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How did they get this engine working on sprite base systems like the SNES?



You can put a coprocessor inside the cartridge. I believe that Another World used the Super FX coprocessor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_FX


Since Another World wasn't listed on that wikipedia page, I searched and found this interview with Rebecca Heineman who ported the game to SNES: http://www.grokcode.com/106/interview-rebecca-heineman/

"Since Interplay wouldn’t pay for a SuperFX chip, I found a way to do it with static RAM on the cart and DMA which got me a great frame rate. Interplay wouldn’t pay for the static RAM either, so I ended up using Fast ROM and a MVN instruction. Interplay wouldn’t pay for a 3.6 Mhz ROM either. So, frustrated, I shoved my block move code into the DMA registers and use it as RAM running at 3.6 Mhz. It worked. I got fast block moves on slow cartridges and made a game using polygons working on a 65816 with pure software rendering."


Hm, I found that interview but the link to it said it was a SuperFX chip so I didn’t watch it. That teaches me.


The style of graphics is superficially similar to early Super FX games, but the cartridge is just a basic ROM+CIC board with an 8-megabit ROM. Based on the fact that it has considerable "load time", I think it basically chopped up the game into working sets and pre-rendered any missing frames when transitioning between them, possibly with some extra streaming code for cutscenes.




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