• Attempt at porting Shadow Of The Beast to the Archimedes

    From xltardy@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jan 23 00:25:38 2018
    yeah, was a bit fed up with the Archimedes bashers, mainly Amiga fanatics, so I have decided to try to port it.
    1/ 100% software solution
    then
    2/ Solution using RasterMan by Steve Harrsion

    I am working on 2 versions :
    1/ for 8 Mhz machines screenmode 320 x 256, 256 colours
    2/ for faster machines screemode 384 x 288, 256 colours (overscan)

    Of course the idea is that all versions run at 50 frames per second.

    You can follow my progress on my YT channel Zarchos :

    https://www.youtube.com/user/Archimedes75009/videos

    I am on Facebook in the Acorn Computer and BBC micro enthusiasts group.
    (Xavier Louis Tardy).

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  • From druck@21:1/5 to xltardy@gmail.com on Tue Jan 23 20:51:54 2018
    On 23/01/2018 08:25, xltardy@gmail.com wrote:
    1/ for 8 Mhz machines screenmode 320 x 256, 256 colours
    2/ for faster machines screemode 384 x 288, 256 colours (overscan)

    As the next step up from an 8MHz ARM2, was an ARM3 3+x faster, surely a
    bit more resolution than that can be afforded.

    ---druck

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  • From Someone Somewhere@21:1/5 to druck on Tue Jan 23 22:48:42 2018
    On 23/01/2018 20:51, druck wrote:
    On 23/01/2018 08:25, xltardy@gmail.com wrote:
    1/ for 8 Mhz machines screenmode 320 x 256, 256 colours
    2/ for faster machines screemode 384 x 288, 256 colours (overscan)

    As the next step up from an 8MHz ARM2, was an ARM3 3+x faster, surely a
    bit more resolution than that can be afforded.

    ---druck
    12MHz ARM250?

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  • From druck@21:1/5 to Someone Somewhere on Wed Jan 24 19:30:37 2018
    On 23/01/2018 22:48, Someone Somewhere wrote:
    On 23/01/2018 20:51, druck wrote:
    On 23/01/2018 08:25, xltardy@gmail.com wrote:
    1/ for 8 Mhz machines screenmode 320 x 256, 256 colours
    2/ for faster machines screemode 384 x 288, 256 colours (overscan)

    As the next step up from an 8MHz ARM2, was an ARM3 3+x faster, surely
    a bit more resolution than that can be afforded.

    ---druck
    12MHz ARM250?

    That was a step back down, as the ARM250 A3010/A3020 was released after Archimedes ARM3 upgrades and the A5000.

    ---druck

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  • From Someone Somewhere@21:1/5 to druck on Thu Jan 25 15:18:36 2018
    On 24/01/2018 19:30, druck wrote:
    On 23/01/2018 22:48, Someone Somewhere wrote:
    On 23/01/2018 20:51, druck wrote:
    On 23/01/2018 08:25, xltardy@gmail.com wrote:
    1/ for 8 Mhz machines screenmode 320 x 256, 256 colours
    2/ for faster machines screemode 384 x 288, 256 colours (overscan)

    As the next step up from an 8MHz ARM2, was an ARM3 3+x faster, surely
    a bit more resolution than that can be afforded.

    ---druck
    12MHz ARM250?

    That was a step back down, as the ARM250 A3010/A3020 was released after Archimedes ARM3 upgrades and the A5000.

    ---druck
    Semantics on the way you put it - the 12MHz ARM250 is in fact a faster
    machine than the 8Mhz original Archs and may well have enough oomph to
    run the given resolution but no more, and therefore may be the machine targeted.

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  • From xltardy@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jan 27 13:45:28 2018
    It is true we would all have prefered an ARM350 but Acorn decided differently. And well, now Sir Hermann Hauser is a billionaire I doubt I can say his strategy was the wrong one ;-)
    As a businessman he was 1st there to thrive, not to please me more than needed. Others companies like Atari or Commodore miserably failed always putting more 'stuff' in their toy computers to close business in miserable conditions, remember (screwwin their suppliers).

    And yes a higher resolution is possible for ARM3 machines, the issue will be that the target machine will not need 2 Mbytes, but 4.
    But : why not, after all.

    Thanks for your interest, anyway.
    I will not produce anything I am afraid before a week as I am very busy at the moment.
    The good news is that I have the right algo to plot all the trees with a very small additional cost in terms of CPU usage, as the background 'behind' the trees won't be plotted (for 90% of the surface).

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  • From Someone Somewhere@21:1/5 to xltardy@gmail.com on Sun Jan 28 08:03:55 2018
    On 27/01/2018 21:45, xltardy@gmail.com wrote:
    It is true we would all have prefered an ARM350 but Acorn decided differently.

    Yes -it's a shame that they didn't - the differential in the chip cost
    would have been very small and the performance would have been much
    inproved.

    Their big prooblem would have been how to keep sellng the A5000 at a
    premium of course.

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  • From xltardy@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jan 28 03:57:26 2018
    Exactly.
    Now note with some fast DRAMs you can bring these machines to 26 Mhz CPU and memory bus ...
    Vectorlight demonstrated that on stardot and there are some videos on YT.
    Not bad for 10 euros maximum to do the modification.

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