Atari v Commodore

[atariksi]

Or, what about Project 'M'? (see programming forum here)

 

Well, Project "M" assist my thesis about having "3D" Games like Wolfenstein 10 years before the PC version. Ofcourse it had needed a memory upgrade, just because the graphics and level data eat far more than 64K, they had to come with expansion Cartridges.

 

We always read, how fast DMA on the C64 is. But, hey, the Atari need one "lda sta" command to have 8k of ram "loaded". >>> 5 cycles load 8K of RAM <<< if needed.

This means up to 2000000K/s in a dedicated controller running in burst mode and a fullscreen charmode is used.

Well , 2 billion bytes/s is a raw guessed theory, but surely a fragment of this is needed to support games on the A8 for full graphics and sound updates where needed.

 

 

I guess if you meant switching banks with LDA #/STA Abs, that can be done about 300,000 times per second so you would end up with bandwidth of 300K*8K or whatever the size of the banking window. But then again, you also have the faster I/O to do virtual memory in case people don't have the expanded RAM.

[atariksi]

Sure thing Allas, so please tell us why they did not do that ? 6 years after C-64 version and such a butt ugly game. Maybe it sadly shows the disadvantage of Atari ?

 

Putting aside what could be done, I don't think a few screenshots are going to show Atari's disadvantages. Even some people claim Colecovision has better games than Atari by showing a few screenshots but then you start playing the game and the flickering, buggy collision detection, coarse scrolls, etc. start showing up. Granted you experience that some people have blue eyes, but that does not allow you to draw the conclusion that everyone has blue eyes.

 

It's not only the "few" screenshots. Have you played both versions of Barbarian ? If don't, try it please and then we will talk.

 

I didn't argue against nor for that particular game. All I stated was that your conclusion of claiming "Atari disadvantages" over C64 does not follow from that game. Even showing a million games that utilize the same strength would not prove Atari disadvantages.

[atariksi]

I am just a simple and humble C-64 fan, who found this topic interesting.

 

I highly doubt you read this topic given your absurd conclusion about "Atari disadvantages" from a small sample.

 

Do not worry mate. Soon, I will show you a much larger sample to prove Atari disadvantages.

 

Make sure you take into account all Atari hardware aspects and C64 hardware aspects.

[andym00]

It's a software algorithm for 8-bits; hardware-wise POKEY has 4 DACs at 4-bits/sample and SID has 1 4-bit DAC.

 

Yeah, and what application is there on C64 that uses hundreds of NMIs and hundreds of IRQs every frame? There's some software workarounds anyways-- one way is just use a 15Khz IRQ for the DLIs and then deal with both timer IRQs at time of interrupt.

 

Perhaps, the C64 haven't run into the problem because they would overload their slower CPU before they can even have the possibility of having hundreds of IRQs and NMIs occurring every frame.

 

I'm not getting into this syntactical rubbish with you again, just calm down a bit, and don't take everything so personally or as afront to your beloved machine..

[Lazarus]

Yeah, and what application is there on C64 that uses hundreds of NMIs and hundreds of IRQs every frame?

C64 sample replay routines do that.

[frogstar_robot]

 

WOW ! Another punisher and this time you scared me to death. I am only a messenger who brings bad news. I know it's hard to bear, but please do not kill me. I also hope that sticking to the topic and being a C-64 fan is not a crime in this forum ? As for Oswald, he is a very talented and respectable guy. He is also very active on the C-64 scene. Having read his posts I clearly see that many people could learn a lot from him. Unfortunately your answer was quite hilarious. Project M and Space Harrier are only projects, not games yet. Besides, will they be working on 64k Atari, as Space Harrier already is on C-64 ? Do they really work in 256 colours, or maybe somebody is colour blind ? Well, I can safely assume that a proper example has not been showed yet. So, could you be so kind and show me the real one, instead of appealing to ban me ? If it's so easy on Atari, just prove it.

 

No one here doubts Oswald is talented. But he wasn't banned from this topic and forum for being talented. He was an arrogant ass who dismissed any Atari advantage that couldn't be utilized in C64 terms and he usually did so in the most crass way possible. Behavior of that sort isn't anything most here would care to learn from him.

