Atari v Commodore

[atarian63]

Congo Bongo again an early full price title from well paid programmers for both systems. Here we go.

 

C64 title screen

 

C64 in game screenshot

 

 

A8 title screen

 

A8 same level.

 

Tears of laughter are streaming down my face as I try and handle the irony of the 256 colour palette producing such nuclear fallout levels of colour burning my eyes!

 

Anyway for the blind and deaf here we go...the tunes and sound effects on the C64 are just awesome, the 16 colour graphics beautiful and the animation superb. All four levels of the arcade are included so nothing missing. This is the best home conversion of Congo Bongo ever produced. Then we have the Atari A8 version which gives you eye cancer, makes your ears bleed and the graphics animation looks about ZX81 quality or Mattel Intellivision.

 

Yet again a full price A8 game in 1983 written for both by companies with plenty of experience and buckloads of money to pay talented programmers to do both and this is what they come up with.

 

The title screen says it all and it's downhill all the way from there baby yeehaaaaaaa.

Same company as Zaxxon, those morons did not know how to program for Atari, probably took you awhile to find a title from that era that looked better than a8

[atariksi]

I gave the general formula how to avoid jitter. You can modify that code in the idle loop so as long as divides evenly into the cycles remaining. And those cycles remaining can be modified as well if you need a more divisible dividend by tacking on some instructions to the VBI.

But things like that are not possible to do in real programs. You cannot just make your main program "dividable by 17" everywhere under all conditions whatever user input it gets and whatever it has to do. It's just something which is such a weird abstract method that it's simply not possible for a human being to do in a program which exceeds your demo routine size. And btw: The same can easily be done on C64 too because it has the exact same conditions: Timer IRQ/NMI at a certain raster position, same CPU.

 

It doesn't have the same conditions-- that's what was discussed. You end up with more overhead to resync on C64.

[atarian63]

This is more the c64 I recall..

Edited September 26, 2009 by atarian63

[atarian63]

This is more the 1983 C64 I recall...

[atarian63]

Or this.. LMAO Galaga c64.. this is why I wondered how this thing ever took off with really no library and poor starting software.

[atarian63]

mm this is a hot one too..

c64

[atarian63]

c64

[atarian63]

c64 1983

[Lazarus]

You haven't established the cream of programmers know more than me first of all and second of all that's irrelevant to the FACT that there are advantages to the planar mode.

Atleast I can't think of any advantage over chunky dual playfield.

 

YOU don't read or DON'T understand that some stupid game like DOOM is no reason to convert the entire hardware to CHUNKY at more expense and/or less compatibility with existing hardware. I forget, you are the one who has all those commodore machines that are incompatible with each other and prefer the Amigas were the same. Doom (the game) did not spell the doom of Amiga nor it's chipset as you speculate. If someone were targetting the game originally on Amiga chipset, he could have done similar 3D stuff and it would have been harder to port to CHUNKY architecture. As I told you before, get your facts straight.

Doom is just "the symbol" of Amiga failing because of no chunky mode. There were chunky based games before and a hell lot after Doom. Some games which required chunky mode and were earlier than Doom: Ultima Underworld, Wolfenstein 3D, Comanche. I personally bought my P133 back in the days just to play Duke Nukem 3D, and I know a lot of people who switched from Amiga to PC just because of games like Doom, Descent, Duke3D.

[atariksi]

Which of course the C64 isn't actually doing... For the character based screens used in all but one of the games i mentioned, the badlines fetch screen data in the same way the A8 does for the five colur character-based modes being used, less in fact if the A8 has to fetch more bytes because it's scrolling horizontally. The odd game out from my list as far as the C64 is concerned was BMX Simulator, which runs a bitmapped screen for both versions and the C64 is still only taking that same 40 cycles of DMA every eighth scanline, what is the A8 doing?

