Joefish wrote: ↑Tue Apr 17, 2018 5:15 pm
Cobra
This one is more complicated - there is no background buffer; the scenery is redrawn from scratch each frame. There are a very limited number of scenic blocks, but it's actually quicker than a scroll+copy. Note also that the scenery now scrolls in 2-pixel steps.
The pre-shifted scenery blocks are loaded into the registers AF, BC, DE and HL then the scenery is drawn by a series of PUSHes, PUSHing the relevant pattern onto the screen at that point. It's wasteful as a scrolling pattern may be half-in and half-out of a character position. So the patterns for solid platforms might be:
AF = empty space
BC = start of platform
DE = continuous platform
HL = end of platform
But before this happens, the program must first re-write the list of PUSH instructions to match the level data. The PUSH list for each row of scenery blocks is re-used to draw all 16 pixel rows. It only has to POP four registers to fetch the scenery patterns for an entire pixel row, so it's quicker that using POP+PUSH to copy a row of data (just as many PUSHes, but fewer POPs).
The scroll can also draw things one-character over, so it only needs scenery pre-shifted to 4 positions (to cover each pattern moving across 8 pixels, not 16). The blacked-off borders either side of the screen are uneven; there's an extra character on one side to hide the scenery redraw moving about, as well as any sprite overlap.
It can have a different set of patterns on each row of the screen, and because of the character-position adjustment it can have either:
- one pattern that can be repeated to any length (e.g. platforms which need 3 pre-shifted patterns to start, repeat and end)
- or 3 separate patterns of a narrow upright object (e.g. pipes up to 10 pixels wide, which always just fit within one 16 pixel wide pre-shifted block)
- or one platform that must start and end within 24 pixels and one narrow upright object.
Finally, there's a faster parallax bit at the bottom of the screen drawn by just PUSHing a 16-bit wide pattern right across the screen. This is programmed to occur twice per game cycle. The result is that this part scrolls at 50fps, making everything seem a bit smoother.