 

If all you wanted to do was tout C64 Barbarian then there is a more recent thread where only the quality of the game at hand and not the platform it runs on is on topic. But you didn't post in that one. You joined simply resurrect this thread; and I'll note you bring absolutely nothing new that hasn't already been said in over 7K posts.

 

C64 had a better Barbarian; so what? I'm still not throwing out my Atari gear and I'm still not regretting passing on Commodore gear I had to friends.

[PeteD]

There is no reason why Barbarian shouldn't be exactly the same on A8 as C64, in fact due to the way the C64 version is done the A8 would actually be faster IF that's desirable. The C64 version may be that speed because that's how it's the most playable. Thinking that adding some colours via scanline colour changes enhances it in any way is kind of wishful thinking. The problem is are people arguing about when these two machines were in their prime or current/future advances. It's all well and good talking about 256 colour 3D mazes when it wasn't around in the 80s.

 

I think the reason for generally poorer A8 versions of games has already been gone over in this thread and imho it's just due to the lack of return for a software company. It wasn't in the top 3 machines for a long time and therefore no coders/companies were willing to take the extra time needed to convert something to it. Saying that porting something from C64 to A8 when the C64 version is using lots of hardware sprites starts to become difficult.

 

I personally think the A8 has a lot to offer hence me starting work on code for it but that doesn't mean I don't still think the C64 is a superior games machine not only based on hardware (and really I'm just talking the joys of hardware sprites, music does not make a game) but on it's back catalog of top titles.

 

 

Pete

[oky2000]

Gotta laugh at the outrageous claims for some of these samples... I checked the ones posted way back that claimed to be 8-bit... sounded like they were barely 5 bit.

 

I remember your comment, and I agree to some degree.. You were listening to the mod playback in 8 bits and I agree totally that they sound rough as hell.. Playing back one 8 bit sample sounds exactly as it should do at the given sample rate, believe me I've checked this and bar a (very) small non-linearity on the 6581 DAC, the 8580 is perfectly linear.. It achieves exactly what it says on the tin.. What people choose to do with those 8bits of audio and try to munge into 8bits is up to them, but what I've heard doesn't sell it's ability in any way at all.. So far.. I think people got too carried away with wanting to play mods which quite frankly I hate both the idea and the format

 

Indeed, 4 channel MOD playback on anything other than an Amiga is an exercise in futility. People do it all the time on the ST too and the output it really hissy and horrible...stick to one channel per DAC is my advice.

[analmux]

It was just a parody. It was never used before, but that's up to the users...OK, for an example, here you go: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~bpos/SAMPLE8/1.gif

It's just a test during the early testing phase.

 

Looks very promising.. The interpolated (if I read the titles right) output at the bottom ? It's from what ? A simulation of the decay or the actual hardware ?

Thanks. I replaced the 1.gif file with a picture + comments (in english).

(see http://www.phys.uu.nl/~bpos/SAMPLE8/1.gif )

The upper part is just 4bit DAC: A 16step pattern of a 'backwards' sawtooth.

The lower part is the same + (backwards) sawtooth wave on top (one nice hardware feature of PoKey).

The sawtooth gets resynced by CPU every time a new 4bit DAC value is processed.

Thus, no simulations.

 

It was just a first test, and I didn't do anything with it to improve.

To improve, I'd need to resync the sawtooth with some delay, to remove the tiny peaks.

The nice thing of Pokey is that it supports both 'forwards' AND 'backwards' sawtooth.

Thus (indeed like some 'waveform surfing') we can use the forward sawtooth to counter-effect the capacitor-decay, or just to interpolate / smoothen the audio signal. The volume and the pitch of the sawtooth both control how this smoothening will work out.

Edited September 1, 2009 by analmux

[Rockford]

 

WOW ! Another punisher and this time you scared me to death. I am only a messenger who brings bad news. I know it's hard to bear, but please do not kill me. I also hope that sticking to the topic and being a C-64 fan is not a crime in this forum ? As for Oswald, he is a very talented and respectable guy. He is also very active on the C-64 scene. Having read his posts I clearly see that many people could learn a lot from him. Unfortunately your answer was quite hilarious. Project M and Space Harrier are only projects, not games yet. Besides, will they be working on 64k Atari, as Space Harrier already is on C-64 ? Do they really work in 256 colours, or maybe somebody is colour blind ? Well, I can safely assume that a proper example has not been showed yet. So, could you be so kind and show me the real one, instead of appealing to ban me ? If it's so easy on Atari, just prove it.

