Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!dino!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uxa.cso.uiuc.edu!jb10320 From: jb10320@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jawaid Bazyar) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple Subject: Re: Lack of games for the GS Message-ID: <1990Feb22.055239.17177@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Date: 22 Feb 90 05:52:39 GMT References: <1580@crash.cts.com> <8776@wpi.wpi.edu> Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News) Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 39 In article gt0t+@andrew.cmu.edu (Gregory Ross Thompson) writes: >dseah@wpi.wpi.edu (David I Seah) writes: >> The Amiga is capable of some truly inspiring modes...overscan video, >> for example, allows you to put graphics in the border for a TV-like, >> full screen effect. Interlaced mode doubles the vertical resolution >> with the tradeoff of flicker. HAM mode gives you 4096 colors (with a >> small restriction on color placement) on the screen at once. These modes >> don't seem to be used often in games as much as in static pictures... >> I believe there was one game that used HAM mode but I've never seen it. >[-stuff wiped-] > > What is this HAM mode? How does it work? How did ACS do it in one >of their demos? > >> Dave Seah | O M N I D Y N E S Y S T E M S - M | Internet: dseah@wpi.wpi.edu >> | User Friendly Killing Machines | America Online: AFC DaveS > > -Greg T. The ACS "HAM" mode demo is a major lie. There is no such thing as HAM mode. HAM is an acronym for Hold-And-Modify, where each pixel is represented as a change from the previous one (instead of each pixel having an absolute color value). This works fairly well to get a large number of colors on the screen, since most pictures that use HAM have only fine variations between colors (say a face, or a car, etc). On the boundary between major color differences, however, a "rainbowing" effect occurs that can be rather annoying. I think the GS is pretty well set with its FILL mode, although I would like to see some hardware support for graphics primitives (point, line, maybe circle) and definitely a blitter (blitters can be used for memory-to memory DMA, not just to the screen). I would also like a DMA SCSI interface so I can multitask my serial communcations without getting nuked by the disk driver. Anyone know if the new Apple SCSI card is a DMA interface? -- Jawaid Bazyar | This message was posted to thousands of machines Junior/Computer Engineering | throughout the entire civilized world. It cost jb10320@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu | the net hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars.