Atari v Commodore

[Heaven/TQA]

Sometimes I cannot believe that you're anyhow involved into computergraphics development.

 

I guess that is the difference, I have been involved in games development for over 20 years - rather than sitting on the sidelines criticizing...

 

 

 

In fact : I looks impressive by the used techniques, compared to 99% of all Atari software.

 

And yes I reckon my assessment (whilst only my opinion) is pretty accurate. I don't doubt it's technical merit, just the visual experience it has created - I don't find it pleasing...

 

In fact other simpler screen design creates more coherent visuals....

 

 

? never saw these games...???

[emkay]

? never saw these games...???

 

Fandal has them for download

[popmilo]

p.s.Anyone for Sentinel like game for Atari ?

Work outstanding on remapping the screen drawing code needs to be resolved.

 

XXL, do you other implementations running under emulation code (e.g. spectrum)?

I don't quite understand what you are trying to say ?

[atariksi]

And what atari feature exactly are you looking for proof which you think it's just an unsubstantiated claim?

 

Well...

 

So just replicate say P1 five times and update it's GRAFn register so you get 4*12+6 = 54 cycles at most (since you can registerize a couple of STA/STX/STYs prior to kernel. So you would have just P1 of size 160*248 and be able to enable/disable any 4*1 of P1. When enabled, you get the P1 color + the 2 ORed colors based on PF0/PF1. So you get a uniform 160*240*7 mode and have P0 and P2/P3/P4 still available with their own 4 colors.

 

OK - the above, I don't believe is possible in a real world game situation.

 

Replicating P1 5 times across the screen - not do-able, without slaving the CPU to the screen draw in such a way that virtually eliminates any CPU for game logic...

 

I am sure that superficially you believe such numerical twiddling, but having tried horizontal sprite multiplexing I found it near impossible to do...

 

sTeVE

 

There's going to be trade-off of CPU useage and sprites available. Looking at it in context, I gave a method to get 160*240*8 using all the players/missiles and no replication (CPU useage minimized) but he (pompillo) wanted to the 3 additional colors to be the same uniformly so I was giving an "approach" how that could also be done. A few messages later (post #6431), I suggested using two players. Both approaches are doable-- one player replication would involve alternating frames or not having 160 consecutive pixel coverage but for moving objects you can shift the whole player area around. Also, I gave example of Joust and curtains where you don't always need to update GRAFn registers for each player.

 

It's actually 5 players uses-- since 32*5 = 160 pixels.

[atariksi]

...

IMHO Atari has many good features, but what it lacks is uniformity of them...

And those "Special cases" killed more than one project...

...

It's pretty uniform except to get more colors than what the standard modes support. I call it compressed bit-depth. You find it more on Amiga and Atari 8-bits-- to squeeze more colors using less bandwidth than it would actually take. Amiga does the 12-bit (4096) color mode using 6 bitplanes along with Copper color changes and Atari does GPRIOR mode "0" and DLIs/sprite overlaps/etc.

 

>Yes C64 has those limits as three colors in 4x8 block, but - blocks are same all over screen....

 

Is that an upper limit-- 3 colors in 4*8 block. I thought they can get more.

 

>Yes it has "only" 8 sprites, but - they are all same size!

 

Atari has 5 sprites if you want to think uniformly-- 8*248. It's just it's flexibility that they can be used in other ways.

[+Stephen]

? never saw these games...???

 

You've never seen Xagon? That has to be one of the top titles I remember playing back in the late 80s. It as great. Sort of a Qbert style of play (jump on blocks to push them down).

 

Stephen Anderson

[atariksi]

Exactly...

 

These theories all sound exciting, if bits of them could be shown working you could color me impressed...

 

I think there is no instance where alternate lines of 160 then GTIA would look acceptable IMHO, but again I might be wrong, I just can't see it...

 

...

 

If you were referring to me, I was talking about choosing a GTIA or 160 mode on a per scanline basis-- not alternating lines for dithering.

