Re: [stella] another idea

Subject: Re: [stella] another idea
From: Erik Mooney <emooney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 20:28:28 -0400
>>I think this is a pretty neat idea
>
>I second that; it would hopefully bring the price of the hardware way
>down.  I think all you'd need was a way to convert the line by line to
>a bitmap and then feed that to video memory in the GBC.  I wonder if
>any of the GB coders have thought about this at all...

I've been experimenting a little bit with GB coding, so here goes.  The
GB does work by drawing scanline-by-scanline on each frame at 60 fps,
just like any other console.  (Probably designed this way to accomodate
the Super Gameboy, which outputs to TV.)  The background tile set would
emulate the 2600's playfield more than adequately.  The GB has 40
hardware 8x8 sprites; you can put up to 10 on a horizontal line.  That's
not-quite-enough to draw all of the 2600's objects if both players and
missiles are set to 3 copies...

The part I'd be clueless on is how to handle rewrites to any of the TIA
registers in the middle of the scanline.  The GB docs just say "don't
modify any sprite registers while the video processor is building a
scanline", and I didn't try.

And of course the GB screen only has 144 lines vertically, a good number
less than the 2600 needs.

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