Just a quick mode7 test on the 84C. I wrote this at work this morning so i havent tested on hardware yet.

The canvas is 128x60 and supports h=l colours (like xLIB).



Like i said i havent tested on hardware yet so i dont think its as fast as this screenshot. That being said i havent attempted to optimise yet. Plus the accuracy is a little off as well :S.

Anyway just a test, im not sure what will become of it. Ill post back with impressions once i get home to test it on my calc .

Was this made using your 3D engine?

Also, it looks like this could be used to make maps for racing games and other 1st/3rd person games, so could another dimension be added to make 3D terrain, or is it limited to 2D images?

Its seperate to the 3D engine, and it currently reads data from a tilemap+tiles.

The accuracy is a little off, its something that i would like to tidy up.

Im sure Ive seen the answer somewhere, but what is "mode7"?

Mode 7 is a graphics mode that Nintendo developed for the SNES that allows rotation and scaling of background sprites/images. If you display a rotated background, then change the scaling factor for every line of the display, then it appears to recede into the distance, and voila, pseudo-3D terrain. Throw some 3D-looking player, environment, and enemy 2D sprites on top, and you have yourself a pretty fun game. calc84maniac was working on a well-known Mode7 game port called FZero for the monochrome calculators that he unfortunately never finished.

Uploaded a video of it running on an actual calc. The speed is ok, but i havent started optimizing as yet, so hopefully i can get a little more out of it.



Also sorry for how annoyingly blurry it is, silly phone.

Great progress, tr1p1ea! Do you have any idea what you're going to make this into, if anything? It certainly looks like it has a great deal of promise and a decent speed, to boot. I'm also thrilled to see that jsTIfied emulated it more or less accurately.

I would still need to implement a lot more code for this to be a playable demo etc, but i might find inspiration over the summer here to do so.

jsTIfied is magnificent, very nice work and it allows me to get a lot more coding done (since i can do some at work etc ).

What would it be a playable demo of? Something like F-Zero?

You flatter me, sir; I'm glad that the tool is able to help you! Just let me know if there are bugs or missing features you run into, as always.

It would only ever be a Mario Kart type game, i would never attempt to duck-jump calc84maniac and his awesome F-Zero project.

I hope that he ports his engine to the 84C as well .

Makes sense; I think this would make an amazing Mario Kart-type game!

I seem to remember that the source for F-Zero got lost in an unfortunate hard drive failure and that there were no backups. If that's the case, you might not have to worry about scooping F-Zero.

Mario Kart would be lots of fun! That's a great idea. Also, what is "duck jump"?

I made a few small changes to improve the accuracy of the engine. It is mainly evident when at angles of 90deg intervals as shown below. At 45deg it is still pretty average, but at least its a little better overall.

Is there a reason you decided to block off the left and right sides of the screen to that extent? Do you get a significant speedup from that? Of course, nice job and keep it up; that goes without saying.

I did indeed do that for speed reasons. The plan was to use the space for HUD information (race position, lap, items etc) ... if it ever comes to that.

EDIT + BUMP!

Worked a little more on this demo this morning. Ive rewritten the rendering so that it is faster/smoother .. the screenshot is a little jumpy though:

This simply blows my mind.

If you were to make this a racing game, I'm curious how many players it would be able to handle besides yourself and run the course?

You have any plans to take this further?

wow this is incredible!

calc84 spoke about porting his engine to the CSE as well (well more like added to his todo list). I jokingly made a deal that he can do fzero and i can do mariokart! Though I doubt anything more than a demo will come of this, I would like people to try it (when its in a more usable form).

Here is another screenie without the free rainbow road:



Also as Runer noted, the angles/elevation/scale/distances etc are all out of whack as this is a proof of concept. This can be adjusted and will need to be if its going to be any use to anyone.

I hope you don't drive like this in real life

One word: Woah