Good, if A8 is in a 5-color text mode that has 40+ wasted cycles, then the comparison is more even although it probably needs to burn a few more to really make it fair.

 

Thing is, at the C64 end i'm perfectly happy to let you have the forty cycles of interrupt time you were wanting every eighth scanline; apart from anything else, you still haven't said how you're planning to do anything useful with it...

...

It's used in many games-- just look at Hero. It uses DLI for making very colorful sprites and screens (256 screens as I recall). And there were examples given which were 160*200*4 instead of 160*200*5.

 

It was an assumption because i'd never seen it done; when you explained how the theory works i accepted it despite no working examples and after that point was concerned with how a game using it would look from amongst other things a design perspective. And again, still a moot point because we were talking character modes and you brought up the GTIA, taking us off at a tangent.

You yourself was doubting and now you are blaming me for going off tangent. I can talk about GTIA or GPRIOR 0 easily.

 

No, the tangent was moving away from five colour character-based mode in the first place since we were comparing existing games, once that had happened i found the tangent interesting (who knows, i might actually see if i can get around the sprites standing out, i've had a couple of ideas but i'm not sure they'll work yet) but it still bore no relation to what we were previously discussing. GPRIOR 0 is in a similar boat, the games in question weren't using it so it's not directly related, regardless of how interesting that tangent could be.

...

That's not a tangent to talk about GPRIOR 0 or GTIA if the game can be done in those modes. Otherwise, you have 160*200*4 w/DLIs or 160*200*5 w/perhaps less DLI useage.

 

No, it's also constituting ugly in your interpretation as well.

 

What interpretation? i was using dictionary definitions like you said to and there's nothing to connect the phrases i used directly or otherwise to the word "ugly".

...

Here's the first definition in my dictionary: UGLY- displeasing to the senses. So if it looks wrong or sticks out like a sore thumb that's only because it's displeasing to the senses so the word UGLY applies.

 

And here we go again with that Chewbacca defence garbage...

It's not AGAIN. It *IS* Chewbacca defense and everytime I stated it before it *WAS* Chewbacca defense.

 

The Chewbacca defense is offering up totally irrelevant facts in order to confuse before using that confusion to your advantage; since i didn't introduce anything irrelevant (unless talking about things that may or may not be beautiful when discussing beauty is somehow going off topic, which it isn't of course), i haven't gone anywhere near the Chewbacca defense.

 

It doesn't have to be facts irrelevant to the point-- it can also be just bullcrap. Your example of dead carcasses is not applicable to my point that more colors and more shades make the world more beatiful. If the whole world was made with C64 palette (god forbid) as compared to what it is now with infinite gradiences, the latter is more beautiful.

 

On the other hand, since you've essentially introduced the Chewbacca defense in an attempt to deliberately confuse things, you're using the Chewbacca defense... oh the irony!

No, I know perfectly well that your example is irrelevant to the point I made and I used the A2600 racing cars as an example. In your example, if that scene was done with C64 palette vs. a bigger palette the latter is more beautiful.

 

More colors and more shades does make things more beautiful even in your example. You can have a beautiful garbage can or carcass with more colors/shades and an ugly one if you just had purple, yellow, and orange. Your example does not refute that having more colors/shades available does make the objects more beautiful.

 

My point has always been that beauty is subjective, so what is a beautiful rubbish bin to you isn't necessarily going to be for me or indeed anyone else, regardless of how colourful it is or whatever justifications you believe you can offer;

...

You are not getting the point. It's the same image-- if done with availability of more colors and shades it increases its beauty.

 

[there are works of art that are essentially monochrome that some people consider beautiful, others see it in black and white photography. Dances can be described as beautiful without the performers wearing overly colourful clothing, the skills exhibited by sportsmen have been described as some observers in a similar way. And i'll mention it again, the saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is well used enough to be offered as proof and it's not possible to get any more subjective than that.

...

