Posted: Jan 27 2008 12:28 am Post subject: Sprite Slowdown on SNES (Looking for help)
Does anybody else experience this?
Sometimes when there's alot going on onscreen or if there are rotating graphics or transparencies my SNES slows down alot. I know this is normal but it seems like I'm experiencing it a lot more than I used to. When I was a kid, I never noticed any slowdown but now out of the last couple of games I've played, I've experienced it maybe 10-15% of the playtime.
I don't mind it so much. The games are still playable and most of the time there is no slowdown. I'm just worried that maybe my SNES is dying.
If any of you experts know anything about it, do let me know.
By the way, I'm using a PAL SNES which has been modified to output a 60Hz signal. Also, over the past couple of days, I've been using it more than I used to. It's been on for 3-4 hours at a time. _________________ http://www.what-song.net http://www.rogershanks.com
I think this is actually pretty common, dude. I was playing a few shooters on the SNES and when more than three or four enemies get on screen, it slows to a crawl. Some games are worse than others. Maybe that was the sacrifice for the nicer graphics and sound.
That's one area that the Genesis/Mega Drive had an edge on the SNES. There's rarely any slow down in Genesis shooters. _________________ "One of God's own prototypes. Too weird to live, too rare to die." --Hunter S Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
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What I think it is is that you probably didn't notice it as much when you were younger. I didn't even know that slowdown wasn't supposed to happen until I started reading about it in magazines. I just figured that it was a common factor of every game.
The trouble was whilst the SNES could essentially handle more on screen sprites than the Megadrive/Genesis (128 as opposed to 80), the machine was lumbered with a CPU which ran at half the speed of the Genesis (3.58MHz as opposed to 7.16MHz). To make matters worse, whilst the SNES used a 16 - bit CPU - the 65816 (in other words a souped up 6502 which could run in either 8 or 16 - bit mode) many early games were coded directly in native 6502 mode to speed up development time neglecting the more advanced 16 - bit features of the CPU (since a lot of programmers were coming directly from NES development). Slowdown mainly affects the first generation of SNES games (1990 to 1991). Through time programmers learned to work around this problem, both with more efficient and clever programming techniques and with the inclusion of custom cartridge mounted chips such as the DSP and Super FX. Compare the early Konami games (Gradius 3/Ganbare Goemon/Castlevania 4) with some of their later releases (Axelay/Contra Spirits/Parodius) as an example of how developers managed to work around the SNES speed problem.
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