Author Topic: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines  (Read 7226 times)

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Offline ZippyDee

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Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« on: March 26, 2011, 04:58:58 am »
I'm working on a game in which I want to use 12x12 sprites, and I would REEEEEEEEEEALLY rather not have 48 wasted bits for every sprite, so I'm looking for an efficient method of displaying 12x12 sprites. If I knew how to access data from an Axe program, I'd just figure out a 12x12 routine using my small knowledge of ASM. Sadly, I don't know how to do that, so I can't. :P

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
-Zippy Dee

Edit: I know how I'd write one in Axe, I just don't know if it would be very optimal, so I guess that's really what I'm looking for: either an assembly routine or an optimized axe routine.
« Last Edit: March 26, 2011, 05:17:05 am by ZippyDee »
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Offline Munchor

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #1 on: March 26, 2011, 07:13:54 am »
I'm working on a game in which I want to use 12x12 sprites, and I would REEEEEEEEEEALLY rather not have 48 wasted bits for every sprite, so I'm looking for an efficient method of displaying 12x12 sprites. If I knew how to access data from an Axe program, I'd just figure out a 12x12 routine using my small knowledge of ASM. Sadly, I don't know how to do that, so I can't. :P

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
-Zippy Dee

Edit: I know how I'd write one in Axe, I just don't know if it would be very optimal, so I guess that's really what I'm looking for: either an assembly routine or an optimized axe routine.

If you know how to make it using Assembly, I suggest Axioms, in case you don't know what they are, they are subroutines coded in pure Assembly but that can be used in Axe.

Offline ZippyDee

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #2 on: March 26, 2011, 07:19:24 am »
I could probably write a crude routine in assembly, but as I said I don't know how to access data defined within the Axe program.
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Offline Munchor

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #3 on: March 26, 2011, 07:23:25 am »
I could probably write a crude routine in assembly, but as I said I don't know how to access data defined within the Axe program.

There's an example on how to use Axioms in Axe 0.5.0's download and I guess you can find some explanations there...

Offline ZippyDee

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #4 on: March 28, 2011, 12:31:48 am »
Great, thanks! Runner12 suggested that I could just save 12x16 sprites and display them as 16x16 and therefore only end up with 6 bytes wasted. I think I'll live with that for now. But this Axiom system is really well defined! I'll certainly be using them for other things at some point.
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Offline FloppusMaximus

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #5 on: March 28, 2011, 11:02:14 pm »
You might consider storing them in a packed form and only uncompressing them when your program starts up.

Or I could write a routine for you.  What type of sprites are we talking about (OR, XOR, masked, grayscale, clipped, ...?)

Offline ZippyDee

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #6 on: March 29, 2011, 02:56:03 am »
Yeah, I did think about decompressing on runtime, and that could work...The sprites I'm thinking of using would be masked 4-level grayscale, because I'm too ambitious for my own good. :P
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Offline FloppusMaximus

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #7 on: March 29, 2011, 10:23:26 pm »
Oh, OK.  So you'd be looking at 18 bytes of wasted space per sprite, not 6.  Would you give every sprite its own mask, or share a mask between multiple sprites?

Also, I don't really know how grayscale works in Axe.  Which buffers do you use?

Offline ztrumpet

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #8 on: March 29, 2011, 10:37:58 pm »
Also, I don't really know how grayscale works in Axe.  Which buffers do you use?
appBackUpScreen (L3 to Axe users) is the back buffer.
plotSScreen(L6 to Axe users) is the front buffer.

Offline FloppusMaximus

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #9 on: March 29, 2011, 11:04:22 pm »
Oh, this is confusing, but I think I understand now.  That's not what "back" and "front" mean in normal usage.  So is appBackUpScreen "light" and plotSScreen "dark", or vice versa?

Offline leafy

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #10 on: March 29, 2011, 11:05:02 pm »
plotSScreen "black and white"
appBackUpScreen "light/dark grey"

EDIT: Actually that's not strictly true. plotSScreen and appBackUpScreen combine to make dark grey and black.

plotSScreen + appBackUpScreen = Black
plotSScreen = Dark Grey
appBackUpScreen = Light Grey
0 = White
« Last Edit: March 29, 2011, 11:08:10 pm by leafiness0 »
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Offline ZippyDee

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #11 on: March 30, 2011, 02:20:21 am »
But what I'd be using is 3 12x12 sprites. The first two sprites would each be drawn to their corresponding buffer (plotSScreen/appBackUpScreen), but they'd first be masked using the third sprite. That allows me to use 4 levels of grayscale and still preserve the background (which I'd keep in another place, probably an appvar or something then delete at the end).
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Offline FloppusMaximus

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Re: Efficient 12x12 sprite routines
« Reply #12 on: March 30, 2011, 10:26:35 pm »
That's sort of what I was asking before, about whether you'd want to have the mask as part of the sprite or as something separate.

I was assuming you'd want to draw everything (mask and both image planes) in one pass, but using multiple passes is also an interesting idea; it would make the code much simpler (hence smaller), as well as more flexible, but also somewhat slower.