19 October 2016, 11:27 | #1 | |
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Were there any Amiga games that were "racing the beam" the Atari2600 way?
The Atari2600 was known to "race the beam", because it had no memory for a video frame buffer (see for a nice explanation here: https://www.wired.com/2009/03/racing-the-beam/ )
It makes me wonder whether there were any Amiga games known to "race the beam" the Atari 2600 way, or did all Amiga games make use of a video frame buffer? Hopefully someone with knowledge in this topic can share some insight? I sort of came interested in this question after reading the Codetapper interview with Martin Pedersen (here: http://codetapper.com/amiga/interviews/martin-pedersen/). In the Battle Squadron section it is said: Quote:
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19 October 2016, 13:55 | #2 |
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In case you mean "racing the beam" in the strictest Atari 2600 sense (only using sprites and copper), I know of no such cases. It doesn't make technical sense, even less so since the CPU speed is very variable on the Amiga.
What you see on every copper rainbow background is a similar phenomenon, though. The copper is tightly bound to screen positions and can do much the same things the 2600 could do by locking itself to the raster. In case you mean locking screen updates (blitting) to various raster positions, that's not unusual, as stated by Martin Pedersen. |
19 October 2016, 17:24 | #3 |
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I only know some demos that "race the beam", for example vertical "copper" bar effect.
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20 October 2016, 10:39 | #4 |
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OK, thanks for the insights.
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20 October 2016, 10:51 | #5 | |
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Quote:
So this method doesn't "race the beam" but rather waits for it in ambush in three different points of the screen, and when the beam passes those points, it then starts making screen changes behind it, hoping to finish those changes before the beam reaches that part of the screen again. If the changes were made fast enough, then good, but if not then you would see graphics flickering becasue the Unbuffering/Redraw process was "caught on tape". It's like a train on a circular track, where you replace the tracks behind the train, rather than in front of it, so in a way it does "race the beam", but in a more relaxed way. |
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20 October 2016, 12:00 | #6 | |
TinkerTailorContentMaker
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Quote:
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20 October 2016, 15:47 | #7 |
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@Master484: Nice explanation of this trick. Thanks. Will maybe use it in future...
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04 November 2016, 12:36 | #8 | |
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Quote:
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