Atari v Commodore

[atariksi]

...

Let's not mix up the points of being able to scroll 1 color clock with ability to do more colors in with horizontal re-use.

 

Surely those things are part and parcel for a significant number of games...

...

Sticking to the point, Atari can do 1 color clock scroll in GTIA mode and it can outdo the color RAM (as example given). Now when you combine you get some more restrictions, but you always have the choice of doing part-screen scroll and have higher color content in non-scroll regions.

 

i've never actually seen a screen being scrolled in this manner ... so are there any examples out there at all?

That's not an argument-- "I haven't seen any." There aren't many GTIA games to begin with what to speak of ones using 1 color clock scroll. It's logical that you can do it just be toggling modes between GTIA mode 9/11 and 10. You don't have to double buffer either.

 

It's not an argument no, it's a question! i know that i've not seen everything on the machine and was asking if there are examples out there including demos that do it.

Okay, I read it as doubting if it was do-able.

 

No, i'm thinking about it as a designer as well as a programmer; if the backgrounds are at GTIA resolution with nine colours and the sprites can only put single or three colour objects over that it's going to look wrong. That's why the only example of a game i can think of that scrolls GTIA vertically does software sprites i suspect...

 

Looks like this was already answered.

 

I already showed example of sprites of Atari 2600 that look beautiful.

 

And apart from that beauty being a subjective opinion, that's not an A8 and not everything the 2600 does can be applied directly.

 

Nothing subjective about it. You can multicolor the sprites vertically or horizontally by combining players. The shading and coloring of the cars the A8 can easily do. And it's not subjective to state that having more colors to choose from makes things more beautiful.

[Rockford]

23 - THE LAST V8

 

C64

C64

C64

 

The C64 version has better sound & music, graphics, more colours and more precise handling. The Atari version doesn't have digitized voices and a car crash sequence is ridiculous (check out the last picture - the screen just blinks in pink ). TMR was right, the C64 version is better.

 

ATARI

ATARI

ATARI

[MaPa]

Not theoretical, but logical which means they can be implemented. Here's one example of 128 colors from palette of 256 every scanline using a DLI in Graphics 9; it does 7 palette changes midscreen and an extra set of 16 shades from missiles combined into a player. Four players are still available and put on edges (overscan area) to show an extra 6 colors.

 

Jesus.. use some usable format please or it's waste of your time to attach it. I think that "nobody" will be able to run it.

[PeteD]

Not theoretical, but logical which means they can be implemented. Here's one example of 128 colors from palette of 256 every scanline using a DLI in Graphics 9; it does 7 palette changes midscreen and an extra set of 16 shades from missiles combined into a player. Four players are still available and put on edges (overscan area) to show an extra 6 colors.

 

Jesus.. use some usable format please or it's waste of your time to attach it. I think that "nobody" will be able to run it.

 

What's the magic mumbo jumbo?

 

Run atari800win plus

f8 to go to monitor

read atarihc.img 0700 2ffa

setpc 707

cont

 

And you get a lovely screen of colour bands which is useless for anything unless you're writing attack of the colour bands certianly nothing like C64 colour ram which IS useful.

 

Just go back to page 220 to see where this stuff is being regurgitated from, saves getting into it all again. Pencils!!! lol

 

 

 

Pete

[TMR]

Sticking to the point, Atari can do 1 color clock scroll in GTIA mode and it can outdo the color RAM (as example given). Now when you combine you get some more restrictions, but you always have the choice of doing part-screen scroll and have higher color content in non-scroll regions.

 

It's still at a significantly lower resolution than the C64 and requires more in the way of overheads. And without a working game to actually demonstrate the principle will work - i don't doubt it will, but i'm honestly not sure how easy it'll be to get any that looks decent within the restrictions we're discussing and unless it can be made to look good there's not even much point in trying.

 

No, i'm thinking about it as a designer as well as a programmer; if the backgrounds are at GTIA resolution with nine colours and the sprites can only put single or three colour objects over that it's going to look wrong.

