I've been thinking about this and I wonder, is a higher frequency necessary for OPL tunes because certain instruments need to be updated faster in order to sound correct?
I know DOSBox uses 1000 Hz for DRO files, which I guess is pretty much guaranteed to make it sound exactly as it originally came out the speakers. What would be the consequences of using 1000 Hz for playback on a 286? I know certain songs made by Adlib Tracker II (which really stretches OPL3 to the max) have trouble playing correctly even when recorded as DRO and played back. Certain players play the resulting DRO files perfectly, while others (such as my IMF/DRO player which works perfectly on IMF files and OPL2 DRO files) do strange things on certain songs and parts of songs.
And back to graphics: I think we're definitely using VGA, 256 colors, 320x200 resolution (i.e. standard Mode 13h). Unless someone wants to go through the trouble of using Mode X, that is. The graphics should be stored uncompressed for now, converted from standard 256 color BMP files (the tiles in sheets, the sprites individually). The tiles can be organized into background, midground, and foreground, with most of the stuff in back and mid, and foreground used mostly for sprite placement and special stuff like portals and doors [note: I'm totally flexible on this approach so if someone thinks there's a better way, I need to know so we do it right the first time 😀] The level designer in me says you should be able to place any tile in the background or the midground, but my gut says that may not be practical given memory limitations [programmers, what's the best way to do this?].
Programming: OpenWatcom [what version is best?], real mode. The code should run on either an 8088 or 286, but I think we should target 286 or turbo XT systems with at least some EMS memory. I assume we're using DOSBox for development (or real hardware of course). We should probably limit DOSBox cycles to whatever our minimum target system is (for 286 I think that should be 1500-2000 iirc), just to make sure it works right.
Let's figure out how we store the graphics and how memory management will work, so we can start working on the foundation of the code. Should there be a github page for this? I can start one if it would be useful.
We'll also need preliminary utilities to concatenate the graphics and levels into the game files.
World's foremost 486 enjoyer.