Re: Musing about a possible project...

[BLuRry <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

On Friday, September 28, 2012 5:05:40 AM UTC-5, Steve Nickolas wrote:
> ...but man, this is gonna hurt if I even come close to pulling it off.
> 
> 
> 
> There's a game which was only officially released on the Sega SG-1000 that 
> 
> I really like, and it's fairly simple.  I have an unofficial disk-based 
> 
> port of this to the MSX (similar hardware, different sound chip which is 
> 
> the same as the Mockingboard's; I mentioned it in the Arcade Board 
> 
> thread).
> 
> 
> 
> I've thought of trying to port it, but it might be way out of my league as 
> 
> my graphics ability, frankly, sucks and I don't have tools for working 
> 
> with Z80.  Still... It would be nice to see Girl's Garden on other 
> 
> hardware.
> 
> 
> 
> Another idea I've thought of was porting Galaga or Bosconian.  Both of 
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> these have MSX ports as well; Galaga also has an NES port and a 7800 port 
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> (the latter of which might even have source) which would lessen the CPU 
> 
> issue.
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> 
> 
> -uso.

All very tempting, but remember that some of these platforms had hardware-managed sprites.  You'd have to do a lot of buffer management to get close to replicating that, so porting will require more than just 1:1 code translation.  One easy solution is to render games with solid-color playfields so that erasing sprites will not require a more expensive memory copy.

Even saying that, a hit to the framerate would pale in comparison to how awesome a galaga port would be, even if it were not quite as cool as the original.

-B