RE: Sega Multigame and Vector Generator Card...

G'day folks,

Hmmm....well, I would imagine that if you put the fading under hardware
control via the speed of the electron beam then you'd want to be able to
both linear fading and something like "exponential" fading (where as
your line is drawn your intensity drops exponentially). These two
features would be sufficient for most purposes.

I was under the impression that the speed of the electron beam was
deciding the intensity of a vector (or part of a vector as the case may
be). So because there is a maximum speed to the beam, there's also a
minimum intensity that all vectors would have? Obviously if the Z was
zeroed then you'd have black, but if we are using the speed of the beam
to control intensity then Z isn't as relevant.

I did follow how Zonn described fading with alot of little vectors of
different intensity, but now you are increasing your vector counts. I'm
sure the cost of stopping drawing the current vector and starting to
draw the next vector is high enough that variable intensity within a
vector is a significant savings (and less of a headache for the software
guy...until you tell him he has to specify how to fade vectors).

                Steven S Ozdemir
                sso@dsc.com

>----------
>From: zonn@zonn.com[SMTP:zonn@zonn.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 1997 11:41 AM
>To: vectorlist@spies.com
>Cc: zonn@zonn.com
>Subject: Re: Sega Multigame and Vector Generator Card...
>
>On Wed, 17 Dec 1997 11:06:31 -0800, "Ozdemir, Steve" <sso@dsc.com> wrote:
>
>>G'day folks,
>>
>>Well, if the ships on Space Wars aren't animated well on a 19" screen,
>>then that explains why only Barrier had a 25" screen. There's no
>>animation in Barrier, and anytime someone brought up a 25" screen for
>>one of the later games this issue probably came up.
>
>That's a good point. The jumps on larger screens would be, well, larger.
>
>>I still like Paul's idea of having intensity differ within any given
>>vector, even if we can't make vectors fade to black (due to speed
>>constraints of the monitor). If I may speculate for a moment, wouldn't
>>it be difficult to specify via software how you wanted the intensity for
>>a vector to change? Let's say I wanted the intensity to increase slowly
>>for the first third of a vector, stay at the highest level for the
>>middle of the vector and finally return to the original intensity in the
>>last third of the vector.
>>
>>I think varying intensity within any given vector would also support
>>first person games with "fading perspective with distance" nicely. All
>>those lines that go off into the distance would be easy to fade as you
>>get further off in the distance (but of course you wouldn't be able to
>>fade completely to black unfortunately). Am I getting too much into
>>game design when the monitor hasn't even been finished?!
>
>The best way at this point to fade a vector using a normal DVG or AVG would
>be
>to draw it with smaller vectors, each set to decreasing intensities.
>
>One could always setup a mode where the intensity of the vector was based on
>the
>value in the Line Length Counter in the vector generator. That would give
>you a
>smooth fade.
>
>In either case there is nothing from stopping you from fading to black.
>
>-Zonn
>
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>
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Received on Wed Dec 17 13:57:55 1997