OpenBOR Live Stream Q&A

Speaking of Ian Michael he mentioned using fast inverse sh4 asm for scripts is this something we could benefit from in the main engine.

@Kratus I have ported many games to psp the 50mb slim model but the original phat model only had 25mb of ram and dreamcast only has 16mb. You should look at my war of the gems light port i made a video explaining some of my options and in the latest version i use a method to unload all players but load them when and if you select them you will need this as you have many playable characters.
 
msmalik681 said:
Speaking of Ian Michael he mentioned using fast inverse sh4 asm for scripts is this something we could benefit from in the main engine.

@Kratus I have ported many games to psp the 50mb slim model but the original phat model only had 25mb of ram and dreamcast only has 16mb. You should look at my war of the gems light port i made a video explaining some of my options and in the latest version i use a method to unload all players but load them when and if you select them you will need this as you have many playable characters.
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@msmalik681

Thanks buddy, I want to take a look at your game. In fact I need to learn more about how to make optimizations for low hardware ports.
A trick that helped me too much on Dreamcast was to convert all music to *.bor format, curiously it increased the fps a lot. Another trick was to replace gif format by png.

About Ian Michael, I'm using his modified OpenBOR build with some optimizations, would be good if we could have all of them on the official too.
About the unload feature, I'm using it for enemies and most level elements, but I never tried to do it with players. I will give it a try, thanks for the suggestion.
 
Kratus & msmalik681

This thread is starting to veer way off topic, I may need to split it.

About the Dreamcast version, it's unlikely that Ian's changes will make it to the official build. I won't say never, but we just have different goals. I don't care at all about the Dreamcast, or any other port for that matter. I'm not against it or anything, I just don't want to spend time on it, especially because doing so severely held back the core engine. That's why I dropped support. Ian is obviously very interested in the Dreamcast, so that's what he would push for.

That said, if his optimizations are universal and not Dreamcast specific, I'd be happy to have a look and would love to have him join the community.

Kratus said:
A trick that helped me too much on Dreamcast was to convert all music to *.bor format, curiously it increased the fps a lot. Another trick was to replace gif format by png.
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This is documented in the Wiki. Both types are streamed and don't use much CPU time, but the .bor format uses even less because it's pretty much a .wav with some header information thrown in. There's almost no overhead at all playing it compared to .ogg which requires a bit of decompression. Personally I prefer .ogg because it's easier on the production side and you have better control of file size, but I don't give two spits if my modules play on a port or not. Since you do, .bor format isn't a bad choice.

DC
 
@DCurrent

DCurrent said:
This thread is starting to veer way off topic, I may need to split it.

About the Dreamcast version, it's unlikely that Ian's changes will make it to the official build. I won't say never, but we just have different goals. I don't care at all about the Dreamcast, or any other port for that matter. I'm not against it or anything, I just don't want to spend time on it, especially because doing so severely held back the core engine. That's why I dropped support. Ian is obviously very interested in the Dreamcast, so that's what he would push for.

That said, if his optimizations are universal and not Dreamcast specific, I'd be happy to have a look and would love to have him join the community.
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No problem buddy, let's go back to the rails. It would be very helpful to have your tips about update/ondraw scripts (and similars) in your next live.


DCurrent said:
especially because doing so severely held back the core engine
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In this case, I think that it's better to leave this port dropped (and any other that can hold the engine progress). To be honest, having Windows/Linux/Android ports I think it's good.
Ian's build is enough for now to work on Dreamcast port. The only thing I think is not good is the slowdown in 16/32 bit color depth, but we can deal with it by managing a global palette in 8 bit mode.


DCurrent said:
This is documented in the Wiki. Both types are streamed and don't use much CPU time, but the .bor format uses even less because it's pretty much a .wav with some header information thrown in. There's almost no overhead at all playing it compared to .ogg which requires a bit of decompression. Personally I prefer .ogg because it's easier on the production side and you have better control of file size, but I don't give two spits if my modules play on a port or not. Since you do, .bor format isn't a bad choice.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I will take a look on the Wiki. I always prefer .ogg with no doubts, a lot easier to work. I'm using .bor only for low hardware devices as an exception.
 
Hi Damon, if you shedule another live stream session, could you tell us why obstacles type seem so inconsistent, even with a body box with a depth value and the need to put a platform inside it?
 
No live session tomorrow. Just found put I have to be out of state. Will try again next week if I can.

DC
 
@DCurrent
Man, the inputall event added a huge firepower to the engine!! Thanks a lot for that.
Additions like that grants a high level access to some engine functionalities, giving more freedom to customize the projects.
 
Let me get a advanced question in is there any way to deform a drawn sprite ?

I know images can be zoomed, clipped and rotated what about for example deforming square image into a triangle ?
 
msmalik681 said:
Let me get a advanced question in is there any way to deform a drawn sprite ?

I know images can be zoomed, clipped and rotated what about for example deforming square image into a triangle ?
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Not without a screen. The closest effect for a sprite all by itself is skewing. It allows you to "lean" a sprite. IOW, reshape rectangles into parallelograms. It's how the shadows are generated, but is available for regular sprites too. You can do some cool stuff with it, but not a triangle specifically.

What you could do is draw the sprite onto a screen object and then use the watermode effect to shrink one end to a point. That would effectively deform the sprite into a triangle.

DC
 
Then i humbly request a tutorial on how to do this when you have the time of course.

Another thing I could have swore i remember utunnels talking about mapping key points over a image in triangles then moving them points to almost free deform the image or was that my imagination ?
 
msmalik681 said:
Then i humbly request a tutorial on how to do this when you have the time of course.

Another thing I could have swore i remember utunnels talking about mapping key points over a image in triangles then moving them points to almost free deform the image or was that my imagination ?
Click to expand...

Sure, whenever I can. Even more busy than usual lately with family stuff, end of semester and applying for graduate work. As for the point to point, that would be a pipe dream - direct affine transformation with no need for screens or tricks. Unfortunately there's no such addition I'm aware of, nor do I see anything of the sort in source code.

DC
 
DCurrent said:
New video: Mario Style Jump Height Control
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It seems you read my mind 😄 I'm currently working on a Mario template for a Patreon member and I had some trouble replicating this jumping mechanic. Thanks for sharing your script, it looks cleaner than mine and will help me to fix some things.

 
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