From: jas37876@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (John A. Slagel)
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re: PC Sprite Engine
Date: 13 Oct 92 22:15:08 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana

djmst19+@pitt.edu (David J Madura) writes:

>Mind you, I think you people in no way even come close to starting this
>project (Like the killer graphics lib, sprites lib, etc...) but maybe
>somebody from some company will read these ideas and make them reality.
 
     Agreed.  If there are any companies (I bet not, tho) that do read this,
     how about adding these features (and documenting them!) to a 
     standard VGA/SVGA card: (I don't think these would add very much
     to the cost, especially compared to putting a stupid bus-mouse
     port on the card (ATI) or worse yet, a stupid hardware mouse
     cursor that no one ever uses. )

     1. The ability to combine together the pixel outputs from 2 pages of
	display memory when displaying a screen. This would make for
	cool multi-layered graphics. Basically, add something like the
	VGA's split screen mode, but display the split screen part 
	instead of the normal part if the pixel value is not zero.

     2. Along the same lines, add another feature to the replace the logical
	AND feature when writing pixels to something like IF, which only
	changes the screen pixel if the one you're writing is non-zero.
	This would allow the use of REP MOVSB with odd-shaped sprites. But
	then, *GASP* we would only have 255 colors instead of 256 !!!!

     3. The ability to scroll a window of display memory in hardware,
	both horizontally and vertically. This could be harder to implement,
	but could even be useful for non-gamey things like Windows 3.1.

     4. Give use a few more low-res SVGA modes, such as 320x200, 320x240,
	400x300, etc... The advantage of these over ModeX would be that
	you wouldn't need to change planes for every pixel, and we could
	use the whole 1 Meg of display memory however we wanted!!!! Talk
	about *BIG* virtual screens or lots of room for internal 32-bit
	sprite data transfers!

     5. Stick all this on a VESA local bus, or even an el-cheapo proprietary
        built-into-motherboard local bus design if you you to convince 
	gamers to buy your $1000 386sx-20 game machine.

     6. Maybe a non-analog Atari-type joystick port. One 8-bit port,
	with 6 bits representing up,down,left,right,button1,button2.

     7. Maybe a way to do DMA to display memory?

     ...Just a few thoughts for someone that has the schematics for an el-
     cheapo SVGA card laying around and wants to reuse their design and
     maybe make a few bucks.  I'd buy this for $50 more than a standard SVGA
     card.  Best Buy could make a killing... Toss an Atari $5 joystick
     and SoundBlaster in a cheapo 386sx, add a few games and standard cheap
     VGA monitor and sell as "Entertainment PCs" -- I have a lot of friends
     that, when buying computers, say, I don't want Windows... I just want
     to write papers and play games... I say, buy a 386sx with 2Meg RAM and
     VGA and SoundBlaster with 40 Meg drive, and they do.
-- 
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  John A. Slagel, email: jas37876@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu