- Joined
- Nov 12, 2002
- Posts
- 4,665
I posted this as a reply to a question in the tech support forum but I thought maybe I should post my reply to the question here as it could open up some nice debated general discussion (esp the speculation section t the bottom). As follows......
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The meg count situation is a total scam in all honesty. Like HPMAN says, it takes the total ROM space into account even though much of that space can be blank. Scam examples include ROTD using duplicate banks using about 32megs of unneeded space. All the latest games can be easily fitted into 1x1meg and 1x4meg P ROMs (40mbit) but playmore are using 1x8meg or 2x4meg (64mbit). the current limit of the system is as follows.
Now KOF 2003 has the S ROM data in the C ROMs so hence a total of 716 Mbit. However there are 2 empty P ROM banks so another 16 Mbit should be removed for a more accurate reading (700 Mbit). On top of that some of the remaining 6 banks are not totally filled and having a quick look through myself I can see that 4 of those could have easily been fitted into 2. Thats another 16 Mbit that could have been saved with ease. The real KOF 2003 meg count should be 684 Mbit. Anything more is a scam in my view.
Now for some speculation....
Looking at the Method the NeoGeo uses to draw sprites (16x16 tiles from the C ROMs) there is one unused bit so far that could be used to access yet another 512 Mbit of 16x16 tiles.
In question here is the unused Bit 7. If that could be used (which it seems it can as it would follow the use of the 3 bits before it) then instead of the 0x7FFFF tile limit it would be increased to 0xFFFFF. I would say the chances of hardware supporting this as being 99% in favor of. This would make the total possible meg count for the NeoGeo system to;
It also means there is plenty of space for extra character animation to make them smoother though I think the reason playmore have never used this is because of the extra cost in having more ROMs on the PCB. At a minimum they could make a KOF game with _ALL_ King of Fighters characters playable in one game.
4x32meg TSOPs will fit onto the cart PCB where 16x8meg DIPs won't.
Nuff said....
Raz
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The meg count situation is a total scam in all honesty. Like HPMAN says, it takes the total ROM space into account even though much of that space can be blank. Scam examples include ROTD using duplicate banks using about 32megs of unneeded space. All the latest games can be easily fitted into 1x1meg and 1x4meg P ROMs (40mbit) but playmore are using 1x8meg or 2x4meg (64mbit). the current limit of the system is as follows.
Code:
512 Mbit = 16x16 tiles (C ROMs)
128 Mbit = Sound (V ROMs)
72 Mbit = Program (P ROMs, 1x1meg main, 8x1meg banks)
4 Mbit = Z80 (M ROM)
4 Mbit = 8x8 tiles (S ROM)
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720 Mbit = TotalNow for some speculation....
Looking at the Method the NeoGeo uses to draw sprites (16x16 tiles from the C ROMs) there is one unused bit so far that could be used to access yet another 512 Mbit of 16x16 tiles.
Code:
$00000 - $DFFF: Blocks of sprite data, each $80 bytes:
Each block is made up of $20 dwords, format is:
Word: Sprite number (16 bits)
Byte: Palette number (8 bits)
Byte: Bit 0: X flip
Bit 1: Y flip
Bit 2: Automatic animation flag (4 tiles?)
Bit 3: Automatic animation flag (8 tiles?)
Bit 4: MSB of sprite number (Mslug)
Bit 5: MSB of sprite number (MSlug2)
Bit 6: MSB of sprite number (Kof97)
Bit 7: Unknown for now
Code:
1024 Mbit = 16x16 tiles (C ROMs)
128 Mbit = Sound (V ROMs)
72 Mbit = Program (P ROMs, 1x1meg, 8x1meg banks)
4 Mbit = Z80 (M ROM)
4 Mbit = 8x8 tiles (S ROM)
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1232 Mbit = Total4x32meg TSOPs will fit onto the cart PCB where 16x8meg DIPs won't.
Nuff said....
Raz
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