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Photon · 30 September 2021, 19:46

chadderack, it seems you're in the planning stages only, and already hesitant?

It takes a very good programmer to make a full-color arcade action game run full framerate on PAL OCS. On NTSC, you will only have ~5/6ths of the CPU time AND Blitter time available to move all graphics in one frame.

The arcade title definitely seems to use more than 16 colors, so the big decision is: faithful or reduced? (And there's a great danger than you might not be able to deliver the reduced version at full framerate either).

I think that a master plan with all Blitter bandwidth accounted for is vital for a game where you can't make changes to the gameplay to lower peak bandwidth.

Since that's not in place, my advice is to do a faithful port for A1200. This gives the Blitter enough bandwidth to go 32 colors and the faster CPU can do some clearing, tile plotting, and projectile handling. Should it then turn out that you've implemented it so efficiently that it almost runs full framerate on A500 NTSC, you're then in a position to move heaven and earth to squeeze it in.

30 September 2021, 19:46	#21
Photon Moderator Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Eksjö / Sweden Posts: 5,647	chadderack, it seems you're in the planning stages only, and already hesitant? It takes a very good programmer to make a full-color arcade action game run full framerate on PAL OCS. On NTSC, you will only have ~5/6ths of the CPU time AND Blitter time available to move all graphics in one frame. The arcade title definitely seems to use more than 16 colors, so the big decision is: faithful or reduced? (And there's a great danger than you might not be able to deliver the reduced version at full framerate either). I think that a master plan with all Blitter bandwidth accounted for is vital for a game where you can't make changes to the gameplay to lower peak bandwidth. Since that's not in place, my advice is to do a faithful port for A1200. This gives the Blitter enough bandwidth to go 32 colors and the faster CPU can do some clearing, tile plotting, and projectile handling. Should it then turn out that you've implemented it so efficiently that it almost runs full framerate on A500 NTSC, you're then in a position to move heaven and earth to squeeze it in. Last edited by Photon; 30 September 2021 at 19:52.