Possible Solution For Snes Transparencies

[DaveC]

Do you think this would be a possible solution for the problem of slow transparencies in the Snes emus? What it would be is every other scanline would be rendered as a *solid* so there would be no color averaging needed like with true transparency. Every other line could be set up in memory so that it would always be clear on the transparency layer. This way you still could see "through" like a transparency without all of the CPU hits that would be needed with true transparencies.


No it doesn't look as good as true transparency but may be a good compromise for speed and playability.

 

[kotd]

While were on the subject of opensnes I was wondering if yoyo has any plans to incorporate RF-Link to his emu in the near future.
Thanks

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

I think that sounds like a great idea, however I am not an emulator developer so I dont know how possible that is, it would be well worth the trade off though.

Remember, they will look much smoother on the real lcd, the colors tend to blend together much nicer.

 

[IntenseWage]

Yeah, that's almost how the Saturn faked transparencies almost all of the time. Seems like a good idea to me.

 

[mr.spiv]

Do you think this would be a possible solution for the problem of slow transparencies in the Snes emus? What it would be is every other scanline would be rendered as a *solid* so there would be no color averaging needed like with true transparency. Every other line could be set up in memory so that it would always be clear on the transparency layer. This way you still could see "through" like a transparency without all of the CPU hits that would be needed with true transparencies.


No it doesn't look as good as true transparency but may be a good compromise for speed and playability.

Check these: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jikorhon/conde.../lcdblaster.txt
and http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/jikorhon/conde...dl/lcdblast.fxe

Somekind of transparency made with LCD hardware (very low CPU usage) but I do have my doubts how well that would work in a complex project. :blink:

 

[RoboJoe32]

Does it have to be scanlines? why not dithering?

Edit: Couldn't simulate the more detailed shape or the foam or bubbles since MSpaint suxx0rs, but you get the idea.

http://joeru.20megsfree.com/images/Dithering.bmp

 

[Akuma no Houkon]

I would think scanlines would be much faster than dithering, less math involved. 320 rows to be calculated as apposed to 76800 individual pixels.

 

[RoboJoe32]

True, Ah well. I got to see if I could make dithering in paint.

 

[wave]

When 0.1 version of osnes was out I told yoyo to do that trick but, nothing has been done yet.

 

[jegHegy]

i'm sure yoyo and the team has thought of that and ditched the idea. i thought of using that when 0.1 came out, but the idea is so simple even _I_ thought of it, so they must've been there already.

 

[DaveC]

i'm sure yoyo and the team has thought of that and ditched the idea. i thought of using that when 0.1 came out, but the idea is so simple even _I_ thought of it, so they must've been there already.

You can't assume anything. Sometimes the simplest things are overlooked. Yoyo may been so cought up in thinking of complex routines to do the effect that this "trick" was missed. You never know. Didn't you ever see an invention or idea and say to yourself "Hey why didn't I think of that". So it would be interesting if an emu coder that has tried emulating transparencies commented on this as well.

If anyone has "secret" e-mail address for Yoyo maybe it would be good to ask him about this and e-mail this pic to him to see what he thinks, could never hurt.