English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Good explanation why half-brite is too slow for game engines?

roondar · 07 July 2020, 23:27

Dynamically switching bitplanes on and off is such a neat and Amiga specific trick. I should really look at Powder to see what the end result looks like. Makes me wonder if more games did that?

Thinking about it some more, if you don't need the 6th bitplane for anything but shadows/transparencies you would be able to save a big part of the cost (i.e. you could get away with blitting only 5 planes for your objects). You'd still lose out compared to doing straight 5 bitplanes, but not by as much as full EHB.

The downside would be that you'd have to have a pretty static 6th bitplane for that to work well. Interesting idea though. Might also work for 5 bitplane screens.

07 July 2020, 23:27	#9
roondar Registered User Join Date: Jul 2015 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 3,411	Dynamically switching bitplanes on and off is such a neat and Amiga specific trick. I should really look at Powder to see what the end result looks like. Makes me wonder if more games did that? Thinking about it some more, if you don't need the 6th bitplane for anything but shadows/transparencies you would be able to save a big part of the cost (i.e. you could get away with blitting only 5 planes for your objects). You'd still lose out compared to doing straight 5 bitplanes, but not by as much as full EHB. The downside would be that you'd have to have a pretty static 6th bitplane for that to work well. Interesting idea though. Might also work for 5 bitplane screens.