prosolis
7ba979a236
Prepares session 4 for handoff. No new measurements; this reconciles the docs with what session 4 changed and makes the next session's entry point cheaper. - tools/bench/check.sh re-runs both display regression tests from the Blu-ray in ~40 s and prints ALL GREEN. Verified green cold, after wiping tmp/ and re-extracting. STATUS and README both open with it, because everything downstream assumes the display path is pixel-exact and nothing previously checked that in one command. - Reconciled the figures session 4 invalidated. Session 3's 38.88 dB ceiling is struck through in STATUS with a pointer to 40.81; the "three facts the player must honour" table no longer quotes R20 = 0x0116, which was the 768-wide IPL timing and would have been copied into the player as if it were the shipping value. crtc_mode.lua is now named as the single source of truth for CRTC registers, in both STATUS and README. The 38.88 dB in the session-3 reproduce section is left alone and annotated instead: it is correct for that test, which still packs I = 1. The two numbers disagree for a reason and a reader should be able to see which is which. - Next-step 2 now leads with something smaller than "write the decoder": a dumb full-frame RAM->GVRAM blit in 68000 code, timed. That number alone confirms or kills the 38% estimate, and needs no bitstream, codebooks, or DLX1 parsing. The reference image and its checker already exist. - Parked the user's Cliff Hanger / Lupin III follow-on in STATUS so it is not lost and not mistaken for scheduled work. Cheaper than this project on every axis except media prep, which is where it would actually stall. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01194oWYW8DQXK1SZ2DnChW6
2.9 KiB
Dragon's Lair — Sharp X68000 port
Porting Dragon's Lair to a stock X68000 (68000 @ 10MHz, 2MB, SASI/SCSI).
This is fundamentally a video codec problem, not a game-logic problem: the game logic is a scene table with branching input windows; the difficulty is pushing ~22 minutes of Don Bluth animation through a 10MHz 68000.
Green-light check: ./tools/bench/check.sh (~40 s, needs the Blu-ray
mounted) re-runs both display regression tests and prints ALL GREEN.
Read first
docs/FINDINGS.md— measured hardware facts, content statistics, codec decision, and a section on measurement traps that produced three separate false results. Read §4 before trusting any pipeline number.docs/STATUS.md— current state, working setup, blockers, next steps. Start here. It also lists what has been explicitly abandoned, so old ideas do not get re-proposed.docs/BENCHMARK.md— how to measure the storage subsystem, and why a bandwidth figure out of MAME would be meaningless.docs/HARDWARE.md— X68000 GVRAM/CRTC reference.
Layout
docs/ findings, status, hardware reference
tools/analysis/ measurement scripts, numbered in the order they were written
(01/02 marked BROKEN deliberately, kept as regression refs).
Run from the repo root — they import from tools/encoder/.
tools/bench/ MAME Lua injection harness + 68000 benchmark sources.
`check.sh` re-runs both display regression tests (~40 s).
`crtc_mode.lua` is the single source of truth for CRTC R00-R08
and R20 — do not write CRTC values anywhere else.
tools/vasm/ vasm m68k assembler (built from source)
tools/encoder/ hybrid VQ encoder + DLX1 container writer (working)
src/player/ 68000 player (not yet written)
assets/ extracted frames/audio (gitignored)
Encoder
python3 tools/encoder/extract.py 00020 /tmp/fr 12 crop
python3 tools/encoder/encode.py /tmp/fr out.dlx --profile sasi --preview p.png
Two quality profiles ship from one codec and one decoder — sasi (110 KB/s) and
scsi (280 KB/s) are two points on the same rate-distortion curve. The codec is
a Cinepak-style hybrid: each 4x4 block is coded as SKIP, one 4x4 codeword, four
2x2 codewords, or RAW literal pixels, chosen per block by rate-distortion.
The RAW escape means lam=0 is pixel-exact against the palettised frame, so the
quality knob spans lossless to heavily-compressed without changing the bitstream.
Profiles are derived from a bandwidth figure, not chosen by eye:
python3 tools/encoder/profile_gen.py --bw-mbps 4 --name scsi
On reading
docs/FINDINGS.md: it is append-only and several later sections overturn earlier ones. Superseded sections carry a blockquote at the top pointing to the correction — heed those, especially 18 (reversed by 21).
Source media (DRAGONS_LAIR.iso) and ROMs are gitignored — supply your own.