What have you all used as maximum scroll speeds in the past, and does anyone have thoughts on breaking up tile and attribute updates into different frames?
In the past, I've programmed my scrolling routines to allow for a maximum of 8 pixels per frame and I usually just let tiles and attribute updates happen on the same frames as they shared some setup work anyway.
If I limit scroll speed to 4 pixels per frame in one direction though, I can stagger tiles and attribute updates to save cycles. If I further limited it to 2.6 pixels then I could split it into reading from the map, converting metatile numbers into tiles, and then converting metatile numbers into attributes, all in different frames.
For a Zelda-inspired game, a scroll speed of even 2 pixels per frame feels excessive.
Is there any reason I'm missing for why this wouldn't be a good idea? There's the possibility, "What if you want it to scroll faster in a cutscene?" So, in that case I could make an option that just bypasses the limiting portions. I guess the conditions would be that I could stop and change a setting to allow for 8-pixel scrolling in a special setting, but this wouldn't be available during typical gameplay. Could this somehow come back to bite me or it just really common?
In the past, I've programmed my scrolling routines to allow for a maximum of 8 pixels per frame and I usually just let tiles and attribute updates happen on the same frames as they shared some setup work anyway.
If I limit scroll speed to 4 pixels per frame in one direction though, I can stagger tiles and attribute updates to save cycles. If I further limited it to 2.6 pixels then I could split it into reading from the map, converting metatile numbers into tiles, and then converting metatile numbers into attributes, all in different frames.
For a Zelda-inspired game, a scroll speed of even 2 pixels per frame feels excessive.
Is there any reason I'm missing for why this wouldn't be a good idea? There's the possibility, "What if you want it to scroll faster in a cutscene?" So, in that case I could make an option that just bypasses the limiting portions. I guess the conditions would be that I could stop and change a setting to allow for 8-pixel scrolling in a special setting, but this wouldn't be available during typical gameplay. Could this somehow come back to bite me or it just really common?