 

Looks like this was already answered.

 

Not really no, we were talking about GTIA modes for a game's play area and how the players wouldn't fit in; emkay's are just silhouettes (and there's not a fat lot you can do with those during a game since apart from anything else you'll lose them in the dark parts of the screen) and if i'm honest i was going to offer the Ballblazer intro as an example of how it doesn't work because i've always thought that was disjointed personally. Yes, it can make a pretty status bar but that's neither here nor there and, as i said, getting a hardware-based game sprite over a GTIA background where it doesn't look out of place is going to be problematic.

 

Nothing subjective about it.

 

Of course there is; i'd not have called the 2600 games beatiful but you did, i'd call at least some of the C64 pictures posted in this and other comparison threads beatiful but people here would disagree. At that sort of level, it's all subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the thingummy and all that.

[atariksi]

Not theoretical, but logical which means they can be implemented. Here's one example of 128 colors from palette of 256 every scanline using a DLI in Graphics 9; it does 7 palette changes midscreen and an extra set of 16 shades from missiles combined into a player. Four players are still available and put on edges (overscan area) to show an extra 6 colors.

 

Jesus.. use some usable format please or it's waste of your time to attach it. I think that "nobody" will be able to run it.

 

It's just sector dump of image disk like all my other binary code postings. I think there's a bug in the emulator that can't handle the boot block but it should be able to run in emulator. It shows you can pick more colors on scanline-- no sample image just shades to show it can be done.

[atarian63]

23 - THE LAST V8

 

C64

C64

C64

 

The C64 version has better sound & music, graphics, more colours and more precise handling. The Atari version doesn't have digitized voices and a car crash sequence is ridiculous (check out the last picture - the screen just blinks in pink ). TMR was right, the C64 version is better.

 

ATARI

ATARI

ATARI

More Lame examples post atari peak. Worthless

[atariksi]

Sticking to the point, Atari can do 1 color clock scroll in GTIA mode and it can outdo the color RAM (as example given). Now when you combine you get some more restrictions, but you always have the choice of doing part-screen scroll and have higher color content in non-scroll regions.

 

It's still at a significantly lower resolution than the C64 and requires more in the way of overheads. And without a working game to actually demonstrate the principle will work - i don't doubt it will, but i'm honestly not sure how easy it'll be to get any that looks decent within the restrictions we're discussing and unless it can be made to look good there's not even much point in trying.

...

Vague blurb makes no sense. You wanted to 1 color clock scroll, you got it. You wanted more colors than color ram, you got it. I would say that color ram is actually just 16 colors being able to re-use them. You want higher resolution now-- well there's GPRIOR mode 0 which also works with GTIA mode 10.

 

No, i'm thinking about it as a designer as well as a programmer; if the backgrounds are at GTIA resolution with nine colours and the sprites can only put single or three colour objects over that it's going to look wrong.

 

Looks like this was already answered.

 

Not really no, we were talking about GTIA modes for a game's play area and how the players wouldn't fit in; emkay's are just silhouettes (and there's not a fat lot you can do with those during a game since apart from anything else you'll lose them in the dark parts of the screen) and if i'm honest i was going to offer the Ballblazer intro as an example of how it doesn't work because i've always thought that was disjointed personally. Yes, it can make a pretty status bar but that's neither here nor there and, as i said, getting a hardware-based game sprite over a GTIA background where it doesn't look out of place is going to be problematic.

...

In the example posted, you can choose which 16 shades you want where in 7 spots plus 4 missile areas in the example posted.

 

Nothing subjective about it.

 

Of course there is; i'd not have called the 2600 games beatiful but you did, i'd call at least some of the C64 pictures posted in this and other comparison threads beatiful but people here would disagree. At that sort of level, it's all subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the thingummy and all that.