 

For example, if you were doing an Atari 8-bit program for "Backyard Pong" game, you can use Graphics 9 on top for shaded scoreboard and borders and then use GPRIOR mode 0 in 160*160 with player replication to draw the two men in 10+ colors each on each end and a shaded ball with 3+ shades and with some birds/garbage falling from windows in 4+ colors that interferes with the ball as the two players try to hit it back and forth.

 

The BASIC program I posted can be modified to a "Backyard Pong" type game so I don't think it's limited to non-game uses; just depends on the game.

[+wood_jl]

? never saw these games...???

 

You've never seen Xagon? That has to be one of the top titles I remember playing back in the late 80s. It as great. Sort of a Qbert style of play (jump on blocks to push them down).

 

Stephen Anderson

 

Ok, now I'm having a hard time following who owns Commodore, who owns Atari.....who owns both, who advocates Atari, who advocates Commodore, who advocates both.....which games are on which....

 

Xagon is on Atari or Commodore?

 

Those game screens several messages ago....which system?

 

I'd like to see those Commodore games that allegedly trump the Atari. What are the titles? I have only recently begun playing C64 and for the most part, things look pretty similar to me (this is a compliment). I hope there are NTSC versions, because I'd like to play them on my real Commodore.

 

Conversely, let's list the Atari games that kick ass in the opposite direction. We mention the "oldies" like Ballblazer and Koronis Rift.....but what is the complete list? What are the new ones? (All I can think of is Yoomp!) I am, of course, more familiar with the Atari and what it does well, but as I've been out of the scene for years, I've missed out on recent game developments.

 

How about some kick-ass game names and which system they are on? I'd like to see this stuff for myself, for both systems. (Let there be NTSC versions for each, I hope!)

[+Stephen]

? never saw these games...???

 

You've never seen Xagon? That has to be one of the top titles I remember playing back in the late 80s. It as great. Sort of a Qbert style of play (jump on blocks to push them down).

 

Stephen Anderson

 

Ok, now I'm having a hard time following who owns Commodore, who owns Atari.....who owns both, who advocates Atari, who advocates Commodore, who advocates both.....which games are on which....

 

Xagon is on Atari or Commodore?

 

Those game screens several messages ago....which system?

 

I'd like to see those Commodore games that allegedly trump the Atari. What are the titles? I have only recently begun playing C64 and for the most part, things look pretty similar to me (this is a compliment). I hope there are NTSC versions, because I'd like to play them on my real Commodore.

 

Conversely, let's list the Atari games that kick ass in the opposite direction. We mention the "oldies" like Ballblazer and Koronis Rift.....but what is the complete list? What are the new ones? (All I can think of is Yoomp!) I am, of course, more familiar with the Atari and what it does well, but as I've been out of the scene for years, I've missed out on recent game developments.

 

How about some kick-ass game names and which system they are on? I'd like to see this stuff for myself, for both systems. (Let there be NTSC versions for each, I hope!)

Sorry - Xagon is an Atari 8-bit game. Played the heck out of it. I am not sure if it is NTSC only, but I doubt it.

 

Stephen Anderson

[atariksi]

...

If one does not use PMGs or flickering between frames/lines to enhance then what realistically can be done in the 160 and 320 modes? For that matter one can flicker two different pallettes but well...it flickers. Since games are brought up as a point against static pictures and mockups, it seems a valid question to me.

 

You can also re-use colors horizontally and vertically without flicker and GPRIOR mode 0 is separate from PMGs. You can have PMGs with or without GPRIOR mode 0.

[oky2000]

The simple unarguable fact is that it is 3 whole decades since the A8 first hit the shops now, and yet there is maybe one or two games that don't look like 16 shades of the same colour OR some lame 4 colour across the whole screen 1982 C64 level game. Apart from DLIs I see NO EVIDENCE for a clean fast ultra colourful game of the quality AND speed of many late C64 games ever appearing.

