Author Topic: Portal Y the next generation  (Read 8344 times)

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Offline theUnnamed

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Portal Y the next generation
« on: May 07, 2010, 08:19:34 pm »
I had a crazy idea. Builder boy wrote portal X to run at 9fps on a z80 running at 15mhz and with 24kB of ram.  Well the N-spire has 90mhz processor, 32MB of ram and an OS that is a million times more intelligent than the TI 84's. (nucleus itself not the TI front end) to put things in perspective the N-spires processor it clocked 18 times faster then the 84 and is a better architecture plus its 32 bit as opposed to 8 bit we are talking around 50 times the computational power of the 84 and over 1186 times the memory. with this kind of memory it should be possible to write a full 3d portal running at 30 fps interlaced. (because the screen is fine enough that it can be gotten away with)
To give a comparison the Nintendo DS has about the same if not less processor power, spread across to processors so there is extra overhead of coordination, then the N-spire and one 4mb of ram + 656k of video ram to the N-spires 32MB (including OS space). 3d rendering a physics are completely possible on the N-spire and portal is only a tiny bit of a strech

Offline calc84maniac

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #1 on: May 07, 2010, 09:31:45 pm »
DS has a fairly advanced GPU in it (doesn't compare to a modern iPhone of course, but the DS is kind of old). 3d isn't as fast as you think it would be when you don't have a GPU doing all the work.

Also, interlacing apparently isn't supposed to be used on LCDs.
"Most people ask, 'What does a thing do?' Hackers ask, 'What can I make it do?'" - Pablos Holman

Offline theUnnamed

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #2 on: May 07, 2010, 09:45:54 pm »
the only thing the ds has on the nspire is the video ram and plus bwag's already got a raycaster

Offline calc84maniac

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #3 on: May 07, 2010, 09:49:31 pm »
the only thing the ds has on the nspire is the video ram and plus bwag's already got a raycaster

Oh, you want to do Portal with a raycaster? I'm not really sure how that would work.
"Most people ask, 'What does a thing do?' Hackers ask, 'What can I make it do?'" - Pablos Holman

Offline bwang

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #4 on: May 07, 2010, 10:07:59 pm »
I'm not sure my raycaster can handle scenes of that complexity and still run at reasonable speed :(
The DS has more that just video RAM; it also has an entire GPU doing the 3D transformations and texture mapping.

Offline TIfanx1999

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #5 on: May 07, 2010, 10:17:32 pm »
Yea, you have to remember even with all that horsepower the Nspire isn't a dedicated gaming machine. Without a GPU to handle all the 3d stuff that means your CPU has to do everything.
*edit* Beat me to the punch!
« Last Edit: May 07, 2010, 10:18:12 pm by Art_of_camelot »

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #6 on: May 08, 2010, 12:27:44 am »
portal plus raycasting might be a bit hectic to make, especially when shooting portals on the floor. I think you wouldnt even be able to see through portals until you get through it (you would then be warped on the other side).

As for the FPS, it would also need to be dropped to like 15 FPS because the Nspire LCD is too blurry to have anything of higher FPS look good. When turning around in Bwang's raycaster, we have trouble seeing stuff if we're viewing an area that renders very fast

Offline calc84maniac

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #7 on: May 08, 2010, 12:35:09 am »
Hmm, I actually do wonder if interlacing could be used to give the illusion of twice the FPS (since every other line of the screen would be updated every other frame, it wouldn't have increased blurriness in theory)
"Most people ask, 'What does a thing do?' Hackers ask, 'What can I make it do?'" - Pablos Holman

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #8 on: May 08, 2010, 12:38:16 am »
I actually thought about interlacing the other day. It could maybe work, actually, and speed things up a lot.

Offline bwang

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #9 on: May 08, 2010, 02:02:56 am »
What do you mean by interlacing? Do you mean draw different sets of columns every other frame (so this frame I'd draw columns 0, 2, 4, ... and next frame I'd draw columns 1, 3, 5, 7, ...)?

Offline calc84maniac

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #10 on: May 08, 2010, 02:04:59 am »
What do you mean by interlacing? Do you mean draw different sets of columns every other frame (so this frame I'd draw columns 0, 2, 4, ... and next frame I'd draw columns 1, 3, 5, 7, ...)?
Exactly.
"Most people ask, 'What does a thing do?' Hackers ask, 'What can I make it do?'" - Pablos Holman

Offline meishe91

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #11 on: May 08, 2010, 02:07:34 am »
Just random, but on topic question kind of, but what if you "MacGyvered1" a GPU up to the Nspire? (In theory.)

1: For those of you who don't know who MacGyver is he is a person from an old TV show who would put together odd contraptions, out of random things around him, to get out of a tricky situation. Ex: Use gunpowder to open a locked door (as tested on MythBusters :P).
Spoiler For Spoiler:



For the 51st time, that is not my card! (Magic Joke)

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #12 on: May 08, 2010, 02:07:42 am »
kinda like old TVs

Offline theUnnamed

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #13 on: May 09, 2010, 11:03:04 am »
you are totally wrong about the way the DS it does ALL of its 3d rendering on an ARM9 clocked at 67 MHZ the N-spire is running an ARM9 clocked at 90 MHZ
from Wikipedia:
Quote
CPUs: Two ARM processors, an ARM946E-S main CPU and ARM7TDMI coprocessor at clock speeds of 67 MHz and 33 MHz respectively. The ARM946E-S CPU processes game play mechanisms and video rendering while the ARM7TDMI processes sound output, Wi-Fi support and additionally, when in Game Boy Advance mode, processes what the other processor used to do.
The DS has no vector coprocessor to speak of sorry to disappoint its just got an efficient engine.

the DS and n-spire use 2 different breeds of the ARM9 the N-spire using the highest end that has special instructions for JAVA optimization and the DS uses the second to highest end that may have more cache.  I'm almost positive this can be done.

as a note:I mentioned the ray caster because it showed that such things could be done.  To do portal one would of course need to optimize the hell out of the current ray caster or write a rasterization rendering engine
« Last Edit: May 09, 2010, 11:32:49 am by theUnnamed »

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Portal Y the next generation
« Reply #14 on: May 09, 2010, 12:51:43 pm »
It would still need to use something else than raycasting, though. I am uncertain raycasting can be vertically wire-frame. Just see in old versions of Bwang raycaster how distorted things can get when looking up/down very high/low.

Basically real 3D could be used. real 3D would be possible, too. With several polygons, Calc84maniac got about 70 FPS on his 3D wireframe engine. That was without textures and polygon sorting, though, and I think the engine is discontinued.

I would like to see more Nspire 3D dev in the future, even if Ndless 2.0 was to be discontinued or end up unavailable forever, because there's lot of potential
« Last Edit: May 19, 2010, 10:10:49 pm by DJ Omnimaga »