If you had the same artist paint the Mona Lisa with C64 palette and the same artist paint it with true color, the latter is more beautiful. (period). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder does not apply to comparing two of the same image-- one done with inferior palette and one with bigger palette. Again, that quote "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is Chewbacca defense (perhaps you did it unknowingly).

 

>And whilst we're still talking about dictionary definitions, you might want to look up the words garish ("crudely or tastelessly colorful") or gaudy ("that which is gaudy challenges the eye, as by brilliant colors"), the existence of which demonstrate that having more colour isn't always a good thing generally.

 

NO, in general more colors and more shades is good but there may be some exceptions. Perhaps, VGA should have incorporated the C64 palette since it's all subjective anyway! Just like if I say "I think the sun rises in the West"-- it does not correspond to objective reality similarly saying that more colors in general is not a good thing does not correspond to objective reality.

[atarian63]

c64 1983 by commodore for their own machine!

[Lazarus]

c64 1983

1983-1984 are years which don't matter much to C64 people. The time of the C64 was 1985-1989, just the time when the C64 games got good and Atari sales dropped.

[atariksi]

Congo Bongo again an early full price title from well paid programmers for both systems. Here we go.

 

C64 title screen

 

C64 in game screenshot

 

 

A8 title screen

 

A8 same level.

 

Tears of laughter are streaming down my face as I try and handle the irony of the 256 colour palette producing such nuclear fallout levels of colour burning my eyes!

 

Anyway for the blind and deaf here we go...the tunes and sound effects on the C64 are just awesome, the 16 colour graphics beautiful and the animation superb. All four levels of the arcade are included so nothing missing. This is the best home conversion of Congo Bongo ever produced. Then we have the Atari A8 version which gives you eye cancer, makes your ears bleed and the graphics animation looks about ZX81 quality or Mattel Intellivision.

 

Yet again a full price A8 game in 1983 written for both by companies with plenty of experience and buckloads of money to pay talented programmers to do both and this is what they come up with.

 

The title screen says it all and it's downhill all the way from there baby yeehaaaaaaa.

Same company as Zaxxon, those morons did not know how to program for Atari, probably took you awhile to find a title from that era that looked better than a8

 

Definitely can see the lack of effort in the title screen. Perhaps, it was easier to just re-use the C64 stuff where possible and do a quick job on parts where it can't be re-used.

[atarian63]

c64 1983

1983-1984 are years which don't matter much to C64 people. The time of the C64 was 1985-1989, just the time when the C64 games got good and Atari sales dropped.

those are the years Atari was excellent, after 84 publishers "forgot" how to do Atari games well though they had been much better in the past.I could say 85-90 are yaers that bdon't matter much to atari people. 82 and 83 c64 wasn't even close to Atari 8. That is my point of these silly comparisons.

[atariksi]

40 cycles minus of course, what is it, 6 in and 6 out before even pushing/popping/ack-ing

 

i wouldn't be duly worried if those cycles weren't even counted... =-)

 

40 cycles on C64 is more cycles on A8 anyway. And DLIs usually do their work in HBlanking (<=34 cycles).

[atariksi]

Does the C64 have anything like a bank switching ROM cartridge like we see on the Atari 8-bit? That is one thing that is strong on the Atari 8-bit with doing 32k, 64k, and 128k carts with an 8k or 16k window. Some of the more memory intensive games probably be hard to do on the Commodore 64. My Tempest Xtreem and Dark Chambers would be good examples. On way around it is have portions loaded from a disk, but that is much slower.

 

What's the cost per cartridge on the A8 for the 128K cartridges (assuming you do a run of 100)?

 

I would think flash ram based cartridges would be cheaper and hold more.

 

$15 to $20, depending on how much I do in one bulk. We (Atlantis Games Group) are going over to AtariMax carts that are 128k and there is another type that is one megabyte (1024k). We were at first using XEGS supercarts, but those are harder to flash and had to outsource some of the work.