Don't be dumb. YOU made a subjective remark that Atari sprites were ugly. I gave you reasons why they are beautiful. I have reasoning to back up my claim-- I have a bigger palette to color my sprites more accurately in the racing car example given. You have the same dull colors to force fit into your sprites. QED.

[atarian63]

23 - THE LAST V8

 

C64

C64

C64

 

The C64 version has better sound & music, graphics, more colours and more precise handling. The Atari version doesn't have digitized voices and a car crash sequence is ridiculous (check out the last picture - the screen just blinks in pink ). TMR was right, the C64 version is better.

 

ATARI

ATARI

ATARI

Also we carried this title, it came in a crappy black plastic folder looking like a half ass effort. Needless to say it did not sell.

[atariksi]

...

And that's before you even consider how bad the Amiga would cope with the new 'craze' of texture mapped pseudo 3D games like Doom and Descent which ran OK on 2nd hand £400 PCs. A1200...released 1992...Doom appears...instantly AGA is obsolete even in the A4000 which costs more than any other PC for sale BUT would run Doom at best like a 16mhz 286 due to the Amigas 8 bit planes per 256 colour screen compared to the 800% faster to manipulate VGA byte per pixel screen on PCs.

I never understood that bitplane thing. It only has disadvantages.

 

...

 

Bitplanes are advantage if you want to optimize the memory useage for the colors you need to use. You always have the blitter to do the moves for you. None of the PCs of various eras (8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and now 64-bit) ever standardized on sprites so people are just relying on BitBlt() to do everything for them or rely on DirectX which is also indirect method of accessing the hardware efficiently. At least Amiga gave you full access to the hardware and at register level and you can bet it would work the same on all AGA machines or if you targetted OCS/ECS, it would still work on AGA.

 

You can also update a single bitplane and quickly put up a graphic rather than update huge chunks of data.

 

The only difference is if you are displaying something which there is no help with from the Amiga Blitter/Copper etc in 256 colours like in a Doom clone for example. The Amiga requires 8 writes to 8 bit planes the PC VGA screen requires only 1 write. That's a huge saving of time compared to the Amiga and that's before you consider that Amigas always had significanlty slower CPU speeds than the PC even since the PC-AT in the mid-late 80s with 16mhz. Sure for most 80s arcade games better to have a blitter but in the 90s everyone wanted Doom or other 3D textured games.....Doom doomed traditional hardware custom chips as on the Amiga

 

You're dead wrong. You can't do 8 writes to 8 bit planes. VGA standard only has 4 bit planes. You can organize them as 2 bits/pixel and 4 planes which is still chunky + 4 planes of them. You have to do an OUT DX,AX to set the plane using port 3c4h and index 02. So if you want to write a character on the screen 8*8, you have to keep writing to 3c4h to switch planes. There's 256K video memory you can access still stuck in the A000:0000 64K chunk but you have 4 planes so 64K*4 = 256K. And go time the out dx,ax and you will find it's at least 16X slower than doing a QUAD move to the memory map area. There's also the blitter to help out the Amiga and the Copper which allows you to get away with lesser bitplanes if you just need a couple of colors here and there.

Get your facts straight.

[emkay]

In some case I liked The Last V8. But everyime playing it, it seemed to be unfinished.

Comparing it to the C64 version now, it makes sense.

[atariksi]

Electra Glide

 

I recently played Pole Position remake on Nintendo 64 and looks like they used electra glide type graphics on it. Still played terrible with their controller and not the classic type feel to it.

[TMR]

It's still at a significantly lower resolution than the C64 and requires more in the way of overheads. And without a working game to actually demonstrate the principle will work - i don't doubt it will, but i'm honestly not sure how easy it'll be to get any that looks decent within the restrictions we're discussing and unless it can be made to look good there's not even much point in trying.

...

Vague blurb makes no sense.