 

Crownland flickers like hell CONSTANTLY and is quite a slow scroller....if Crownland is SMB then Mayhem is Sonic & Knuckles in speed, but flickering is unacceptable, if flickering is acceptable then the 8-bit Sega Master System version of R-Type can be rebranded as perfect. Flickering = you are asking the hardware to do something it CAN'T do in time end of story.

 

So far despite 261 I have only seen maybe one mildly impressive game (that flickers on the PM graphics constantly) and one tune which was better than I though (but still inferior to the SID tune it is trying to replicate on technical grounds...severe lack of waveform AND sound control in hardware)

 

Let's face it.....throwing hopeful theories and some lines of code to compare to REAL GAMES like Enforcer level two demo on C64 (search it yourself on youtube, nobody ever has any comments worth reading in retaliation to it anyway here) which blows the A8 chipset out of the water and into the next universe is not going to cut the mustard with me sorry. Nice machine, but the only advantage the A8 does have (larger palette) is practically unusable, which is why apart from raster bar horizontal colour graduations the A8 is just too complex, too limiting and with inferior sound to boot. As a games machine it will always be incomplete to the genius and lightning fast design produced by MOS for C=.

 

Both machines are good but after 261 pages it is still obvious to all but a few trolling atari fanboys here that the A8 is the worse of the two compromises. Every machine has a compromise...but reading some posts in the thread you would think God was fabricating the chips while jesus scoured the promised lands for raw materials to build the awesome messiah of 8 bit computing

[potatohead]

...but I like Atari.

[atariksi]

The simple unarguable fact is that it is 3 whole decades since the A8 first hit the shops now, and yet there is maybe one or two games that don't look like 16 shades of the same colour OR some lame 4 colour across the whole screen 1982 C64 level game. Apart from DLIs I see NO EVIDENCE for a clean fast ultra colourful game of the quality AND speed of many late C64 games ever appearing.

 

Crownland flickers like hell CONSTANTLY and is quite a slow scroller....if Crownland is SMB then Mayhem is Sonic & Knuckles in speed, but flickering is unacceptable, if flickering is acceptable then the 8-bit Sega Master System version of R-Type can be rebranded as perfect. Flickering = you are asking the hardware to do something it CAN'T do in time end of story.

 

So far despite 261 I have only seen maybe one mildly impressive game (that flickers on the PM graphics constantly) and one tune which was better than I though (but still inferior to the SID tune it is trying to replicate on technical grounds...severe lack of waveform AND sound control in hardware)

 

Let's face it.....throwing hopeful theories and some lines of code to compare to REAL GAMES like Enforcer level two demo on C64 (search it yourself on youtube, nobody ever has any comments worth reading in retaliation to it anyway here) which blows the A8 chipset out of the water and into the next universe is not going to cut the mustard with me sorry. Nice machine, but the only advantage the A8 does have (larger palette) is practically unusable, which is why apart from raster bar horizontal colour graduations the A8 is just too complex, too limiting and with inferior sound to boot. As a games machine it will always be incomplete to the genius and lightning fast design produced by MOS for C=.

 

Both machines are good but after 261 pages it is still obvious to all but a few trolling atari fanboys here that the A8 is the worse of the two compromises. Every machine has a compromise...but reading some posts in the thread you would think God was fabricating the chips while jesus scoured the promised lands for raw materials to build the awesome messiah of 8 bit computing

 

You are the one trolling and acting as a fanboy. You are trying to draw a conclusion about the two machines' hardware based on some games that may or may not use the capabilities of the machine. If you want to say something about games say it, but then don't draw the absurd conclusion about the hardware from it unless you can prove that the games are using the machines to the fullest extent. You don't even make any sense-- atari has advantage of larger palette but it's unusable.

 

We're mainly been talking recently about 160*200 mode and how to appease someone porting a game to A8 not about every graphics mode, every sound possible, all I/O possible, etc. etc. Go get a clue. So-called "lightning fast design" is why C64 runs slower than A8 in CPU speed and I/O speed and scrolling. You are like a frog in a well-- unless Atari can do 4*8 color RAM technique, all it's other techniques don't matter. Unless it can have wider better horizontal sprites, vertical value and hardware collision detection is useless. Etc. etc.

