godzillajoe Posted May 22, 2007 Share Posted May 22, 2007 What's the deal? Hardware limitation or lazy programming? I just got Alien Brigade today and the scrolling and sprite animation is sorta "not good" Add this to games like Hat Trick (4 freaking sprites, come on!) and Galaga etc. and for a "super" system it seems to lack Wasn't it supposed to move a million billion sprites effortlessly? Seems like anything requiring movement on the 7800 comes off looking like @$$ Touchdown Football? Yikes! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted May 22, 2007 Share Posted May 22, 2007 I don't know what it is, but this has been a major complaint of mine for years. I'm glad I'm not the only one who notices this! Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted May 22, 2007 Share Posted May 22, 2007 I say lazy programming. Look at the games that DO have good animation/scrolling: Ballblazer, Food Fight, Xevious, Tower Toppler, Scrapyard Dog, Ninja Golf, Desert Falcon, Choplifter!, etc. Even Donkey Kong with it's cringe inducing sounds has some pretty smooth Mario animation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8th lutz Posted May 22, 2007 Share Posted May 22, 2007 (edited) Hat Trick and Touchdown football are considered to be a list for worst atari 7800 games alltime. Hat Trick is due to lazy or bad programming. That game Hat Trick was developed by the same development house that creater Karateka aand Karateka is a well known crappy game for 7800 owners and is on the top of the worst game ever for the 7800 game console. Edited May 22, 2007 by 8th lutz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted May 22, 2007 Share Posted May 22, 2007 (edited) As soon as you have a game like BALLBLAZER and another like TOWER TOPPLER, you have to chalk it up to bad programming. But yeah, there is some sloppy work on the 7800 which makes it ALL THE MORE PAINFUL when you see games like BALLBLAZER. Alien Brigade is choppy but at least that has some more excuse as the sprites are pretty darn big (for an 8 bit console). Hat Trick has no excuse except crappy programming. Edited May 22, 2007 by DracIsBack Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadow460 Posted May 22, 2007 Share Posted May 22, 2007 Seems to me that quite a few 7800 titles have good animation. It's just a few that don't. Wanna be even more amazed, look at the polygons in F-18 Hornet. If it was hardware limitations, out homebrews wouldn't look as good as they do, either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricBall Posted May 22, 2007 Share Posted May 22, 2007 How many of these games are ports from other systems? A port automatically has three ways of going wrong. First, the usual differences between systems - resolution, colors, sound capabilities, different processor, etc. Second, the 7800 graphics system is very different from anything else so it's much more difficult to leverage the code from the source system. Finally, ports are often done as a quick money grab so the publishers don't want to sink a lot of development money into porting the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted May 22, 2007 Share Posted May 22, 2007 It was probably just an inexperienced, bad, or lazy programmer in most cases. Actually, it could be the SAME inexperienced, bad, or lazy programmer over and over again. Keep in mind that three of the absolute worst games for the system (and one pretty bad prototype) were all done by the same programmer from Ibid: Choplifter, Hat Trick, Karateka, and GATO. You know, one of these days this guy is going to track me down and hurt me... Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert M Posted May 22, 2007 Share Posted May 22, 2007 In general, I would chalk it up to lazy programming, but there may be a management cost cutting factor involved too. Since the 7800 has no hardware support for vertically (the VCS does BTW) or horizontally flipping sprites then it means you have to store double or quadruple the sprite images than if the hardware did support flipping. Graphics in games starting at the later 8-bit systems and beyond take up the bulk of space in the final bin. The management may have said we want to use a smaller ROM, so cut the number of frames of animation in half and save a couple bucks. Cheers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted May 22, 2007 Share Posted May 22, 2007 You know, one of these days this guy is going to track me down and hurt me... We'll get your back. Anyone that thought KARATEKA is acceptable ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip_Cannon Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 It was probably just an inexperienced, bad, or lazy programmer in most cases. Actually, it could be the SAME inexperienced, bad, or lazy programmer over and over again. Keep in mind that three of the absolute worst games for the system (and one pretty bad prototype) were all done by the same programmer from Ibid: Choplifter, Hat Trick, Karateka, and GATO. You know, one of these days this guy is going to track me down and hurt me... Tempest I remember that one of the programmers from Ibid posted on this forum at one point. He was instantly lamb basted and never came back. I wish he would have stuck around to tell us more stories. But I'm afraid the damage was already done... the damage being the three crap titles they unleashed on us... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atarifever Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 It was probably just an inexperienced, bad, or lazy programmer in most cases. Actually, it could be the SAME inexperienced, bad, or lazy programmer over and over again. Keep in mind that three of the absolute worst games for the system (and one pretty bad prototype) were all done by the same programmer from Ibid: Choplifter, Hat Trick, Karateka, and GATO. You know, one of these days this guy is going to track me down and hurt me... Tempest I remember that one of the programmers from Ibid posted on this forum at one point. He was instantly lamb basted and never came back. I wish he would have stuck around to tell us more stories. But I'm afraid the damage was already done... the damage being the three crap titles they unleashed on us... In his defense, maybe he changed during the 20 years in between when he made the game and when he came here. Perhaps if the community had embraced him, he might have felt the desire to help make a hack of one of his games that didn't suck so bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip_Cannon Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 I think we blew that opportunity... