atariksi Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 p.s. And it could be done on C64 also! and with more colors Sure. In hires the A8 can display 8 colours then , and the C64 can display 16 colours. But, how will the C64 reach more than 16 colours in the colour resolution, where the Atari can reach more than 20 colours per scanline? Not to talk about the additional changes every scanline. Here Im talking about sprite layer only: All of Ataris players and missiles combined in quadruple size cover maximum of 40 pixels wide area... That is 20 characters wide, half a screen... And missiles have same color as apropriate player... and thats only 4 different colors in one line max... And not any pixel in any color... lines of 8 pixels long... Please correct me if I'm wrong... ... All players/missiles combine in quadruple size to give 160 pixels that covers the whole screen w/o any DLIs. You overlap them and use sprite replication and multicolor player mode to get 7 colors total instead of 5. That's without involving OR effects with playfields. You can also use sprites to color information in 320*200 mode so you can get more colors in 320*200 mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frogstar_robot Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 Textmode Action and "C64" colours and an additional gfx & sound cards. I believe you are incorrect about the additional gfx hardware. Though a SoundBlaster Pro was added (and serves as the timer source for sending info to the CGA as well as the sound hardware proper). The demo isn't intended as a statement of XT 5150 superiority. He just wanted to show something is possible. The author anticipated statements like yours: Q: Big deal, my 8-bit C64/Atari/Speccy can do more with less. Digitized audio aside, yes, they can, because they have much more flexible graphics hardware. Even the simple act of being able to redefine the character font in text mode gives them much higher graphics capabilities than what we had to work with. The true hack of 8088 Corruption isn't the playback software, but rather the video conversion to make the most of CGA, which was very fixed and limited (can't change the font, can't change colors, etc.). Q: It has a hard drive in it; can you really call that a "stock" 5150? Since it was perfectly possible to add hard drives to a 5150 before the introduction of the XT (5160) in 1983, yes. I have always claimed that all you need to run 8088 Corruption is a 5150, a hard drive, and a Sound Blaster, which is not an unreasonable or false claim. However, the criticism isn't lost on me, and I am working on a demo project that will indeed run off of floppies and not require a hard drive or sound card. And yes yes we know he missed the digitized audio possibilities of old 8-bits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 All players/missiles combine in quadruple size to give 160 pixels that covers the whole screen w/o any DLIs. You overlap them and use sprite replication and multicolor player mode to get 7 colors total instead of 5. That's without involving OR effects with playfields. Uuuugggghhhh how wrong was I.... So many hours spent playing games and looking at screenshots and reading documentation and something big as this to slip by unnoticed.... Is there a sentence or an image in whole atariarchives site that says that ? So PMGraphic normal size is 2 hires pixels and not a simple hires pixel !!! :!: And quadruple is whole character wide... uffff.... So they can cover whole screen line just that resolution is half of commodores ... Even with dlis for changing colors it would make pretty simple one colored platforms... I guess something nice could be done with double size and 20 out of 40 screen chars covered with sprite layer... and in multicolor mode its even worse... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 p.s. And it could be done on C64 also! and with more colors Sure. In hires the A8 can display 8 colours then , and the C64 can display 16 colours. But, how will the C64 reach more than 16 colours in the colour resolution, where the Atari can reach more than 20 colours per scanline? Not to talk about the additional changes every scanline. Here Im talking about sprite layer only: ... 8 Commodore double expanded sprites in multicolor, cover 8x12=96 pixels wide area... That is 48 characters.... enough even for pure hardware scrolling with tilemap blocks the size of one sprite... And every pixel can have any of 3 colors plus each sprite can have one of 16 colors... That is 10 different colors in one line... Or if you take unexpanded sprites that gives you 96 pixels= 24 chars wide... in twice nicer resolution than ataris... and again more colors... Lemmings used this method to show background. 