Posted: 9/6/2010 10:52 AM
Post subject: Is there a way to hide layers in 2D games?
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Epsilon
Joined: 7/27/2010
Posts: 42
Yeeeeaaahhh, me again. And I don't have a critical issue that needs to be answered RIGHT away. I was just wondering if there's a way to turn off the background layer in pcsx, or foreground layer, or certain layers of sprites, like in the TASing snes emulator on this site. Not zsnes, but the other one. Is there? Or is there a better emulator for that? Sorry, I hate to be so off-topic, since this site is about TASing, and my question has nothing to do with TASing. I can live without layer options. I was just curious. It would just make it a lot easier to extract sprites from the game. (MM X6) I've looked around for such an option for quite a while now, and there's really not much to explore on this emulator. It's like zsnes, except not as user-friendly. ... Actually, now that I think about it, maybe there isn't. Since most psx games are 3D, I have no idea where hiding layers in a 3D graphics game would be useful. Well, I don't know, but I'd like to verify it. Thanks in advance. Sorry for the dumb question. I feel stupid. P.S. For the record, I did google it. Nothing useful popped up on the first page.
Posted: 9/6/2010 2:19 PM
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Tub
Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 1377
The SNES has hardware support for layers and sprites. The game has to say "This is layer 1, this is layer 2, ..." and it's the hardware's (read: emulator's) job to render them. Since layers and sprites are explicitely defined, they can be rendered separately. The PSX does not have any hardware support for layers. The game just draws all objects from the back layer, then all objects from the second layer etc. until the scene is done. There's no generic way for the emulator to know where a layer ends and where the next one starts. If you want to disable some layers, you'll have to research the game's render engine, then hack the GPU plugin to detect the relevant instructions and skip them. This isn't simple, and it'll only work with a single game.
m00
Posted: 9/6/2010 3:51 PM
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Epsilon
Joined: 7/27/2010
Posts: 42
haha, yeah. Sounds like a project. I'll pass on that, but thanks for the answer.