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SNES PORTING?

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TheRealGamerBoy07Created:
Because SmileBasic Can Handle better and atleast mode-7 3D, Can we port Super Mario Kart on smilebasic?

OR STARFOX?! That would be cool!

But still, Super Mario Kart!

But the copyright... hmm...

Star Fox isn't mode 7. It uses a custom chip that's basically a CPU specialized in math. SmileBASIC's math isn't fast enough to do a decent mode 7 effect on a whole BG layer properly (unless it's in a super low resolution), let alone full 3D... Anyway, even Pilotwings and Mario Kart had their own custom chips for extra math power. I think you can however port any 2D SNES game fine.

I'd really love to see something like an Atari 2800/5600 emulator, but I have ABSOLUTELY no clue how that would work

Atari 2600 is supposedly notoriously difficult to emulate properly due to the crazy display hardware. SB should be fast enough, though.

Star Fox isn't mode 7. It uses a custom chip that's basically a CPU specialized in math. SmileBASIC's math isn't fast enough to do a decent mode 7 effect on a whole BG layer properly (unless it's in a super low resolution), let alone full 3D... Anyway, even Pilotwings and Mario Kart had their own custom chips for extra math power. I think you can however port any 2D SNES game fine.
Well if that's the case, then super mario RPG legend of the seven stars must have had a special chip too.

Star Fox isn't mode 7. It uses a custom chip that's basically a CPU specialized in math. SmileBASIC's math isn't fast enough to do a decent mode 7 effect on a whole BG layer properly (unless it's in a super low resolution), let alone full 3D... Anyway, even Pilotwings and Mario Kart had their own custom chips for extra math power. I think you can however port any 2D SNES game fine.
Well if that's the case, then super mario RPG legend of the seven stars must have had a special chip too.
Yep. It used the SA1 chip, which was pretty much a tiny CPU with some hardware trinkets like fancy DMA and a hardware timer. The reason you could do this was because the cartridge slot had an external bus so the system could access external chips. It allowed Nintendo to effectively "upgrade" the console and increase it's longevity at a decent cost.

Star Fox isn't mode 7. It uses a custom chip that's basically a CPU specialized in math. SmileBASIC's math isn't fast enough to do a decent mode 7 effect on a whole BG layer properly (unless it's in a super low resolution), let alone full 3D... Anyway, even Pilotwings and Mario Kart had their own custom chips for extra math power. I think you can however port any 2D SNES game fine.
Well if that's the case, then super mario RPG legend of the seven stars must have had a special chip too.
Yep. It used the SA1 chip, which was pretty much a tiny CPU with some hardware trinkets like fancy DMA and a hardware timer. The reason you could do this was because the cartridge slot had an external bus so the system could access external chips. It allowed Nintendo to effectively "upgrade" the console and increase it's longevity at a decent cost.
So what you're saying is, that people who want to port games that used this chip, need to either do a workaround to recreate the effect just in a different way, make a 2d snes/nes/ps1/sega what not graphical game or just make an original game. So then what about a specific NES chip in the Super Mario Bros. 3 game? Is it possible(obviously it is) that sb can recreate it? But, you can scale bg's so pilotwings may be possible. Polygonal games is gonna be an issue and there may be the need for a workaround.

I think SMB3's chip only allowed it some more processing power and better background scrolling, which we obviously already have in SmileBASIC.

What's special about SMB3? It always looked very mediocre to me.

What's special about SMB3? It always looked very mediocre to me.
Smoothly scrolling in two axes. It was a big deal at the time.

What's special about SMB3? It always looked very mediocre to me.
Smoothly scrolling in two axes. It was a big deal at the time.
Ah yeah, also the split screen. I had forgotten that already.

What's special about SMB3? It always looked very mediocre to me.
Smoothly scrolling in two axes. It was a big deal at the time.
Awesome! Thanks for that little fact, never knew that. All this recreation of SNES games has me thinking and drooling, if someone could make a Castlevania clone, in the style of AoS, SoTN.. oh that would be so amazing. So I'm really impressed if this program is powerful enough to make that. Obviously it can match SoTN, I think the least powerful system that ran on was the Sega Saturn.

So what you're saying is, that people who want to port games that used this chip, need to either do a workaround to recreate the effect just in a different way, make a 2d snes/nes/ps1/sega what not graphical game or just make an original game. So then what about a specific NES chip in the Super Mario Bros. 3 game? Is it possible(obviously it is) that sb can recreate it? But, you can scale bg's so pilotwings may be possible. Polygonal games is gonna be an issue and there may be the need for a workaround.
You missed something: Pilotwings used mode7. Pretty much the entire game was mode7 environments, so that's a no-go. Quite a shame too, it's one of the better SNES titles out there. As for emulating the specific functions of a chip, that's a big question mark. In most cases, SB won't even need that, because we have much of the power and facilities of a modern programming language (albeit with speed as a bottleneck).

The SNES has no 3D capabilities so It uses the "mode 7" effect to apply scaling and rotation to images and simulate 3D to some extent. This is achieved through mathematical operations so the console could handle it fine up to a certain point. For more complex environments (like Pilotwings and Super Mario Kart) they had to include math coprocessors in the cartridges. Of course these effects might be a piece of cake for the 3DS hardware but we're limited by SmileBASIC's interpreter.

To put it more technically, mode 7 was achieved by changing the various properties of (usually) a BG layer (like scaling and rotation) every scanline to fake various perspective mappings and whatnot of whatever image was on the BG. Usually math was involved, so anything more complicated was assisted by expansion hardware. The timing was also very precise as well. The effects achieved could be more involved than a simple 3D map, but it was very difficult.

Crono Trigger used mode 7 to make the dr who-esque time travel visuals.

Mario's Time Machine used Mode 7 for the time travel minigame Not even kidding