7 sprites wide layer in 3+ backround colors. And software sprites in charmode. Here's the Curtains demo I posted previously. Others have pointed out other demos as well. The curtains demos uses 192*240 sprite layer in 7-colors chosen from palette of 128. It has 16-color GTIA image in background and playing 11Khz digitized audio. You have to boot up in real atari (never tried with emulator). Although I do give edge overall of sprites to C64, your analysis above is biased toward the X-axis. Atari has taller sprites and thus require no multiplexing vertically to fill up the screen including overscan and uses up less DMA cycles. Also your example of porting C64 specific game to Atari doesn't prove either system's inferiority/superiority. I can give many graphics examples where it's true the other way. Porting any GTIA mode applications, GPRIOR-mode based applications, or those that use kernels to enhance colors/flip modes/hscroll/vscroll/overscan/etc. would be harder to port over to C64. CURTAIN.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 Here's the Curtains demo I posted previously. Others have pointed out other demos as well. The curtains demos uses 192*240 sprite layer in 7-colors chosen from palette of 128. It has 16-color GTIA image in background and playing 11Khz digitized audio. You have to boot up in real atari (never tried with emulator). Don't know what to do with that IMG file... I have Atari 800xl... how could I transfer that to it ? I don't have disk drive for it thou.... If I understood correctly from your previous posts, you change xposition of players in middle of line to get more sprites ? Although I do give edge overall of sprites to C64, your analysis above is biased toward the X-axis. Thank you for that My bias toward better resolution is just because I dont see 4 or 8 pixel wide dots good for pixel-art graphic... They are fine for big pictures Even commodores multicolored pixels are to wide... (but I have a solution for that... ) Here is an example of one: And one more: Atari has taller sprites and thus require no multiplexing vertically to fill up the screen including overscan and uses up less DMA cycles. Also your example of porting C64 specific game to Atari doesn't prove either system's inferiority/superiority. I can give many graphics examples where it's true the other way. Porting any GTIA mode applications, GPRIOR-mode based applications, or those that use kernels to enhance colors/flip modes/hscroll/vscroll/overscan/etc. would be harder to port over to C64. I'm not trying to prove anything I'm just stating obstacles and difficulties in development and trying to surpass them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 Here's the Curtains demo I posted previously. Others have pointed out other demos as well. The curtains demos uses 192*240 sprite layer in 7-colors chosen from palette of 128. It has 16-color GTIA image in background and playing 11Khz digitized audio. You have to boot up in real atari (never tried with emulator). Don't know what to do with that IMG file... I have Atari 800xl... how could I transfer that to it ? I don't have disk drive for it thou.... If I understood correctly from your previous posts, you change xposition of players in middle of line to get more sprites ? ... You need to boot off a real disk drive or one of those PC->Atari SIO cables. If you want one of those cables, you can look around or pmail me for one. You would need it if you are developing a game for Atari. IMG file is a boot disk made up of sector by sector without any headers. Each sector is 128 bytes. Some disk simulators use the ATR format which has a 16byte header (I think) followed by the sector by sector dump. Yes, that demo re-uses all the players (4 of them) on the right side for the right curtain. So total sprite coverage is 8 players + 4 missiles. I could also change the colors of the right curtain, but I wanted curtain to look symmetric. >>Although I do give edge overall of sprites to C64, your analysis above is biased toward the X-axis. >Thank you for that >My bias toward better resolution is just because I dont see 4 or 8 pixel wide dots good for pixel-art graphic... They are fine for big pictures >Even commodores multicolored pixels are to wide... (but I have a solution for that... ) I think Atari people use sprites in back of playfield mode (priority setting) in 320*200 to get higher resolution sprites. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 I think Atari people use sprites in back of playfield mode (priority setting) in 320*200 to get higher resolution sprites. Seems like thing I'm doing with hires sprite over multicolor one. Could be usefull... combined with software sprites could be nice... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted June 4, 2009 Share Posted June 4, 2009 And one more: Not sure about the intention But, if I wanted, I could do additional dithering of the guy and the background... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 Not sure about the intention But, if I wanted, I could do additional dithering of the guy and the background... Thanks for the improvement ! I was keeping it in the limits of the engine Im trying to make... Three color 12x21 doublex sized pixel sprite overlayed with 24x21 black hires sprite... You added extra colors for gun (I admit on my version you would probably realize that it is a gun only when you would see it firing buletts ) and I wouldn't do background color stripes as you showed ... that is atari thing But it uses only one of eight sprites so thats what I was aiming at... It would be pain to convert it to atari 100%.... As I realised yesterday..