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CLOUDBOND007

Thank you Andy Thorley

Lead

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Posts: 12352

(07/15/08 10:49 PM)

Lunitari Mage
Moderator

Tags : None

I was bored out of my skull wondering what to do before bed tonight when I saw this very interesting submission.

CB007's Review & GPT Archive
CB007's Gaming BBS

James FP

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Posts: 3164

(07/16/08 12:52 PM)

Schmendrick's Nose
Moderator

I wonder if there's a consistent reason the programmers often hid things in the upper left corner of the screen (the Gate Key in Truce Canyon, the treasure chests in the castle, the man's legs in the Trial scene).

Get out of my cheese, get into my corn!

Minerva K Red

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Posts: 592

(07/17/08 12:39 PM)

Some Assembly Required

Someone should do that for Final Fantasy 6. I'm almost positive I remember stripping away background layers with an emulator a long time ago and finding some weird things.

~ Remember: FIRST you pillage, THEN you burn!

Flying Omelette

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Posts: 20891

(07/17/08 9:25 PM)

But you had to have the BIIIIIG salad!

I noticed that when you peel away the background on Ninja Warriors, there's an unused animated background underneath. It's not much, it's like long bars of wavy lights, or something like that, but it's there. And you would never know it's there without an emulator.

That's what a stage normally looks like.

Peel off the background layers and you get this...and it's constantly moving downwards.

Think of what you're saying,
You can get it wrong
And still you think that it's all right.
Think of what I'm saying,
We can work it out
And get it straight or say good night.

There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one

Last Edited By: Flying Omelette 07/17/08 9:30 PM. Edited 1 times.

Crawl and 1OOO

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Posts: 15594

(07/17/08 11:26 PM)

Administrator

How can you be bored at home? That's what hobbies are for.

Crawl and 1OOO

[-]

Posts: 15594

(07/17/08 11:29 PM)

Administrator

Although I admit I do like to have one final good thing to look at on the internet before going to bed, so I guess my previous post was stupid.

CLOUDBOND007

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Posts: 12352

(07/17/08 11:46 PM)

Lunitari Mage
Moderator

Well, I was too tired to read a book or watch a movie and enjoy it properly. Nothing I wanted to play. I also was going to have a snack, and I like to use the computer when I'm eating for some reason.

CB007's Review & GPT Archive
CB007's Gaming BBS

Camira Breen

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Posts: 440

(07/21/08 1:22 PM)

The Baroness

This begs the question - do Super NES games have to have all four backgrounds in place always? And the developers just hide the layers they don't need?

What I always thought was that if a game only has a foreground and one scrolling background of parallax, then all that exists are those two layers, and if you tried turning off the nonexistant layers with an emulator, nothing would happen.

--Pepto-Dash!!

CRAWLand1000

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Posts: 3590

(07/21/08 3:00 PM)

The Fuzzy Physicist
Administrator

Off the top of my head:

The term "Mode 7" is not a meaningless catch phrase (eg., "Blast Processing") but refers to 7 modes the SNES can use. Only some have 4 backgrounds active at once. I forget what advantages you get by using a mode with less backgrounds (possibly just increased execution speed elsewhere). I thought I had a magazine that said what the modes were, how many backgrounds they used, and what other effects were available. (Some people think that the SNES can do "scaling" and "rotation", maybe forgetting that it can only scale and rotate backgrounds, not sprites. I think in a case like, say, the stage 2 boss of Axelay, some of its body parts were made of backgrounds -- kind of like some large NES bosses (eg., Lifeforce) Games that truly had scaling or rotating sprites probably used a FX/FX2 chip -- eg., Yoshi's Island)

It might be difficult for me to find that magazine, though.

"Without a foothold in the past, we cannot walk towards the future."
-Vagrant Story

CRAWLand1000

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Posts: 3590

(07/21/08 3:08 PM)

The Fuzzy Physicist
Administrator

Okay, Wikipedia does have this information, not under "mode 7" but under the general SNES entry:

Mode 0: 4 layers, all using 4-color palettes. Each BG uses its own section of the SNES palette.
Mode 1: 3 layers, two using 16-color palettes and one using 4-color palettes.
Mode 2: 2 layers, both using 16-color palettes. Each tile can be individually scrolled.
Mode 3: 2 layers, one using the full 256-color palette and one using 16-color palettes. The 256-color layer can also directly specify colors from an 11-bit (RGB443) colorspace.
Mode 4: 2 layers, one using the full 256-color palette and one using 4-color palettes. The 256-color layer can directly specify colors, and each tile can be individually scrolled.
Mode 5: 2 layers, one using 16-color palettes and one using 4-color palettes. Tile decoding is altered to facilitate use of the 512-width and interlaced resolutions.
Mode 6: 1 layer, using 16-color palettes. Tile decoding is as in Mode 5, and each tile can be individually scrolled.
Mode 7: 1 layer of 128x128 tiles from a set of 256, which may be interpreted as a 256-color one-plane layer or a 128-color two-plane layer. The layer may be rotated and scaled using matrix transformations. HDMA is often used to change the matrix parameters for each scanline to generate perspective effects.