[atariksi]

But you're right.. The sprites are a pain when it comes to handling cycle exact stuff, especially a badline with all 8 sprites enabled.. But you work around that in whatever you're building.. And the benefits of them more than outweigh the downsides.. If you really must, you can always stretch (not multiplex!) the sprites down the screen completely to ensure consistent timing, and then through judicious use of sprite pointers change the sprite pointer to change data in a line by line basis, so even if the sprite wasn't displayed, you'd still be setting it to empty sprite data.. But this is exploiting more bugs in Vic so it probably doesn't count in your books since it's not a 'hardware' feature

 

Bugs are used on both sides quite a lot nowadays, and if the A8 programmers used no tricks/hacks/bugs then their games would look like 4 colours total on screen 1982 crap that we had to endure on the C64 due to programmer ignorance

 

That's a typical fanboy argument. "1982 crap". Your subjective biased opinion. I think many of the 1982 and before games are excellent. Games don't have to use all the capabilities of the hardware to be good. By the way, andym00 made a straw-man argument and you supported it which means another fanboyish mentality. I never said anything about not being able to use "bugs" in hardware. I was talking about consistency of making it run on all machines. Go read it yourself.

[Jetboot Jack]

Ok, now I'm having a hard time following who owns Commodore, who owns Atari.....who owns both, who advocates Atari, who advocates Commodore, who advocates both.....which games are on which....

 

Xagon is on Atari or Commodore?

 

Those game screens several messages ago....which system?

 

Sorry my bad - I assumed everyone would be familiar with Qb and Xagon - off to atarimania with you!!!

 

They are both A8 titles, surely the multishade palette look is a giveaway

 

I am a dyed in the wool A8 person, but feel increasingly uncomfortable with the theoretical technical vs actual demonstrable software arguments.

 

sTeVE

 

P.S. Hve - shame on you, every A8 fan should have played those games!!!!

Edited July 1, 2009 by Jetboot Jack

[popmilo]

...

IMHO Atari has many good features, but what it lacks is uniformity of them...

And those "Special cases" killed more than one project...

...

It's pretty uniform except to get more colors than what the standard modes support. I call it compressed bit-depth. You find it more on Amiga and Atari 8-bits-- to squeeze more colors using less bandwidth than it would actually take. Amiga does the 12-bit (4096) color mode using 6 bitplanes along with Copper color changes and Atari does GPRIOR mode "0" and DLIs/sprite overlaps/etc.

 

>Yes C64 has those limits as three colors in 4x8 block, but - blocks are same all over screen....

 

Is that an upper limit-- 3 colors in 4*8 block. I thought they can get more.

It is 4 colors...

One background color for whole screen area (unless you change it using rasters, something that creatures and mayhem games did...)

+ 3 colors for each character.... Two 4bit values in screen ram, and 4 bit value in color ram....

 

So you get up in the morning, make coffee, sit in front of computer, and 5 minutes later you can have nice colored game, with objects freely flying around the screen without any use of mind boggling tricks

 

That is what I'm trying to say....

 

>Yes it has "only" 8 sprites, but - they are all same size!

 

Atari has 5 sprites if you want to think uniformly-- 8*248. It's just it's flexibility that they can be used in other ways.

That is fine.... only problem is that 8<24, and 5<8

Not to mention colors....

Colors are not uniform... First four yes, but that fifth one is a problem...

Not in regular use, but in those tricky modes...

Its color is pulled from already used color register so you have large palette but can not choose freely any color...

 

So what you gain in vertical, you lose much more in horizontal...

 

-------------------------------------

Looked again at crownland ....

It really flickers allot around stars... they really should have done them using chars...

 

Once again, IMHO only viable mode for 2d arcade jump and run on Atari 8bit is 5 color character mode with use of char sprites for repetitive objects and PMG for rest...

DLIs can give it more color for background....

