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

[TMR]

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

 

To recreate Wizzy it'd need either all four players or two players and four missiles (which limits the colours of the remaining two players) since he's twelve pixels wide; i'd go with the latter personally and use the other two players for Nifta.

[emkay]

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.

 

Well, after 5 Years of trying to put people together, doing something better in pokey sound exploration, the only thing that really happened was that emkay found ways of making demonstrations by using extensiv tricks via multiple roundabout ways.

 

http://www.phys.uu.nl/~bpos/cyb/cyb.mp3

 

If you've checked it already in the Hardsynth thread, you might recognize that the sound vary manifold on the different emulations. So to "fine tune" this sounds of the main voice is more like "look into the future" than to adjust them for the real machine But the result was better than I expected.

[TMR]

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

 

Actually, not producing examples proves non-existance doesn't it? "Sorry, this isn't possible so it's not been done". =-)

[Cybergoth]

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

 

Actually, not producing examples proves non-existance doesn't it? "Sorry, this isn't possible so it's not been done". =-)

 

You know, I found that secret VIC trick allowing an 1:1 port of Half-Life to the C64. If I only had a free weekend to do it. Meanwhile, feel free to prove me wrong...

[Cybergoth]

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

 

To recreate Wizzy it'd need either all four players or two players and four missiles (which limits the colours of the remaining two players) since he's twelve pixels wide; i'd go with the latter personally and use the other two players for Nifta.

 

Well, Wizball is just the tip of the ice-berg anyway. If he alone will already keep the whole A8 busy, I don't even need to uncover the tank...

[emkay]

... like "16 colours are not 16 colours". 2+2=5. Room 101.

 

 

I think Emkay try to say: Atari 160x200x(+5)/128 could be better than C64 160x200x16/16

 

What I'm "Trying to say":

 

2 x 16 colours at "8bit" resolution:

[emkay]

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

 

And you're missing the point when sticking Sprites and PMg together already.

The functionality is fully different.

 

How many "Sprites" do you see in this 47 colour image? I see none. But the Bot is moving and you see coloured images on the 16 colour background.

 

[Cybergoth]

http://www.phys.uu.nl/~bpos/cyb/cyb.mp3

 

That's very impressive. Are you purposely playing all the false notes though?

 

The baseline in the beginning is cool, also the percussion. The SID sound seems to be fuller and tighter though. Especially the higher melody instruments seem to be very thin.

 

I think it'd make more sense to compose a fresh tune though. Technically it seems to be very good, definitely amongst the best Pokey sounds I've ever heard.

 

It just has that taste of a bad cover version, since you automatically compare it against the original and the slightest difference hurts and distracts the experience. Maybe at least try a radical remix

[Cybergoth]

How many "Sprites" do you see in this 47 colour image? I see none. But the Bot is moving and you see coloured images on the 16 colour background.

 

Well, yes, charset animation, the greatest thing since sliced bread. You know it has limits as well as I do, just have a look at the C-16 or the Speccy, all machines without any sprites at all

[thomasholzer]

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

 

Actually, not producing examples proves non-existance doesn't it? "Sorry, this isn't possible so it's not been done". =-)

 

Can be applied to Oswald as well: My C64 is better than your A8. A8? Never owned one, never used one, but...my C64 is better.

[Vigo]

"It seems POKEY using the 1.7897Mhz timing not only topped the C64 timers at 1.022Mhz, but the Amiga CIA timers at 715.909Khz and the PC timer at 1.19318Mhz. "

 

So that's makes the A8 even better than the Amiga!

 

That's what I mean with "cringeworthy statements". Faster Timers would be useless on the C64, because the CPU is running at 1.022 Mhz.

 

Here, i can also start stupid, cringeworthy statements:

 

My PAL C64 colour clock runs at 17,7Mhz. bababababa!

NTSC C64 bus speed is 2,04 Mhz! babababa! (the same as VIC 20, so BOTH must be equal, right?)

The C64 has much more chips in it and weights more! babababa!

 

Fact is, you can create MORE scenarios on the C64 that you CAN NOT do on the A8. Ist all starts with BASIC, writing Texts in different colours. And if we employ all kinds of hardware tricks, the gap becomes even more apparent. Fröhn is absolutely right when he says "it's all about the Sprites". They are large, there are more of them, they are more colourful, they can be easily duplicated, and every sprite can have its own independent resolution even. They give you so much more freedom to manipulate the screen.

