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From: saunders@triton.unm.edu (Richard Saunders CIRT)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer,comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Better Dynamic HiRes Mode?
Message-ID: <1991Jun05.165952.14140@ariel.unm.edu>
Date: 5 Jun 91 16:59:52 GMT
References: <-J#-M6C@engin.umich.edu>
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Lines: 28

I was wondering about the technical feasibilty of a better Dynamic
Hi-res mode.  As I understand Dynamic Hires, every raster line can
change its pallete, in effect giving you any 16 colors per line.
Well, the 16 color limit per line comes from the fact that Hires 
screens can only use 4 bitplanes ... so is there a way to use all
32 color registers instead of just the first 16?


Well, how about if we used all eight sprites FOR EVERY LINE?
Have every sprite be just one pixel high (one raster line high),
and change the definition of all 8 sprites every raster line.
The sprites use color registers 16-31, so by displaying the sprites
at every raster line, we could increase the number of colors to 32 ...
Now granted, this is an EXPENSIVE graphics mode, as every raster
line would have to reuse all eight sprites as well as do the normal dynamic
hi-res magic, and the extra 16 colors would be limited to the size
of the sprites (16 bits * 8 sprites, only 128 bits per raster line
for our new 16 colors), but this mode might be real useful for a GIF viewer,
or something like that.

Now, I am fairly new to the amiga community (just got my 3000 a few
months ago), but does this "dynamic hires with sprites" sound like
a resonable graphics mode?  I'd like to try it out, but I'm still
not an Amiga Guru yet ;v)



* saunders@triton.unm.edu * "This is _NOT_ Mel Torme!" - Top Secret