 

Having lots of memory that can be bank switched in and out allows anyone to make a major game. Those would be games that have lots of levels and need to access lots of data. You can use disks, but that is much slower. I am alittle surprised that it was not common on the Commodore 64. Like I said using cartridges is much faster and harder to pirate.

 

Still a bit high for general distribution unless you do it for fun. I mean I am still better off with making the custom PC interface cable and using the PC's memory and hard drive for Atari's data/code.

[atariksi]

Well if we think cartridges were not doing so well in the mid 1980s, it was not Atari or Commodore that took over the game market, it was Nintendo. That was why Atari started manufacturing 64k and 128k carts for the XEGS&7800 in attempt to compete with Nintendo 8. But by the time Atari had it ready to market, Sega came onto the market with the Genesis. So they were going nowhere fast.

 

The other main thing are cartridges load, access and transfer data at the internal speed of the computer. Where things happen almost instant with a cartridge based game, it will take many seconds with a disk based game. You know I am talking about games that cannot be crammed into 64k with lots of fonts, backgrounds, sprites, sound tracks, sound effects, etc.

 

But the NES didn't hit the market until '86, and I didn't really pay the thing any attention..

 

...

 

I didn't pay much attention to it either. One thing good about C64 and A8 is the DB9-based digital joysticks give much better control and easier to use than all these NES and SNES and N64 controllers. I think you have to read the manual to learn how to use the controllers and the little keypads don't provide as much control. And the later generation ones with 10+ buttons really suck. Games are suppose to be easy to use so kids can play them as well. I wouldn't be surprised, if they put an entire keyboard on one of those joysticks in the future.

 

Enemy approaching-- duck! Oh, crap that was the Z button not A! Then you have these stupid games that employ all those buttons so you can't tell what the hell you did that you can reverse.

[Lazarus]

those are the years Atari was excellent, after 84 publishers "forgot" how to do Atari games well though they had been much better in the past.I could say 85-90 are yaers that bdon't matter much to atari people. 82 and 83 c64 wasn't even close to Atari 8. That is my point of these silly comparisons.

Ofcourse. The C64 was just new, the games library was just started and nobody had yet understood it's advantages and many people just ported games over from Atari, TI99 and Apple2. It just takes a bit time until developers understand a machine. That's why later games on any platforms are always the better ones from a technical point of view. The early C64 games are not really C64 games. They are just games from other platforms in disguise.

[atariksi]

...

Tears of laughter are streaming down my face as I try and handle the irony of the 256 colour palette producing such nuclear fallout levels of colour burning my eyes!

...

Because you chose the colors. They are different on the real version as well as other snapshots given by others.

 

By the way, VGA also used planar modes and still does when your vga driver bombs out, it goes back to standard VGA which is 640*480*16 planar. However, I don't think they use the trick of updating one plane for their notepad while maintaining a 16 color display.

 

>The title screen says it all and it's downhill all the way from there baby yeehaaaaaaa.

 

Another speculative drivel that does not follow any laws of rationality.

[analmux]

This is more the c64 I recall..

Me too

 

The C64 has indeed a huge software library. I'm not sure how much but wasn't it at least 10 times larger than the A8 library? But the percentage of 'quality' games seems much much lower.

 

I have nearly 100 of old 5.25'' floppies with C64 games at home. 99% of it is filled with this (and pics in 8930,8931,8932,8933,8936) kind of stuff.

Edited September 26, 2009 by analmux

[analmux]

Let's look at Hardball...Not very colourful or even the correct colours for a 256 colour palette This clearly shows the limited colour resolution of the A8 160x200 screen mode compared to the superior flexibility of the C64s 16 colours @ 160x200. 3 colours for the grass alone not bad for neon eye cancer inducing 16 colours only eh?

So, despite the fact that the A8 has nearly 32 different greens, it's the fault of the A8's colour resolution that the grass is not green enough? It has nothing to do with the choice of the programmers? ....the programmers had more choice, choosing a 'right' green out of the A8's palette. So, maybe it was their taste.