 

And this really breaks the A8 neck when trying to compete in the typical 80's scroller games. What you really can do better on the A8 is calculating and displaying 3D scenarios. And yes, you can have wonderful rainbows with DLI's. I can also create the same rainbows with the VCS, because even the VCS has more colours that the C64. So the main points of the C64 against the A8 are really sprites, higher colour resolution and sound. If they would have put in a 16 entry LUT for all colours in the VIC, there would be no point anymore. Instead, we have a fixed palette, but a very good one at that. They made them exactly so you can arrange them in all kinds of variations to create various gradients.

 

I know the answer will contain now stupid "arguments" like "if I want have to hires, I would have bought an IBM PC...", completely dodging the issue.

You know what's really missing here? Apple II users.

 

I'm outta here now, things get too heated and frankly, I better use my time to create something instead of having useless arguments. I know what both machines can do.

Edited April 26, 2008 by Vigo

[Oswald]

No string arrays (useful for porting programs from other systems)

128 variable limit. Ok for most programs. No way to get of unused variables other than using LIST/ENTER to free up entries).

 

so Atari Basic Is missing some extremely crucial things:

 

a) speed

b) no string arrays

b) only 128 variables

 

 

I think this evens the scales.

 

 

 

Instant syntax checking (maybe a personal preference)

 

also you can go wherever with the cursor and edit whatever or is it restricted to edit one line at a time ?

 

ESC key use in editor. No editor quote and insert mode behavior crap (OS issue)

 

its not a crap, its a way to help the user enter cursor and color and etc commands.

 

Can save a program to disk without having to go get a bite to eat.

 

saving speed is an IO thing and is not the Basic's attribute.

 

While I think the one soccer ball pic for the commodore looks sharp, using colors as substitutes of gray just doesn't look right to me, but that is a personal preference.

 

its the exact opposite: the ball was made on c64 originally it could have grays aswell but the artist made it like that, and the atari mock up was made by me, so it is the atari which is forced to use grays (or whatever shade) as substitutes of colors in this case

 

I think the Atari soccer pic, could probably be done in a 160 mode using PM for adding some colors that would look sharper but just as colorful as the GTIA mode one.

 

nope, it is impossible to do that ball in a way that comes close anywhere close to c64's coloring with pms. and anyhow I can bring up 600 other pictures which is 6x more impossible for the a8 than this ball

Edited April 26, 2008 by Oswald

[Vigo]

http://www.phys.uu.nl/~bpos/cyb/cyb.mp3

 

Sounds cool, and much more sophisticated than any Atari ST tune i have heard so far (lofi digi mixing routines apart).

 

And hearing it, I know why a person who remembers C64 music only from 1983-1987 might have the opinion that POKEY and SID aren't that far away... Now what I would really like to hear is some modulation and filter sweeps...

Edited April 26, 2008 by Vigo

[Oswald]

Multifinder 6.1b9 on the Macintosh was wonderful and stable, and I used it in around 1990-1991.

 

 

apple machines were always overpriced piece of underpowered HW (and are today) for their price, they only sell through marketing and because the americans think if something costs more it must be better. The AmigaOS of 85 blew away the MacOS of 91. and AGA was only 1 year away from your timeline.

[Oswald]

And... BCD is crap. I would rather have a ADD command in 6502 asm instead of BCD. BCD is a disease caused by Cobol, and it's 99% useless.

 

BCD is useful in some situations. The vast majority of 2600 games use BCD for score calculations. As for having add-without-carry, that would require reworking the opcode map. I'm more puzzled at why $CA and $EA aren't used for "INC A" and "DEC A". There are plenty of other places to stick "INX" and "NOP".

 

BCD is crap indeed. any other instructions taking up the chip space this shit is occupying would have been a send from god itself. (I am coding on 6510 since ~17 years)

Edited April 26, 2008 by Oswald

[Thomas Jentzsch]

What I'm "Trying to say":

 

2 x 16 colours at "8bit" resolution:

Those pictures look really impressive.

 

Regarding the mp3, I have problems with the off pitch notes, which really hurt.

[Oswald]

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

 

no its not, its just emulating the PAL circuitry's color mixing and TV's blur.

 

Maybe, we can refine the Atari image with interlaced mode to show more shades and better resolution.

 

yeah welcome to flicker hell, which doesnt shows in this faked picture.

 

[emkay]

Are you purposely playing all the false notes though?

 

OK. Perhaps the last one will sometimes somehow realize the probem, the explanation of the biggest problem here:

 

The Main voice and the filter Voice are "INDEPENTENT". POKEY does NOT RESET the start of the wave it plays.