[popmilo]

I'd like to see those Commodore games that allegedly trump the Atari. What are the titles? I have only recently begun playing C64 and for the most part, things look pretty similar to me (this is a compliment). I hope there are NTSC versions, because I'd like to play them on my real Commodore.

Maniac Mansion

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

Turrican

Turrican II: The Final Fight

Creatures

Creatures 2: Torture Trouble

Great Giana Sisters, The

Armalyte

Mayhem in Monsterland

Laser Squad

Bubble Bobble

Katakis

Newcomer

Rainbow Islands

Wizball

Rick Dangerous

Rick Dangerous II

Enforcer: Fullmetal Megablaster

MYTH: History in the Making

Midnight Resistance

Rodland

 

Look them up on http://noname.c64.org/csdb/ ...

[Wrathchild]

p.s.Anyone for Sentinel like game for Atari ?

Work outstanding on remapping the screen drawing code needs to be resolved.

 

XXL, do you other implementations running under emulation code (e.g. spectrum)?

I don't quite understand what you are trying to say ?

Some beginnings towards a port of The Sentinel were started, taking the same prinicple of using an Antic 4 screen with multiple fonts to provide a memory area for the screen memory. In doing so the memory does not lay contiguously and so a remapping of drawing routines needs to be incorporated.

 

By searching AtariAge you should find past details of such things, e.g. here

 

In offering up some works-in-progress for others to have a bash at continuing, Irgendwer offered to take a look at The Sentinel but hasn't had much opportunity to do so (something common to us all) and during that time I found and fixed one of the annoying drawing bugs but as you can see from the screenshot, the polygon filling routine used on the title screen showing the sentinel requires some adjusting to take the memory layout into consideration.

 

Regards,

Mark

[MaPa]

Looked again at crownland ....

It really flickers allot around stars... they really should have done them using chars...

 

Maybe easier just to not put more than two multicolour pmg sprites on same line, so instead of two stars next to each other just use one or the other above etc.

[andym00]

That's a typical fanboy argument. "1982 crap". Your subjective biased opinion. I think many of the 1982 and before games are excellent. Games don't have to use all the capabilities of the hardware to be good. By the way, andym00 made a straw-man argument and you supported it which means another fanboyish mentality. I never said anything about not being able to use "bugs" in hardware. I was talking about consistency of making it run on all machines. Go read it yourself.

 

Please don't confuse me with a fanboy here Atariski, like both, I have owned both for a very long time.. I'm simply trying to get some balanced view of what both are capable of technically.. Apparently it's fine for the A8 team to throw around ideas that are nigh on impossible to implement if not impossible, only to be greeted by the cheer of the supporters.. You questioned some facts I stated, I answered all of them.. The only one throwing blatently inaccurate facts around is you, and people choose to ignore when you do so.. Ie: with regards to your statements on the multiple processors configurations of Pet computers..

 

Anyway regards your straw-man distraction I'm not playing your games, you've had your questions answered..

Regards your point about VSP ? I suggest you go read up.. The only issues are with demos (no surprise really there).. The games that use this don't have a problem.. You go figure why, it's not rocket science really..

 

I figure the only way to answer this is to build a technical prototype for a game on both and then see.. I guess 3D is out because we've a weaker processor as has been agreed on.. Both since it's clear from the rational discussion here that the A8 can match the 64 on all other aspects if not exceed it in many areas, pick your poison..

 

edit: I don't really expect any sensible outcome to come from this, but I'm open to this if it remains civil..

Edited July 1, 2009 by andym00

[+wood_jl]

...but I like Atari.

 

Well-said, Potatohead!!!

 

I have to admit, I've been a fanboy about this stuff (and other things to a lesser extent but THIS in particular) and it's (I've been) silly.

 

Two conditions for fanboyism (there may be more but these are primary).

