Atari v Commodore

[FastRobPlus]

I still have a problem with the statement that DotC is any better on the C64.

 

 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/defend...own/screenshots

 

http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/defender...own/screenshots

 

You can't see it on screenshots, but it is more fun to play

 

What fun could be when you have to wait minutes between everything happens.

 

a lot. I remember someone telling me that a game exists where you can fight battles, take castles with catapults, recruit army, go jousting, etc. I didnt believe him that such a game exists. then I got dotc

 

The game could be surprisingly fun on all platforms, but it was an Amiga game ported to other systems with a corresposnding loss of visual and audio quality. The only issue with that was the game was first and foremost a showcase of the audio/visual power of the Amiga, so without the Amiga to drive it it kinda fell flat.

 

An Atari 800 port would have been interesting, if only to see what things carried over well and what things did not. I suspect in an Atari 800 version the music would be second only to the Amiga version owing to the influence of Bill Williams.

Edited December 11, 2008 by FastRobPlus

[Oswald]

well, no loss in audio quality in most ports I guess, the amiga msx of DOTC was horrible.

[Tezz]

The point is, that the C64 games that really matter simply don't exist on the A8. When thinking of C64 games I'm thinking of Maniac Mansion, Pirates!, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, Last Ninja 2, IK+, Elite, Turrican II: The Final Fight, Wasteland, Bubble Bobble, Last Ninja, Project Firestart, Summer Games 2, Turrican, Defender of the Crown, Emlyn Hughes International Soccer, MicroProse Soccer, Winter Games, Great Giana Sisters, Creatures 2: Torture Trouble, Impossible Mission, World Games, Samurai Warrior: The Battles of Usagi Yojimbo, Armalyte, Mayhem in Monsterland, Airborne Ranger, Bard's Tale, The: Tales of the Unknown, California Games, Paradroid, Skate or Die!, Wizball, Creatures, Katakis, Rainbow Islands, Little Computer People, Midnight Resistance, MYTH: History in the Making, Grand Prix Circuit, Stunt Car Racer, Buggy Boy, Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior, Power Drift, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Krakout, Lemmings, Salamander, Turbo Out Run, Platoon, Nebulus, Law of the West, Kikstart II, Cauldron II: The Pumpkin Strikes Back, Delta, Test Drive, Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Impossible Mission 2, Last Ninja 3, R-Type, Batman, Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax, to name just a few...

It's a well timed list actually.. I can tell you that some of these games you've listed will soon be ticked off the list of unavailable for the A8

[Tezz]

With regard to the discussion earlier today, in terms of testing the C64 games, I personally use VICE everyday as I work between the two platforms regularly.

[+CharlieChaplin]

a lot. I remember someone telling me that a game exists where you can fight battles, take castles with catapults, recruit army, go jousting, etc. I didnt believe him that such a game exists. then I got dotc

 

 

Well,

taking only what someone said (e.g. adverts for a commercial game), and not testing it yourself, then the german commercial game "Adalmar" must be a great DotC clone:

- it includes realtime fight battles (programmed extremely awful and slow in Atari Basic!)

- in the game you can take castles with catapults (which is more a matter of luck than anything else)

- you can also recruit an army here (but its quite boring via a menu)

- you can have horse battles, err battles on a horse using a lance (again in slow Atari basic, with no chance against the computer opponent!)

- you can give parties or orgies to make friends and gain points (you will get a nice picture-show then!)

- you can do a lot of other things - if you understand german language and are willing to play an awful and boring game that is pure crap and full of bugs... (the authors tried to speed-up the game by using the TB XL compiler, but since un-trapped Errors happen quite often in the game, the program shows the Runtime message "Error xxx at line yyy, Dos, Load or Run program ?" also quite often...)

 

Saying "I never play / test the games, I only watch the videos..." is like "I never have sex, I only watch porn videos..."

-Andreas Koch.

[Irgendwer]

It's a well timed list actually.. I can tell you that some of these games you've listed will soon be ticked off the list of unavailable for the A8

Bard's Tale, Wasteland, Stunt Car Racer, Elite?