(shame on me... ) - only way to get hires on atari screen is hires charmode or hires bitmap mode... and then you have only sprites to put additional colors below that layer... Is there a game that used such method? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5676 but I am not a fan of "speccy" modes... that's why I am gonna use 5 colour charmode for Beyond Evil... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 ps. btw... which c64 game are we talking about? if we can have a look then it might be easier to suggest the way to go? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 I don't want to make a demo or static picture... I want a proper arcade game experience ... You know what ? I wanted it too! But, all the Sprites and colours didn't help with the speed of -Test Drive -Space Harrier -Outrun ... and all 3D view games. A bunch of static pictures gives also no great gaming fun. They helped very nicely with the Sega sprite scaling type 3D games of Buggy Boy Turbo Charge Power Drift Turbo Outrun. These games are a class ahead of any other 8bit game using a similar style of graphics. The difference is Outrun is coded by idiots, Space Harrier was coded in a few weeks for a set fee (not a 3 year labour of love like the as yet unfinished A8 version of Space Harrier) and Test Drive is a polygon type game...not very well written as obviously games like Encounter shows fast filled 3D is possible on the C64. As for Space Harrier the NTSC version done for the USA still runs on a PAL machine and is just a few extra hours coding to add slightly smoother graphics and the scrolling floor tile effect which is the version you should be looking at. I doubt A8 Space Harrier would be worth looking at if the time limite was set to even double what Chris Buttler had to finish the game on the C64 and his first 3D game to boot (1 month to be exact). The point that I am making is, as usual, don't purposefully point out quick and dirty ports done to a budget/timescale of weeks to completion as an example of ultimate machine capabilities. I have posted these 4 games as examples many times, none of which has been even remotely replicated as well on the A8 even by some team spending years writing the code. All I have ever asked is to see the best on both platforms, try and keep it above board and less fanboyish even though I know that is extremely difficult for mr emkay. If we can't come to an agreement at least if we keep it sensible BOTH SIDES will get to see things that they didn't think was possible on either machine....surely the whole point of the whole thread if there is no clear cut winner no? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 Not sure about the intention But, if I wanted, I could do additional dithering of the guy and the background... Thanks for the improvement ! I was keeping it in the limits of the engine Im trying to make... Three color 12x21 doublex sized pixel sprite overlayed with 24x21 black hires sprite... "trying to make" ... the hits the spot. The C64's Sprites make some things easier. But, at the end, you don't have more than 16 colours on the screen. You added extra colors for gun (I admit on my version you would probably realize that it is a gun only when you would see it firing buletts )and I wouldn't do background color stripes as you showed ... that is atari thing But it uses only one of eight sprites so thats what I was aiming at... Well, that is what I wanted to show. If you have still images or still objects on the screen, you can give up to 128 colours to them. Games like "Monkey Island" could exist, looking like MCGA. And sprites, well. Seeing the PM graphics as an overlay, you could do a char based sprite engine without taking care of the overlapping. If you need 50 or 60 fps , just keep the 5 colours. If you need 25 fps give them 20 colours If you need 5-6 fps (as in many graphics adventures, you could give up to 128 colours to every moving object. It would be pain to convert it to atari 100%.... As I realised yesterday..(shame on me... ) - only way to get hires on atari screen is hires charmode or hires bitmap mode... and then you have only sprites to put additional colors below that layer... Is there a game that used such method? Jetboy is a good example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOtom2X2u0c But in the past they forgot to play with different brightnesses, making hires objects with 4 colours possible. It made the game looking colourful but the whole screen looked flat. The depending games are also not great ones, so I don't remind the names Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 (edited) For what it's worth, aside from spectrum conversions - and Jetboy is a wonderful looking game, I see NO point in GR.8 with PMG underlays as an approach to original A8 