** New Frontiers in VIC-Hires-Graphics, Part 1
Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 3:24 pm
In the last two weeks, tokra, and I had quite a intense discussion about the limits of the VIC chip regarding high resolution graphics.
As a result, we pushed the achievable resolution for a full display bitmap (i.e. *all* pixels freely definable) much further than both of us originally imagined.
We will present this achievement in five separate threads, featuring a translation of the PM's to English. Just to prepare you about the results, here are the proposed names:
Part 1: Introduction, Overview
Part 2: Adding an extra line: 160x200
Part 3: Taking it further: 160x240
Part 4: Faster routine, better resolution: 208x208
Part 5: The Final Frontier? 208x240
Comments, and an open discussion are welcome, and we'll do our best to incorporate these as the story unfolds. It's just in that case we want to share how these new graphics modes came into existence, and not keep it a secret.
The routines involved are tuned to PAL VICs, but the principles behind them translate well to NTSC, at slightly less resolution.
...
One last thing beforehand: the 160x192 resolution, like used by MINIGRAFIK, is given as start point. It is the biggest resolution, that can be displayed on an unmodded VIC-20 without using the lower 1K RAM, or raster interrupts.
The first PM I wrote to tokra will follow shortly.
As a result, we pushed the achievable resolution for a full display bitmap (i.e. *all* pixels freely definable) much further than both of us originally imagined.
We will present this achievement in five separate threads, featuring a translation of the PM's to English. Just to prepare you about the results, here are the proposed names:
Part 1: Introduction, Overview
Part 2: Adding an extra line: 160x200
Part 3: Taking it further: 160x240
Part 4: Faster routine, better resolution: 208x208
Part 5: The Final Frontier? 208x240
Comments, and an open discussion are welcome, and we'll do our best to incorporate these as the story unfolds. It's just in that case we want to share how these new graphics modes came into existence, and not keep it a secret.
The routines involved are tuned to PAL VICs, but the principles behind them translate well to NTSC, at slightly less resolution.
...
One last thing beforehand: the 160x192 resolution, like used by MINIGRAFIK, is given as start point. It is the biggest resolution, that can be displayed on an unmodded VIC-20 without using the lower 1K RAM, or raster interrupts.
The first PM I wrote to tokra will follow shortly.