 

(Are on my 1:1 portable list...)

 

CU

Irgendwer

[atarian63]

I always thought Apple was successful purely by luck, they chose to sell a way overpriced low performance machine to Schools and actually got them to buy them. How they marketed and the terms they gave them,plus the reeducation of the students and faculties were the actual keys to Apples success.Inother words.. right place,right time. How else could you sell such and overpriced inferior product. Even Atari turned them down, as they has a bteer machine in the pipe. ( though Al Alcorn helped Jobs get financing) dumb move.

The difference was that they were truly fanatical about their product. I don't think Atari was planning to release a personal computer at all until after they saw the success Apple was having.

actually it was already in the pipe, never heard anything fanatical about apple.

[atarian63]

So now we're comparing C64 to Amiga?

 

(Waits for the Altair 8800 vs. P4 discussion.......)

Thats what oswald means about Turrican on C64 being 16bit graphics...

 

sorry you're mixing me up with emkay. I've never said the c64 can do 16bit gfx. or feel free to prove me wrong with a quote and url to the post.

please reread your posts :roll:

[Tezz]

Bard's Tale, Wasteland, Stunt Car Racer, Elite?

 

(Are on my 1:1 portable list...)

 

Irgendwer

Unfortunately not those games although yes they really should be on the A8

There are 3 games being completed from that the list and another that is not in the list. They are under wraps now for the surprise.

[atarian63]

I always thought Apple was successful purely by luck, they chose to sell a way overpriced low performance machine to Schools and actually got them to buy them. How they marketed and the terms they gave them,plus the reeducation of the students and faculties were the actual keys to Apples success.Inother words.. right place,right time. How else could you sell such and overpriced inferior product. Even Atari turned them down, as they has a bteer machine in the pipe. ( though Al Alcorn helped Jobs get financing) dumb move.

The difference was that they were truly fanatical about their product. I don't think Atari was planning to release a personal computer at all until after they saw the success Apple was having.

 

imho the difference was that apple could be expanded and many 3rd party stuff was available. the key was visicalc, and add the backward compatibility aswell.

 

You're exactly right about that... it's been well documented that the personal computer was not taken seriously, nor did the Apple II sell very well, until Visicalc was released. That's why it's called a "killer app". Apple was the first system to get a killer app. The expandability also gave it the ability to be a more powerful machine.

 

IBM was the second PC to get a "killer app". Lotus 123...

Could be, though both machines were pitiful

[Oswald]

a lot. I remember someone telling me that a game exists where you can fight battles, take castles with catapults, recruit army, go jousting, etc. I didnt believe him that such a game exists. then I got dotc

 

 

Well,

taking only what someone said (e.g. adverts for a commercial game), and not testing it yourself, then the german commercial game "Adalmar" must be a great DotC clone:

 

...

 

Saying "I never play / test the games, I only watch the videos..." is like "I never have sex, I only watch porn videos..."

-Andreas Koch.

 

 

1. about 20 years ago someone told me about a c64 game. and now 20 years later someone blames me, because I didnt had the game right away to test at home. you must be joking.

 

2. I not only I havent played many a8 games. I havent written an opinion here about any of those. I hope a secret cult doesnt exists which forbids not to play a8 games...

[Oswald]

So now we're comparing C64 to Amiga?

 

(Waits for the Altair 8800 vs. P4 discussion.......)

Thats what oswald means about Turrican on C64 being 16bit graphics...

 

sorry you're mixing me up with emkay. I've never said the c64 can do 16bit gfx. or feel free to prove me wrong with a quote and url to the post.

please reread your posts :roll:

 

I've never said the c64 can do 16bit gfx. feel free to prove me wrong with a quote and url to the post.

[Oswald]

It's a well timed list actually.. I can tell you that some of these games you've listed will soon be ticked off the list of unavailable for the A8

Bard's Tale, Wasteland, Stunt Car Racer, Elite?

