow (MSX-2) has a nice scrolling, but MSX-1 games like Salamander are awful.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7RX8eaOBmvM


http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=bLRnFMHTykk

[discomeats]

on the msx2 the horizontal scrolling is a trick involving setting the position of the screen, that's why you have the oddness on each side of the screen, on a 2+ it does it properly and looks much nicer.

but it makes no odds, space manbow is too damn hard for me

hopefully one day I can get a msx2+, my msx2 is borked. :/

[Stefan Lindberg]

Any system that don't have "hardware scrolling" has choppy scrolling... then it's up the the gamedesign and programmers how it will be.

[h0ffman]

Fair play the MSX scrolling was pretty shocking but the music and gameplay were ace!

I'd say PC's are the worst, no matter how many times you set the VSYNC to on, there is still always tearing of the frame!

[Thorham]

At the risk of sounding like a know it all, I'm going to clear this up

Originally Posted by Stefan Lindberg

Any system that don't have "hardware scrolling" has choppy scrolling... then it's up the the gamedesign and programmers how it will be.

Any system with bitmap graphics and the ability to vsync can scroll smoothly if the machine is fast enough.

Originally Posted by h0ffman

I'd say PC's are the worst, no matter how many times you set the VSYNC to on, there is still always tearing of the frame!

That's just the os screwing up. Without an os in the way, peecees can scroll smoothly. Just try to scroll smoothly under AmigaOs

[Photon]

Thorham is right, with the addition that illusions of scrolling (even parallax scrolling) can be created, and smooth, even if the computer is slow. And the exception that the OS (you mean driver? 3D API?) can be overridden with programs like PowerStrip.

And discomeats, as I wrote, no blitter in the MSX. But in some (Konami) cartridges like Maze of Galious, which usually also had an 8-channel (Yamaha?) synth chip.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by h0ffman

I'd say PC's are the worst, no matter how many times you set the VSYNC to on, there is still always tearing of the frame!

Hmm, can't say that it is like that for me too. Certainly there are games that don't vsync properly, even if it is set, but most games are smooth when set to the right resolution and level of effects Also the fact that Windows games have to run on an API (OpenGL or Direct...) to 'reach' the hardware isn't a real problem if the PC is fast enough (the HAL layer isn't that bad btw ). Of course using the 'raw' hardware power on a PC would improve the performance of games quite a bit

[discomeats]

the soundchip in some konami carts is a 5 channel chip, which has builtin ram for either 4 or 5(scc+) 32-byte wave tables depending on version (it's also a memory mapper) manufactured by konami(well, labelled konami, yamaha made a lot of chips for everyone so who knows), the extra 3 channels come from the psg which is already in the computer, 8 channels was a bit of artistic marketing license , supposedly it's been used in a few arcade machines too, I think the konami synthesizer cart uses just a basic dac and I think there were some other ones with basic rom based sample replay on them aswell.

and sorry photon, I must have misunderstood your other post, I've had a stupid cold for the last few days and it's made sleep "fun" and I'm still not completely cogent

but hang on this was a choppy scrolling thread

as far as I can remember the spectrum had somewhat of an edge in scrolling graphics over the amstrad, but then it would have just under a third? the amount of data to shift in a single frame for full screen scrolling. my brain is too munted to work how how many bytes/sec that would need to be to actually work with all the game logic etc, oh and I just remembered of course on the spectrum 128 you could double buffer the display so maybe you could achieve a full screen scroll at 25Hz without needing to be absolutely l33t or whatever, did the amstrads let you do that kind of thing?.

though personally, I would have taken choppy/crap scrolling over having a tiny active game screen next to a huge static graphic with the name of the game on it (in case I forgot what I was playing I guess), that always seemed somehow lazy to me (yes, guess which machine I had..)

Having said all that there's a few impressive looking amstrad demos on youtube that a spectrum's never going to match so maybe the jury's still out.

Hmm, this post has become epic, I better stop typing now

[Hungry Horace]

Originally Posted by discomeats

Having said all that there's a few impressive looking amstrad demos on youtube that a spectrum's never going to match so maybe the jury's still out.

i suggest you have another look on youtube for Speccy demos, as there are some amazing ones out there. In particular machined by tbk&4d and ElectroGodzilla and Pink Socks spring to mind.


My vote choppy scrolling vote goes to the ST. Although even i'm not stupid enough to say most scrolling on the Speccy was great, it's not something i care much about (even on the Amiga)

[klx300r]

Originally Posted by s2325

for me:
1. MSX
2. Apple IIe
3. Amstrad CPC

any more?

holy &^%$..Apple IIe..gaming system