Reply 60 of 72, by Exploit
Falcosoft wrote on 2022-06-22, 06:29:WhiteFalcon wrote on 2022-06-22, 05:09:Or is it okay to draw all the screen for every frame? Background, sprites and all? It did work in VGA 320x200, I think even on a 486, but that was less than 1/2 of the pixels. I am afraid it would give me like 5-10 FPS on the Pentium, if even that many.
You have to try. I always use this double buffering 'flip' concept and redraw full pages. But I must say I do not think that banked 640x480 256 color mode on a 486 (and 20+) fps is a realistic expectation. VGA 320x200 has less than 1/4 of the pixels (not 1/2). I think even the linear frame buffer mode of 640x480 could have performance problems on a 486.
Flight Simulator games were unplayable in VESA 2.0 LFB 640x480x8 on my 486DX 33MHz with an ET4000/W32 ISA 1 MB VRAM videocard. The same applies to Tomb Raider.
But Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, which did use VESA 2.0 LFB 640x480x8 too, was playable.
But the real problem wasn't even the CPU, but the slow ISA bus. That was the main bottleneck. Unfortunately, a VLB card didn't fit into the mainboard.
WhiteFalcon wrote on 2022-06-22, 11:39:...
TTycoon is a different beast though, they must have needed to redraw the screen almost constantly with so much happening in bustling cities and also with allowing the user to drag the whole landscape around. Magic. No other explanation.EDIT: Maybe my eyes are pink-tinded with nostalgia and there were some artifacts, will have to try on the real PC when possible.
Transport Tycoon most likely makes heavy use of color cycling. Only the values in the color palettes are changed, which is extremely cost-effective. The same trick was used in Sim City 2000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_cycling