So you get timing offsets between the voices. To have the correct offset, you have to set the timing corrected (which is easily possible, but cost 2 vbi cycles in RMT, but the emulation doesn't care correctly)

The filter without timing correction results in "random" wavelengths.

Having the full correction, you can directly program the wavelength, which results in always clean notes.

Now the crux: Because I'm no musician, I have to use RMT with the mod import and then playing around which what the emulation gives and the RMT has. A musician could use the same techniques on the real thing, with a full pokey supporting tracker, giving much better results.

Edited April 26, 2008 by emkay

[Heaven/TQA]

Emkay... sprites are used for the panel, for the fx and for the modules down at the bottom...

[Oswald]

QUOTE (atariksi @ Sun Apr 20, 2008 10:42 AM) *

For some reason Commodore 64/128 spread better than Atari 8-bits although most people would agree that the Ataris are and were better machines than C64/128

So reality for you is cringeworthy statements as long as it does not support your opinions.

 

as there are simply more c64 users and c64 fans out there most people would agree that the c64s are and were better. thats the reality my friend.

 

 

If someone really wanted HIRES during the time the C64 was popular they would buy a CGA-based IBM PC

 

 

however this thread is still about c64 and atari. so I will just ignore all of that

 

 

Atari can also set background color of characters in text mode using a sprite backdrop.

 

well then I have big news to you. c64 has a mode where the chars are reduced to 64, and in exchange you can have 4 background, and 16 foreground colors on each charplace without any restrains or extra code.

 

 

What exactly are you denying?

 

you are denying that a 82 machine can be better than a 79 one. as someone said: there are much more scenarios in which the c64 can do better than those for the atari.

 

Even for the more sprites that your system supports, you need to first find games that were un-doable on the Atari due to lack of sprites and make a probability distribution to see how many were un-doable due to lack of sprites.

 

we dont need to find anything. 90% or more of 80s games used sprites.

 

And it's a FACT that Atari was years before the C64 and even after they tried to beat it out, they did not succeed. You got be good if someone after years of research trying to excel you fails in many aspects.

 

nope my dear. atari inc. effectively collapsed because of the c64, tramiel bought it for some bargain price and saved later. if thats not a success then nothing is. also the a8bit line effectively died out in the second half of 80s because it lost it to the c64. it couldnt be beaten more than that

[emkay]

And hearing it, I know why a person who remembers C64 music only from 1983-1987 might have the opinion that POKEY and SID aren't that far away... Now what I would really like to hear is some modulation and filter sweeps...

 

 

http://www.atariarea.krap.pl/pliki/rozne/filter.zip

[Vigo]

I can't help it:

 

(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

 

So it in fact can NOT DO anything the SID can do.

 

, and only the analog filters (which in fact lie outside the SID chip for a big part) are not there.

 

Argh. No , the filters are on the chip (it's an analogue integrator circuit), the capacitors are only a small part of them.

 

Another person attempted to rebuild the SID Filter externally. He needed 14 extra components:

 

http://blog.kevtris.org/

 

And there are still some parts left in the FPGA...

 

Just to counter the impression you try to imply here that the SID filter is the 2 capacitors.

 

ADSR could be emulated. At 50 up to 200 Hz, tunes get crystalclear.

 

Also in 256 steps? And does it take the same raster time as the C64 equivalent? I highly doubt it.

 

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.

 

Examples? Though I complimented the Cyernoid tune, I need not to mention it's not nearly as good sounding as the original.

 

http://www.se2a1.net:40000/soasc/CSG8580R5...oid_T01.sid.mp3

 

And the original doesn't even use tricks.

 

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.

 

That doesn't make sense. What exactly takes so much CPU power on the C64 to set the filter mode, resonance and cut-off registers? And why are they "for free" only on pokey? I really want to hear some filtered sounds on Pokey now, you make me curious.

 

...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.

 

So you need an elaborate PWM routine on Pokey to do a sawtooth waveform, which basically comes for free on SID?

 

You try to achieve things which the SID can do out of the box without any tricks. Is there any CPU time left at all to do something else?

 

Modulation:

 

http://www.se2a1.net:40000/soasc/MOS6581R2...ndo_T01.sid.mp3

Edited April 26, 2008 by Vigo

[Heaven/TQA]

emkay...where did you grab this sound examples put at atari.online.pl? and who did them?

[emkay]

Emkay... sprites are used for the panel, for the fx and for the modules down at the bottom...

 

PMs are used, yes. For enhancing the screen with colours and higher resolution where needed.

[Oswald]

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.

 

spectrum fan level argument again. the c64 ball is more hires and has more colors. nothing more to say