Atari v Commodore

[emkay]

That's very cynical of you and i'm afraid pretty much wrong; at that point in time, most of the people producing games were teenagers who had little or no exposure to the A8 or indeed other machines apart from the one they'd spent months saving (or nagging parents) for; there weren't many people making a conscious decision between formats based on how much money they'd earn and most people were in it for the sheer hell of it. They made games because they enjoyed the process of writing code, doing graphics, composing music or whatever.

 

Hm... Seems we both live on a planet named Earth, but it's not the same planet

 

People above 20 are hardly teenagers

And, ofcourse, they mostly say "I'm doing it for fun", but hoping for the big moneysack can be fun aswell

Some were driven by the fact that they had big fun when playing games, so why not doing those themselves. But on the 1st placer there were the producers of the Hardware and the 1st generation of professional softwarebuilders. Later, the coders got younger and software got built with even more fun. But this is a successive progress.

[atariksi]

Can you explain the "hidden" monitor? is it accessable?

 

i don't think this works on most of the cracks that are online because the irrelevant parts of the RAM will have been "scrubbed" by the crackers to get the file size down (the garbage that gets left in RAM on commercial games is rather surprising, including source code, graphics from other games, bits of utilities...) but if memory serves, on the original a quick reset and SYS49152 should do it? At one point, my dev tools disk had a copy of the monitor on it's own.

 

A lot of times debug code lets left in in releases but perhaps that debug area was still needed to continue making the game.

[atariksi]

@Rockford:

 

Well,

- I think you know the C64 does 160x200 with 16 colours out of the box (standard)

while

-the Atari does 160x192 with 4 colours out of the box (standard).

 

Getting more colours on the Atari requires more efforts, more knowledge, sometimes using tricks, etc. etc.

And err, most games and screenshots you were and still are presenting here (with a few exceptions) are LOW BUDGET GAMES ! Do you really think they would have put more efforts, more time, more money in a low budget production, just to get more colours (and/or higher resolution) in the A8 (con)version ?!? Instead the "low budget programmers" used the standard / out of the box graphics, colours and resolutions. So most of your presentations like Milk Race, BMX Simulator, Grand Prix Sim., Draconus, Zybex, etc. don`t count - they are better on the C64, since they just used the standard there, they could have been better on the A8 (but then they had to use an uncommon or non-standard way, which was and still is unrealistic for commercial low budget productions)...

 

As I said before, there are exceptions, e.g. Rampage was a full price game, but it is a piss-poor game on the A8, still this does not mean the A8 is poor, only the programmers who did this game (conversion) were poor !! Think you have to count for more things than just "hey the C64 version has more colours and/or higher resolution", you also have to count if it was a full price or low-budget release, if it was a conversion or an original game, how much time was put into the original game vs. how much time was spent for the conversion, how long was the computer on the market at the release of the program (was everything already well-known or was everything still a mystery about the machine), was it the programmer`s first (and maybe only) production etc. etc. Of course thats true for both sides C64 and A8, if we show examples like A.R., RoF, Koronis Rift, etc. stating the A8 version is better, we have to take the same things into account (e.g. the C64 wasn`t that long on the market then, etc.)...

 

Only counting one or two facts and then saying "the C64 version is superior in all aspects" simply isn`t enough. Or to say it with the words of your bad WW2 example "We germans have killed the most - we have won the war !" and of course you know, while the first thing seems to be true, the second isn`t for sure !!

 

-Andreas Koch.

 

P.S.: And err, allthough being an A8-owner, I still think, while Amaurote looks quite impressive it has an extremely boring gameplay. The vehicle in the game has bad controls and targeting something with the "spring-bombs" is just a matter of luck. Last not least, the game is extremely repetitive, there isn`t much difference between playing one level or another of the game (play one level if you like and you are bored enough NOT to play another level). Thats why I always choose Amaurote for the top ten of bad/boring A8 games, the gfx alone do not impress me that much...

