Atari Vs C64 --- 80s Computer scene etc chat...

[Cybergoth]

Always programmers know Atari can do it, but really this is a solid example about this feature. Maybe, you can take much interest on that, but finally is a feature that C64 can't reach.

 

It's just not that obvious and not that impressive. It's not that the C64 was desperately showing any lack of color. Look here for two prime examples of games it already had in 86/87. Note that these are single loads, they dont't reload anything for later levels:

 

Ghosts'n'Goblins:

http://www.commodoreformat.co.uk/images/ma...stsngoblins.jpg

 

Wizball

http://www.commodoreformat.co.uk/images/ma...all%20small.jpg

 

Wizball is one of my favourite C64 games and also a good example for C64 colors. As you can see, it is themed around colors, with each level focusing on one. I'm sure that the A8 can do something similar (minus the parallax stars background?), I'm just trying to illustrate, that the C64 wasn't really suffering from having only 16 basic colors.

 

I see you guys are putting emphasis on having a broader palette and more processing power and that is a good thing, since that can indeed make a difference and something the C64 can't compete with. It's just that it had tons of really colorful jump'n'runs too, so the first thing a C64 owner will notice with Crownland is the sprite flicker and slowdown (Emulator only BTW?).

[Heaven/TQA]

if you are interested how some of the g2f pics are done...simply look here...

 

http://atari.online.pl/v01/index.phtml?sub...&ct=nowinki

[Heaven/TQA]

Cyberghoth

 

check out http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...amp;hl=whizball

 

[Allas]

Always programmers know Atari can do it, but really this is a solid example about this feature. Maybe, you can take much interest on that, but finally is a feature that C64 can't reach.

 

It's just not that obvious and not that impressive. It's not that the C64 was desperately showing any lack of color. Look here for two prime examples of games it already had in 86/87. Note that these are single loads, they dont't reload anything for later levels:

 

Ghosts'n'Goblins:

http://www.commodoreformat.co.uk/images/ma...stsngoblins.jpg

 

Wizball

http://www.commodoreformat.co.uk/images/ma...all%20small.jpg

 

Wizball is one of my favourite C64 games and also a good example for C64 colors. As you can see, it is themed around colors, with each level focusing on one. I'm sure that the A8 can do something similar (minus the parallax stars background?), I'm just trying to illustrate, that the C64 wasn't really suffering from having only 16 basic colors.

 

I see you guys are putting emphasis on having a broader palette and more processing power and that is a good thing, since that can indeed make a difference and something the C64 can't compete with. It's just that it had tons of really colorful jump'n'runs too, so the first thing a C64 owner will notice with Crownland is the sprite flicker and slowdown (Emulator only BTW?).

 

I'm basically a person who love the variation of colors. C64 did it very well, I have a C128 and GNG impress me on his time. I played many times until I finished. The map looks great with the disposition of 16 colors, but it's obvious with a palette of 128 could be look better. After playing at the 1,000th game on my C128 all the maps and textures seems the same or the remake from older games. Imagine how you feel playing 8 ugly fixed colors games from Spectrum?

 

Eventually has surprises on C64 of course, a trick that impress me, like happens with Mayhem.

 

But, I need more variation of colors on a game. It's only a personal opinion, and maybe that is one of the main reason why I like Atari games over the C64. Those MSX machines even can manage 4096 colors, what the hell !!!

 

Maybe not all the people can take care of that.

Edited April 26, 2008 by Allas

[thomasholzer]

another spectrum fan argument.

 

 

Ouch, he's starting now comparing C64 vs Spectrum, running out of steam already?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

But, Atari can do this simple type of sprites (one player per shape):

 

Even a 2600 can do those.

[Heaven/TQA]

thomas...that's why I hate them... no...honestly... Activision did some nice sprites with the limitations...but even having them and colouring is done via a kernel or DLIs... code gets complicated (imho) when moving them across the screen...

[carmel_andrews]

That's why the speccy had a faster proccessor (4 mhz z80) to compensate for the lack of graphics hardware

 

Mind you... didn't the Msx also have the same speed z80 and a half decent gfx chip (i recall the later versions...namely anything msx 2+ and newer, you could have programmable gfx resolutions)

Edited April 26, 2008 by carmel_andrews

[emkay]

the creator decided:

 

[/img]

 

Interesting. You want to demonstrate the advantage of the hires colours and for real, you show that even the 1/4 res with 16 shades of grey shows a better depth. The C64 picture suffers by the yellow, red & brown colours breaking the depth of view clearly.

 

people have to learn any "music" its not like when you get born, you come out equipped with liking guiter piano and whatever sounds

 

 

What a crap...

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Interesting. You want to demonstrate the advantage of the hires colours and for real, you show that even the 1/4 res with 16 shades of grey shows a better depth. The C64 picture suffers by the yellow, red & brown colours breaking the depth of view clearly.