 

Vague blurb... which bit of that lot was vague then? To reiterate, is what you're talking about at a lower resolution than the C64? Yes. Does it require higher overheads to generate? Yes again. Despite the lack of a working game, do i think it's possible? Yes once more. Is it extremely hard to produce decent graphics when working at that low a resolution? Hell, yes. If it's going to look like crap, is there any point at all in even trying? Nope.

 

You wanted to 1 color clock scroll, you got it. You wanted more colors than color ram, you got it.

 

Actually, i asked about one colour clock scrolling but i didn't ask for more colours than colour RAM as such, at least if i did it wasn't at that resolutiuon.

 

In the example posted, you can choose which 16 shades you want where in 7 spots plus 4 missile areas in the example posted.

 

That's nice. But without looking at it (i don't have time until Friday, i'm meant to be working right now as well) i don't know how viable that is for a game screen (for example, can things move between the seven slots you're talking about without losing their colours or are they stuck in place) and that's what we were talking about here.

 

Don't be dumb. YOU made a subjective remark that Atari sprites were ugly.

 

For a start there's no need to be insulting and no i bloody well didn't call them ugly so stop trying to put words into my mouth. i quite clearly said that using players over a GTIA background would make them stand out and that is the case; it happens in the Ballblazer intro where the player-generated graphics look like they're not part of the rest of the image and will become far more glaringly obvious if we're running a game using players over GTIA since the person playing it will be concentrating on the foreground objects.

 

I gave you reasons why they are beautiful.

 

You gave me reasons why you personally thought they were beautiful, but that and the reasons are still your subjective opinion and no amount of reasoning sets any of it in stone.

[oky2000]

...

And that's before you even consider how bad the Amiga would cope with the new 'craze' of texture mapped pseudo 3D games like Doom and Descent which ran OK on 2nd hand £400 PCs. A1200...released 1992...Doom appears...instantly AGA is obsolete even in the A4000 which costs more than any other PC for sale BUT would run Doom at best like a 16mhz 286 due to the Amigas 8 bit planes per 256 colour screen compared to the 800% faster to manipulate VGA byte per pixel screen on PCs.

I never understood that bitplane thing. It only has disadvantages.

 

...

 

Bitplanes are advantage if you want to optimize the memory useage for the colors you need to use. You always have the blitter to do the moves for you. None of the PCs of various eras (8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and now 64-bit) ever standardized on sprites so people are just relying on BitBlt() to do everything for them or rely on DirectX which is also indirect method of accessing the hardware efficiently. At least Amiga gave you full access to the hardware and at register level and you can bet it would work the same on all AGA machines or if you targetted OCS/ECS, it would still work on AGA.

 

You can also update a single bitplane and quickly put up a graphic rather than update huge chunks of data.

 

The only difference is if you are displaying something which there is no help with from the Amiga Blitter/Copper etc in 256 colours like in a Doom clone for example. The Amiga requires 8 writes to 8 bit planes the PC VGA screen requires only 1 write. That's a huge saving of time compared to the Amiga and that's before you consider that Amigas always had significanlty slower CPU speeds than the PC even since the PC-AT in the mid-late 80s with 16mhz. Sure for most 80s arcade games better to have a blitter but in the 90s everyone wanted Doom or other 3D textured games.....Doom doomed traditional hardware custom chips as on the Amiga

 

You're dead wrong. You can't do 8 writes to 8 bit planes. VGA standard only has 4 bit planes. You can organize them as 2 bits/pixel and 4 planes which is still chunky + 4 planes of them. You have to do an OUT DX,AX to set the plane using port 3c4h and index 02. So if you want to write a character on the screen 8*8, you have to keep writing to 3c4h to switch planes. There's 256K video memory you can access still stuck in the A000:0000 64K chunk but you have 4 planes so 64K*4 = 256K. And go time the out dx,ax and you will find it's at least 16X slower than doing a QUAD move to the memory map area. There's also the blitter to help out the Amiga and the Copper which allows you to get away with lesser bitplanes if you just need a couple of colors here and there.