 

Now he thinks you are admitting that C64 is more powerful and flexibile although it does not follow from your posting. That's why I stopped trying to correct his mistaken conclusions. And to add to your above remarks, not all games need high color content in high resolution. If the characters can be well-defined in 160*200, then that resolution should be used-- no sense in forcing high resolution on it. And even in modern games, you see that playing in 1024*768*32 full-screen is worse than playing in 320*480 full-screen mode because although graphics may be lower resolution, the smoother playback is preferred. I think those older DOS-based games that went directly to the VGA hardware (320*480 or 640*480) and sound cards play much smoother than those going through the Windows API at 1024*768.

[atarian63]

@Rockford:

 

Well,

- I think you know the C64 does 160x200 with 16 colours out of the box (standard)

while

-the Atari does 160x192 with 4 colours out of the box (standard).

 

Getting more colours on the Atari requires more efforts, more knowledge, sometimes using tricks, etc. etc.

And err, most games and screenshots you were and still are presenting here (with a few exceptions) are LOW BUDGET GAMES ! Do you really think they would have put more efforts, more time, more money in a low budget production, just to get more colours (and/or higher resolution) in the A8 (con)version ?!? Instead the "low budget programmers" used the standard / out of the box graphics, colours and resolutions. So most of your presentations like Milk Race, BMX Simulator, Grand Prix Sim., Draconus, Zybex, etc. don`t count - they are better on the C64, since they just used the standard there, they could have been better on the A8 (but then they had to use an uncommon or non-standard way, which was and still is unrealistic for commercial low budget productions)...

 

As I said before, there are exceptions, e.g. Rampage was a full price game, but it is a piss-poor game on the A8, still this does not mean the A8 is poor, only the programmers who did this game (conversion) were poor !! Think you have to count for more things than just "hey the C64 version has more colours and/or higher resolution", you also have to count if it was a full price or low-budget release, if it was a conversion or an original game, how much time was put into the original game vs. how much time was spent for the conversion, how long was the computer on the market at the release of the program (was everything already well-known or was everything still a mystery about the machine), was it the programmer`s first (and maybe only) production etc. etc. Of course thats true for both sides C64 and A8, if we show examples like A.R., RoF, Koronis Rift, etc. stating the A8 version is better, we have to take the same things into account (e.g. the C64 wasn`t that long on the market then, etc.)...

 

Only counting one or two facts and then saying "the C64 version is superior in all aspects" simply isn`t enough. Or to say it with the words of your bad WW2 example "We germans have killed the most - we have won the war !" and of course you know, while the first thing seems to be true, the second isn`t for sure !!

 

-Andreas Koch.

 

P.S.: And err, allthough being an A8-owner, I still think, while Amaurote looks quite impressive it has an extremely boring gameplay. The vehicle in the game has bad controls and targeting something with the "spring-bombs" is just a matter of luck. Last not least, the game is extremely repetitive, there isn`t much difference between playing one level or another of the game (play one level if you like and you are bored enough NOT to play another level). Thats why I always choose Amaurote for the top ten of bad/boring A8 games, the gfx alone do not impress me that much...

A very well written and reasonable post. I can agree on most points and I wish there were more atarians like you, really. The problem is that many atarians here bear criticism badly and become increasingly defensive and irrational. Next, they hold to their position until they become fanatical in defending it. I am perfectly aware of all the factors and circumstances that you mentioned here. I also know what both computers are capable of (out of the box). Unfortunately, many atarians seem to ignore that in most (not all of course) cases C64 is a better and more flexible computer. I know it sounds terribly brutal, especially on this site, but that's reality (as history showed). Look Charlie, in this topic Allas showed some games that look better on Atari (nobody complained). All I do is shed some light on the other side of the story. Sadly, often atarians find that "negative", but that's shortsighted naivity and some kind of "double morality". To be brutally honest, I'm not going to stop. Anyway, thanks a lot for your opinion, I really appreciate it. By the way, you have a great site.

Cheers mate

Puhleezzz.