While you might be right here (I disagree), you are again focussing on a single aspect. Overall the C64 picture looks definitely better, even if the depth would be worse. But obviously you cannot admit that.

 

people have to learn any "music" its not like when you get born, you come out equipped with liking guiter piano and whatever sounds

 

What a crap...

Now, that's an argument!

[emkay]

How many sprites do you need to 1:1 recreate this one on the A8 (I assume 6?):

 

Non?

 

Just take usage of the faster CPU and create it via software

Actually, it is better to use the PMg for enhancing the Background, caused by the fact that they can be placed onscreen without cpu time.

[emkay]

While you might be right here (I disagree), you are again focussing on a single aspect. Overall the C64 picture looks definitely better, even if the depth would be worse. But obviously you cannot admit that.

 

LOL "single aspect" The relation between the brightnesses of the cours on the C64 is obviouly faulty, while the 16 colours This is what ALL Images on the C64 are suffering from.

 

people have to learn any "music" its not like when you get born, you come out equipped with liking guiter piano and whatever sounds

 

What a crap...

Now, that's an argument!

 

Oswald is getting all wrong what could be understood wrong. I quess my english isn't good enough to eplain colours to colourblind people. Sorry.

 

It is obvious that I am not writing here about "people have to learn playing instruments"...

In many ranges of Art, you have to understand what the Artist wanted to explain. After this, you can say whether the piece of art is good or not.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

LOL "single aspect" The relation between the brightnesses of the cours on the C64 is obviouly faulty, while the 16 colours This is what ALL Images on the C64 are suffering from.

You really think the Atari picture looks overall better?

 

It is obvious that I am not writing here about "people have to learn playing instruments"...

In many ranges of Art, you have to understand what the Artist wanted to explain. After this, you can say whether the piece of art is good or not.

So you agree, that (at least partially) you have to learn "music" and "pictures", right?

 

Which means that you can be conditioned to prefer special music or pictures. Which would explain why you prefer Atari pictures and sounds over C64 ones and I do vice versa. Which means, both our opinions are completely subjective and therefore completely irrelevant.

 

Though, maybe the C64 is looking and sounding better for more people, because it is adapted better to the average subjective perception?

[analmux]

Even if you would have better support in this area, you can not beat something on another 8 bit system which is even very hard to emulate on a modern PC. I would really like to hear the same filter sweeps SID can do on Pokey, or the same modulation effects and complex waveforms. We are talking about stuff which takes a big performance hit when being emulated on a PC.

 

(as a reply on 'modulation effects and complex waveforms')

 

Pokey can in fact do anything SID can do and something more, be it that SID envelope generator and pitch resolution is of course far superior, and only the analog filters (which in fact lie outside the SID chip for a big part) are not there. ADSR could be emulated. At 50 up to 200 Hz, tunes get crystalclear.

 

There's squarewave, pulsewave, triangle, sawtooth, a vast continuum of polycounter distortions when choosing the right combinations of pokey's channelsand clockings. There's a ring-mod alike effect, there is a sync-like effect. The 16bit filter gives also very nice surprises, which are also possible on SID though, but not with a minimum of used CPU power. On pokey they're all for free, though it's far out of the book.

 

 

Yes, it is correct that writing a 4 channel DIGI routine is actually easier on Pokey. But then again, I can have real 8 bit samples on the SID using PWM.

 

...and who told you that PWM is not possible on Pokey? In fact it is a PWM feature of Pokey that gives us the sawtooth waveform. The simulated PWM-resolution depends on the timing. This should always work better on a8bit, as clockspeed is higher.

Edited April 26, 2008 by Analogue Multiplexer

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Pokey can in fact do anything SID can do and something more, be it that SID envelope generator and pitch resolution is of course far superior, and only the analog filters (which in fact lie outside the SID chip for a big part) are not there. ADSR could be emulated. At 50 up to 200 Hz, tunes get crystalclear.

 

There's squarewave, pulsewave, triangle, sawtooth, a vast continuum of polycounter distortions when choosing the right combinations of pokey's channelsand clockings. There's a ring-mod alike effect, there is a sync-like effect. The 16bit filter gives also very nice surprises, which are also possible on SID though, but not with a minimum of used CPU power. On pokey they're all for free, though it's far out of the book.

Examples?

[TMR]

Well, the balloon c64 image is 255 colors indexed, so is a interlaced screen.

 

Nope, it's a sixteen colour non-interlaced image... i have a 16 colour bitmap if you want it?

[analmux]

Pokey can in fact do anything SID can do and something more, be it that SID envelope generator and pitch resolution is of course far superior, and only the analog filters (which in fact lie outside the SID chip for a big part) are not there. ADSR could be emulated. At 50 up to 200 Hz, tunes get crystalclear.

 

There's squarewave, pulsewave, triangle, sawtooth, a vast continuum of polycounter distortions when choosing the right combinations of pokey's channelsand clockings. There's a ring-mod alike effect, there is a sync-like effect. The 16bit filter gives also very nice surprises, which are also possible on SID though, but not with a minimum of used CPU power. On pokey they're all for free, though it's far out of the book.