 

(1) False dichotomy - THIS ONE is best so THAT ONE SUCKS

(2) I am familiar with THIS so THAT ONE SUCKS

 

Analogy:

 

(1) I have 2007 GMC pickup. I'm sure the Toyota is actually "better" than mine, but that doesn't mean mine SUCKS; there is not dichotomy here. Even if the Toyota is slightly quicker, gets slightly better mileage, and is more reliable, my GMC is a fine, somewhat impressive vehicle, still. (price was less, too)

 

(2) I grew up with GM cars and trucks, have other GM vehicles, and I am familiar and comfortable with GM. I bought it instead of Toyota. (ok, price had something to do with it as well). However, that doesn't mean Toyota sucks.

 

If Toyotas were as cheap and easy to store as Commodore 64s, I'd have one as well. As it is, I can only afford ($$ and space) the Commodore!!

 

There can be more than one "good/excellent/great" product - computer/game console/vehicle on the market, and arguing to the very end about the very last point in an attempt to crown one king and relegate all others to shit is really not a fruitful endeavor - although I must admit I've engaged as well!

[oky2000]

But you're right.. The sprites are a pain when it comes to handling cycle exact stuff, especially a badline with all 8 sprites enabled.. But you work around that in whatever you're building.. And the benefits of them more than outweigh the downsides.. If you really must, you can always stretch (not multiplex!) the sprites down the screen completely to ensure consistent timing, and then through judicious use of sprite pointers change the sprite pointer to change data in a line by line basis, so even if the sprite wasn't displayed, you'd still be setting it to empty sprite data.. But this is exploiting more bugs in Vic so it probably doesn't count in your books since it's not a 'hardware' feature

 

Bugs are used on both sides quite a lot nowadays, and if the A8 programmers used no tricks/hacks/bugs then their games would look like 4 colours total on screen 1982 crap that we had to endure on the C64 due to programmer ignorance

 

That's a typical fanboy argument. "1982 crap". Your subjective biased opinion. I think many of the 1982 and before games are excellent. Games don't have to use all the capabilities of the hardware to be good. By the way, andym00 made a straw-man argument and you supported it which means another fanboyish mentality. I never said anything about not being able to use "bugs" in hardware. I was talking about consistency of making it run on all machines. Go read it yourself.

 

 

Don't get your Atari knickers in a twist luv! '1982 crap' refers specifically to Commodore C64 games (most of which are used conveniently as showing the power of the C64) produced around 1982 using less than the 'safe' and 'official' hardware capability of the C64 ie hardly any rasters, maximum of 8 sprites anywhere, and a maximum of 4 colours on the entire screen. Add to this some pretty basic sound lifted from a more basic chip of a lower machine. Clearly a quick read of the C64 programmers reference guide tells you how to.

 

Use more than 8 sprites on screen.

Use more than 4 colours for the whole screen or more than 3 colours for all 8 sprites.

Use ring modulation, synchronisation, filtering and full ADSR dynamically in SID

 

What ARE bugs are things like sprites in the borders, creating more than 16 colours, sample playback on the 6581 (not 8580) version of the SID etc etc.

 

Clearly the issue here is...some games may be great but clearly DO NOT use the hardware to its maximum potential. And clearly a game like this written in 1982 for the C64 is no indication of the power of the machine and can be easily replicated on the A8. So that was the entire point of that post...I HAVE YET TO SEE THE FOLLOWING DEMOS/EXAMPLES BEATEN ON A8 BY AUDIO OR VIDEO LINKS..

 

1. ENFORCER 2 - LEVEL 2 game play for sheer graphical power.

2. WIZBALL (the game) SID tune playing a FAULTLESS ELECTRIC GUITAR SOUND WITHOUT SAMPLES JUST STANDARD SID WAVEFORMS/FEATURES.

 

Hell I would be happy just to see a duplicate identical looking, sounding and playing version of just one level of the awesome C64 arcade conversion of Konami's Salamander/Lifeforce arcade games.

 

That is the whole point, 160 pages of waffle from a few Atari fan boys like you, and ZERO EVIDENCE of any actual physical improvement on these two graphical and aural masterpieces. All I see are theories and static pictures (some of which use PMs just to display more colours making it unlikely to use in games) or some weird lower resolution or flickery/horizontal banding type screen output.