software. Compared with 160 resolution full color work it just looks plain ugly IMHO, take a look at those Last Ninja shots emkay did, it looks like a BAD spectrum game, not a conversion of a very pretty C64 game... As this I think illustrates - http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...t&p=1757613 - compared with the C64 original it looks dreadful... Until proved otherwise, by an actual game or images, I see nothing gained by using this technique that is worth trading the proper color control 160 wide mode gives... sTeVE Edited June 5, 2009 by Jetboot Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 Steve, I found the screenies as one of the best examples of colouring Gr.8 in a game but I can not help myself but Gr.8 games are always kind of Speccy style...neverless they might be good... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 Steve, I found the screenies as one of the best examples of colouring Gr.8 in a game but I can not help myself but Gr.8 games are always kind of Speccy style...neverless they might be good... It's a hard bread for the A8 to have image making people without imaginations ´ It's not the first time Steve blamed my "demonstrations". At this moment, it still is easier to put some pokes and DLIs together for a good looking hires picture than to handle G2F . Before the VBXE was added into G2F, the tool had less bugs. Even the small picture you see above, took hundreds of switching "zoom" on and off, because the zoom always showed wrong drawn pixels. The pictures with the "last ninja" are by far not the peak of what is possible. G2F even has heavy logic bugs in the DLI/Raster logics, Player re-use is not possible... and so on... and so on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 (edited) They helped very nicely with the Sega sprite scaling type 3D games of Buggy Boy Turbo Charge Power Drift Turbo Outrun. They belong more to my list of worse gameplay by bad FPS Really. If Atari people had a closer look at the programming techniques, you would find those games still at double speeds with the same resolution. The coders on the C64 use some "interleaving" object movement, which makes the game looking more fluent as it is for real. Allthough it looks like 3-6 frames movement with the most objects. Edited June 5, 2009 by emkay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 (edited) I must just be me but I don't see how the GR8 with mismatched PMG overlays looks anywhere near as good as the C64 version... Edited June 5, 2009 by Jetboot Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 I must just be me but I don't see how the GR8 with mismatched PMG overlays looks anywhere near as good as the C64 version... Import the C64 pic completely into G2F and I will make the correct overlays Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazyace Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 I must just be me but I don't see how the GR8 with mismatched PMG overlays looks anywhere near as good as the C64 version... Import the C64 pic completely into G2F and I will make the correct overlays I think Emkay's picture is pretty good - but it's just a still picture - so there are no enemies running around, or gameplay cpu utilisation. Given how G2F can suck up most of the CPU cycles in the visible region of the screen there would be far less time available for anything else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 I still don't see it - sorry, a mono picture with spot color overlays for "extended" monochrome look vs this... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 G2F does not suck up 100% of the CPU as you have the VBL time for your code... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 I still don't see it - sorry, a mono picture with spot color overlays for "extended" monochrome look vs this... It's easier to solve in hires on the A8 as you might think. But, hey, it's not the game we was writing about Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 G2F does not suck up 100% of the CPU as you have the VBL time for your code... We'd need a full "kernal" for the gamescreen height, still leaving more cpu time available then the C64 has at all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazyace Posted June 5, 2009 Share Posted June 5, 2009 They helped very nicely with the Sega sprite scaling type 3D games of Buggy Boy Turbo Charge Power Drift Turbo Outrun. They belong more to my list of worse gameplay by bad FPS Really. If Atari people had a closer look at the programming techniques, you would find those games still at double speeds with the same resolution. The coders on the C64 use some "interleaving" object movement, which makes the game looking more fluent as it is for real. Allthough it looks like 3-6 frames movement with the most objects. PowerDrift is 3 frames ( About 17fps ) on PAL, which isn't too bad for the game it's emulating. ( Even the Amiga version sucked compared to the Arcade game ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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