atariksi Posted July 18, 2009 Share Posted July 18, 2009 I am often amused by Carmel's interpretation of other people's posts. Maybe he wants him to leave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted July 18, 2009 Share Posted July 18, 2009 hehe Don't worry I'm not going anywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted July 18, 2009 Share Posted July 18, 2009 Probably depends on what forum you are on. In my retail days the 64 was crap,just from a sales standpoint. I personally never liked it and always thought the Atari was far superior as a games machine. More likely what country you're from good point! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted July 18, 2009 Share Posted July 18, 2009 Can we agree not going down this road again, esp. Atariski? ;=) Pete should actually code something and not spend his time debating what is a sprite and what not... I can see the 2000 sprites but they are 1x1 "sprites"... I can't really agree with the more sprites thing either. 8 per line as standard, call an interrupt and you've got another 8, do that as many times as you want, fill the whole screen with sprites, not a problem. They're also wider. it must be harder to repeat the sprites horizontally on A8 than it is to repeat them vertically on c64. Then you've still got to have an interrupt in the correct place to change the X position an A8. Also, can you alter the sprite definition ram pointer? or do you have to copy/move data around to change the Y all the time? I gave algorithm for 2000+ sprites in this thread. C64 has to update a lot more registers and has less time. Atari wins. QED. Come on dude, 2000 sprites with what in them? a pixel, a line? Sprites that are any use for something would be a fairer comparison. If I'm not wrong (and I'm quite sure someone will be quick enough to tell me) A8 sprites are 1bpp 8 pixel wide (not including expanding them to double or quadruple the size) and mono, to make them MC you need to overlay 2 of them. So to reproduce a c64 sprite you need 6 and c64 has 8 of those to a line. That is the difference between the machines. Without any extra work the c64 trounces the atari on sprites. Usable ones that can be seen in a game, all on the same line. Where the A8 wins out to some extent is the vertical positioning of them but even then if they begin to overlap you're screwed again. So every game with more sprites on the A8 than the C64 they can only really change X position safely. Yes, please code something, more games are always welcome! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 Just found a downloadable version of 'Home computer wars' by Michael Tomczyk ....I remember reading this book way back when, get's up to the point where Tramiel buys out atari (very interesting read) http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books.htm There's a few books on c64programming and general 6502/z80 programming also (i'm off to do some leeching) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 Can we agree not going down this road again, esp. Atariski? ;=) Pete should actually code something and not spend his time debating what is a sprite and what not... I can see the 2000 sprites but they are 1x1 "sprites"... I can't really agree with the more sprites thing either. 8 per line as standard, call an interrupt and you've got another 8, do that as many times as you want, fill the whole screen with sprites, not a problem. They're also wider. it must be harder to repeat the sprites horizontally on A8 than it is to repeat them vertically on c64. Then you've still got to have an interrupt in the correct place to change the X position an A8. Also, can you alter the sprite definition ram pointer? or do you have to copy/move data around to change the Y all the time? I gave algorithm for 2000+ sprites in this thread. C64 has to update a lot more registers and has less time. Atari wins. QED. Come on dude, 2000 sprites with what in them? a pixel, a line? Sprites that are any use for something would be a fairer comparison. If I'm not wrong (and I'm quite sure someone will be quick enough to tell me) A8 sprites are 1bpp 8 pixel wide (not including expanding them to double or quadruple the size) and mono, to make them MC you need to overlay 2 of them. So to reproduce a c64 sprite you need 6 and c64 has 8 of those to a line. That is the difference between the machines. Without any extra work the c64 trounces the atari on sprites. Usable ones that can be seen in a game, all on the same line. Where the A8 wins out to some extent is the vertical positioning of them but even then if they begin to overlap you're screwed again. So every game with more sprites on the A8 than the C64 they can only really change X position safely. The Atari sprites have a lot of flexibility and uses but there's just not enough of them: (1)* Borders w/collision detection (like Pong) (2)+ Color enhancement (GPRIOR mode 0) and for Hi-res (320) mode (3) Resolution enhancement (especially in GTIA