Get your facts straight.

 

I meant on the Amiga AGA 256 colour screens you have to do 8x writes...one for each bitplane = 256 colours instead of just writing out 1 calculated byte to video memory on VGA. Whether you do it or it is a refresh by the system something somewhere needs to update 8 bitplanes to give you 256 colours. That was a serious problem which is why the CD32 had a chunky<>planar botch in the Akiko custom chip, I think it's still 2-3 slower than manipulating a true chunky pixel mode but better than what you had on the A1200 or A4000 without AKIKO.

 

Anyway enough about the poor old miggy's problems at Commodore back to the 8bits. I doubt very much comparing budget games is worth the effort, no budget game is going to be utilising the full potential of either machine because they are cheap games developed in a very short space of time, there is simply not enough time/money to devote to doing anything like the advanced coding in full price game so I don't see the point of Rockfords repeated budget crap game comparisons. Sure one might be better than the other but neither is using the machine properly and so proves very little about either machines capabilities.

[Lazarus]

I meant on the Amiga AGA 256 colour screens you have to do 8x writes...one for each bitplane = 256 colours instead of just writing out 1 calculated byte to video memory on VGA. Whether you do it or it is a refresh by the system something somewhere needs to update 8 bitplanes to give you 256 colours. That was a serious problem which is why the CD32 had a chunky<>planar botch in the Akiko custom chip, I think it's still 2-3 slower than manipulating a true chunky pixel mode but better than what you had on the A1200 or A4000 without AKIKO.

On a fast Amiga with 68030++ CPU you lose one frame. It's not that bad, but the problem was: People had to develop such stuff first and that again took years. I still remember the days when people were discussing a hell lot about chunky to planar merge speeds: "i got a merge in 24 cycles"... "hey but mine is 22 cycles" and then finally: "here's my 18 cycles merge". In the end you could play Doom on an Amiga in 386/486 speed, but it was years too late.

 

Anyway enough about the poor old miggy's problems at Commodore back to the 8bits. I doubt very much comparing budget games is worth the effort, no budget game is going to be utilising the full potential of either machine because they are cheap games developed in a very short space of time, there is simply not enough time/money to devote to doing anything like the advanced coding in full price game so I don't see the point of Rockfords repeated budget crap game comparisons. Sure one might be better than the other but neither is using the machine properly and so proves very little about either machines capabilities.

It's still some kind of benchmark. "What can be achieved with little time and money on this computer"

[ANTIQ]

Not really no, we were talking about GTIA modes for a game's play area and how the players wouldn't fit in; emkay's are just silhouettes (and there's not a fat lot you can do with those during a game since apart from anything else you'll lose them in the dark parts of the screen) and if i'm honest i was going to offer the Ballblazer intro as an example of how it doesn't work because i've always thought that was disjointed personally. Yes, it can make a pretty status bar but that's neither here nor there and, as i said, getting a hardware-based game sprite over a GTIA background where it doesn't look out of place is going to be problematic.

 

The Ballblazer players might look less different if they were blockier!

 

Alternatively, the developers could've drawn the objects in software then ORed missiles onto them to "colourise" them, changing COLPF3 as needed.

[Allas]

No, i'm thinking about it as a designer as well as a programmer; if the backgrounds are at GTIA resolution with nine colours and the sprites can only put single or three colour objects over that it's going to look wrong.

 

These were nice though:

 

 

(from Atarimania)

 

Project M's transparencies look promising too.

 

 

 

Other stufff is also possible ...

 

What demo is it? I've never seen before... I think

Edited September 24, 2009 by Allas

[Heaven/TQA]

Sticking to the point, Atari can do 1 color clock scroll in GTIA mode and it can outdo the color RAM (as example given). Now when you combine you get some more restrictions, but you always have the choice of doing part-screen scroll and have higher color content in non-scroll regions.

