Re: Sega Multigame and Vector Generator Card...

Steve,

  My idea about changing line intensity was not a designed feature, rather
it is a *bonus* for building hardware that can generate curves. So yes, we
could do curves better than Quantum. The circuit for doing curves is a
simple extension of a fixed-point DVG. However, since Clay is trying to
fit all this into 128 CLBs it looks like the extra registers aren't going
to fit (6 24-bit numbers is over 128 bits). However, I'm still toying
with an idea that may help.
 ___ __ _ _ _
| \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer
| _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much?
|_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H.

> G'day folks,
>
> No brightening, constant, darkening within a single vector as my below
> example described. That's fine. I just wanted to check if you were
> suggesting features that would support my difficult example. As you
> (and Zonn) suggested splitting the vector into two parts where one
> vector was only brightening and the other vector was only darkening
> would be OK. I was thinking more of what Al was describing where
> vectors fade into the distance in first player games.
>
> Could we have curved lines like in Quantum? As I remember the "curved
> lines" were actually lots of short straight lines that look like one big
> curved line. This is a tall order, but if we are in the middle of
> brainstorming up suggestions I'll stick my neck out!
>
> By the way, while I have people focussed on Quantum, can anyone tell me
> why they didn't do this game with a raster monitor? Come on. Curved
> lines and solid filled objects. What's the point of using vectors?
>
> Steven S Ozdemir
> sso@dsc.com
>
> ps - Of course, I'm the guy who's convinced that Qix should be redone
> with vectors.
>
> >----------
> >From: Paul Kahler[SMTP:phkahler@Oakland.edu]
> >Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 1997 1:59 PM
> >To: vectorlist@spies.com
> >Cc: Paul Kahler
> >Subject: Re: Sega Multigame and Vector Generator Card...
> >
> >> 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.
> >>
> >> 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 don't think it'd be possible to have a single line get brighter in the
> >middle and then dimmer using a 2nd order system (a 3rd order would work).
> >but you could draw it in 2 parts, one brightening and one dimming. The nice
> >thing is that you can derive a few equations to do different things and then
> >just plug numbers in. I haven't derived it yet, but there are equations that
> >take X1,Y1,X2,Y2,X3,Y3 and give the parameters to make a curve go from X1,Y1
> >to X3,Y3 while hitting X2,Y2 on the way. You can also derive stuff to work
> >with the velocity (inverse of intensity) instead of using 3 points. I'm not
> >sure if there are other significant options right now, but I know those 2
> >are easy - I'll do the general equations IF there is ever hardware to use it.
> >
> >X(t) = X0 + (dX)t + (ddx)(t)(t-1)/2
> >Y(t) = Y0 + (dY)t + (ddy)(t)(t-1)/2
> >
> >or some such, where t is the "pixel" number starting at zero. This is the
> >starting point for deriving something useful.
> >--
> > ___ __ _ _ _
> >| \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer
> >| _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much?
> >|_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H.
> >
>

-- 
 ___   __   _   _  _
|   \ /  \ | | | || |       phkahler@oakland.edu     Engineer/Programmer
|  _/| || || |_| || |__     " What makes someone care so much?
|_|  |_||_| \___/ |____)      for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H.