 

(Are on my 1:1 portable list...)

 

CU

Irgendwer

 

stunt car would be cool!! tho the c64 version uses a trick to speed up the filling with color attributes, but I'm "afraid" it wont stop the a8 getting the whole thing faster

[Bryan]

actually it was already in the pipe, never heard anything fanatical about apple.

The chipset for the successor to the 2600 was in the pipe, but Atari wasn't initially interested in Steve Jobs' computer idea. Once Apple started getting attention, Atari decided to turn its development efforts to producing a competitor to the Apple.

 

Steve Jobs was known for showing up personally to promote the Apple. He was responsible for the huge success of Apple as an educational computer.

[Tezz]

stunt car would be cool!!

Yea I think it could be done nicely on the A8. Was SCR really that popular to play on any platform or as a nice 3D example to marvel over?

 

I was checking out the new Protovision game nearing completion the other day.. Enforcer II. It's looking impresive.

[Oswald]

stunt car would be cool!!

Yea I think it could be done nicely on the A8. Was SCR really that popular to play on any platform or as a nice 3D example to marvel over?

 

I was checking out the new Protovision game nearing completion the other day.. Enforcer II. It's looking impresive.

 

SCR was very very playable, with a lot of replay value. you actually have to learn the tracks, and when you won them all, you get a 2x faster car with the same tracks, but you have to re learn the tracks because the opponent is much faster, and things with the 2x faster car is totally different even with the slow frame rate the controls feel tight and responsive, I could go on forever

[Tezz]

SCR was very very playable, with a lot of replay value. you actually have to learn the tracks, and when you won them all, you get a 2x faster car with the same tracks, but you have to re learn the tracks because the opponent is much faster, and things with the 2x faster car is totally different even with the slow frame rate the controls feel tight and responsive, I could go on forever

Nice, it sounds worth checking out, I'll have to take a look at the c64 version, my memories are of the Amiga version and falling off the track a lot

[deathtrappomegranate]

Stunt Car Racer was very playable on the ST as well, and even the Spectrum version was quite decent.

 

An A8 version would be cool.

[atariksi]

You have the color RAM to allow you to pick colors in 8*8 cells whereas Atari has up to 4X zoomed sprites with conflicting priority on playfield, ORed colors by sprite overlap, DLIs, and IRQs to set the colors.

 

c64 can use sprites and interrupts aswell to enhance pictures. the atari has here less features.

...

 

You miscounted. GPRIOR and OR produced colors are features not on the C64 whereas color RAM is not on the Atari. Sprite overlays and interrupts are there on the C64 although not as accurate to do horizontal split windows.

 

>>Atari is setting luminance at 1/320 resolution but C64 is setting the color, but I have yet to see this color changing work consistently statically or with scrolling.

 

>many ten million humans have already seen it working both statically or scrolling. havent you seen a c64 scrolling game so far?

 

You have ten million relatives who argue like you or you misunderstood me or your not using TV hooked up to a C64. Here's a simple piece of code in BASIC that explains what I am talking about as well as showing the GPRIOR/OR color effect in 320 pixel mode:

 

10 GRAPHICS 8

20 POKE 704,16:POKE 705,32:POKE 706,48:POKE 707,64:POKE 623,32

30 COLOR 1:PLOT 256,0:DR. 256,159:PLOT 258,0:DR. 258,159

40 PLOT 265,0:DR. 265,159:PLOT 267,0:DR. 267,159

50 FOR T=53256 TO 53264:POKE T,255:N.T

60 POKE 53248,112:POKE 53249,128:POKE 53250,160:POKE 53251,176

 

On the first blank vertical line, Atari shows correct color but on the next one, it does not show same color although it should. Now show me C64 code that does the above but also shows the same color consistently.

 

>I'm yet to see a game (as INGAME gfx)/application using those modes. demos benefit them a lot tho.

 

Looks like people already answered this. It's also used in my own applications.

