Fröhn Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 >Because he explicitely doesn't want to use one of the MC-colors to avoid sharing of colors. Imagine you use sprites 1 to 4, and overlay sprite 1 with 2 and 3 with 4. As a result you get two combined sprites with following colors: >Overlayed sprite A: SC1 + SC2 + MC1 (ignoring MC2) >Overlayed sprite B: SC3 + SC4 + MC2 (ignoring MC1) Original point: multicolor sprite on Atari is better implementation. QED, you're using 4 sprites. You have to use 4 players to achieve 2 multicolor players on Atari aswell. Btw, when do I have to stop repeating myself? mmmm .... 1982 - 1986 C64 is cheaper -> people buy C64 -> companies make more games for C64 -> people buy C64 because have more games 1987 - 1994 C64 is absolutely cheaper -> people continue buy c64 because have tons of games -> companies produce garbage arcade ports at full speed Strange enough I usually remember the A8 being cheaper than the C64 around 1987-1988. Also, if it was only the price, then the ZX should have outsold them all 5 - BLUE PRINT Atari screenshots Another example how a classic can feel so responsive on the right machine. A lot of fun for hours, who needs the 1x1 pixel precision? Again colors seems to be the same, but Atari has the right tone. C64 screenshots The Vice emulator has quite some input delay. Don't try to compare via emulators. And concerning the screenshots: The game was one of the first games to appear on C64. So it was done on a completely unexplored machine and the screenshots look nearly the same as the ones from the machine which was out for some time already. That pretty much hints that my claim "it's easy to write games for C64" might be true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 Oswald, I think we are talking at cross purposes... I am saying those statistics are meaningless. Specification does not define the experience. More is not always an indicator of better, look at the fact Pokey has more voices than SID - yet that is meaningless as the composer is the key to good music (aided by competent hardware). The A8 has a huge pallette so that must mean it is better, no? In reality it is the quality of the experience created that counts. No one would argue that a more powerful camera would create a better film per se - it may allow for more complexity, or more flexibilty, but the skill of the director and writers etc, like the programmer is the real power... Difference is good, why try to claim one is better than the other, just be happy you enjoy your choice. sTeVE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 >the screen rendered by a8/c64 is 2d. forget the z axis for god's sake.>It expands and shrinks on my version. what? the screen? you have a 3d one with z axis ? >why should you accept anything I say or link, or anything on the world, like facts that there were sprite capable video chips before the atari ? >You gave a link stating earlier existence of sprites. I gave a link to article stating Atari 800 was first to use them. It does not follow that your article is correct. and why does it follow that your article is correct ? >>Why do you call look-up tables are WASTING RAM? It's a way of SPEEDING things up. I use the following code all the time: >compared to VICII where they are not needed arent they ? either 11x slower or much more ram needed to reach the same speed... >Original point: POTENTIAL OF machine targetting 800XL vs. C64. Now you want to compare RAM useage 16K vs. 1K. sure, and potentially the c64 is either faster or uses much less ram for moving around sprites. goto 10. >Restricted modes, I can pump out 16 colors in 320*200 as well. I gave you mode where it's not restricted. I can do any of the 16 shades at any point. >Original point: most imagery has shading. Your resolution cannot have as much shading as that's a hardware restriction. you can not pump out 16 colors in 320x200 without using the cpu. the c64 can. and its certainly much better for gfx than a monochrome screen with 4x wide pixels, it uses 1000 bytes more data to build up the screen. remember? the more data the better picture: these pics kick ass... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 Oswald, I think we are talking at cross purposes... I am saying those statistics are meaningless. Specification does not define the experience. More is not always an indicator of better, look at the fact Pokey has more voices than SID - yet that is meaningless as the composer is the key to good music (aided by competent hardware). The A8 has a huge pallette so that must mean it is better, no? In reality it is the quality of the experience created that counts. No one would argue that a more powerful camera would create a better film per se - it may allow for more complexity, or more flexibilty, but the skill of the director and writers etc, like the programmer is the real power... Difference is good, why try to claim one is better than the other, just be happy you enjoy your choice. sTeVE Well said from someone in the game biz... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oswald Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 Oswald, I think we are talking at cross purposes... I am saying those statistics are meaningless. Specification does not define the experience. More is not always an indicator of better, look at the fact Pokey has more voices than SID - yet that is meaningless as the composer is the key to good music (aided by competent hardware). The A8 has a huge pallette so that must mean it is better, no? In reality it is the quality of the experience created that counts. No one would argue that a more powerful camera would create a better film per se - it may allow for more complexity, or more flexibilty, but the skill of the director and writers etc, like the programmer is the real power... Difference is good, why try to claim one is better than the other, just be happy you enjoy your choice. sTeVE Well said from someone in the game biz... the only question is, why he doesnt replies posts which say an a8 game is better than the c64 version with "they are not comparable only different" :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 emkay, yes koronis rift is better on the a8, but there are more better games for the c64, if you wanna play like this. But THAT is only caused by the fact that more scrolling with sprites Games existed back in the 80s. With a little more success of the Atari, we would have seen more (and faster) 3D back then. It's also a fact that the Atari wasn't optimized in any way by Lucasfilm Games. It was only the 1st step of a development that was stopped by the missed advantage of marketing by ATARI. Just to think about : Everyone says the SID was the superior Soundchip. But, there was many left out. Well, if SID was a perfect Synthi-Chip, you wouldn't recognize to hear a SID by the first note it plays. Have you checked that latest tune from miker? The Thalion intro remake? While still features missing in the RMT tracker and the emulation, it shows clearly potential of real POKEY music. The main point here: Those "complex" sounds run at 4 channels. Not only at 3 channels, even at standard 50Hz VBI speed. Seeing this potential, I ask again, how much better the SID really is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazyace Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 This picture gets better every time I look at it How anyone tried to convert it to an A8 format? ( I have no artistic talent - so any effort I made would look pitiful ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oswald Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 (edited) But THAT is only caused by the fact that more scrolling with sprites Games existed back in the 80s. nobody stopped a8 coders to write lots of 3d games to wash off the poor c64 off the game market. still they produced more 2d games than 3d even when c64 didnt existed. With a little more success of the Atari, we would have seen more (and faster) 3D back then. nope. see previous. It's also a fact that the Atari wasn't optimized in any way by Lucasfilm Games. It was only the 1st step of a development that was stopped by the missed advantage of marketing by ATARI. neither c64 games were. and it was not marketing as you explain it. when c64 arrived to the market it had the more memory better gfx & sound & sprites for ~half of the price of ibm's and apples, and ~$200 less than ataris. then it radically went even cheaper. Just to think about : Everyone says the SID was the superior Soundchip. But, there was many left out. Well, if SID was a perfect Synthi-Chip, you wouldn't recognize to hear a SID by the first note it plays.nobody says SID is/was perfect. I ask again, how much better the SID really is. I can tell you: 16bit freq for 3 channels, ADSR, 4 waveforms for 3 channels, filters, 16 bit variable pulse width . Edited November 28, 2008 by Oswald Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oswald Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 How anyone tried to convert it to an A8 format? ( I have no artistic talent - so any effort I made would look pitiful ) would be as useless as trying to convert a TIP image to c64 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 Oswald, I have said many times I like my A8, I like it's games, I am biased, we all are, all our opinions are relative. I can see good games on other systems, I own a few others - but here, on this Atari Forum I enjoy our celebration of all things Atari - and that means the games that are good on that system. On the other hand I long since stopped lusting after games or abilities for the hardware that are not possible, the Atari 800/XL/XE is strong in some areas, and I am fortunate those areas coincided with my tastes (at the time, back in the early 80's). I do not see any discussion will re-write the histroy books, the C64 sold lots of units, and lots of great games appeared on that platform - in the end there were more games on the C64 than the Atari, and many of the great games that helped define a golden age of UK and US software development were on the C64 (LCP, Manic Mansion, Sanxion etc etc) - I accept that, it was a profitable place to be as a developer and publisher. I happen to enjoy Atari, and I am happy to share that with the people here on AA, not fight about it. sTeVE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 Don't see any restriction with static palettes. Give an example. The first player is blue, the second is red but the third can't be grey because the OR'd value of red and blue isn't grey. It can't be certain shades of yellow either, can't be darker than the two source colours, can't be lighter if they're both the same shade... that third colour may be unique but it's