 

No one here doubts Oswald is talented. But he wasn't banned from this topic and forum for being talented. He was an arrogant ass who dismissed any Atari advantage that couldn't be utilized in C64 terms and he usually did so in the most crass way possible. Behavior of that sort isn't anything most here would care to learn from him.

 

If all you wanted to do was tout C64 Barbarian then there is a more recent thread where only the quality of the game at hand and not the platform it runs on is on topic. But you didn't post in that one. You joined simply resurrect this thread; and I'll note you bring absolutely nothing new that hasn't already been said in over 7K posts.

 

C64 had a better Barbarian; so what? I'm still not throwing out my Atari gear and I'm still not regretting passing on Commodore gear I had to friends.

 

It really amazes me how all atarians from this forum know why I am here and what is my purpose. You must have the very rare knowledge on how to read people's minds. The truth is brutal, I just showed how much Barbarian is better on C64 and I did it in the right topic. I know it was the very painful example, but you'd better be ready, since much more is coming. When Allas was doing the same, showing the superiority of Atari games, nobody was whining. So, let's act like men rather than children. OK ?

Edited September 1, 2009 by Rockford

[Bryan]

I know it was the very painful example, but you'd better be ready, since much more is coming.

Then the prophecy of the one who would appear on page 284 and reset the thread is true...

[andym00]

I personally think the A8 has a lot to offer hence me starting work on code for it but that doesn't mean I don't still think the C64 is a superior games machine not only based on hardware (and really I'm just talking the joys of hardware sprites, music does not make a game) but on it's back catalog of top titles.

 

Totally agree with you on that, except maybe the bit about music.. I think in the 64s case that perhaps music did in fact make some games.. For me back then every new Ocean release was accompanied by a craving to hear what Galway had wrung out of a SID chip this time, though equally it applies to Hubbard and company.. In many cases I think the music is better than the games themselves.. <cough>Thalamus</cough>

 

I do think that the music quality at the time though did propel many games into another league.. One for me is Thing on a Spring.. Without the music it would have been dross, but I kept playing that bugger until I finished the thing, loving every beat of that stupid music Though feeling feckin pissed off when I finished it...

 

As far back catalogues, I'd hazard a guess that the 64 has more utterly utterly utterly utterly shite titles in its catalogue then the entire total of the A8 And before the Atari stake burners arrive for me that's meant as a condemnation of 64 titles, not A8 titles

 

Personally, I hold the demo-scene at the time responsible where suddenly every man and his multiplexed and raster coloured dog thought that since they could knock out a demo, they could knock out games, and flog them to the budget houses for sod all cash.. I know a lot of people came into the games industry that way (I did for sure) but I think the quality of stuff suffered a lot at that point, not only through immaturity, but through the sheer number of people available in the c64 development world..

 

I think that later the C64 was unfortunate to be there at a time when Arcade conversions were all the rage, and things that wouldn't otherwise have been attempted were done just for the money and to flog boxes of shit that shouldn't be sold.. AfterBurner on 64 is a good example, and before you judge me, I worked on that abortion.. The really good titles that use a 64 for what it is are really few and far between in the grand scheme of things..

 

I await my ritual burning at the hands of the 64 stake people now

 

Oops, sorry for the long post that veered slightly away from what I wanted to say, but I left work early and am sitting in the glorious Vienna sun having some beers, and got carried away.. Forgive me

[Bryan]

Oops, sorry for the long post that veered slightly away from what I wanted to say, but I left work early and am sitting in the glorious Vienna sun having some beers, and got carried away.. Forgive me

I'm at work so have one for me.

[analmux]

Hehehe! :D

 

...I am only a messenger who brings bad news...

Still didn't see any bad...please tell me what's the bad news. I see only some misinformed C64 puppet. Sorry

 

 

...I also hope that sticking to the topic and being a C-64 fan is not a crime in this forum ?...