[TMR]

And, ofcourse, they mostly say "I'm doing it for fun", but hoping for the big moneysack can be fun aswell

 

You owned a C128 for fourteen days and had precisely bugger all contact with the people within the C64 community writing these games, you cannot comment on this at all without expecting people to laugh.

 

Some were driven by the fact that they had big fun when playing games, so why not doing those themselves. But on the 1st placer there were the producers of the Hardware and the 1st generation of professional softwarebuilders.

 

Over half of the C64 games that people mention were written by either backroom coders or those who'd moved into the "industry" from backroom coding; Armalyte was written in a back room, Sensible worked out of Jon Hare's flat for their formative years, Creatures and Mayhem in Monsterland were developed by two brothers at their parents' house if memory serves, Hunter's Moon and Citadel were one-man productions written in a back room and pretty much everything on the budget labels came from enthusiastic people, most of whom would've been happy just to see their game on shelves in the local shop - considering the money paid for budget games in particular, nobody in their right mind would have done it for the cash.

 

That still doesn't answer the question though... why, with all the support the Atari has here, were there so few outstanding artists? Even some of the examples in the "best graphics" thread are actually jobbing C64 people doing A8 graphics (which sort of dents your "going where the money is" argument doesn't it, the money was seemingly there for the A8 even if it was at budget house level).

Edited September 11, 2009 by TMR

[TMR]

A lot of times debug code lets left in in releases but perhaps that debug area was still needed to continue making the game.

 

Nope, as i say it's been scrubbed from the cracks because it was dead space; saving to $bfff instead of $cfff would've probably worked because Dropzone doesn't keep anything under the I/O or Kernal.

Edited September 11, 2009 by TMR

[TMR]

And to add to your above remarks, not all games need high color content in high resolution.

 

[Looks at current project] Oh...

[Rockford]

Wow a real achievement indeed, you have just digitalized a picture and then ported it to atari. Nowadays, with PC tools, even monkey can do this

 

Yes, posting different screen shots from two machines and explain that one look better than the other is of course more sophisticated...

 

 

No it's not, but you are trying to compare a pixel drawn picture, that takes a lot of time and work, to a scanned s..t, that can be made by a well trained monkey. Did you really want a real comparison ? Why didn't you draw it pixel by pixel ? If you try to prove something or impress anybody don't copy, ripp off or digitalize others people work. It's lame and laughable, especially if you brag about it to someone who knows how it works. If you are really so good try to draw something like this:

ATARI "Follow the easter rabbit" by Powrooz

C64 "Marshmallow" by Mermaid

 

Well, drawing something like this takes much more time than turning the scanner on, isn't it ? So, If you want some respect (yes you got it right) be creative, only this really counts. You know, there are enough "xerox masters"

 

 

 

BTW: I've built a scanner head for my 1020 plotter and 'digitalized' pictures from newspapers with about the same quality about 25 years ago. A clever monkey don't have to wait until 'nowadays'...

 

 

Really... there are many Atari databases, so why don't you show us some links to your pictures (as STE did). 25 years is a looooong time and you undoubtedly did a hell of a work.

 

 

Why for the world should I like to talk with you?

 

 

If that's so, why did you bother replying to my first post ?

 

 

On every 8bit scene (including Atari)you would be a laughing-stock if you bragged about anything like that

 

Hmm - must have something to do with this 'respect'-thing - correct?

 

Exactly. If you have some spare time then it would be a good idea to make some research about 8bit scene. You will not be disappointed

[Rockford]

 

 

Now he thinks you are admitting that C64 is more powerful and flexibile although it does not follow from your posting. That's why I stopped trying to correct his mistaken conclusions.

 

Really.... ? When did I write anything like that ? Oh, well... I forgot that you can read people's mind.

[oky2000]

Not anyone elses but Archers fault if he had no clue how to code properly on C64 Same as I keep saying about a lot of games being ported to A8 from C64 though. Doesn't mean one is a worse machine just the coder didn't know how to handle it.

