atarian63 Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 Except that the PET was never designed to do anything other than display business applications on its monochrome 80-column screen. That seems irrelevant to my post - fact is the PET was the FIRST generation Commodore computer in 1977, a contemporary of the Atari 800 (1979), TRS 80 (1977) and Apple 2 (1977)... It's abilities were not in question - just that it was a machine (like those other 1977-1979 systems) that was sold to real people not electronics engineers... sTeVE Yep, that is why Atari was far and away a great machine for the generation and so good it lasted into other generations with little to no change. Others had several models going forward. It's also what Atari should have been doing. The crash sure made a mess of things (yes as well as many others inside Atari). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 8x faster? possibly more actually. For planar modes you have to load, OR a bit in (or AND it out) and store 8 times, that's 3 operations per bit, 24 operations total (excluding how you get the and/or masks to start with). chunky is a load and store to get a pixel onscreen. potentially it could be up to 20 times faster like-for-like. You are taking one specific case of planar vs. chunky. It can be faster or slower. No sense in taking the case that favors you and claim it's always inferior. And I am not arguing planar is ALWAYS superior. It has its advantages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 I'd never heard of "Dimension X", so I just loaded it up to take a look. In my own opinion, it's not as as good as Ballblazer. Yes, it plays quicker than BB, but that only seems to be because the squares on the ground are smaller. And as for being more graphically complex, yes, there are more colours but where are the boundaries, unless I missed them, it seems to go on and on. BB must have to have itself set up so that you can hit the sides on any side of the square that you're on. BB to me is a masterpiece, but everyone's opinions are welcome. Lots of UK people don't really know many USA made games, Synapse made many classics for Apple 2, A8, and C64. Or ever played any Sirius classics? eg Blade of Blackpool, Gruds in Space? Or Broderbund? Mask of the sun, The Serpent's Star, The castles of Dr Creep? Thing about Dimension X is, it has the generic A8/C64 loading instructions, and when C64 users ask for a Dimension X version for their machine, Synapse said 'sorry, can't be done, the C64 cannot cope with the speed as the A8 can. True story But don't see why Dimension X should not be possible on c64... the illusion is done via rasters... but well... maybe horizontal distortion not possible as you would need an LMS per line... but maybe via preshifting the checkboard. Some things cannot be made up for in software-- like palette, CPU speed, timing accuracy, I/O speed, etc. LMS they can probably get away with in software at cost of more CPU time. I would rather have LMS and line-based scrollability than 1/2 color clock scroll (if I can't have both). That constitutes more hardware scrolling support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 8x faster? possibly more actually. For planar modes you have to load, OR a bit in (or AND it out) and store 8 times, that's 3 operations per bit, 24 operations total (excluding how you get the and/or masks to start with). chunky is a load and store to get a pixel onscreen. potentially it could be up to 20 times faster like-for-like. Finally someone gets what I am talking about! For the rest............I was only talking about screen memory format in terms of displaying frames in Doom style games, planar is nothing but a disadvantage IN THIS CASE when after spending 10000s of cycles calculating what your next frame should look like in 256 colours the Amiga then has to mess about generating this 256 colour screen by manipulating 8 separate bit planes independently as opposed to one single 8bit value to be written somewhere to set the same single pixel. ... As far as copying data from off-screen buffers to video area, it's not going to be 800% slower. You would update one plane at a time not write to 8 planes for every pixel. Or you can do 32 pixels at a time on each plane: Move.l (a0)+,P1Ofs(a4) Move.l (a1)+,P2Ofs(a4) Move.l (a2)+,P3Ofs(a4) Move.l (a3)+,(a4)+ ;assume one plane is at 0 offset Bit planes were kept for compatability and it was cheaper to expand and clean up the original chipset than redesign it again to add completely alien screen modes like chunky pixel VGA style. AAA and other chipset prototypes do not use bitplanes except for legacy Amiga screen modes and there's a good reason why It's good that they kept backward compatibility. That's the problem in modern graphics cards-- they all have their own methods of accessing the screen and different I/O ports so you are forced to go through some API and thus not being able to take full advantage of the hardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 Some things cannot be made up for in software-- like palette, CPU speed, timing accuracy, I/O speed, etc. LMS they can probably get away with in software at cost of more CPU time. I would rather have LMS and line-based scrollability than 1/2 color clock scroll (if I can't have both). That constitutes more hardware scrolling support. LMS plus palette changing... the whole depth scrolling is created by 4 (start address plus 2 colour registers) bytes to control per scanline where the palette change happens. Without it, only LMS has to be adjusted... 2 bytes Someone should add a digi tune playing in the background Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 I 100% believe that Dimension X can be made on C64... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 I 100% believe that Dimension X can be made on C64... Agreed and dare I say might look a little better, at least as far as the "sprites" go Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 no...you can not do the quad sprites in the tunnel... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 I 100% believe that Dimension X can be made on C64... You could explain how you would manage to use the zooming tiles... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 You could explain how you would manage to use the zooming tiles... Sprites or charsets + scrolling, there's many options on the c64.. Not just one. And I think it's best to call them vertical strips because that's all they are. Oh, and the positioning would be in hi-res, not lo-res, so far smoother on the 64 as well.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 You could explain how you would manage to use the zooming tiles... Sprites or charsets + scrolling, there's many options on the c64.. Not just one. And I think it's best to call them vertical strips because that's all they are. Oh, and the positioning would be in hi-res, not lo-res, so far smoother on the 64 as well.. Sprites could be a limited solution, but, for sure not any charset solution would help. Scrolling won't help either. You have to change the content of every scanline, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 Are you talking about the floor here? The one like Ballblazer on the C64 does? Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 (edited) Sprites could be a limited solution, but, for sure not any charset solution would help. Scrolling won't help either. You have to change the content of every scanline, too. No.. Sprites would be a full solution.. No.. Charsets are part of a solution.. And of course I meant changing the scrolling on every line you buffoon.. You know full well what I meant, at least I sincerely hope you do or all hope is lost.. Edited September 24, 2009 by andym00 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 Are you talking about the floor here? The one like Ballblazer on the C64 does? Pete Compare the framerate... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 What's the framerate got to do with it? C64 can easily dump a screen of chars per frame. You precalc the charsets and screen layouts needed for the vertical strips, change them when you move left/right and use raster interrupts to change the colours so no need for complex chars. 50fps. It will "move" as fast as you want it then by changing the rasters or the charsets faster. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rockford Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 (edited) More Lame examples post atari peak. Worthless 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. OK then, today another high budget game from the "golden era of Atari" 24 - SUPER ZAXXON C64 C64 C64 The C64 version has better sound, graphics, sprites, handling more colours and plays more smoothly. The poor atari version works in lower resolution and plays slow and jerky (even though the play area is much smaller ). C64 proves its superiority again. ATARI ATARI ATARI Edited September 24, 2009 by Rockford 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 I 100% believe that Dimension X can be made on C64... I see a few versions of DimensionX floating around-- which company made the game and when? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 I 100% believe that Dimension X can be made on C64... Maybe now with the greatly improved programming skills that exist but at the time it may have been much harder also from a marketing standpoint C64 was not dominant yet.. That's the issue with comparing, lots of factors and timing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 More Lame examples post atari peak. Worthless 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. OK then, today another high budget game from the "golden era of Atari" 24 - SUPER ZAXXON C64 C64 C64 The C64 version has better sound, graphics, sprites, handling more colours and plays more smoothly. The poor atari version works in lower resolution and plays slow and jerky (even though the play area is much smaller ). C64 proves its superiority again. ATARI ATARI ATARI not many examples like that from that time period. Must have had a love for C64. in 83 there were hardly any c64's out there out there. As you very well know there are are LOTS of examples of the opposite. Good job finding one though. You are determined Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 I 100% believe that Dimension X can be made on C64... I see a few versions of DimensionX floating around-- which company made the game and when? Synapse 1984, try some of their other titles as well! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 More Lame examples post atari peak. Worthless 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. OK then, today another high budget game from the "golden era of Atari" 24 - SUPER ZAXXON C64 C64 C64 The C64 version has better sound, graphics, sprites, handling more colours and plays more smoothly. The poor atari version works in lower resolution and plays slow and jerky (even though the play area is much smaller ). C64 proves its superiority again. ATARI ATARI ATARI Haha Rockford! You're getting good at this:) Only problem is, you are starting to make our little machine look bad. I wonder how long it took the coder to create that STUNNING title screen for the Atari version? I guess I shouldn't complain - at least he used 3 different text modes on a single screen. Top notch stuff I tell ya. Keep em coming though, I love watching people's reactions. Stephen Anderson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 (edited) Pharoah's Curse 1983 Atari Check lemon 64 the c64 version has poor poor color and just is a weaker version. Edited September 24, 2009 by atarian63 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 I 100% believe that Dimension X can be made on C64... Maybe now with the greatly improved programming skills that exist but at the time it may have been much harder also from a marketing standpoint C64 was not dominant yet.. That's the issue with comparing, lots of factors and timing. Things get not as easy as they might look. Ofcourse one could define different charsets, but have you seen different charsets every scanline without the reading of them, causing another badline with the vic? Or, reusing Sprites... it is the same, causing additional DMA reads... I wonder where the coder may find the needed cycles for managing the independent horizontal movement every scanline then. BTW... Ballblazer is horrible on the C64... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 I 100% believe that Dimension X can be made on C64... Maybe now with the greatly improved programming skills that exist but at the time it may have been much harder also from a marketing standpoint C64 was not dominant yet.. That's the issue with comparing, lots of factors and timing. Things get not as easy as they might look. Ofcourse one could define different charsets, but have you seen different charsets every scanline without the reading of them, causing another badline with the vic? Or, reusing Sprites... it is the same, causing additional DMA reads... I wonder where the coder may find the needed cycles for managing the independent horizontal movement every scanline then. BTW... Ballblazer is horrible on the C64... I don't think there's any need for any kind of badline trickery etc, just a series of chars some solid some 1/2 and 1/2 etc. You may have to bank switch or dump the chars into a bank when needed but it's like 8 or 9 charlines high so say you had 8 different charsets for the x movement even in bitmap mode that's only 20k and a lot of those chars are either solid or repeated. Like I say you just precalc them on PC or on the C64 or something and then use some code to check for repetitions and strip them out, build up a "frame" of chars (320 bytes if you say it's 8 charlines high) then you dump those to the screen each frame for the X movement. There are other ways to do it, using say the actual charset pointer swapping (no need for badlines or anything for that either) but the above is the way I'd tackle it as a first go. It's a fairly memory hungry method but I reckon you could squeeze the chars into 12k max. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 24, 2009 Share Posted September 24, 2009 There are other ways to do it, using say the actual charset pointer swapping (no need for badlines or anything for that either) but the above is the way I'd tackle it as a first go. It's a fairly memory hungry method but I reckon you could squeeze the chars into 12k max. Charset pointer setting does not help, either you get a badline every scanline or you get 8 lines of a fixed charset. How to do the spread and shrink effect that is needed to have the depth then? Have a look at Ballblazer on the C64. The only cause for using the interlaced movement is the "badline" or something else that prevents from doing the needed calculations on the needed place... And, well, Dimension X is even more complex with this, and still only needs 4 registers to actuate per scanline on the A8. Possibly it needs only 2 registers for the whole "depth scrolling"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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