 

It's still at a significantly lower resolution than the C64 and requires more in the way of overheads. And without a working game to actually demonstrate the principle will work - i don't doubt it will, but i'm honestly not sure how easy it'll be to get any that looks decent within the restrictions we're discussing and unless it can be made to look good there's not even much point in trying.

 

No, i'm thinking about it as a designer as well as a programmer; if the backgrounds are at GTIA resolution with nine colours and the sprites can only put single or three colour objects over that it's going to look wrong.

 

Looks like this was already answered.

 

Not really no, we were talking about GTIA modes for a game's play area and how the players wouldn't fit in; emkay's are just silhouettes (and there's not a fat lot you can do with those during a game since apart from anything else you'll lose them in the dark parts of the screen) and if i'm honest i was going to offer the Ballblazer intro as an example of how it doesn't work because i've always thought that was disjointed personally. Yes, it can make a pretty status bar but that's neither here nor there and, as i said, getting a hardware-based game sprite over a GTIA background where it doesn't look out of place is going to be problematic.

 

Nothing subjective about it.

 

Of course there is; i'd not have called the 2600 games beatiful but you did, i'd call at least some of the C64 pictures posted in this and other comparison threads beatiful but people here would disagree. At that sort of level, it's all subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the thingummy and all that.

 

I personally found this a good example of using GTIA background + players but did we not posted that already?

 

http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?MENU=8&VERSION_ID=4730

[atariksi]

It's still at a significantly lower resolution than the C64 and requires more in the way of overheads. And without a working game to actually demonstrate the principle will work - i don't doubt it will, but i'm honestly not sure how easy it'll be to get any that looks decent within the restrictions we're discussing and unless it can be made to look good there's not even much point in trying.

...

Vague blurb makes no sense.

 

Vague blurb... which bit of that lot was vague then? To reiterate, is what you're talking about at a lower resolution than the C64? Yes. Does it require higher overheads to generate? Yes again. Despite the lack of a working game, do i think it's possible? Yes once more. Is it extremely hard to produce decent graphics when working at that low a resolution? Hell, yes. If it's going to look like crap, is there any point at all in even trying? Nope.

...

It's vague ending-- "get any that looks decent within the restrictions we're discussing...". You got what you asked for -- you are specifying more restrictions (rules) now. Yeah, it's lower resolution but that's not the restriction or pertinent to the point. Does A8 have higher CPU speed than C64-- yes. But what does that have to do with the point?

 

You wanted to 1 color clock scroll, you got it. You wanted more colors than color ram, you got it.

 

Actually, i asked about one colour clock scrolling but i didn't ask for more colours than colour RAM as such, at least if i did it wasn't at that resolutiuon.

 

You didn't specify any resolution but we were discussing GTIA modes and you indirectly asked for more colors.

 

In the example posted, you can choose which 16 shades you want where in 7 spots plus 4 missile areas in the example posted.

 

That's nice. But without looking at it (i don't have time until Friday, i'm meant to be working right now as well) i don't know how viable that is for a game screen (for example, can things move between the seven slots you're talking about without losing their colours or are they stuck in place) and that's what we were talking about here.

The seven slots can move around where there's no DMA cycle. You can also toggle to Gr.11 or Gr.10 instead of staying with Gr. 9 as in the example. I suppose that would increase the choices as Gr. 11 is more colors and no shades and Gr.10 is whatever palette you set up.

 

Don't be dumb. YOU made a subjective remark that Atari sprites were ugly.

 

For a start there's no need to be insulting and no i bloody well didn't call them ugly so stop trying to put words into my mouth.

...

 

It translates to "ugly" by saying it stands out like sore thumbs or doesn't look good. And I'm not insulting-- I'm saying don't be dumb as in don't pretend not to have said something like that.

 

I gave you reasons why they are beautiful.

 

You gave me reasons why you personally thought they were beautiful, but that and the reasons are still your subjective opinion and no amount of reasoning sets any of it in stone.