 

 

It has more to do with the fact that the C64 broke with the "Computer growth rules".

The Atari was able to have simulations running and to show what's going on.

The C64 was done to have something on the screen going on with less capabilities of doing simulations.

 

 

In truth all the games Archer has done that I can think of are nothing special technically, none of them push the limits of the host machine so who cares what he thinks when he hasn't written anything seriously cutting edge or exceeding the 'limits' of the machine.

 

I think he just prefers having less competition in the A8 games market

[oky2000]

Of course those are only "numbers" but you can't say outright that the A8 is more of a "simulation" machine.

 

 

 

 

Ofcourse I can.

Particular Drop Zone is the best example for this. The whole level is calculated in realtime and the action is immense.

Vice Versa on the C64 in Turrican. Many stuff can happen on the screen, but the whole game is triggered for the enemies to save CPU time.

And, well, I just want to point out the Sierpinskies in the Shrine demo. Have you really watched it?

Also Rescue on Fractalus takes benefit by this. The graphics fit to the "simulation" the game handles, and it is fast enough projected to the screen.

When C64 wants to show some "simulation" it gets unplayable slow, or is restricted to the Charmode resolution of 40*25.

 

 

So he's a shit programmer and couldn't find a better way to do a pissant little Defender rip-off? It get's worse, Guardian 1 or 2 is a better game, and it doesn't require any 'simulation'

[oky2000]

 

As I said before, there are exceptions, e.g. Rampage was a full price game, but it is a piss-poor game on the A8, still this does not mean the A8 is poor, only the programmers who did this game (conversion) were poor !!

 

This only counts for C64ers, it's a bad coder who cannot program the C64 (Dropzone PeteD comment), but when it is on A8 (eg Rampage), the computer is oh so bad (Rocky Mountains).

 

I think seriously the point is that there simply wasn't enough exceptional coders to replicate C64 standard hardware features using the more restrictive colour resolution of 160x192 displays and the smaller more restrictive PM graphics.

 

In the case of the A8 the majority of games look as you would expect of a machine that can do 4 colours total + basic horizontal colour graduations via DLIs. The problem simply is that there was no 3rd or 4th generation of games programmed for the A8 because the restrictions the hardware placed were very difficult to break and even then could only be used in certain situations etc.

 

This is not a knock against A8 but a genuine experience of the 100s of Atari games I have played with Atari owning friends at the time (1984-88) and certainly there are games that do work better in the confines of the A8 chipset compromise (Elektraglide and Attack of the Mutant Camels extra palette for DLIs and Rescue on Fractalus for having a lower resolution in hardware etc)

 

However doing something like Rainbow Islands as well on the A8 as the C64 version would be difficult to say the least, simply a sign of the times.....the C64 chipset was designed for use as an arcade motherboard first and foremost and these game styles were the ones that lasted all the way up to Virtua Racer by SEGA with just bigger bobs/sprites more colours and faster movement...same basic game design though.

[José Pereira]

Hello.

 

Archer was really an A8 fan. I read is interview in Retrogramer some months ago and as I remember he said there he discouvers Atari after his first conputer (VIC-20? I'm not sure...) and was amazed by the priorities. I don't remember many of the interview. probably someone can scan this?

 

O.k. It could done more games. I'm sure it could have done some great games. If the A8 market was near ZX, C64 and/or CPC, I'm sure some people will appear. Ivan Mackintosh, Chris Paul Murray and Archer MacLean, but if Eastern Europe discouver A8 in 84/85 (probably they put down the Berlin wall on the beggining of Eighties)...

 

Being here on the end of Europe, and with A8 and ZX only computers on that time, here A8 was the second one. The C64 only arrives at the same time of ST/Amiga. As I remember was the same shops that bring Amiga that try to sell C64 with the name Commodore and try to show it was a cheaper Amiga.