[popmilo]

@Congo bongo:

 

You can find both C64 versions and compare them here:

 

http://c64.hardwired.hu/

 

Game could have been better on A8, shame they converted the shitty one....

[TMR]

It's used in many games-- just look at Hero. It uses DLI for making very colorful sprites and screens (256 screens as I recall).

 

It divides the background into fixed coloured bands whilst the C64 colour RAM can change things on a character by character basis vertically and horizontally. Whilst it may improve things generally (and that isn't guaranteed, Draconus or Zybex won't work particularly well if the colour is split because their software sprites'll change as they pass through the bands) it won't replicate what the C64 is doing in the list of games we're talking about.

 

And there were examples given which were 160*200*4 instead of 160*200*5.

 

In those cases, just BMX Simulator if memory serves (since both Zybex and Draconus run at 160*100*4) and the A8 is using a bitmapped mode rather than characters - i did ask what overhead using bitmaps places on the A8 DMA previously, but you didn't answer...?

 

That's not a tangent to talk about GPRIOR 0 or GTIA if the game can be done in those modes.

 

It is within a thread that is meant to be a comparison of exisiting games on both platforms.

 

Here's the first definition in my dictionary: UGLY- displeasing to the senses. So if it looks wrong or sticks out like a sore thumb that's only because it's displeasing to the senses so the word UGLY applies.

 

And it wasn't your dictionary equating something looking wrong or sticking out to actually being displeasing at all, you're making that leap by yourself (despite me repeatedly saying that wasn't the implication on my part, an orange in a box of bananas isn't displeasing to the senses either especially if you like oranges... and now i'm hungry!) so again it's your misinterpretation rather than anything else.

 

Your example of dead carcasses

 

Unless you're reading "the carcass of a purple leather sofa" and believing that said sofa to have been alive at some point (in which case, get help... seriously!) i've never referred to a dead anything in this context - so that basically means i have to say something about how you're not reading what i've written properly, doesn't it...

 

If you had the same artist paint the Mona Lisa with C64 palette and the same artist paint it with true color, the latter is more beautiful. (period).

 

And since we're discussing beauty in general terms and not about the C64 or indeed A8 palette at this point you're using the Chewbacca defense by introducing it in an attempt to confuse matters. Who knows though, since it's all just theoretical the Mona Lisa might end up being more beautiful in the C64 palette since the resolution of a painting is higher than either the C64 or A8 can manage and we're talking about a truly exceptional artist.

 

NO, in general more colors and more shades is good but there may be some exceptions.

 

And now you're trying to change your argument; previously the addition of more colours automatically equated to more beauty and now there are "some exceptions"... except of course there are a huge number of exceptions (people don't go around inventing words for a situation that almost never happens, at least not multiple words) and to a degree it's down to the individual viewer as to where. Again, beauty is subjective, in the eye of the beholder, etc.

[TMR]

The C64 has indeed a huge software library. I'm not sure how much but wasn't it at least 10 times larger than the A8 library? But the percentage of 'quality' games seems much much lower.

 

I have nearly 100 of old 5.25'' floppies with C64 games at home. 99% of it is filled with this (and pics in 8930,8931,8932,8933,8936) kind of stuff.

 

That's a good point actually, with a hundred disks you're barely scratching the surface with the C64 and it's harder to get an overall "feel" with three or four random screenshots from one year as well, especially if said year has over 1,500 games released.

[Heaven/TQA]

you know what I realised?

 

that most of the time (99%) non-coders on a8 side (except Atariski) are arguing against coders esp. game coders on the commie side...

 

if the A8 side would be dead right I am wondering why Tezz, Miker, Fandal, XXL, Candle, Wrathchild, Pete, Analmux, MaPa, Raster etc are not responding in that way these non-coders do?