On Mon, 29 Aug 2011 11:22:00 +0100 (GMT Daylight Time), Jeffrey Lee wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Aug 2011, Chris Young wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:45:59 +0100 (GMT Daylight Time), Jeffrey Lee wrote:
> >
> >> * Amiga video code is half-updated, with the aim to use 16bpp output.
> >> However I'm having trouble finding any decent documentation, so I might
> >> leave the rest to you Chris, if that's OK? There's plenty of todo notes
> >> in there for the bits that need filling in.
> >
> > The old code uses a palette-mapped mode for simplicity, as ArcEm's
> > emulated screen was only ever 8-bit maximum (is this still the case?).
> > It then can just change the palette and plot the pens exactly as the
> > emulated screen would be - which is quicker than converting the screen
> > to 16bpp.  Is this still possible?
> 
> The Arc hardware is only capable of using palettised modes, but since some 
> games use mid-frame palette swaps you can end up with over 256 colours on 
> screen at once (the video hardware outputs 12 bit RGB). Since you can't 
> guarantee that the host will support mid-frame palette swaps (and 
> getting the timing right would be nigh-impossible), this is why the new 
> code is designed to work with true colour displays.

OK, makes sense.

> If you're worried about performance (even with palette-mapped output the 
> code would still be doing a per-pixel lookup to map from the current Arc 
> palette to the host palette) then I can easily produce a version of the 
> code that's designed to work with palettised host displays. I haven't 
> profiled the new display code yet, but I'm sure that such a mode would
> give an appreciable performance boost on ARM hosts as well.

Might be a good idea, if it improves performance - that would be my
main concern in switching to 16bpp mode.  Given the relative benefits
of the two, the ideal situation would be to support both and allow
switching between them (preferably during execution), which I
understand your new display code allows anyway?

Chris

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