Question:The other day I came across your website, and found it very interesting −
especially your video game articles, and tales of life in Japan − in fact
I'm actually drinking an Asahi beer as I write this. Incidentally, I was once a
subscriber to "The Journal of Computer Game Design", and remember reading your
tutorial with Dan Chang at the end of 1992 about the programming of the NES
M.C. Kids.
I've got a couple of questions, and wonder if you can assist with any advice
about the following and/or point me in the direction of any further resources,
such as good links on the Web?
(1) Curved Platforms.
I'm just getting into OpenTUME, so I'm sure this question may be answered after a little experimentation.
With curved / variable height walking surfaces, such as those found in games
such as the SNES Earthworm Jim, because TUME is so feature−rich, in order
to get a Quick Start, what specific areas of TUME should I be learning about,
or concentrating on to implement this?
(2) Object Management Systems.
Being interested in Gameboy Advance programming, I'm researching the various
(possibly innovative) systems and ways that programmers managed the SNES and
Genesis object (sprite) memory. i.e. how they allocated and handled (a) the
image data that was placed in VRAM once at the start of level and left there,
and then 🍺 the other object image data which had to be DMA'd every
frame, such as hero and enemy animations. Plus all the other considerations,
such as different object sizes (8x8, 8x16, 32x32 etc.) that make up an image,
and how to make best use of the object VRAM without any, or too much
fragmentation. Did a few techniques gain prominence amongst developers, or did
people end up using many disparate methods?
Answer:Generally I would think of VRAM as characters (characters = text = fonts = one
8x8 16 color block of memory on the SNES/Genesis or 4 color on Gameboy. I
don't know the details of GBA but it looks like a SNES (since they are porting
SNES games) so I'm going to assume it's similar.