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Retro Game Mechanics Explained

Deleted member 12790

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Oct 27, 2017
24,537
This is by far on the coolest Youtube Channels out there. It takes a long time between videos, because the author goes into extreme detail about everything he talks about. A new video just uploaded and I figure people here will probably love this stuff. I wish I could post all of this guy's videos here, but there's a limit on media one can include per post, so I'll just link to the first in his long line of SNES hardware breakdown videos, as well as one of his super interesting Mario 3 TAS explainations.





Great, great Youtube channel. Deserves way, way more love.
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 12790

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Oct 27, 2017
24,537
Incidentally, the latest video on HDMA for the SNES, is so beyond rad, especially the visualization of how mode 7 perspective shifting works.
 
The Shadow Knight

The Shadow Knight

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,430
I've been subbed for a while and it really is a consistently great channel.

I'd imagine it gets a bit too technical and is a bit too dry for a lot of people though.
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 12790

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Oct 27, 2017
24,537
The Shadow Knight said:
I've been subbed for a while and it really is a consistently great channel.

I'd imagine it gets a bit too technical and is a bit too dry for a lot of people though.
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Perhaps, but I'd recommend even those lost power through it, because it often includes some really cool visualizations that make things make more sense. He frequently goes back and retouches on old subjects to provide more clarity. To understand how Mode 7 works entirely, for example, you need to watch 3 separate videos. They all sort of build on each other.
 

Nuclear Muffin

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
4,721
This channel is brilliant! Been subbed for as long as it has been around. They do fantastic breakdowns of how assembly programming works for old consoles, in such a simple, clear and easily readable way that anyone can understand, even if you've never done any real programming before (like me!)

Immensely fascinating! Can't recommed it enough!
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 12790

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Oct 27, 2017
24,537
sir_crocodile said:
I'll have to watch that one. I recall correct HDMA timing being an issue for the longest time in snes emulation.
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The way he describes HDMA using HDMA tables in the video is remarkably similar to the way Copper lists work on the Amiga. Really interesting stuff. If you like this, and want to dig in to something even cooler, check out this:



This is way dryer, way slower, and way more technical, but it's a primer for Amiga 500 graphics programming from a long time Demoscene coder and it fucking rules.
 
Weltall Zero

Weltall Zero

Game Developer
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
19,343
Madrid
Krejlooc said:
Incidentally, the latest video on HDMA for the SNES, is so beyond rad, especially the visualization of how mode 7 perspective shifting works.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is absolutely mindblowing but I feel is buried deep into the video, after a lot of dry technical explanations about memory adressing that I feel are of limited interest to anyone not particularly invested in the scene. So let me try to dig it up and give the elevator pitch version for everyone else so that they understand what they're seeing.

Basically watch the video at the point I link below. Notice that the image is rendered vertically, one line after another, and that the right image contains a visual representation of "what's in memory" (specifically, "what's adressed by the CPU registers") at the time a specific line of pixels is rendered, while the left image contains the actual, finished rendered image. Specifically, note that where the green arrow is (the current line being rendered), the pixels in that line match between both images (since they're being copied from the right to the left). This allows the mode 7 perspective effects (last in the video) by doing something as simple as "zooming" the flat image of the track / floor, as the image is rendered, but also all sorts of cool effects like the beams and Power Bomb explosions in Super Metroid.
 
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OP
OP

Deleted member 12790

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
24,537
Weltall Zero said:
This is absolutely mindblowing but I feel is buried deep into the video, after a lot of dry technical explanations about memory adressing that I feel are of limited interest to anyone not particularly invested in the scene. So let me try to dig it up and give the elevator pitch version for everyone else so that they understand what they're seeing.

Basically watch the video at the point I link below. Notice that the image is rendered vertically, one line after another, and that the right image contains a visual representation of "what's in memory" at the time a specific line of pixels is rendered, while the left image contains the actual, finished rendered image. Specifically, note that where the green arrow is (the current line being rendered), the pixels in that line match between both images (since they're being copied from the right to the left). This allows the mode 7 perspective effects (last in the video) by doing something as simple as "zooming" the flat image of the track / floor, as the image is rendered, but also all sorts of cool effects like the beams and Power Bomb explosions in Super Metroid.
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AH, but zooming isn't quite as simple as people might think. A preceding video goes into much more detail about precisely how the image is scaled in the PPU:



This is precisely what I meant by the videos building up upon themselves, and to power through the dry material as there are usually visuals later that make earlier concepts easier to grasp. It's worth plowing through the 3-hours of material they have put up online.
 