 

My side brothers, the Spanish have also the ZX as the first, but like french the CPC was the 2nd, probably was MSX. They had in Spanish the same we had in Poland/Czech. They have many software houses, and they done very good games. I always see the Spanish magazines (because of the similar language). we all here prefer MicroMania (a kind of Computer and Video Games - but with better looking colours and presentation, many, many Pokes to get infinitive lives on ZX, MSX, C64 and CPC. And real full size Maps with all the screen games, I think it's from here I BECOME MAD WITH GAME MAPS)and MicroHobby (zx Spectrum).

 

Topo Soft, Opera House, and the best known Dinamic (Army Move, Navy Moves,...) And if you take that magazines, many of the games were for the Z80 machines. I think some C64 versions was mostly for U.K. market. Everytime I went to Spain, I didn't remember to see any C64 at the shops.

 

 

The Spanish distributors like ERBE, ZIGURAT and others import the games and you'll saw everytime a MSX version. A complete, simply and ripped ZX port. You see Out Run on MSX colour in Japan and the Ugglish monochrome in SPain.

 

In Poland, if they done for the A8 like the Spanish for the MSX!...

 

Greetings.

José Pereira.

 

 

Bye.

José Pereira.

[Rockford]

12 - DRACONUS

 

C64

C64

C64

 

The C64 version has better graphics, sprites and more colours. The Atari version works in low-res graphics with ugly sprites and also doesn't have the animated end sequence. An easy win by C64

 

ATARI

ATARI

ATARI

[atarian63]

12 - DRACONUS

 

C64

C64

C64

 

The C64 version has better graphics, sprites and more colours. The Atari version works in low-res graphics with ugly sprites and also doesn't have the animated end sequence. An easy win by C64

 

ATARI

ATARI

ATARI

Nah! Poor programming by the coder.

[atarian63]

 

As I said before, there are exceptions, e.g. Rampage was a full price game, but it is a piss-poor game on the A8, still this does not mean the A8 is poor, only the programmers who did this game (conversion) were poor !!

 

This only counts for C64ers, it's a bad coder who cannot program the C64 (Dropzone PeteD comment), but when it is on A8 (eg Rampage), the computer is oh so bad (Rocky Mountains).

 

I think seriously the point is that there simply wasn't enough exceptional coders to replicate C64 standard hardware features using the more restrictive colour resolution of 160x192 displays and the smaller more restrictive PM graphics.

 

In the case of the A8 the majority of games look as you would expect of a machine that can do 4 colours total + basic horizontal colour graduations via DLIs. The problem simply is that there was no 3rd or 4th generation of games programmed for the A8 because the restrictions the hardware placed were very difficult to break and even then could only be used in certain situations etc.

 

This is not a knock against A8 but a genuine experience of the 100s of Atari games I have played with Atari owning friends at the time (1984-88) and certainly there are games that do work better in the confines of the A8 chipset compromise (Elektraglide and Attack of the Mutant Camels extra palette for DLIs and Rescue on Fractalus for having a lower resolution in hardware etc)

 

However doing something like Rainbow Islands as well on the A8 as the C64 version would be difficult to say the least, simply a sign of the times.....the C64 chipset was designed for use as an arcade motherboard first and foremost and these game styles were the ones that lasted all the way up to Virtua Racer by SEGA with just bigger bobs/sprites more colours and faster movement...same basic game design though.

If it was designed for arcades it would have sucked. I have never viewed c64 as an arcade playing machine.

[Lazarus]

12 - DRACONUS

 

The C64 version has better graphics, sprites and more colours. The Atari version works in low-res graphics with ugly sprites and also doesn't have the animated end sequence. An easy win by C64

Nah! Poor programming by the coder.

No, this shows the weakness of the A8: All PMs are already used for the player sprite and because of this, all other sprites have to be software sprites rendered to the background. This has two major effects:

 

- The software sprites have to use the same 4 colors as the background.

 

- The resolution is reduced because otherwise the CPU would be too busy rendering those sprites (the shots are not the best examples, there are screens with more sprites).

 

Also the software sprite rendering routines eat up space. On C64 they are not required. Maybe that's the reason why they removed the end sequence.