[atariksi]

Actually, I used it for my curtains demo I mentioned a few times in this thread which is a moving scene not a static one. Once I remove its dependence on joystick input for real-time audio playback, I'll post it as an image disk. It uses > 4-bit color depth total (7-shaded overscanned curtain on top of a GTIA 16-color image). It can also work for some games like joust (if someone wanted to re-write it). Your code above is sub-optimal. Algorithm is that you want to set the Hpos0..3 in HBLank and also set up the A,X,Y registers to the xpos of 3 additional sprites which are closest to HPOSn already used. You want to avoid doing LDAs in the middle of the scanline during visible area. I still had cycles left over for setting the colors for right side of curtain if I wanted to but curtain wouldn't look as good.

 

My code snippet was just for cycle counting - you're right that loading A+X+Y is much better in real code. Were you reloading the graphics for the curtain as well as changing the hpos?

...

 

Even in cycle counting if you were in a DLI kernel (or IRQ-based kernel), the X,Y at least can be factored out to beginning of kernel since the HPOS you are replicating will be constant throughout the kernel. I am actually using zero bytes of RAM for the curtain since it's just shading produced by GPRIOR settings of colored bars.

 

>In a game like joust the problem occurs that all the sprites could intersect, so the calculate of the positioining code can be different ( and the ostriches have different colours ) , but in the non intersecting cases it could look pretty good.

 

You would be allowed to have intersections but obviously not the replicated HPOSes with their originals.

 

>Firstly I'm not confusing things - the sprites on C64 have a 320 pixel resolution, and the A8 ones dont. That is a fact.

 

I was replying to the graphics mode 320*200 not the sprite resolution.

 

>Also even with all of the player underlay tricks it is not possible to have each 8 pixel ( @320 ) wide character have 2 unique colours ( 4 background, 16 foreground )

 

>( and on the 160 mode there are 4 choices per pixel - but 3 of them can be defined uniquely per 8x8 colour cell )

 

I don't know what you mean by 4 background, 16 foreground in your parentheses.

 

On Atari you can disable/enable any of the GTIA modes at mid-scanline and put in higher color content in 320*200 mode and selecting a GTIA mode (one STA) automatically switches in/out a 16-color or 16-shade or custom 9-color palette...

[Oswald]

Sprite overlays and interrupts are there on the C64 although not as accurate to do horizontal split windows.

 

I wonder then how is this possible, with multiplexed moving sprites (see below). remember every time a sprite changes Y coord the timing changes, and here we have quite some of them, with horizontal split windows, and this is just one example of dozens of routines like this.

 

 

 

 

On the first blank vertical line, Atari shows correct color but on the next one, it does not show same color although it should. Now show me C64 code that does the above but also shows the same color consistently.

 

check any scrolling game with hires pixels ?! how hard is that ? turrican has that fex.

[Allas]

[atarian63]

So now we're comparing C64 to Amiga?

 

(Waits for the Altair 8800 vs. P4 discussion.......)

Thats what oswald means about Turrican on C64 being 16bit graphics...

 

sorry you're mixing me up with emkay. I've never said the c64 can do 16bit gfx. or feel free to prove me wrong with a quote and url to the post.

please reread your posts :roll:

 

I've never said the c64 can do 16bit gfx. feel free to prove me wrong with a quote and url to the post.

Re Read your posts... Oswalds are lazy..

[atarian63]

actually it was already in the pipe, never heard anything fanatical about apple.

The chipset for the successor to the 2600 was in the pipe, but Atari wasn't initially interested in Steve Jobs' computer idea. Once Apple started getting attention, Atari decided to turn its development efforts to producing a competitor to the Apple.

 

Steve Jobs was known for showing up personally to promote the Apple. He was responsible for the huge success of Apple as an educational computer.

Actually the 400/800 was already in dev when jobs proposed it to Atari. They didn't need it.

Jobs does not impress me but I suppose in the heady early days of computers it worked.

[Allas]

24 - DROPZONE

 

Atari screenshots

 

There is no words to add about a game that has been discussed many times on different topics.

 

C64 Screenshots