severely restricted as to what it can actually display. I'm so sorry you did not understand my algorithm. Perhaps, if you allow your mind to allow for the possibility rather than trying to find fault, it may become more clear to you. It's dynamic. i read it through and from what i understand it relies on zones and vertically pre-shifted images; my method, although CPU heavy, can animate objects independently of each other and i remember you saying this was a 10x faster version of what that could do, but unless you've missed a detail out somewhere yours can't match everything. If it were just me i'd assume i was at fault because i've never said i was perfect or anything and even after a few years i don't claim to know all the tricks of the Atari hardware, but when an Atari coder starts asking similar questions i'm pondering... You can turn off sprite DMA if you are worried about cycles on other scan lines. i'm not worried about cycles on other scanlines (in fact, you brought the cycle loads up, not me). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazyace Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 the c64 was both better and cheaper. Different and cheaper, yes. Why not using a game for comparision where the C64 looks like the 4 years older computer? The name is Koronis Rift. http://www.mobygames.com/game/koronis-rift/screenshots The only picture that looks worse on the Atari is the title screen. But in game you see the clear difference. Around 50 colours (incl. 16 steps of one hue) on the Atari with a 3 layer depth of view and fading hills come into the scene softly. The C64 even shows not 16 colours, has only two layers of depth, and due to the missing palette the hills are hard popping into the scene... and so on. I looked at the MSX picture and was amazed - then realised it's a picture for the MSX2 , which has a 256 colour per pixel video mode Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 (edited) Difference is good, why try to claim one is better than the other, just be happy you enjoy your choice. Someone not being happy with their choice is pretty much what started this thread, otherwise why look only for comparisons where the Atari comes out on top rather than making it more general...? I can see good games on other systems, I own a few others - but here, on this Atari Forum I enjoy our celebration of all things Atari - and that means the games that are good on that system. ... I happen to enjoy Atari, and I am happy to share that with the people here on AA, not fight about it. i happen enjoy Atari and the C64, but it seems that i'm not allowed to do the latter here without derision or being accused of trolling; i'm not saying that you do it and i know all the programmers tend to be more interested in the technical details anyway (as i noticed Oswald said between my original post and this edit, i like discussing these details because there are always things to learn about machines and this is a great way of learning them - i want to see atariski's sprite system!) but some people just seem incapable of enjoying the Atari unless it's at the expense of other machines. Edited November 28, 2008 by TMR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artlover Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 how much better the SID really is. So this got me to thinking. Sid chips and Sid instruction sets have been used in a couple of stand alone commercial synthesizers and sequencers (Elektron SidStation & Monomachine). Also, if I recall from back in later 80's there was a commercial multi channel A/D capture board (PC based I think) that could use up to 8 of them. Can't for the life of my remember the name of that tho. I do remember the ads in some of my old science and technology related magazines from those days. Dark ad, mostly brown and black, with a picture of the card floating with a bunch of leds along the backplane and wire terminal ports on the card with a bunch of sockets for you to install the sids into. Can't remember if they sold with it with a chips already installed option. Holy crap what was the name of that thing......Me think's I'll be digging through boxes of magazines this weekend. Unless someone else can remember and spare me the trouble. ... PLEASE, someone else remember, I don't want to go on that mission. Has the Pokey ever been used in any stand alone commercial applications? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oswald Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 Steve, and I enjoy debating over the machines capabilities, cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 This picture gets better every time I look at it How anyone tried to convert it to an A8 format? ( I have no artistic talent - so any effort I made would look pitiful ) With some enhanced G2F and scanline interleaved Antic modes, well, something similar could be done. The image is a nice one with good details. But the colouring style is restriced, so the picture has no real depth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 Me think's I'll be digging through boxes of magazines this weekend. Unless someone else can remember and spare me the trouble. ... PLEASE, someone else remember, I don't want to go on that mission. i can't really help on that one, i've heard about it and vaguely remember Rob Hubbard mentioning something similar in an interview but it's not something i remember even seeing adverts for... Has the Pokey ever been used in any stand alone commercial applications? Well, the "biggie" from my point of view is all the coin-ops that had POKEY (what can i say, i like games =-) but no, i'm not aware of any similar situations to the HardSID (wasn't that developed by an Atari demo crew...?), SIDStation or the plug-in software synths... but i'm not a musician by any stretch of the imagination. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irgendwer Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 5 - BLUE PRINT And for me most important when I start with computing: THE BUILD-IN BASIC! CU Irgendwer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 (edited) I looked at the MSX picture and was amazed - then realised it's a picture for the MSX2 , which has a 256 colour per pixel video mode The MSX2... now there's a machine i should have a play with at some point, but getting hold of rocking horse poo seems easier here...! =-( And for me most important when I start with computing: THE BUILD-IN BASIC! In that case, the best machine would be the BBC Micro because that BASIC is bloody phenomenal for it's age; it supports inline assembly code, if/then/else conditions, named procedures, repeat/until loops and essentially pre-compiles (and assembles the inline) code before execution so it moves like poo off a shovel. Edited November 28, 2008 by TMR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 (edited) Without picking an argument I would say you are being disingenuous there Oswald - you enjoy making assertions and getting reactions, there is little listening on either side here! The original question was - "Does anybody have any views on where any titles were launched on both Atari and Commodore - and the Atari version is the better of the two?" And the answer to that question is yes, there are game released for both where the Atari 8bit version is "better": Rescue on Fractalus Ballblazer Kornonis Rift The Eidolon Pole Position Dropzone Elektraglide Others where many would feel the A8 is arguably better, like: Pastfinder Henry's House Amaurote Bandits Blue Max There are others where there is more debate, for instance: Boulderdash Montezuma's Revenge Bruce Lee Popeye International Karate And I prefer the A8 versions in all these instances (and others)... sTeVE Edited November 28, 2008 by Jetboot Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 but to say something positive: a) compared to last time we are not getting too emotional and personal attacks - thats good b) we are discussing in more detail as the details are the important ones (not so general states like 5 sprites vs 8 sprites, 256 colours vs 16 etc...) I guess that's the reason why TMR and other coders are here still around... (me either)... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irgendwer Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 In that case, the best machine would be the BBC Micro because that BASIC is bloody phenomenal for it's age; it supports inline assembly code, if/then/else conditions, named procedures, repeat/until loops and essentially pre-compiles (and assembles the inline) code before execution so it moves like poo off a shovel. Could be, but this machine was invisible (out-of-reach, to expensive - pick one) for the german buyer CU Irgendwer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oswald Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 (edited) Without picking an argument I would say you are being disingenuous there Oswald - you enjoy making assertions and getting reactions, there is little listening on either side here! Please re read my posts. I'm arguing using arguments and logics. if thats being disingenuous then I am. btw bruce lee for example is the perfect example of not being better or worse but different. the colors are slightly different. oh and the ninja doesnt slides on his back after a kick like in the c64 version, because the a8 ran out of spritewidth. also the c64 sounds are better. there you go. then, no idea why do you find IK, montezuma, blue max, henry's house, pole position, dropzone better. Edited November 28, 2008 by Oswald Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fröhn Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 With some enhanced G2F and scanline interleaved Antic modes, well, something similar could be done. 320x200? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irgendwer Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 so we should search further... do we get 20? Think we already have them: 1. Rescue on Fractalus 2. Ballblazer 3. Kornonis Rift 4. The Eidolon 5. Pole Position 6. Dropzone 7. Elektraglide 8. Encounter 9. Seven Cities of Gold 10. Alternate Reality (x2 if you like) 11. Mercenary (x2 if you like) 12. The Great American Cross Country Race 13. Amaurote 14. Blue Print 15. Attack of the Mutant Camels 16. M.U.L.E. 17. Blue Max 18. Henry's House 19. Pastfinder 20. Bandits 21. Build-in BASIC (+ with discussions) - Boulderdash - Montezuma's Revenge - Bruce Lee - Popeye - International Karate - Hero - Pitfall 2 - Rainbow Walker - Pong - Star Raiders 2 - Zone ranger - Gremlins - Spindizzy - Archon 1+2 I like the list, since most of the titles are top-notch on both computers! CU Irgendwer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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