Edited September 11, 2009 by Lazarus

[Gury]

In any case, Draconus on Atari is nice game. I enjoyed playing it a lot in my childhood.

[atariksi]

No, they designed it so C64 could make pretty graphical interpretations of your simulation data, whilst the 1541(s) did all the simulation work

You're comparing the A8 against the worlds first truly scaleable parallel processing machine.. Just add another 1541 to gain another 6502 processor!! Visionary!!

Just think, RoF using 4 1541s

 

Think of a buch of Ataris, connected via the Joystick interface...

 

And SIO port so they both work simultaneously.

[atariksi]

 

As I said before, there are exceptions, e.g. Rampage was a full price game, but it is a piss-poor game on the A8, still this does not mean the A8 is poor, only the programmers who did this game (conversion) were poor !!

 

This only counts for C64ers, it's a bad coder who cannot program the C64 (Dropzone PeteD comment), but when it is on A8 (eg Rampage), the computer is oh so bad (Rocky Mountains).

 

I think seriously the point is that there simply wasn't enough exceptional coders to replicate C64 standard hardware features using the more restrictive colour resolution of 160x192 displays and the smaller more restrictive PM graphics.

...

You don't need exceptional coders-- it requires a different approach. To me programming C64 color RAM in cell-based graphics mode seems quirky and problematic. But if your company is based on making money, you have to learn C64 stuff and then port it over to A8. 160*192 is restrictive if you don't learn how the rest of the hardware works.

 

>In the case of the A8 the majority of games look as you would expect of a machine that can do 4 colours total + basic horizontal colour graduations via DLIs. The problem simply is that there was no 3rd or 4th generation of games programmed for the A8 because the restrictions the hardware placed were very difficult to break and even then could only be used in certain situations etc.

 

No, the color changes are not limited to horizontal color graduations. GPRIOR mode 0 doesn't care if it's horizontal or vertical and GTIA modes allow vertical and horizontal color graduations. Most games did not use GTIA modes and even without resolution enhancement, the moving sprites would still be at 160*200 on GTIA graphics.

 

>This is not a knock against A8 but a genuine experience of the 100s of Atari games I have played with Atari owning friends at the time (1984-88) and certainly there are games that do work better in the confines of the A8 chipset compromise (Elektraglide and Attack of the Mutant Camels extra palette for DLIs and Rescue on Fractalus for having a lower resolution in hardware etc)

 

>However doing something like Rainbow Islands as well on the A8 as the C64 version would be difficult to say the least, simply a sign of the times.....the C64 chipset was designed for use as an arcade motherboard first and foremost and these game styles were the ones that lasted all the way up to Virtua Racer by SEGA with just bigger bobs/sprites more colours and faster movement...same basic game design though.

 

I believe arcade motherboards were superior at the time to what the C64 chipset had to offer.

[atariksi]

A lot of times debug code lets left in in releases but perhaps that debug area was still needed to continue making the game.

 

Nope, as i say it's been scrubbed from the cracks because it was dead space; saving to $bfff instead of $cfff would've probably worked because Dropzone doesn't keep anything under the I/O or Kernal.

 

So you're saying he didn't need the monitor space to continue with the game?

[atariksi]

@Rockford:

 

Well,

- I think you know the C64 does 160x200 with 16 colours out of the box (standard)

while

-the Atari does 160x192 with 4 colours out of the box (standard).

 

Getting more colours on the Atari requires more efforts, more knowledge, sometimes using tricks, etc. etc.

And err, most games and screenshots you were and still are presenting here (with a few exceptions) are LOW BUDGET GAMES ! Do you really think they would have put more efforts, more time, more money in a low budget production, just to get more colours (and/or higher resolution) in the A8 (con)version ?!? Instead the "low budget programmers" used the standard / out of the box graphics, colours and resolutions. So most of your presentations like Milk Race, BMX Simulator, Grand Prix Sim., Draconus, Zybex, etc. don`t count - they are better on the C64, since they just used the standard there, they could have been better on the A8 (but then they had to use an uncommon or non-standard way, which was and still is unrealistic for commercial low budget productions)...

