Mode 2 - Would a decent vector game be possible such as Asteroids , StarWars

[Bryce]

Beware the birth of Skynet! 

Relax, I've already sent someone back in time to make sure that doesn't happen. What could possibly go wrong?!

Bryce.

[arnoldemu]

Beware the birth of Skynet! 

isn't that the name of the UK's spy satellite network?

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28satellite%29

[robcfg]

Then there's nothing to worry about... 

[Gryzor]

Can someone explain the question posed earlier - whether a vector screen machine has some advantage over a raster one if you develop the same vecrot gfx?

[MaV]

Can someone explain the question posed earlier - whether a vector screen machine has some advantage over a raster one if you develop the same vecrot gfx?

Well, for one, you don't need to clear the drawing area as the CRT sort of does that for you on every update of the screen. After all it displays only what you tell him to. Clearing the area for the vector graphics takes a good chunk of time on a bitmapped screen.

Then also no need to implement a line algorithm, since you only supply the coordinates for the lines and perhaps the colour of it for example.

The projection of 3d models onto a 2d plane is the same on both machines unless the vector graphics unit can do that as well (unlikely on retro boxes).

The disadvantage of a vector screen machine would be that you cannot display bitmaps or textures.

[Gryzor]

What I thought... yes, of course I know you can do bitmaps on a vector machine (well, if it's fast enough?), I was talking about speed

Also, I guess you forget the concept of monitor frequency, but I guess that since the beam skips most of it you can go faster than a normal 50KHz monitor, if the underlying hardware supports it?