 

I don't buy your bullcrap that it's subjective. Reasoning does make it objective. If reasoning keeps things subjective, you have no business being here arguing against anything. Of course, your full of bullcrap if you think total colors available for a sprite does not have an real objective value to make them beautiful. You yourself argued about how you have more colors for your sprites than Atari does. Was that also just your subjective perspective? It doesn't matter-- because the real world is MORE beautiful with MORE colors and shades.

[dwhyte]

♪♫ This is the thread that doesn't end... Yes it goes on and on, my friend ♪♫

[atariksi]

I meant on the Amiga AGA 256 colour screens you have to do 8x writes...one for each bitplane = 256 colours instead of just writing out 1 calculated byte to video memory on VGA. Whether you do it or it is a refresh by the system something somewhere needs to update 8 bitplanes to give you 256 colours. That was a serious problem which is why the CD32 had a chunky<>planar botch in the Akiko custom chip, I think it's still 2-3 slower than manipulating a true chunky pixel mode but better than what you had on the A1200 or A4000 without AKIKO.

On a fast Amiga with 68030++ CPU you lose one frame. It's not that bad, but the problem was: People had to develop such stuff first and that again took years. I still remember the days when people were discussing a hell lot about chunky to planar merge speeds: "i got a merge in 24 cycles"... "hey but mine is 22 cycles" and then finally: "here's my 18 cycles merge". In the end you could play Doom on an Amiga in 386/486 speed, but it was years too late.

...

You're comparing and apples and oranges. Chunky to planar is a conversion software. If you were writing shapes on Amiga, you would keep them in planar format. The amount of time to write to 8 planes is more if you just write one pixel but for blocks, it takes the same time (assuming the processor speeds, memory speeds are equal). But as I stated with bitplanes you can optimize the memory useage better.

[atariksi]

...

And that's before you even consider how bad the Amiga would cope with the new 'craze' of texture mapped pseudo 3D games like Doom and Descent which ran OK on 2nd hand £400 PCs. A1200...released 1992...Doom appears...instantly AGA is obsolete even in the A4000 which costs more than any other PC for sale BUT would run Doom at best like a 16mhz 286 due to the Amigas 8 bit planes per 256 colour screen compared to the 800% faster to manipulate VGA byte per pixel screen on PCs.

I never understood that bitplane thing. It only has disadvantages.

 

...

 

Bitplanes are advantage if you want to optimize the memory useage for the colors you need to use. You always have the blitter to do the moves for you. None of the PCs of various eras (8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and now 64-bit) ever standardized on sprites so people are just relying on BitBlt() to do everything for them or rely on DirectX which is also indirect method of accessing the hardware efficiently. At least Amiga gave you full access to the hardware and at register level and you can bet it would work the same on all AGA machines or if you targetted OCS/ECS, it would still work on AGA.

 

You can also update a single bitplane and quickly put up a graphic rather than update huge chunks of data.

 

The only difference is if you are displaying something which there is no help with from the Amiga Blitter/Copper etc in 256 colours like in a Doom clone for example. The Amiga requires 8 writes to 8 bit planes the PC VGA screen requires only 1 write. That's a huge saving of time compared to the Amiga and that's before you consider that Amigas always had significanlty slower CPU speeds than the PC even since the PC-AT in the mid-late 80s with 16mhz. Sure for most 80s arcade games better to have a blitter but in the 90s everyone wanted Doom or other 3D textured games.....Doom doomed traditional hardware custom chips as on the Amiga

 

You're dead wrong. You can't do 8 writes to 8 bit planes. VGA standard only has 4 bit planes. You can organize them as 2 bits/pixel and 4 planes which is still chunky + 4 planes of them. You have to do an OUT DX,AX to set the plane using port 3c4h and index 02. So if you want to write a character on the screen 8*8, you have to keep writing to 3c4h to switch planes. There's 256K video memory you can access still stuck in the A000:0000 64K chunk but you have 4 planes so 64K*4 = 256K. And go time the out dx,ax and you will find it's at least 16X slower than doing a QUAD move to the memory map area. There's also the blitter to help out the Amiga and the Copper which allows you to get away with lesser bitplanes if you just need a couple of colors here and there.

