WIP Atari ST ScummVM-lite

[agranlund]

Some early dither tests, I think this is going to be an improvement with a bit more work.
Dither thresholds is going to need some trial and error tweaking per game. Day of the Tentacle looks much better with a very high threshold (or off completely) while Monkey1 looks better with a low threshold for dithering.

Now that I am looking at the pictures again I think they may need a bit higher threshold before dithering, but still, I think something along these lines are going to be an improvement, even though I'm usually not very fond of dithering :)

mi2ad2.png

mi2ad0.png

mi2bd2.png

mi2bd0.png

[GadgetUK164]

Out of interest, does it support (or could it support) the Blitter? Progress has been amazing! I am tempted to try this myself - I just need to sort out another SD card as my card is full lol.

EDIT: Just been playing it - wow, it's awesome!!! General Midi works perfectly, as does YM samples. Samples are pretty crackly but I guess that was always going to be the issue. I did get a crash after the start at the point it says "Wo ist Fritz?". Using 4MB STFM, with PP HDD driver. I was running at 16MHz using the original mod by Exxos. Will test at 8Mhz to see if that solves it. TOS 1.04

[GadgetUK164]

I loaded it again and skipped past that part that crashed earlier and its fine! Managed to save and load too etc. This is incredible work!!!

[agranlund]

I loaded it again and skipped past that part that crashed earlier and its fine! Managed to save and load too etc. This is incredible work!!!

Thank you! :)
There was an issue before on another machine that ran the PP driver and I made a best-guess workaround for it.
Maybe there are other issues still, or maybe it's not related to the driver. Thanks for reporting it though! I'll give it a go with TOS1.04 here as well in case it's that.

It doesn't use of the Blitter currently but it was something I was almost certain I would explore at some point.
Perhaps some kind of cache where x number of most-recently used non-scaling sprites could end up for faster blitting.
It would be quite a bit of work and the games run pretty decent at the moment so I've pushed that idea far down the priority list.

[agranlund]

I think I've found a dithering scheme I like.
For my taste I think it's an improvement even though I'm usually not fond of dithering!
It's really simple but I don't want to increase that already long install time too much so simple is good :)

m1d1.png

m1d0.png

m2d1.png

m2d0.png

[GadgetUK164]

Wow, that's looking great dithered! Re Blitter, yeah that makes sense! No point in trying to squeeze in use of it where it creates more work and provides little benefit. I was thinking of some of the more complex scenes that were cut if not 030 CPU etc.

[agranlund]

Wow, that's looking great dithered! Re Blitter, yeah that makes sense! No point in trying to squeeze in use of it where it creates more work and provides little benefit. I was thinking of some of the more complex scenes that were cut if not 030 CPU etc.

Yeah I really like it! And I usually hate dithering ever since I was exposed to Sierras EGA dithering in my youth :lol:

[simon.osborne]

This is pretty excellent work! Never thought I'd ever see Monkey Island 2 running on an ST with speech!

The new dithering does look really good.

[nemo]

I think I've found a dithering scheme I like.
For my taste I think it's an improvement even though I'm usually not fond of dithering!
It's really simple but I don't want to increase that already long install time too much so simple is good :)

Very nice, this actually looks better than the official Atari ST conversion!

[GadgetUK164]

I think I've found a dithering scheme I like.
For my taste I think it's an improvement even though I'm usually not fond of dithering!
It's really simple but I don't want to increase that already long install time too much so simple is good :)

Very nice, this actually looks better than the official Atari ST conversion!

Yeah, I thought that too about the original MI game! Being able to play MI2 and Fate of Atlantis is just icing on the cake! I wonder what other SCUMM games might be possible in the distant future (Zak McKracken maybe?)