Rockford Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Sorry Pete, you are wrong, C64 outsold Atari in US too. An interesting quote from wikipedia: "During the Commodore 64's lifetime, sales totalled 17 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer model of all time. For a substantial period of time (1983-1986), the Commodore 64 dominated the market with between 30% and 40% share and 2 million units sold per year, outselling the IBM PC clones, Apple computers, and Atari computers. Sam Tramiel, a former Atari president said in a 1989 interview "When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years." It shows how big impact C64 had on the market. Summing it up, C64 outsold Atari everywhere Sorry for double-posting, my fault Quite happy to be wrong It's just what I'd read somewhere, probably here but I can't be sure. Pete It's understood that you could read something like that here. LOL :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 What's the use of having bigger palette of colours if you cannot use them in games. Scroll up, please, I've been showing many examples of that. There are 10 so far, but much more will be coming The bigger palette was used many times in games. Just have a look at Yoomp! Or the old games like Archon, Rainbow Walker, Master of the Lamps, Rescue on Fractalus (Intro), Koronis Rift, American Road Race, (Or simply) Bruce Lee (poor green broocy)...., Space Lobsters ... Some games use it for the screen itself, some game use palette changes to enhance the scene. The last of both you don't see on fixed images. And of course, you have palette changes when switching scenes/levels like in Boulderdash and HERO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Thanks for the suggestions... they both look like capable players, although I'm leaning towards SIDPlay2 so far for features. I'll be checking them out, as well as SID's music, over the coming days. Sidplay 2.5 does eat a fair amount of CPU power. Actually, compared to the other 8-bit players I'm using (ASAP <Atari>, NSF Play <NES>) SIDPlay2 is also a fairly CPU hungry app. Is SID that tough to emulate compared to these other chips?? Any suggestions for tunes/composers that utilize SID to good advantage? Anything that shows good form, melodic composition, or unique abilities of the chip are desirable. The Resid library is an attempt to make the perfect SID emulation, and as a result it emulates SID clock cycle by clock cycle at 1MHZ to capture all of the little foibles of it and to accurately emulate the filters and the distortion present within the device, and also to catch all the effects that the processor messing with SID might be having.. It's the best there is with ResidFP, still not 100% perfect, but it's getting there slowly.. If you've got a Mac then Sidplay 2.5 is much more fully featured on the Mac than the PC version.. It looks more like iTunes if that's you cup of tea Here's a fairly complete list of all the Editors & Trackers & other music things for the 64.. It's an enormous list http://utenti.lycos.it/ice00/HVMEC/CONTROL/ If you click on an entry, it'll show you screenshots, and keyboard commands, and other stuff about the particular program.. Personally, I'd get started with GoatTracker.. But the Editor doesn't run natively on the 64.. I don't know if that's of importance to you or not, but it's a place to start.. http://covertbitops.c64.org/ I can't link directly because of frames, but it under Tools.. A quick google will tell you more about it as well.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 UK would never manage any of these titles. To borrow your own argument, just because they didn't make any that doesn't mean they couldn't actually manage to. The UK publishers had a different market to cater to; both sides of the pond produced some great games but whilst there was some overlapping, they didn't really cover the same ground so trying to compare the two with like for like is a bit like comparing chalk and custard. But when trying each other's specialist fields (as it were) the UK had Magnetic Scrolls as something of an answer to Infocom, titles like Stunt Car Racer, Mercenary, Elite or The Sentinel as random examples of 3D-based games but the American attempts at 2D action-oriented games like Side Arms or Bionic Commando were nowhere near as well executed as what the British were doing and the publishers knew that; in fact they'd hire British development hoses to produce things like Alcon, Life Force and Sky Shark. By the way, on the not owning a disk drive front i only knew one other Atari 8-bit owner apart from myself during the 1980's and both of us were using tape-based 800XLs - at least half the C64 users owned disk drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Any suggestions for tunes/composers that utilize SID to good advantage? Anything that shows good form, melodic composition, or unique abilities of the chip are desirable. Here's a fairly complete list of all the Editors & Trackers & other music things for the 64.. It's an enormous list http://utenti.lycos..../HVMEC/CONTROL/ If you click on an entry, it'll show you screenshots, and keyboard commands, and other stuff about the particular program.. Personally, I'd get started with GoatTracker.. But the Editor doesn't run natively on the 64.. I don't know if that's of importance to you or not, but it's a place to start.. http://covertbitops.c64.org/ I can't link directly because of frames, but it under Tools.. A quick google will tell you more about it as well.. Actually, I was referring to "music" that's already been composed in the above request, although eventually sequencing some myself would be great too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 mmmm custard chalk And yes, everyone I knew owned a 1541. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rockford Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 You mean don't be so cruel on the C64ers'. Here's the Test Drive screenshot, talken from the C64 god site Lemon64 (wonder why it's called Lemon, poor choice of name, if you ask me. But the the C64 was more lemon than peach). Can't you get anything right? Lemon64 screenshots are hardly a reference because all of them are made with an old crappy emulator with a horribly wrong palette. Well, let's see how it works. Atarians rip off an 20+ years old C64 picture, then fix it a little bit with a modern PC tool and TA-DA... what an achivement :D What's interesting is that C64 sceners don't have to rip anything off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 mmmm custard chalk Must be time for breakfast... And yes, everyone I knew owned a 1541. Ironically, i was one of the people who didn't have a 1541, at least for the first year and a half of owning a C64; most of my first real C64 game was written on a tape-based machine with Zeus 64 assembler and using an Expert cartridge to dump the RAM out to tape between sessions. My Atari 800XL and (obviously considering the drive wasn't around when i got the C64) VIC 20 were both tape-based as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Actually, I was referring to "music" that's already been composed in the above request, although eventually sequencing some myself would be great too. Ah, oops.. Ummm, now that's a highly subjective issue.. There's so much great music out there that I daren't comment apart from to say I'm a huge Galway fan, but that's maybe a bit too old school in this day and age I'd suggest hitting CSDB and maybe looking through the music charts.. http://noname.c64.org/csdb/toplist.php?type=release&subtype=%287%29&submit=Check%A0chart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 What's interesting is that C64 sceners don't have to rip anything off. Well,a Pawn who only know his Cow and Pig, don't see a reason why to change something But, let's have a look at Lemon64... A statement about "Driller" Very interesting game.Full 3D graphics...and like(almost)all 3D game on 64,this stuff is enormously slow too.The music is superb...hmmm,and familiar Castle Master Is there antything that the C64 couldn't do even to small extent? Slow game but very absorbing. 9/10 It'a cumulated bunch of people that prefer graphics and sound. Gameplay is not that relevant. Speed seems useless, if fixed graphics and SID sound were nice. So, C64 fit perfectly to them.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 (edited) C64 guys state that the A version of RoF is "quite" better.... Just start both in different windows and see the difference. Edited September 10, 2009 by emkay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 What's interesting is that C64 sceners don't have to rip anything off. Well,a Pawn The graphics in The Pawn were converted from the C64 version as well, weren't they? =-) But, let's have a look at Lemon64... Do we have to? i'd really rather not if we could avoid it, ta (and remember that the same kinds of comment can probably be found for the A8, Spectrum or Amstrad CPC... in fact, one site for the latter springs immediately to mind!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rockford Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 What's interesting is that C64 sceners don't have to rip anything off. Well,a Pawn who only know his Cow and Pig, don't see a reason why to change something Sorry emkay, C64 sceners just create, only atarians have to rip pictures off, convert different games etc. in order to prove that their beloved computer can do it as well as C64 alredy did many years ago. Have you seen anything on C64 that was ripped off from Atari ? Btw, haven't you ported Bomb Jack lately and doesn't it need a booming amount of memory to work ? :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Actually, I was referring to "music" that's already been composed in the above request, although eventually sequencing some myself would be great too. Ah, oops.. Ummm, now that's a highly subjective issue.. There's so much great music out there that I daren't comment apart from to say I'm a huge Galway fan, but that's maybe a bit too old school in this day and age I'd suggest hitting CSDB and maybe looking through the music charts.. http://noname.c64.or...t=Check%A0chart Thanks! I'll take a look... also looks like a good site for browsing c64 graphics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 @MrFish Check this out too http://www.transbyte.org/SID/HVSC_Top100.html The other list looks like it contains a lot of new stuff, this one has all the old 80s game classics etc. They tend to be quite different styles as musical "taste" has changed quite a lot since the 80s Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 ... Depending on the colour usage Ballblazer and Dropzone could be done without transitions on the A8. Perhaps I find the time to do one of those. I never saw any title screen in the Ballblazer game, but the picture on the box looks like the one to try to render. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 (edited) Sorry emkay, C64 sceners just create, only atarians have to rip pictures off, convert different games etc. in order to prove that their beloved computer can do it as well as C64 alredy did many years ago. Have you seen anything on C64 that was ripped off from Atari ? :D You ask I shall deliver. From the house of Commodore: Obviously C64 tried to compete with the VCS :D :D You know the drill: BTW, aren't you dead yet? Edited September 10, 2009 by frenchman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lazarus Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 You ask I shall deliver. From the house of Commodore: From HAL Laboratory, Commodore only being the publisher. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 ... Depending on the colour usage Ballblazer and Dropzone could be done without transitions on the A8. Perhaps I find the time to do one of those. Dropzone..interesting.....wasn't there something posted here already. A quote from Archer McLean in ZZAP! issue 12 or so? Atari XL being the Rolls Royce of 8-bit computers, C64 just a 320 BMW? Gotta dig out my ZZAP!s and I'll post that quote. I think it was in Retro Gamer too, gonna search. Wasn't THAT a degrading statement in the forceful C64 magazine ZZAP!? (I always wondered why ZZAP! review team also always mentioned the A8 being the more powerful of the two) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Here we go again....shoulda, coulda, woulda.... And to follow this direction.... I would have bought A C64 ... If it had a 2MHz CPU If it had a good colour palette If it had a better Keyboard If the floppy worked at a better speed from scratch The C64 would have been a good machine, but it was a cheap machine. .... I would have bought an A8 if it... Wasn't 200% overpriced for an 800 (400 keyboard is beyond useless). Had less Atari VCS/2600 sounding music/effect Had some decent sprite graphics Had games using more than 4/128 @ 160x200 or 2/128 @ 20x200 unique colours* Tapes didn't take 2 hours to load Had more well known games anyway had cheap backup cartridges that didn't require a $150 chip inside the floppy. *raster bar horizontal graduations and 16 shades of 1 colour modes excluded obviously (PS VIC-II and SID would have cost Atari just as much as a customer as Pokey and Antic/CTIA etc to have produced by MOS ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Instead C64 can try to convert: Those pictures have been taken from the C64 version of Test Drive in the first place, so why convert them back again? Hey Lazarus don't be so cruel on atarians It's quite clear to see the horizontal scan line shading improving the look so they are impossible. Can we have those rotated 90 degrees on the Atari thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 (edited) You ask I shall deliver. From the house of Commodore: From HAL Laboratory, Commodore only being the publisher. irrelevant, the question was NOT 'written by the house of Commodore.' Edited September 10, 2009 by frenchman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Obviously C64 tried to compete with the VCS :D :D You know the drill: BTW, aren't you dead yet? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umFRpUqcono Looks like a pretty accurate arcade conversion to me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Here we go again....shoulda, coulda, woulda.... And to follow this direction.... I would have bought A C64 ... If it had a 2MHz CPU If it had a good colour palette If it had a better Keyboard If the floppy worked at a better speed from scratch The C64 would have been a good machine, but it was a cheap machine. .... Well, C64 turned out to be a better computer, simple as that. You know, history never lies By the way, wasn't Atari 800XL cheaper than C64 BTW, wasn't the Spectrum cheaper than the C64 Yes but it is worse for 99% of all aspects of an 8bit home computer. It didn't even have a joystick port, a sound chip (16k/48k original rubber keys) or real disk drives. Also didn't have a decent TV output either. Complete fail apart from a 3.5Mhz CPU and monochrome wireframe 3D games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Ballblazer would go well in Interlace... help iron out some of those near-horizontal jaggies. ewww I can't stand interlace I know some colours don't flicker as badly and even less so on 60hz but why swap one compromise for another? Maybe some people don't mind it but I'd rather look at a picture and have it stay still if it isn't "meant" to animate Pete Interlace only really looks ok with massive amounts of colours on screen and lots of anti-alaising like in HAM6/8 on Amigas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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