thaz exactly what I did, iirc. thanx for clearing that up so Wolf and I can stop throwing tomatoes at eachother and continue with normal business like cuffing up some rediculous names for that 'new' msx thingy. cheers.

aaaawwww... I actually liked throwing tomatoes at you ^_^

On a more personal sidenote: that looks gross :\

Funny how fast this thread went from Gradius to VDP modes to La Tomatina, and in less than 24 hours too...
Anyways, let me try to re-explain what I'm wondering about:
Let's say you have a laser and shoot it. Then you get a laser object originating at a point based on Vicky's current coordinates, and with a size of 1:

  ·---
          ·---
      _           ·---
  ···=|==> ==
      ¯
             ·---

Then, the way I see it, on the next frame or so the laser moves forward 8 pixels, and another piece is added on:

  ·---
          ·---
      _           ·---
  ···=|==> ====
      ¯
             ·---

But, if you were moving fast enough backwards, there would be a gap between segments:

  ·---
          ·---
    _           ·---
···=|==> ==  ==
    ¯
             ·---

And with forward movement, laser tiles would be stacked on top of each other, making the overall beam smaller. But, neither of these things happen, so Konami must have taken a different approach.

no they don't. how do you figure?
it's simply a matter of reprinting the darn laser over and over again, gently adjusting x/y positions (dunno about the X pos tho)
keep in mind that the WHOLE laser is printed on each frame (no fragments, additions or whatever)

tomenadatentomatentomatenatvrat.
(figure that one out!)

[off] ro: you should do that one with To and Tom. [/off]