Overdrive 2 Effect Write-Up: Pushing Polygons on the Mega Drive
category: code [glöplog]
It took a bit longer than anticipated, but I finally finished the write-up of the effect I did for Overdrive 2: https://jix.one/pushing-polygons-on-the-mega-drive/
awesome stuff
Good work. Thanks for sharing.
wow, great writeup!
Thanks!
I wonder if the "polygon codec" routines on C64 (for example) work similarly, and what are the differences?
Demos that come to mind:
- Wok Zombie by FLT
- Sphaeristerium by Horizon & Triad & Instinct
- Second Reality by Smash Design
Demos that come to mind:
- Wok Zombie by FLT
- Sphaeristerium by Horizon & Triad & Instinct
- Second Reality by Smash Design
If I´m not totally wrong the mentioned C64 demos all use somehow lossless or lossy compressed precalced chars/tiles. No polygon drawing is happening there.
The C64-"engine" closest to the one described above is used in the first screen of Fantasmolytic
The differences are:
- The polygon coverage handling is done realtime, because it would be hard to precalc that, if you want to drive the movement of the buildings by music. Algo behind it is close to what Doom/DukeNukem do on PC.
- The C64 Version works 90° rotated. The "fringe"-buffer is not left-right oriented, but top-down. Because the C64 multicolor pixels have 2x1 aspect-ratio. So line interpolation and coverage handling is done in half the resolution.
The C64-"engine" closest to the one described above is used in the first screen of Fantasmolytic
The differences are:
- The polygon coverage handling is done realtime, because it would be hard to precalc that, if you want to drive the movement of the buildings by music. Algo behind it is close to what Doom/DukeNukem do on PC.
- The C64 Version works 90° rotated. The "fringe"-buffer is not left-right oriented, but top-down. Because the C64 multicolor pixels have 2x1 aspect-ratio. So line interpolation and coverage handling is done in half the resolution.
In Wok Zombie the frames are stored as lines and dots, and then its an eor filler.
Thanks for sharing, that's a really informative and detailed write up, and i was thinking that it can be applied to any old-skool system (tile based, bitmapped or whatever)
Now just want to know how all the crazy effects in Overdrive II (zooming plasma, tilting greets etc..) were done :D
Maybe the time has come to precalc the vertex transform, culling and what will fit in a reasonable amount of memory on Amiga aswell now. Those metaballs on the recent bomb demo made me want to precalc the shit out of those metaball vertices. Vertex compression is also a noble art.
Err.. yes I wanted to say thanks for the great article!
Thanks for the writeup!
Sorry for necroposting, but it's related. Strobe also put up a how the soundtrack was made video. It shows the soundtrack playing in Defle Mask, and contains a link to the music file. There are lots of streamed PCM sequences however, and I wonder what the workflow was like, what tools were used, etc. Are you around, Strobe? :)
Thanks for sharing absence :-)
