How many graphics engines are there?

[Jipcy]

I know there are at least two, but I (perhaps falsely) remember pagefault working on a third graphics engine?

Also, what is the fundamental difference between the new/old graphics engines that are toggled in the Config->Options? And/or, why does one engine perform differently than the other?

One of my reasons for asking is that I'd like to combine the lists of what's implemented in each graphics engine in the Current Progress section of Readme.htm. There seems to be almost no difference as to what's implemented between the two engines, so we could have one list that has everything that is the same, and separate smaller lists for what is different.

[creaothceann]

Wasn't there a section in the old documentation that lists the features of each engine? I think the old one was tile-based instead of line-based, and used 13-bit instead of 15-bit graphics.

[Nach]

New, Old, Old 2.

[Ichinisan]

How about one new engine with lots of bugs that get fixed one at a time until we don't need another engine?

[Nach]

How about one new engine with lots of bugs that get fixed one at a time until we don't need another engine?

This is only like the 23rd time you brought this up. Any reason you keep bringing it up when you know it annoys pagefault?

[Deathlike2]

How about one new engine with lots of bugs that get fixed one at a time until we don't need another engine?

It isn't that simple.

I often wonder why the whole engine is not tile based.. but since now we have overpowered computers to waste HQ filters with... it beats me. Snes9x used to have a tile based engine.. but that was dropped for some reason... go figure.

Then again... what other emulator uses a tile based engine anyways?

[Ichinisan]

How about one new engine with lots of bugs that get fixed one at a time until we don't need another engine?

This is only like the 23rd time you brought this up. Any reason you keep bringing it up when you know it annoys pagefault?

I think that may have been the third or fourth time, but I don't recall seeing a response from a developer.

Anyway, I thought that the old engines were left because both engines had display errors with specific games. Is this the reason, or is it based on performance? I never noticed a performance difference because I've always had >60FPS since I had a PIII 500 in early 1999. Before that, my computers were always slow no matter what settings I used (crappy AMD K6 and Cyrix junk...ugh)

[Deathlike2]

Anyway, I thought that the old engines were left because both engines had display errors with specific games. Is this the reason, or is it based on performance? I never noticed a performance difference because I've always had >60FPS since I had a PIII 500 in early 1999. Before that, my computers were always slow no matter what settings I used (crappy AMD K6 and Cyrix junk...ugh)

Well, as far as the engines were concerned.. it not too hard to figure out why. There are still obviously bugs in the old engine.. but the core problem was that the whole thing was rendered in 13-bit and that wasn't really a good thing moving forward. Back then, the 13-bit hack was a compromise between speed and still managing to add transparancies to ZSNES. The most affected game by this hack is Chrono Trigger and their menus (you can try it for yourself and see what I mean). There are probably more important reasons such as color accuracy and subscreen addition/subtraction and having the lost color bits would be problematic. It's easier to create a newer engine than to try to fix the hack.

Anyway.. AMD K6-2s weren't too bad.. Cyrix was complete junk.. no matter what.

[Nach]

How about one new engine with lots of bugs that get fixed one at a time until we don't need another engine?

This is only like the 23rd time you brought this up. Any reason you keep bringing it up when you know it annoys pagefault?

I think that may have been the third or fourth time, but I don't recall seeing a response from a developer.

Upgrade your memory then, the last two times you brought this up, pagefault responded and told you to cut it out already and he explained why there's more than one.

[Ichinisan]

How about one new engine with lots of bugs that get fixed one at a time until we don't need another engine?

This is only like the 23rd time you brought this up. Any reason you keep bringing it up when you know it annoys pagefault?

I think that may have been the third or fourth time, but I don't recall seeing a response from a developer.

Upgrade your memory then, the last two times you brought this up, pagefault responded and told you to cut it out already and he explained why there's more than one.

I must have missed it. I was not aware that the old engine had a color depth limitation. At that time, it thought you could only choose a color depth along with a video mode (8/16bit) in the DOS version.

[Deathlike2]

I must have missed it. I was not aware that the old engine had a color depth limitation. At that time, it thought you could only choose a color depth along with a video mode (8/16bit) in the DOS version.

Well, that's true.. but somehow they found a way (via the hack) to render less in 16-bit mode... the primary reasoning was performance at the time.

[pagefault]

Old gfx engine

Line engine
Missing lots of windowing and DMA effects
More accurate at drawing some things
13-bit colour rendering

New gfx engine
Tile engine
Nealry complete engine with a few bugs
Can draw mostly everything on the SNES
15-bit colouring

Bottom line

Tile engine is harder to maintain but the line engine is slower and makes some things harder to work with.

Stop being this up.

[Jipcy]

The information about what's implemented in the various graphics engines, in the Current Progress section of Readme.htm, has been updated. I would really appreciate if a developer could look over it and make corrections and changes as necessary.