Get your facts straight.

 

I meant on the Amiga AGA 256 colour screens you have to do 8x writes...one for each bitplane = 256 colours instead of just writing out 1 calculated byte to video memory on VGA. Whether you do it or it is a refresh by the system something somewhere needs to update 8 bitplanes to give you 256 colours. That was a serious problem which is why the CD32 had a chunky<>planar botch in the Akiko custom chip, I think it's still 2-3 slower than manipulating a true chunky pixel mode but better than what you had on the A1200 or A4000 without AKIKO.

...

But you are writing to 1 pixel to VGA in chunky, whereas with planar you can update 8-pixels in one shot or 16/32 pixels given the 16/32 680x0 architecture. As I said for buffer writes, you can optimize the memory useage to use the number of planes as needed for the image so 320*200*8 only requires a 24K buffer and less memory writes to update it.

 

Anyway enough about the poor old miggy's problems at Commodore back to the 8bits. I doubt very much comparing budget games is worth the effort, no budget game is going to be utilising the full potential of either machine because they are cheap games developed in a very short space of time, there is simply not enough time/money to devote to doing anything like the advanced coding in full price game so I don't see the point of Rockfords repeated budget crap game comparisons. Sure one might be better than the other but neither is using the machine properly and so proves very little about either machines capabilities.

 

Yeah, I'm sure there are some poor conversions from A2600 that look better and play better on A2600 than on later generation machines.

[MaPa]

No, i'm thinking about it as a designer as well as a programmer; if the backgrounds are at GTIA resolution with nine colours and the sprites can only put single or three colour objects over that it's going to look wrong.

 

These were nice though:

 

 

(from Atarimania)

 

Project M's transparencies look promising too.

 

 

 

Other stufff is also possible ...

 

What demo is it? I've never seen before... I think

 

Pokey Demo - http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=6019

[Lazarus]

You're comparing and apples and oranges. Chunky to planar is a conversion software. If you were writing shapes on Amiga, you would keep them in planar format. The amount of time to write to 8 planes is more if you just write one pixel but for blocks, it takes the same time (assuming the processor speeds, memory speeds are equal).

No I am not comparing apples to organges. Planar was a stupid decision to make. Planar ALWAYS means more action for CPU. And the smaller the object is, even the blitter will work more (but the CPU will work much more so blitter waits weren't needed).

 

But as I stated with bitplanes you can optimize the memory useage better.

No, memory usage would be exactly the same:

 

1 bitplane? 1+0 chunky!

2 bitplanes? 2+0 chunky or 1+1 chunky!

3 bitplanes? 2+1 chunky!

4 bitplanes? 2+2 chunky!

5 bitplanes? 4+1 chunky!

6 bitplanes? 4+2 chunky!

 

As I said: 2 chunky bitmap channels would have been much better than that bitplane crap.

Edited September 24, 2009 by Lazarus

[emkay]

 

The Ballblazer players might look less different if they were blockier!

 

Alternatively, the developers could've drawn the objects in software then ORed missiles onto them to "colourise" them, changing COLPF3 as needed.

 

Doing movent on the playfield and overlay the necessary plots with the transparent Missiles... and doing lineups with the players...

What a hard bread for professional coders

 

You can see it there.... Lucasfilm got a lot of money from atari, so they produced well stuff for the A8, but it was done with the experience of "supercomputer" coders, not really using the hardware in the optimal way. Doing the "next" step in using the advantages of the A8 , could have shown really jawbreaking games...

 

 

 

And, well, money also changed memories as we know from the released videos of David Fox, where he stated that the C64 version has more colours which made the fading of the Hills possible....