Writing Assembler for Sega Genesis #4

In this note I will describe how to draw sprites using the VDP emulator of the Sega Genesis console.
The process of rendering sprites is very similar to rendering tiles:

  1. Loading colors into CRAM
  2. Unloading 8×8 sprite parts into VRAM
  3. Filling Sprite Table in VRAM

For example, let’s take a sprite of a skeleton with a sword 32×32 pixels

Skeleton Guy [Animated] by Disthorn

CRAM

Using ImaGenesis we will convert it into CRAM colors and VRAM patterns for assembler. After that we will get two files in asm format, then we will rewrite the colors to word size, and the tiles should be put in the correct order for drawing.
Interesting information: you can switch the VDP autoincrement via register 0xF to the word size, this will allow you to remove the address increment from the CRAM color fill code.

VRAM

The Sega manual has the correct tile order for large sprites, but we’re smarter, so we’ll take the indexes from the ChibiAkumas blog, starting the count from index 0:

0 4 8 12

1 5 9 13

2 6 10 14

3 7 11 15

Why is everything upside down? What do you expect, the prefix is ​​Japanese! It could have been from right to left!
Let’s change the order manually in the sprite asm file:

	dc.l	$11111111	; Tile #0 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111	; Tile #4 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111
	dc.l	$11111111	; Tile #8 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111111 
	dc.l	$11111122 
	dc.l	$11111122 
	dc.l	$11111166 
	dc.l	$11111166	; Tile #12 
	dc.l	$11111166 
	dc.l	$11111166 
	и т.д.

Load the sprite like regular tiles/patterns:

  lea Sprite,a0 
  move.l #$40200000,vdp_control_port; write to VRAM command 
  move.w #128,d0 ; (16*8 rows of sprite) counter 
SpriteVRAMLoop: 
  move.l (a0)+,vdp_data_port; 
  dbra d0,SpriteVRAMLoop

To draw the sprite, it remains to fill the sprite table (Sprite Table)

Sprite Table

The sprite table is filled in VRAM, its location address is set in VDP register 0x05, the address is again tricky, you can look it up in the manual, an example for address F000:

Ок, теперь запишем наш спрайт в таблицу. Для этого нужно заполнить “структуру” данных состоящую из четырех word. Бинарное описание структуры вы можете найти в мануале. Лично я сделал проще, таблицу спрайтов можно редактировать вручную в эмуляторе Exodus.
The parameters of the structure are obvious from the name, for example XPos, YPos – coordinates, Tiles – the number of the starting tile for drawing, HSize, VSize – the size of the sprite by adding parts 8×8, HFlip, VFlip – hardware rotations of the sprite horizontally and vertically.

It is very important to remember that sprites can be off-screen, this is correct behavior, since unloading off-screen sprites from memory is quite a resource-intensive task.
After filling the data in the emulator, it needs to be copied from VRAM to address 0xF000, Exodus also supports this feature.
By analogy with drawing tiles, first we access the VDP control port to start writing at address 0xF000, then we write the structure to the data port.
Let me remind you that the description of VRAM addressing can be read in the manual or in the blog Nameless Algorithm.

In short, VDP addressing works like this:
[..DC BA98 7654 3210 …. …. …. ..FE]
Where hex is the bit position in the desired address. The first two bits are the type of command requested, for example 01 – write to VRAM. Then for address 0XF000 you get:
0111 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0011 (70000003)

As a result we get the code:

  move.l #$70000003,vdp_control_port 
  move.w #$0100,vdp_data_port 
  move.w #$0F00,vdp_data_port 
  move.w #$0001,vdp_data_port 
  move.w #$0100,vdp_data_port

After this, the skeleton sprite will be displayed at coordinates 256, 256. Cool, huh?

Links

https://gitlab.com/demensdeum /segagenesissamples/-/tree/main/7Sprite/vasm
https://opengameart.org/content/skeleton-guy-animated

Sources

https://namelessalgorithm.com/genesis/blog/vdp/
https://www.chibiakumas.com/68000/platform3.php#LessonP27
https://plutiedev.com/sprites

Published by demensdeum