Then please stick to the topic. Then there's no problem.

 

 

As for Oswald, he is a very talented and respectable guy. He is also very active on the C-64 scene. Having read his posts I clearly see that many people could learn a lot from him.

Yeah, especially his ignorance and sarcasm was really a great thing.

 

 

Unfortunately your answer was quite hilarious. Project M and Space Harrier are only projects, not games yet.

What the hell should I care? I don't care if a prog is a game or an almost game. That's your choice to exclude these. Not mine, and certainly not of many others. So, you say you'd just like to discuss stuff here, and for me that's fine, but in the meantime you act as if you decide the rules of comparison.

 

 

Besides, will they be working on 64k Atari, as Space Harrier already is on C-64 ?

Again, why should I care? Then we could as well say, hey let's compare a game on A8 & C64 and pretend we make no use of VIC2's sprites, or SID turned off. I think it's quite fair to compare A8 with double memory vs. C64 with the 3yrs more modern ICs. However, the Project 'M' prog works on standard 64kB machines. Sorry to say.

 

 

Do they really work in 256 colours, or maybe somebody is colour blind ?

Maybe your problem, if you didn't see 256 colours. Who's colourblind then?

 

 

[sorry, oswald mode off ]

[analmux]

I know it was the very painful example, but you'd better be ready, since much more is coming.

Then the prophecy of the one who would appear on page 284 and reset the thread is true...

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D (thanks )

[andym00]

It was just a parody. It was never used before, but that's up to the users...OK, for an example, here you go: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~bpos/SAMPLE8/1.gif

It's just a test during the early testing phase.

 

Looks very promising.. The interpolated (if I read the titles right) output at the bottom ? It's from what ? A simulation of the decay or the actual hardware ?

Thanks. I replaced the 1.gif file with a picture + comments (in english).

(see http://www.phys.uu.nl/~bpos/SAMPLE8/1.gif )

The upper part is just 4bit DAC: A 16step pattern of a 'backwards' sawtooth.

The lower part is the same + (backwards) sawtooth wave on top (one nice hardware feature of PoKey).

The sawtooth gets resynced by CPU every time a new 4bit DAC value is processed.

Thus, no simulations.

 

It was just a first test, and I didn't do anything with it to improve.

To improve, I'd need to resync the sawtooth with some delay, to remove the tiny peaks.

The nice thing of Pokey is that it supports both 'forwards' AND 'backwards' sawtooth.

Thus (indeed like some 'waveform surfing') we can use the forward sawtooth to counter-effect the capacitor-decay, or just to interpolate / smoothen the audio signal. The volume and the pitch of the sawtooth both control how this smoothening will work out.

 

I like that You're a brave man to try it like this.. Do you have enough timer accuracy to do this using the interrrupts alone ?

I'd love too see an FFT of that waveform, just curious to see how those small glitches manifest themselves in the spectrum.. You think you'll be able to remove them completely ?

And does the decay of the capacitor introduce any limits to the maximum sample rate you can produce with this technique ? And I guess you just reverse the direction of the sawtooths to enable you to produce positive upswings, but how do you handle the capacitor decay when the signal is on a positive upswing ? Surely it'll introduce nasty harmonics ? Akin to that of a sawtooth at the step frequency ?

 

I've been trying a very kind of similar thing on the c64, but with the intention of 'surfing' the envelopes so that it would enable individual level control of voices, since we can't change the level of a voice.. Yes, I know, we can lower sustain levels whilst gated, but I wanted to try something a bit more flexible

Anyway, it's proving a nightmare trying to calculate exactly where the envelope generator is at a given cycle, easy on paper..

[andym00]

Oops, sorry for the long post that veered slightly away from what I wanted to say, but I left work early and am sitting in the glorious Vienna sun having some beers, and got carried away.. Forgive me

I'm at work so have one for me.

 

Consider it done, but just the one ?

[Bryan]

Oops, sorry for the long post that veered slightly away from what I wanted to say, but I left work early and am sitting in the glorious Vienna sun having some beers, and got carried away.. Forgive me

I'm at work so have one for me.

 

Consider it done, but just the one ?

I'll let you know if I need another one as the day goes on.

