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Info

A frame rendering is achieved by creating a display list for everything that needs to be drawn for that frame. The completed display list is broken down into 4 different display lists:

  • WORK_DISP - Seems to only branch directly to POLY_OPA_DISP
  • POLY_OPA_DISP - Contains display lists for 3D polys/models without translucency(Opaque). Branches to POLY_XLU_DISP.
  • POLY_XLU_DISP - Contains display lists for 3D polys/models with translucency. Branches to OVERLAY_DISP.
  • OVERLAY_DISP - Contains display lists for 2D elements (like UI) that are overlaid over everything else.

These four display lists have their own buffers, which can be used to write display list commands programmatically. To do so, each has a "append start" pointer and "append end" pointer, as seen in the table below. The "append start" pointer points to the next free spot for display list commands. In order to append a new display list, you simply write your instructions starting at the "append start" pointer, then increment the pointer past your instructions. The "append end" pointer points to the address past the end of the remaining buffer. This pointer is used to append data for commands that are programmatically set during that frame. For example, the perspective and camera matrices (used to transform 3D models to a 2D space) change every frame. To add the matrix data, the "append end" address is decremented by 0x40 (the size of the matrix), then the matrix is stored at the new "append end" address.

Display list buffers should only be used to store instructions that cannot be pre-computed beforehand, since otherwise you'll be wasting cpu, time, and the limited buffer space.

Graphics Context

At Game Struct + 0x00 within all Game States is a pointer to a struct located on the "graph" thread stack that contains data used to assist in rendering.

Graphics Context
Offset Type Purpose Other
0000 ptr Working POLY_OPA_DISP start
0004 ptr Working POLY_XLU_DISP start
0014 ptr Working OVERLAY_DISP start
0038 OSMesg[8]  ? Referenced by 005C OsMesgQueue
005C OSMesgQueue  ? First OSMesg at 0038
0088 int  ?, set to 1
008C int  ?, set to 4
0090 ptr Microcode Ptr  ?
0094 int Microcode Length Length in bytes of the microcode sequence referenced by 0090
0098 ptr Microcode Ptr  ?
00B8 ptr Completed WORK_DISP Start branches to the DList task the RCP should be working on this cycle
00BC int Completed WORK_DISP Size
00C0 ptr Unknown Buffer (0xC00) Start mdump'ed as binary data. All 0s possibly due to emulation
00C4 int Unknown Buffer (0xC00) Size
01B0 ptr Working WORK_DISP Start
01B4 int WORK_DISP Size 0x0400
01B8 ptr WORK_DISP ptr
01BC ptr WORK_DISP append address Used to append microcode instructions to the pipeline
01C0 ptr WORK_DISP append end address Used to store extra instruction data (matrix/movemem commands)
02A8 int OVERLAY_DISP Size 0x2000 bytes
02AC ptr OVERLAY_DISP ptr
02B0 ptr OVERLAY_DISP append address Used to append microcode instructions to the pipeline
02B4 ptr OVERLAY_DISP append end address Used to store extra instruction data (matrix/movemem commands)
02B8 int POLY_OPA_DISP Size 0xBF00 bytes
02BC ptr POLY_OPA_DISP ptr
02C0 ptr POLY_OPA_DISP append address Used to append microcode instructions to the pipeline
02C4 ptr POLY_OPA_DISP append end address Used to store extra instruction data (matrix/movemem commands)
02C8 int POLY_XLU_DISP Size 0x4000 bytes
02CC ptr POLY_XLU_DISP ptr
02D0 ptr POLY_XLU_DISP append address Used to append microcode instructions to the pipeline
02D4 ptr POLY_XLU_DISP append end address Used to store extra instruction data (matrix/movemem commands)
02D8 int Frame Counter 1 Used for swapping display list buffers
02DC ptr Working Framebuffer
02E8 int Frame Counter 2 Used for swapping framebuffers
02EC ptr Function Pointer  ?
02F0 ptr Global Context