There are actually 8 modes, but the first one is labeled zero; hence, mode 7. It sounds like only mode 7 has mode 7 effects? And that it can only use two planes in that mode? Hmmm... In a lot of games, only one plane has mode 7 effects while another does not (eg., the Karanot fight in CV4; Karanot himself uses mode 7 effects, while the other background is barebones; in pilotwings, the mainbackground is the ground, which has mode 7 effects; the horizon is simplier). But what about the Axelay fight I mentioned? I wonder if they did do that another way.

"Without a foothold in the past, we cannot walk towards the future."
-Vagrant Story

Crawl and 1OOO

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Posts: 15594

(07/21/08 6:22 PM)

Administrator

FO claims that only the body of the Axelay boss is mode 7 rotated; the legs are animated sprites.� If so, those legs are animated very smoothly; it sure looks like it could be mode 7 rotation.

Maybe I'll check it out with ZSNES and peel away the background layers...

Here's a video, by the way.� (Boss fight starts at around 4:10)

Crawl and 1OOO

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Posts: 15594

(07/21/08 6:40 PM)

Administrator

FO was right!

Peel away the background layer, and the center disappears. So does the layer at the top at bottom.

Peel away the sprite layer, and the legs disappear.

Not only that, but the background details are sprites, too, and disappear with the sprite layer. People have suspected that, anyway, since they sometimes exhibit sprite flicker.

Crawl and 1OOO

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Posts: 15594

(07/22/08 1:17 PM)

Administrator

Camira Breen wrote:
This begs the question - do Super NES games have to have all four backgrounds in place always?

Time to nitpick. It does not beg the question. It raises the question.

To beg the question is to conclude what you're saying by assuming it's true. It's like answering a question with the question itself.

Alfred misused the expression in Batman Begins ("This begs the question, what does Bruce Wayne do with his time?") And that's why that was a zero star movie.

Last Edited By: CRAWLand1000 07/22/08 5:09 PM. Edited 1 times.

TaroSH

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Posts: 2952

(07/22/08 4:16 PM)

I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost

So, what's an example of "begging the question"?

Flying Omelette

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Posts: 20891

(07/22/08 5:01 PM)

But you had to have the BIIIIIG salad!

That's definitely a New Jersey/Philadelphia thing. I used to hear "begs the question" all the time back there, but not so much here anymore. (Before anyone says it, yes I know Cam lives in California, but I'm pretty sure she's from Philly.)

Think of what you're saying,
You can get it wrong
And still you think that it's all right.
Think of what I'm saying,
We can work it out
And get it straight or say good night.

There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one

CRAWLand1000

[-]

Posts: 3590

(07/22/08 5:07 PM)

The Fuzzy Physicist
Administrator

It's not a New Jersey thing; it's a common mistake thing. Its frequency must be similar to "irregardless."

Incidentally, today my boss corrected two people (an American and an Indian) for saying "Me and [John went to the store]." (ie., using "me" as a subject, and in a compound subject, putting yourself first)

What's an example of begging the question? How about, "I like this game because it's fun."

"Without a foothold in the past, we cannot walk towards the future."
-Vagrant Story

Flying Omelette

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Posts: 20891

(07/22/08 5:42 PM)

But you had to have the BIIIIIG salad!

But I definitely hear "raise the question" here, and it was always "begs the question" back there.

Think of what you're saying,
You can get it wrong
And still you think that it's all right.
Think of what I'm saying,
We can work it out
And get it straight or say good night.

There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one

Flying Omelette

[-]

Posts: 20891

(12/23/08 2:21 PM)

But you had to have the BIIIIIG salad!

BTW, the mystery of that hidden scrolling background has been solved. Someone emailed me this morning to tell me that if you look carefully at a time gate after it opens, you will see the scrolling background making up the "rim" of the gate. I watched a Chrono Trigger YouTube video this morning and confirmed it.

This explains why there is none on the Lavos screen, because that gate does not have a fluctuating rim and is the only one in the game that is like that.

I guess one mystery that still remains is why do that as a background instead of as an animated sprite?

I've fallen down, but I'll rise above this... rise above this doubt.

www.flyingomelette.com

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