 

As I said before, there are exceptions, e.g. Rampage was a full price game, but it is a piss-poor game on the A8, still this does not mean the A8 is poor, only the programmers who did this game (conversion) were poor !! Think you have to count for more things than just "hey the C64 version has more colours and/or higher resolution", you also have to count if it was a full price or low-budget release, if it was a conversion or an original game, how much time was put into the original game vs. how much time was spent for the conversion, how long was the computer on the market at the release of the program (was everything already well-known or was everything still a mystery about the machine), was it the programmer`s first (and maybe only) production etc. etc. Of course thats true for both sides C64 and A8, if we show examples like A.R., RoF, Koronis Rift, etc. stating the A8 version is better, we have to take the same things into account (e.g. the C64 wasn`t that long on the market then, etc.)...

 

Only counting one or two facts and then saying "the C64 version is superior in all aspects" simply isn`t enough. Or to say it with the words of your bad WW2 example "We germans have killed the most - we have won the war !" and of course you know, while the first thing seems to be true, the second isn`t for sure !!

 

-Andreas Koch.

 

P.S.: And err, allthough being an A8-owner, I still think, while Amaurote looks quite impressive it has an extremely boring gameplay. The vehicle in the game has bad controls and targeting something with the "spring-bombs" is just a matter of luck. Last not least, the game is extremely repetitive, there isn`t much difference between playing one level or another of the game (play one level if you like and you are bored enough NOT to play another level). Thats why I always choose Amaurote for the top ten of bad/boring A8 games, the gfx alone do not impress me that much...

A very well written and reasonable post. I can agree on most points and I wish there were more atarians like you, really. The problem is that many atarians here bear criticism badly and become increasingly defensive and irrational. Next, they hold to their position until they become fanatical in defending it. I am perfectly aware of all the factors and circumstances that you mentioned here. I also know what both computers are capable of (out of the box). Unfortunately, many atarians seem to ignore that in most (not all of course) cases C64 is a better and more flexible computer. I know it sounds terribly brutal, especially on this site, but that's reality (as history showed). Look Charlie, in this topic Allas showed some games that look better on Atari (nobody complained). All I do is shed some light on the other side of the story. Sadly, often atarians find that "negative", but that's shortsighted naivity and some kind of "double morality". To be brutally honest, I'm not going to stop. Anyway, thanks a lot for your opinion, I really appreciate it. By the way, you have a great site.

Cheers mate

Puhleezzz.

 

Note he is blaming people for "double morality". He thinks its fine to go into any topic and try to show the "other" side. However, there are many topics talking about Atari games so perhaps he's going to invade those topics to and try to even those out as well despite what the discussion is or what the original poster wants.

[atariksi]

In any case, Draconus on Atari is nice game. I enjoyed playing it a lot in my childhood.

 

If they keep repeating sprites are better, we can also keep repeating the colors are inaccurate, it's slower, etc. Note the shading is substituted with a color that makes the picture look like it's a recording on an old VCR tape with color bleeding.

[Lazarus]

You don't need exceptional coders-- it requires a different approach. To me programming C64 color RAM in cell-based graphics mode seems quirky and problematic. But if your company is based on making money, you have to learn C64 stuff and then port it over to A8.

If you think it's difficult to deal with color cells just don't use them. You get 4 color background gfx then, just like A8.

[atariksi]

You don't need exceptional coders-- it requires a different approach. To me programming C64 color RAM in cell-based graphics mode seems quirky and problematic. But if your company is based on making money, you have to learn C64 stuff and then port it over to A8.

If you think it's difficult to deal with color cells just don't use them. You get 4 color background gfx then, just like A8.

 

I would like some code to set up that mode-- 320*200*2 and 160*200*4. Perhaps, then I can port some of my A8 stuff to C64.