 

If you have something to show me great, if not then your fanboy trollings/straw-man distracting type comments will be ignored. I own both systems, have done in my youth, I came to this thread hoping for some intelligent discussion AND some actual proof of games/code that can match those 2 examples above as you people are obviously meant to be experts (and adults!).

 

Thank you.

[frogstar_robot]

It's come up before but could be many 10s of pages back now. SuperIRG mode is a way of getting at least 13 colors on screen. It switches between two 4x8 character sets on the VBI which means two different character sets on alternating frames.

 

Here is an editor for the mode:

 

http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/sife/

 

The same developer has done at least one game in the mode called Gem Drop. The technique does have some flicker but appears simple to implement and actually use.

[Jetboot Jack]

I think Ripper shows lots of promise - it's not a game, but it can be...

 

Download executable here...

 

Very comparable with C64 Vertical Shooters and nicely colorful in an Atari way...

 

sTeVE

Edited July 1, 2009 by Jetboot Jack

[José Pereira]

Ok. Here I go again, owmn my own... (I take this from a song).

 

But my probably "stupid" questions about A8 have a meaning.

 

I never had a C64. Only oneof mine friend had one. He only wanted games. So, I "rip" the manual "book" (rip it´s with quotes). I only ask him, if can take it for some days, and I still have it. The book exists, the C64 probably not, and my friend I don't know anything more about him!...

 

And I learned more about C64 then A8. The only diference, it was that I cannot do any C64 coding on home. I think the beggining of this and others threads, probably would be more "right away" if you start talking about what happen on the market owner support!...

 

All of us know the ... (I don´t remember now any of that ... words to describe) book (papers) of A8 instruction book (book!...). Only Basic, graphic modes, pokey sounds only on basic. Where are the so called Player-Missile graphics?

 

 

 

But, come back to C64 instruction book, they also have all the BASIC words. And C64 basic it´s... (Today I forgot all that ... english words). I think the only thing different in C64 basics to A8 basic it's more BASIC words of trigonometry.

And the real thing, I came here today it's to explain something about C64 sprites:

- 8 Sprites - 1 colour eachone. - 8 adresses.

- Multicolour - The other 2 colours, to join each sprite, only have two adresses. So You can create 8 different colour sprites but the other 2colours on multicoloured way in each sprite will be the same 2 colours in all the 8 sprites. And this 2 colours can only be from colours 1 to 8.

- Then they have a register to give the colour number of background. I think, this is the best think they have. Why? They can create a sprite and a great part of it could be like a real sprite. In A8, backgr. will always have less in priority.

 

 

 

 

Some C64 examples:

1st. - take their instruction book and read.

2nd. - 8 different colour sprites but all the other 2colours the same and only from 1 to 8 colour numbers - just see their Horizontal shoot'en'ups (Armalyte it is a good example).

3rd. - The background colour registrer on their book, just see Golden Axe, and I think all the others horizontal beat'em'ups (and more type of games). You always see black (like ZX., black, almost always as background and/or border colour) around the main sprite colours. The only thing I don´t know and don't understand until today, it's that it was not just a border black line. Like just a single pixel design around the main character colours (In Last Ninja, my crazy game, it was possible they (John Twiddy and ...) do all the players as background, just a little part, like faces and hands as real sprites. I count all the sizes and in horizontal, if they put 8 hi-resol. sprites, I think it was impossible. Why? Because, if black was used as a sprite, with the weapon on horizontal way it was 4sprites x 8pixels for the enemy and the same fot the black body of enemy. They will not have any other sprites for hands, clothes and faces. Ok. I know they also have on that sprite table, an adress of interrupt, they call ir IRQ.) I always said to you, I never was, never, a programmer. This

is why I want to ear from you!... Once again. am I right? (answers on a postcard... - just kidding).

 

This don't show A8 it's better. No, probably not so bad in Sprites talk. But as I always said and think: IT CAN DO BETTER!... IF WE ONLY HAVE ... ... ...

 

 

 

José Pereira.