[PeteD]

@andym00

 

Totally understand where you're coming from as far as the music itself goes. I'm a massive SID fan, still listen to stuff every day but as far as it making the games, hmm, not really, as far as people buying games just for the music, yes , but then back in the day my demos were all about ripping the music from the latest games, doing a quick demo and getting it released on compunet all on the day the game was available in the shops, so to me the game itself wasn't of much interest. We probably annoyed quite a few companies that were relying on the latest Hubbard tune to sell their pile of crap.

 

 

Pete

[andym00]

@andym00

 

Totally understand where you're coming from as far as the music itself goes. I'm a massive SID fan, still listen to stuff every day but as far as it making the games, hmm, not really, as far as people buying games just for the music, yes , but then back in the day my demos were all about ripping the music from the latest games, doing a quick demo and getting it released on compunet all on the day the game was available in the shops, so to me the game itself wasn't of much interest. We probably annoyed quite a few companies that were relying on the latest Hubbard tune to sell their pile of crap.

 

 

Pete

 

Long, rambling, completely unrelated reply finally deleted, and simply replaced by:

 

Yes

[frogstar_robot]

 

 

It really amazes me how all atarians from this forum know why I am here and what is my purpose. You must have the very rare knowledge on how to read people's minds. The truth is brutal, I just showed how much Barbarian is better on C64 and I did it in the right topic. I know it was the very painful example, but you'd better be ready, since much more is coming. When Allas was doing the same, showing the superiority of Atari games, nobody was whining. So, let's act like men rather than children. OK ?

 

Correct thread: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/147727-atari-and-commodore-versions-of-the-same-game-which-is-better/

 

There is nothing "painful" about your exposition of C64 Barbarian. We've seen and acknowledged any number of titles that were superior on the C64 or only exist on the C64. We've even been comparing and contrasting with videos. Have you troubled to read this monster in it's entirety before weighing in with your pearls of wisdom?

 

So Rockford is going to come here give us Atarians tough love with "painful truth"? LOL. We need to be ready for more manly pain as only Rockford can dish it out? Give me a <bleep> break.

 

On the bright side there has been lot of lore being swapped and even experimentation though other threads will serve that better. This thread sucks the oxygen out of other topics when someone can't help but revive it. I suggest locking it and maybe even making it permanently pinned as pretty much everything Atari and Commodore fanbois can fling at each other has been aired in it and the other vs thread we had about a year ago. We could just refer everybody to them when this sad sad GM vs Ford type stuff comes up again as it must from time to time.

[jvas]

... I just showed how much Barbarian is better on C64 and I did it in the right topic ...

 

That wouldn't be a problem. But you also said in Post#7090: "Maybe it sadly shows the disadvantage of Atari ?" Your conclusion is totally wrong. That is the problem!

[andym00]

On the bright side there has been lot of lore being swapped and even experimentation though other threads will serve that better. This thread sucks the oxygen out of other topics when someone can't help but revive it. I suggest locking it and maybe even making it permanently pinned as pretty much everything Atari and Commodore fanbois can fling at each other has been aired in it and the other vs thread we had about a year ago. We could just refer everybody to them when this sad sad GM vs Ford type stuff comes up again as it must from time to time.

 

You really think that ? I think given that even after 286 pages it should be allowed to run its course.. If you think that course has run then fine, but I guess it's what Albert thinks, or CpuWiz or the other mods of this gaff.. I for one think it's an interesting read on the occasional few times it re-resurfaces from the murky depths..

I'm curious how you think it sucks the oxygen from other threads though.. I've only really ever followed the homebrew, hardware & the 2600/7800 programming forums on here, mainly because their the ones the held any real content.. And this thread really only attracts the postings of a few..

Personally I find this thread a nice easy place to bat^hnter this out, though there's less bat^hntering now, albeit at more of a lounge pace now, but none the less, it's an interesting thread, when not being obliterated by weeble-tards.. It's like whos computer is best, but over White Russians and lounge music whilst seated in nice sofas in the sun

It'd be a shame to lock it, I think..

[GroovyBee]

weeble-tards..

LMAO!

[andym00]

weeble-tards..

LMAO!

Don't laugh, I'll probably get banned for that