modes) (4) Normal 4 players/4 missiles or 5 players with or without multiplexing (5)# Multicolor (MC) players/missiles with or without multiplexing (6)* Translucency effect in Gr.9/11. ... If there were 8 sprites and missiles were just re-use of players that would fit in same PMBase memory area. As it is now, you need to re-use sprites horizontally to incorporate most/all of the above features on same scanline. [footnotes] *Without incurring any CPU/DMA cycles +Other ways to use for color enhancement #MC interlaced sprites could be used as well to add fine shading to the 3 colors without noticeable flicker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 Sprites sprites sprites lol I thought we'd agreed not to go on about them any more I could type up a reply to your list with rebuttals and equal or greater comparisons to the C64 sprites but then it'll look like I'm being argumentative again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
irwin Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 offtopic... C64 Power: Slideshow from today party Little Computer People 2009 17 - 19 July 2009 http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=81153 new GFX mode - allows show interlaced pictures without interlace, in plain 320x200x16 colors. (of course with special conventer - released soon) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 thx... irwin... is there no chance to play around with the palette? no chance? I mean vic tricks are nice and a lot of work went into them... nearly every trick discovered but what about the palette? so really fix is fix? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
irwin Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 Nop. Palette is still ugly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 (edited) Very nice Pretty useless apart from displaying pictures, at least for now till someone thinks of something clever to do with it but with precise timing and 0 cpu free I don't think there will be a lot. Probably just playing around with the bitmap contents to produce some effects. I don't think the poor C64s fixed palette will ever change It's not something that software can alter apart from doing the old trick of putting certain colours next to each other to produce a pseudo 3rd and that looked awful back in like 1984 or whenever I first saw it. Edited July 19, 2009 by PeteD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 That Crest demo has a nice rendition of Ashes to Ashes (Bowie) a bit later on into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 That Crest demo has a nice rendition of Ashes to Ashes (Bowie) a bit later on into it. What about a 4ch pokey version ? ash1vbi4ch.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 Not bad for pokey but really doesn't compare to the c64 one in that demo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 Not bad for pokey but really doesn't compare to the c64 one in that demo. 3 things to point out a) I'm not a musician b) The bass isn't fully supported in RMT c) there is still potential Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 Well for starters if you're not a musician you've done a better job than I ever could. I do class myself as a musician but have NEVER been able to compose stuff on a computer (at least not until the advent of the DAW) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 19, 2009 Share Posted July 19, 2009 (edited) Isn't it interesting? Only the -for music created- SID is in some cases unreachable for POKEY, but the 70's technique still offers some "new" stuff, beating soundchips like a YM or AY of the early 80s by far.... Have a look at the CPU usage indicator... the tune has it's own "Pokey-charm" which is - in a matter of taste - beating the SID version in some other cases. It sounds "free" and not "muffled" like with the SID.... The indicator shows a rather low CPU usage, which makes more updates per second easily possible even for games. Faster Updates can enhance Pokey's sound dramatically . Edited July 19, 2009 by emkay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted July 20, 2009 Share Posted July 20, 2009 A competing Pokey version would need to use lots of features. 2-tone voice, triangle, saw, 1.79 MHz on single voice to get some equivalent instruments. Of course as we know, no music player currently supports all these features. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted July 20, 2009 Share Posted July 20, 2009 offtopic...C64 Power: Slideshow from today party Little Computer People 2009 17 - 19 July 2009 http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=81153 new GFX mode - allows show interlaced pictures without interlace, in plain 320x200x16 colors. (of course with special conventer - released soon) Looks like G2F for C64 Its just better Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted July 20, 2009 Share Posted July 20, 2009 I wouldn't necessarily say "better". I reckon it would have it's limitations... looks like it just spreads 8 sprites across (under) a hires background to provide additional colour. I like his scroller - looks like he's got character sets underlayed scrolling at the slower speed. Must have a pretty nifty routine to put the text into sprites... the letters look to be variable horizontal size and don't seem to conform to a byte/nybble boundary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 20, 2009 Share Posted July 20, 2009 A competing Pokey version would need to use lots of features. 2-tone voice, triangle, saw, 1.79 MHz on single voice to get some equivalent instruments. Of course as we know, no music player currently supports all these features. There is an exception. Listening to many Pokey tunes that use 4 channels, you don't recognize it. The tune uses Instruments like a Midi sequencer on 4 channels. They are clearly there and all 4 voices help to play the tune together. Coming to the Fact that POKEY never plays squares, the bass is a mix of squares and sine which the C64 isn't capable of. And, the mix of gen A and "2" gives a "2" tone variation to the main voice. The SID version is great... no argue (except the muffled sounding). Seeing my "sound adjustment" for this tune with POKEY not even worse, the tune works already very well. What's really missing is that Midi command "controller" which is working separately at the pattern, independend from the instruments. It would cost some more CPU cycles, but it would help to create better slides, vibratos , tone and/ note vibratos etc.... So the tunes may get better "between the lines". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted July 20, 2009 Share Posted July 20, 2009 @Rybags You're right about it being not much use, as I said they say it uses all cpu cycles per line. I think it's more than putting sprites beneath the picture though. Afaik it uses ifli too (tricking the hardware into fetching more colour ram so you can have more than 4 colours per 8x8) and they mention it also needs to use some sprites to cover the ifli bug (you don't get the colours you want at the start of a line with ifli). Also doing a variable width scrolltext is easy, I did some back in the 80s It's using sprites for the scrolltext with chars beneath for that parallax effect. @emkay I think it's supposed to sound "muffled" lol A lot of people use filters on purpose to create that effect, something that the C64 was good at but far too much difference between machines. You couldn't rely on a filter being the same on two C64s sitting next to each other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted July 20, 2009 Share Posted July 20, 2009 I suspected use of FLI... it's a gimme due to giving the extra attributes available. The scroller... given the CPU time remaining, and the fact the character bitmaps aren't byte-aligned, it looks fairly impressive. I'd like to try something similar on the A8, so far as the slower moving background goes... I have a trick or two up my sleeve that would make that possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted July 20, 2009 Share Posted July 20, 2009 I wouldn't necessarily say "better". I reckon it would have it's limitations... looks like it just spreads 8 sprites across (under) a hires background to provide additional colour. I like his scroller - looks like he's got character sets underlayed scrolling at the slower speed. Must have a pretty nifty routine to put the text into sprites... the letters look to be variable horizontal size and don't seem to conform to a byte/nybble boundary. "better" as higher resolution... 320... Of course it has limitations... Its hires bitmap in FLI mode... - 320x200, every 8x1 pixel has its own 2 colors plus 7 horizontaly double expanded sprite layer under it... that gives you one more color to choose from for 6 chars wide regions... sprite no 8 is used to cover first three character columns to cover fli bug and give one more color to that region... And all colors are changable every raster line... (I guess... Deekay said every available cpu cycle is used...) And that last part - Logo and scrolling text in interlace... That you have to see on real thing. A8 interlaced modes work great, but I always disliked its resolution... 320x200 with ditering and interlace... thats really nice... And scroller is 40 chars wide Thats Crest at its best ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted July 20, 2009 Share Posted July 20, 2009 I doubt it uses "interlace" as you incorrectly call it. If you're in 320 pixel mode, moving 1 pixel left or right doesn't really accomplish anything, so why do it? And I have doubts about doing colour changes every line for sprites... 8 load immediate + store instructions = 48 cycles. Doable on standard lines, and leaves some time left for other stuff. Impossible on badlines. Or if the colours are table-based, there's 64 cycles... as good as an entire scanline gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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