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What is the actual purpose of VDP1 end codes?
mrkotfw - Jan 2, 2015
 mrkotfw Jan 2, 2015
I'm unable to see any use (to a developer's point of view) on using end codes other than a way to improve the sprite fill rate (i.e. a "sparse" sprite would benefit from this)

Is this a correct assumption?

 antime Jan 4, 2015
That was the intended use. I've never come up with any practical creative way to abuse the feature.

 mrkotfw Jan 4, 2015

antime said:
That was the intended use. I've never come up with any practical creative way to abuse the feature.


Is it explicitly stated somewhere?

It seems like it's used quite a bit. I see a lot of games with end codes enabled.

 antime Jan 12, 2015

Piratero said:
Is it explicitly stated somewhere?

I don't remember if it's spelled out more explicitly anywhere than in the VDP1 manual ("If a second end code is read in the horizontal direction during drawing of a character ... drawing of that row is terminated"). Since end codes don't cost anything I guess it's not too surprising they're used.