From: boh@fraser.sfu.ca (Changhao Boh)
Subject: Re: Sprite Engine News, VOL #1
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 23:24:38 GMT

kennehra@craft.camp.clarkson.edu (Rich"TheMan"Kennehan) writes:

>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Ok...here are my suggestions for the sprite engine:

>1)  I'd make it comaptible with all IBMs (except the IBM pc jr.) from
>    the lowly 8086 to the 80486...basically, if you have a card slot 
>    and its an ibm, it'll run.  

Hmm... A 16-bit version of the sprite card would be about 2 times faster
than an 8 bit card.

>2)  I'd have some scaling and rotation features for the sprites (this 
>    can come later...and is just wishful thinking :)  

No sprite card would ever be complete without hardware scaling and rotation
of sprites.  Scaling might not be important if you can afford losts of bitmaps
but rotation is definitely IMPORTANT !!! We don't want to have more than 1
bitmap per size...

>3)  It should be able to output to a regular VGA monitor 

Agreed, but with the option of upgrading to a SVGA monitor to take advantage of their higher refresh rate, if not their higher resolution.  Also, the sprite
engine should work separately from the resident VGA/SVGA/GUIacc card (meaning
that they MUST coexist...) so that perhaps games could display graphics thru
your sprite card while keeping scores and other information on the regular
video screen.

>4)  Definitely two atari 2600 joystick ports!!  (for those arcade style
>    gamers!)  

Actually, there are lots of digital joysticks fro the IBM too !  The Gravis
game pad comes to mind...

>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>The following is information describing my ideas on building the sprite engine.
>Feel free to comment on these ideas, add your own, point out errors, etc!!!


>      |    YOUR COMPUTER    |
>      |                     |
>      |           (1) (2)   |
>       ------------|---|-----
>                   |   |                 ___________
>Y adapter cable --> ---                 ||---------||
>                     |                  ||         ||
>                     |                  || Screen  ||
>                     |__________________||         ||
>                                        ||_________|| 
>                                         -----------

>(1) Is the output from a regular VGA card
>(2) Is the output from the sprite engine

Like I said, there should be options, to have either passthru or dual screen !

>When you change into "Game Mode" the software turns off the VGA card and turns
>on the sprite engine.  This causes the monitor screen to change to the sprite
>engine screen.  By keeping the sprite engine completely separate from VGA we
>can keep costs down and standardise the market (instead of simply building
>a co-processor for VGA)  So a person with EGA does not have to buy a VGA card
>to use the sprite engine, he can just buy a sprite engine.  It will also not
>have to worry about "windows" or "OS/2" graphics at all since it is a 
>completely separate piece of equipment

Totally agreed, but please include the option of dual monitor operations.

Good HEalth.

Changhao.
boh@sfu.ca
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer