Amiga performance, Super Xevious ready for transcode, and Donkey Kong updates.

I've been playing around with the (transcoded) Xevious source in order to facilitate better performance on the Amiga. I think I was somewhat successful.

On the original machine, the MAIN CPU gets a VBLANK interrupt and updates the lower 32 (ground-based object) sprites. It then sets a pair of memory variables (aka semaphores) to signal to both MAIN and SUB ROMs to stop spinning and calculate the next frame. The MAIN doesn't touch any hardware, but the first thing SUB does is update the upper 32 (air-based object) sprites and then hits the h/w scroll register. This is why the ground-based objects "shake" a little even on real hardware!

In order to handle this on one processor, the transcode updates the lower 32 sprites and sets the memory variables in the VBLANK ISR as per the original. When MAIN is signalled, it first calls the SUB ROM routine, which updates its hardware (as described above), runs the rest of its code to completion, and then MAIN can complete the frame processing, before spinning again waiting for the next VBLANK.

So SUB ROM gets to update its hardware immediately after MAIN finishes its VBLANK ISR - just like on the original - which comprise the most time-critical tasks. But on the original, it wasn't clear which CPU was finishing its processing first. This could be important, since the last thing SUB does is update the sprite shadow registers with data from the current frame - including data updated by MAIN. HOWEVER, the transcode is calling MAIN *AFTER* SUB has run to completion. And this is still the case atm. It's something that requires more investigation on my part.

One thing the code couldn't handle though, is 'frame-skipping' which is especially important to get the game running at 60Hz on a PAL (50Hz) machine. So I added an 'ISR' for SUB, comprising the two h/w-related routines, and removed them from the SUB main loop. This 'ISR' gets called directly from the MAIN VBLANK ISR.

I then modified the code to treat the 'semaphore' variable (I removed the superfluous SUB semaphore) more like a real semaphore - a count instead of a flag. The result being, if you set the semaphore to 2 instead of 1, it'll call the main and sub routines twice, whilst updating the screen just once. Perfect for adding an extra frame every 5.

jotd has reported better performance on the Amiga, though I can't immediately eplain why, unless excessive lag was causing the two semaphores to get out of sync and delay an extra frame? Regardless, it's getting a lot closer to a release and is certainly very playable on suitable Amiga harwdare now!

The other thing I've done is completed the RE for the new objects in Super Xevious. They aren't particularly exciting, or very complex at all, though to be fair there wasn't much spare memory to play with as the Xevious ROMs were pretty full; they even removed some of the copy protection to fit them in.

At the risk of spoilers, I will say that of the six new objects, 3 are better left alone and one is completely benign! I was wondering why they went to the trouble of adding an object that effectively does nothing, and only appears in one place - until I saw it in action; it's a bridge to allow Domograms to cross a river. Purely cosmetic of course, as there was nothing stopping them from crossing before, but a clever addition.

The bridge 'allowing' Domograms to cross the river.

The rest I'll let you discover yourselves.

It won't take me long now to add Super Xevious to the transcode, at least as a build option. I'll probably add it before the next beta release on the Neo Geo.

Oh and when I haven't had the opportunity to work on Xevious, I've been working on Donkey Kong. I've updated the makefile to bring it in line with the Xevious makefile, including eliminating any need for masquerading. I've also moved the Neo Geo-specific code from MAIN into the now-familiar OSD routines, and also removed some macros that I'm not sure why I implemented.

I still need to fix the mess I made of the graphics routines, where I attempted to support rotation by changing tile/sprite coordinates on-the-fly in the code, rather than writing the original values to shadow memory and converting then or during VBLANK rendering. Once that's done the MAIN code will be 'clean' and even suitable for jotd to work with on the Amiga.