Talk:PPU scrolling

Proposed Merge

I think it's high time we merged The skinny on NES scrolling into this document. This redundancy has been a problem for a long time.

1. Keep the lead and "The common case" from this article, discard the rest.
2. Keep everything from Skinny except the preface, and include it directly after "The common case".

I'm suggesting doing it this way because while I don't see anything incorrect in this article, the explanations in Skinny are universally more detailed, and there's nothing covered here that isn't explained more clearly there. I find the formatting in this article hard to read and the prose is difficult to parse (much like the original loopy document), so I don't think we're really losing anything by just going with the Skinny article version. Of course we shall continue to revise after the merge too, I'm not saying the Skinny version is perfect either.

Does anyone oppose this? Any additional thoughts on how this merge should be done? Since it's a topic a lot of people care about I just wanted to open a discussion before making a change like this.

- Rainwarrior (talk) 14:57, 24 March 2015 (MDT)

You have my thumbs up, but I don't have any particular ideas. Well, other than that the animated gif here seems like a good illustration. —Lidnariq (talk) 16:14, 24 March 2015 (MDT)

Thirded. I blew away everything after #The common case and replaced it with a link to Skinny. The GIF was part of #The common case, so I left it in. --Tepples (talk) 17:23, 24 March 2015 (MDT)

Yes of course keep the GIF! Keep that whole section. - Rainwarrior (talk)

I guess I'll just do it. Everyone seems in favour, and tepples already wiped the rest of PPU scrolling anyway. - Rainwarrior (talk) 20:40, 24 March 2015 (MDT)

I'm not so sure I like how the merged version feels. Beginners might feel tempted to read on before they're ready to understand the rest. I'd prefer reverting the merge, leaving just "The common case" here, so that we have a place to direct beginners who want a short and sweet summary of best practices for a game that does not use a split screen. True, "The skinny on NES scrolling" isn't quite the best title for the advanced parts, but that's resolvable with a rename to "Advanced scrolling". --Tepples (talk) 21:30, 24 March 2015 (MDT)

I've actually felt that a lot of people were daunted by the "advanced" stuff being kept tucked away separately, in a document with a weird name, especially with all the weird mystique associated with loopy's old hard-to-understand document. I honestly think that presenting it plainly here without the attached reputation, or undue separation, might make it more approachable in general. The old paths to this information were riddled with thorns, and I think it can be taught a lot more easily. It seems that every week or so a new emulator author comes to understand it just fine, perhaps new homebrew developers would have an easier time if we didn't make such a big initiation ritual out of it? ... Anyhow, with the current layout, the GIF makes a great visual division between the "easy" and "hard" stuff. I think as long as we keep it well organized, it'll be better than before. - Rainwarrior (talk) 22:17, 24 March 2015 (MDT)