Examples?

 

Examples: You could do them by yourself in basic, if you know what to do

 

Fact is that I know how to obtain the features I talked about. If I'd have the time, my task would be to write a doc about '"how to make full use of Pokey's features".

 

Only when this is implemented in a pokey tracker, which is not the case, there's a way of giving examples like in some tune.

[Cybergoth]

Well, so all the usual yadda yadda you have is "pokey can do this as well and even better". Blablabla. If you can't show it, it doesn't exist. I can dream of new SID tricks all day long as well. Supercat gets better music out of the TIA than anything you have available on pokey.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Examples: You could do them by yourself in basic, if you know what to do

 

Fact is that I know how to obtain the features I talked about. If I'd have the time, my task would be to write a doc about '"how to make full use of Pokey's features".

 

Only when this is implemented in a pokey tracker, which is not the case, there's a way of giving examples like in some tune.

Actually I didn't want theories, just some existing examples. After almost 30 years, one would expect something exist, no?

 

Give me pictures, give me sounds!

[analmux]

Well, so all the usual yadda yadda you have is "pokey can do this as well and even better". Blablabla. If you can't show it, it doesn't exist. I can dream of new SID tricks all day long as well. Supercat gets better music out of the TIA than anything you have available on pokey.

 

Seems you misunderstood

 

I never said that pokey is better. Can you give an exact quote from me where I say that?

 

What I said is that, though SID has always the better QUALITY, the pokey can do everything the SID can EXCEPT the filtering.

 

It's not a matter of dreaming I'm talking about. I'm doing tests with pokey for more than one whole year. What I stated is what I already tested. So it is reality.

 

So, maybe you should prove me wrong then: Show that pokey has no:

-ring-modulation

-sync

-pulsewave, (in a controllable fashion)

-sawtooth

-triangle

-etc.

[TMR]

That's why the speccy had a faster proccessor (4 mhz z80) to compensate for the lack of graphics hardware

 

That was the norm for Z80 chips though, but the Spectrum is clocked at 3.5MHz whilst the Amstrad CPC does 4MHz - since Z80s take more cycles per command that's not as large a difference as it would appear between them and the 6502-based machines either.

 

Those MSX machines even can manage 4096 colors, what the hell !!!

 

The later MSX hardware can do that many colours, the original MSX has sixteen and was released after both the A8 and C64. If we're going that far forward, the revised Amstrad CPC Plus series had 4,096 colours, could get loads of them on a scanline in a palette-based screen, had hardware scrolling and sprites and a sound DMA which all toasted both the machine we're discussing, but didn't appear until after the Amiga...

Edited April 26, 2008 by TMR

[analmux]

Examples: You could do them by yourself in basic, if you know what to do

 

Fact is that I know how to obtain the features I talked about. If I'd have the time, my task would be to write a doc about '"how to make full use of Pokey's features".

 

Only when this is implemented in a pokey tracker, which is not the case, there's a way of giving examples like in some tune.

Actually I didn't want theories, just some existing examples. After almost 30 years, one would expect something exist, no?

 

Give me pictures, give me sounds!

 

If you need proof of concept it's your problem. I don't have time to look for examples just to convince you. It's a waste of time. What I stated is based on my own experience with pokey. If you don't believe me, that's your choice, but not my problem.

 

If you're sure that what I say about pokey is bllsht, why don't you give ME sounds which show that?

[Cybergoth]

How many sprites do you need to 1:1 recreate this one on the A8 (I assume 6?):

 

Non?

 

Just take usage of the faster CPU and create it via software

Actually, it is better to use the PMg for enhancing the Background, caused by the fact that they can be placed onscreen without cpu time.

 

You're missing the whole point though, which was just comparing the two sprites against each other.

[TMR]

Seems you misunderstood

 

I never said that pokey is better. Can you give an exact quote from me where I say that?

 

He didn't say that you said that... just wants to hear the sounds you're talking about and that seems a perfectly fair request, if i said the SID can do something you weren't aware of you'd be asking to hear that too, wouldn't you? i've never heard the POKEY handle ring modulation for example, does it work in the same way as the SID handles it?

Edited April 26, 2008 by TMR

[Thomas Jentzsch]

If you need proof of concept it's your problem. I don't have time to look for examples just to convince you. It's a waste of time. What I stated is based on my own experience with pokey. If you don't believe me, that's your choice, but not my problem.

You made a statement. It's not up to me to prove it.

 

And if not from you (unless you invented the "wheel" on Atari), I would expect someone else must have done something you can show me.

 

If you're sure that what I say about pokey is bllsht, why don't you give ME sounds which show that?

I never said that what you say is bullshit, I just asked for examples.

 

And: To prove the existance of something is way easier than to prove the non-existance.