Hello everyone, I've been puzzling on a historical matter recently and wonder if anyone can set the record straight. Caution that my first point of reference currently are some Wikipedia articles with few effective citations, so bear with me.
In the History section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tile-based_video_game the following is stated (without citation):
I've often seen the 9918 cited as the archetypal tile-based VDP but also seen the Galaxian matter put forth as the reason tile-based consoles settled on 8x8 tiles of varying depth. Given how close the two are, I'm having trouble determining if the 9918 would've influenced Galaxian, if they simply landed on 8x8 by coincidence, or if there is some last common ancestor video processor that established 8x8 as the norm. The other angle I'm also considering is that 8x8 pixels mean a tile bitplane consists of 8 rows of 8 bits, simply landing the format on a nice round number in the world of 8 bit bytes and power-of-2 word alignments, so it was only natural that disparate vendors exploring tiled graphics in the late 70s would've landed on 8x8.
Still, there is the fact that a byte has not always been 8 bits, and there could be precedent for this not being based on bits in a byte since at the time you still had a minority of multiple-of-3 systems (lots of bit slicing at the time, chaining together 3-bit ALUs instead of 4-bit ALUs drove a lot of this in my understanding.)
I did find a previous thread here speculating on the relationship between the 9918 and the 2C02 PPU, but it seemed to be more concerned with design influences elsewhere in the chip rather than focused on why specifically 8 wide by 8 tall tiles instead of some other size.
Anyone have any juicy details from their own research, if there is cross pollination involved, or if 8x8 was a forgone conclusion due to byte widths and alignments.
In the History section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tile-based_video_game the following is stated (without citation):
Bouncing over to the page on the TMS9918, one of the most influential VDPs, the same release year is given:The tile-map model was introduced to video games by Namco's arcade game Galaxian (1979), which ran on the Namco Galaxian arcade system board, capable of displaying multiple colors per tile as well as scrolling. It used a tile size of 8×8 pixels, which since became the most common tile size used in video games.
Some further digging reveals the 1979 Galaxian fact originates in "Before the Crash", a book on early video game history, whereas the 1979 citation for the VDP originates from a presentation given that year on the 9918.The TMS9918 is a video display controller (VDC) manufactured by Texas Instruments, in manuals referenced as "Video Display Processor" (VDP) and introduced in 1979.
I've often seen the 9918 cited as the archetypal tile-based VDP but also seen the Galaxian matter put forth as the reason tile-based consoles settled on 8x8 tiles of varying depth. Given how close the two are, I'm having trouble determining if the 9918 would've influenced Galaxian, if they simply landed on 8x8 by coincidence, or if there is some last common ancestor video processor that established 8x8 as the norm. The other angle I'm also considering is that 8x8 pixels mean a tile bitplane consists of 8 rows of 8 bits, simply landing the format on a nice round number in the world of 8 bit bytes and power-of-2 word alignments, so it was only natural that disparate vendors exploring tiled graphics in the late 70s would've landed on 8x8.
Still, there is the fact that a byte has not always been 8 bits, and there could be precedent for this not being based on bits in a byte since at the time you still had a minority of multiple-of-3 systems (lots of bit slicing at the time, chaining together 3-bit ALUs instead of 4-bit ALUs drove a lot of this in my understanding.)
I did find a previous thread here speculating on the relationship between the 9918 and the 2C02 PPU, but it seemed to be more concerned with design influences elsewhere in the chip rather than focused on why specifically 8 wide by 8 tall tiles instead of some other size.
Anyone have any juicy details from their own research, if there is cross pollination involved, or if 8x8 was a forgone conclusion due to byte widths and alignments.
Statistics: Posted by segaloco — Thu Sep 19, 2024 4:26 pm — Replies 9 — Views 401