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Breakpack Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 Anything less than 60 fps on 2d games is crap,IMHO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbanes Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 What's the deal? Wasn't it supposed to move a million billion sprites effortlessly? Seems like anything requiring movement on the 7800 comes off looking like @$$ Meh. Lazy programmers are part of the problem, but the other part was that the 7800 didn't do anything "effortlessly". Moving sprites vertically is far more difficult than it should be and requires the use of memory "holes" to do it properly. Managing the DLL lists can lead to some rather tricky programming, and on top of everything the system barely has enough cycles to render a full scanline of hi-res, tiled graphics! The 7800 was a fascinating design, but it was doomed to be a technological dead-end. The ANTIC was a much better design (IMHO), but it obviously cost a lot more to make than the 7800. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris-in-NJ Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 I say lazy programming. Look at the games that DO have good animation/scrolling: Ballblazer, Food Fight, Xevious, Tower Toppler, Scrapyard Dog, Ninja Golf, Desert Falcon Desert Falcon? Have you ever tried to play it on the third level? There are so many things on screen that the processor can't keep up with them all! However, Robotron never ceases to amaze me with the sheer number of things on screen at one time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApolloBoy Posted May 23, 2007 Share Posted May 23, 2007 What's the deal? Wasn't it supposed to move a million billion sprites effortlessly? Seems like anything requiring movement on the 7800 comes off looking like @$$ Meh. Lazy programmers are part of the problem, but the other part was that the 7800 didn't do anything "effortlessly". Moving sprites vertically is far more difficult than it should be and requires the use of memory "holes" to do it properly. Managing the DLL lists can lead to some rather tricky programming, and on top of everything the system barely has enough cycles to render a full scanline of hi-res, tiled graphics! The 7800 was a fascinating design, but it was doomed to be a technological dead-end. The ANTIC was a much better design (IMHO), but it obviously cost a lot more to make than the 7800. I think it would've been better if GCC had given the MARIA chip its own data bus instead of having it "hijack" SALLY's bus. Would that have been possible for GCC to do at the time? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 Desert Falcon? Have you ever tried to play it on the third level? There are so many things on screen that the processor can't keep up with them all! LOL - one thing this reminded me of was the original battle cry of the 16-bit systems. Moving around a large number of sprites was problematic on 8-bit consoles across the board. Some games did it well, but many ran into problems. I've got an NES, an SMS, an XE, a 2600 and a 7800. At various points, when a lot of things are on screen, one of two things will typically happen: 1. The system will slow down; 2. The sprites will flicker. This is pretty common on 8-bit games. The 7800 had less flickering than the others, but did slow down just like everything else. When the Genesis and Turbografx 16 came out, there was a lot of hooplah about big sprites, less slowdown and elimination of screen flicker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari5200 Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 One game i had some hopes for suffers from choppy play hard, Motopsycho. I so wanted to like this game but alas can't. Its way to choppy. Commando rules though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Propane13 Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 I remember that one of the programmers from Ibid posted on this forum at one point. He was instantly lamb basted and never came back. I wish he would have stuck around to tell us more stories. But I'm afraid the damage was already done... the damage being the three crap titles they unleashed on us... Did I miss this thread? Link? -John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip_Cannon Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 (edited) I remember that one of the programmers from Ibid posted on this forum at one point. He was instantly lamb basted and never came back. I wish he would have stuck around to tell us more stories. But I'm afraid the damage was already done... the damage being the three crap titles they unleashed on us... Did I miss this thread? Link? -John The guy's name is mfeldman and the link can be found here. Tempest was pretty civil during that conversation... Edited May 24, 2007 by Trip_Cannon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Loguidice Posted May 24, 2007 Share Posted May 24, 2007 Thanks for the link. Unless I missed something or the offending content was edited out, those comments weren't too bad. They were a bit ignorant (you can't make assumptions about someone else's work conditions and motivations), but not enough to make someone not want to show up again necessarily. It seemed like he remembered pretty much all he could anyway, which was not a whole lot... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rik Posted May 25, 2007 Share Posted May 25, 2007 (edited) I guess all consoles have their good and bad points,i only wish that i had ALIEN BRIGADE,but its hard as F%$K to find and if you do find one, they cost a fortune Yeah i noticed some games dont scroll very well on the 7800,but it seems to handle scrolling better than the CV,which is a great system,but we all know it scrolls like crap.I always thought the point of a console is to play games with no configuring,unlike pc games where you have not enough video ram,memory,etc.That may be true today,but i guess back then the technology wasnt there. Edited May 25, 2007 by Rik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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