Weltall Zero

Weltall Zero

Game Developer
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
19,343
Madrid
Krejlooc said:
AH, but zooming isn't quite as simple as people might think. A preceding video goes into much more detail about precisely how the image is scaled in the PPU:



This is precisely what I meant by the videos building up upon themselves, and to power through the dry material as there are usually visuals later that make earlier concepts easier to grasp. It's worth plowing through the 3-hours of material they have put up online.
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This is quite meta-interesting in terms of how we're addressing (no pun intended) different segments of the gradient (or pyramid) of knowledge and interest in technical aspects, which is perfectly fine, BTW. You're adressing the people with enough interest in SNES hardware to spend three hours watching technical videos on it, while I'm talking to people with less investment in the subject matter that are nonetheless willing to spend 5 minutes to learn some cool tricks behind the games they love, and ideally turn a percentage of the latter, however small, into the former.
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 12790

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
24,537
Weltall Zero said:
This is quite meta-interesting in terms of how we're addressing (no pun intended) different segments of the gradient (or pyramid) of knowledge and interest in technical aspects, which is perfectly fine, BTW. You're adressing the people with enough interest in SNES hardware to spend three hours watching technical videos on it, while I'm talking to people with less investment in the subject matter that are nonetheless willing to spend 5 minutes to learn some cool tricks behind the games they love, and ideally turn a percentage of the latter, however small, into the former.
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No I understand, I was just hoping to further nudge someone who'd only listen to a quick pitch into investing more time. The videos all sort of follow the format you described, a lot of dry stuff at the beginning, then usually a pretty awesome visualization of the concept. They all play on each other and it makes watching other visualizations make even more sense.

This also sort of leads into topics about general computer science. It's all a great vector into the technical realm of game programming. He has a general videos on stacks that's fun to watch IMO:



Ideally, if someone wants to really get the most out of all these videos, they should also familiarize themselves with hexadecimal and binary arithmetic:



I mean, yeah, this might be dry because it literally is computer science. But at the same time, it's genuinely interesting to a type of person and you don't usually know if you'll love this type of knowledge until you dive into it. I would have loved this type of content when I was younger, because this type of explanation used to typically come in way, way dryer form. These types of videos are way more digestible.
 
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Boy Wander

Boy Wander

Alt Account
Banned
Oct 29, 2017
2,126
UK
Krejlooc said:
This is by far on the coolest Youtube Channels out there. It takes a long time between videos, because the author goes into extreme detail about everything he talks about. A new video just uploaded and I figure people here will probably love this stuff. I wish I could post all of this guy's videos here, but there's a limit on media one can include per post, so I'll just link to the first in his long line of SNES hardware breakdown videos, as well as one of his super interesting Mario 3 TAS explainations.





Great, great Youtube channel. Deserves way, way more love.
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Thanks for this. People might also be interested in the Game Hut channel run by one of the founders of travellers tales, Jon Burton, but I assume you subscribe to that one already. It's also really cool imo.
 
dock

dock

Game Designer
Verified
Nov 5, 2017
1,370
Krejlooc said:
The way he describes HDMA using HDMA tables in the video is remarkably similar to the way Copper lists work on the Amiga. Really interesting stuff. If you like this, and want to dig in to something even cooler, check out this:



This is way dryer, way slower, and way more technical, but it's a primer for Amiga 500 graphics programming from a long time Demoscene coder and it fucking rules.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Back when I dabbled in Amiga game development , I used to make character sprites using 40+ colours and plot them out so there would be no more than 7 colours per horizontal line. They looked like such a mess before they were rendered. The palette would switch per-line to create a fast/large/colourful sprite! It was annoying to do but satisfying to pull off.
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 12790

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
24,537
dock said:
Back when I dabbled in Amiga game development , I used to make character sprites using 40+ colours and plot them out so there would be no more than 7 colours per horizontal line. They looked like such a mess before they were rendered. The palette would switch per-line to create a fast/large/colourful sprite! It was annoying to do but satisfying to pull off.
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Click to shrink...

this is how titan Overdrive achieves 512c high res mode. Its similar to how Mickey mania does the moose chasing 3d scene.
 

HeihachiMishima

Member
Nov 1, 2017
294
Great videos, and great visualizations. Some of them are really clever. The video where he explains how the visualizations are made is also really interesting.

Yeah, this isn't going to be a million sub channel, but I'm glad it exists.
 
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