frenchman Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Just out of interest and not to slight JBJ because I don't know what he's done but isn't he an artist/designer/producer and not a coder? Pete Just check out this thread (way back) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Just out of interest and not to slight JBJ because I don't know what he's done but isn't he an artist/designer/producer and not a coder? Pete Just check out this thread (way back) At least give me a clue All of the stuff on his site (8 bit stuff anyway) has got other people down as coders. I know he's been a designer and producer but not seen him mention coding anything. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Meanwhile, I made this somewhat ordinary-looking ship almost three times as beautiful! Objectively! If it isn't just a joke, then that's a straw-man argument (if you know what that is). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Meanwhile, I made this somewhat ordinary-looking ship almost three times as beautiful! Objectively! And this is just plain ugly.. Objectively Ow me eyes!! And every time you drew, you were compromising the colors/shades to the restrictions you were forced to be in. Just declaring something "subjective" doesn't make it so. Some people think the earth is flat so they can also argue that it's subjective when presented with evidence to the contrary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 I don't see any C64 game coders here, wannabe coders yes, but coders no.As for A8 coders, Steve (Jetboot Jack) is highly here above all others, having published on A8, PS, CD32 Dreamcast and many other platforms. You really haven't been paying attention have you.. Here, you can borrow my glasses Funny! Those are some cool geeky glasses. In the military we would have called those "birth control" glasses! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 All I can tell you is we had many an A1000 return. Could not fix. The ST also has problems but only the loose chip thing, quite an easy fix. I have no opposition to the A1000 construction. It was light years ahead in quality. Being a close relative of A800 did not hurt either. ST loose chip issues were resolved for customers in 20 min or so. The Amiga issues.. As you said probably were software. The machine was rushed to market to attempt to compete with Atari,the early units did not have enough ram and we had people bitching about the ram upgrade..the front installed module to make it 512k.Yes Atari had to wait a month after release for TOS on Rom,but it was a fast fix and way ahead in the timeline compared to a1000. Also lots of buyers remorse having to deal with kickstart, then WB and the GURU. The A500 yes was a cost reduced machine but that did not occur for years. I personally have owned several of each model, I used it exclusivly for games. Which is fine, I really like games! The funny thing in all this is the inbred mess that was created with Atari and Commodore. You would think C64 guys would love the St and Atari Guys would love the Amiga but from a retail standpoint it did not work out that way. The name or Brand was the primary thing. Will say both camps in the day really hated MAC! Being in the EU we had to wait for PAL machines which were pretty much bug fixed/sorted. I have one with a serial number in the 2xxx range and it has the same chipset as the A500 slim Agnus with EHB 64 colour mode. My troublesome ST was taken to Compumart dealers some 100 miles away (mail order and Atari were no help) at which point the vibration of the car journey had re-seated the chips and it worked perfectly when tried there! What a nightmare that was for mail order customers but to be fair it worked very nicely with the requisite 6 inch drop onto the desk up until 1999 and then I gave it to my cousin who was 12 and interested in my Neochrome drawings all the time Anyway the A500 wasn't really delayed for EU launch so it's probably less than 1.5 years between 1000 and 500/2000 models for us in 87 It's interesting talking about the C64 successor, whilst clearly the Amiga is very much on the same sort of lines as the A8 the ST and C64 have nothing in common, probably because Shiraz Shivji had little design input into the VIC-II and SID. A real successor to the C64 would have been something with the sprite manipulating capabilities of the Sega Genesis/Megadrive or Sharp X68000 and would have had some sort of analogue synth on a chip with full ADSR and filtering and effects for each of it's say 8 channels etc but nobody made a home computer like this. The trouble is the VIC-II and SID designers left very early on and never worked for Commodore again...one of them created Ensonique the synthesizer company but either way I don't actually accept the Amiga is the spiritual successor to the C64 (soundchip gives you no control, sprites are weak and screen layout/tricks are more like A8) and neither is the ST (no sprites, basic YM soundchip off the shelf from inferior 8bit micros, no 4-way pixel scrolling registers etc). Apple's use of a sophisticated Ensonique sound chip is a hint of what may have been if Bob had not left MOS Technology. The 1991 C65 prototype has minimal VIC improvements over the 1982 C64 and only dual SIDs no new soundchip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 At least give me a clue All of the stuff on his site (8 bit stuff anyway) has got other people down as coders. I know he's been a designer and producer but not seen him mention coding anything. Pete I don't know* what he coded-only, produced-only or designed-only, but he's an all-rounder alright. *I know most, but sometimes attention's going (must visit 4chan to get those glasses) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 At least give me a clue All of the stuff on his site (8 bit stuff anyway) has got other people down as coders. I know he's been a designer and producer but not seen him mention coding anything. Pete I don't know* what he coded-only, produced-only or designed-only, but he's an all-rounder alright. *I know most, but sometimes attention's going (must visit 4chan to get those glasses) Yes, and by the same lack of exact information you don't know what I coded, produced, etc from the C64 days through to now Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 (edited) At least give me a clue All of the stuff on his site (8 bit stuff anyway) has got other people down as coders. I know he's been a designer and producer but not seen him mention coding anything. Pete I don't know* what he coded-only, produced-only or designed-only, but he's an all-rounder alright. *I know most, but sometimes attention's going (must visit 4chan to get those glasses) Yes, and by the same lack of exact information you don't know what I coded, produced, etc from the C64 days through to now Pete Exactly, and Heaven/TQA has the same lack of information about the A8 posters here. Point proven. Edited September 28, 2009 by frenchman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 (edited) At least give me a clue All of the stuff on his site (8 bit stuff anyway) has got other people down as coders. I know he's been a designer and producer but not seen him mention coding anything. Pete My potted history: I have coded in 6502 (Atari and C64), a bit of 68K (ST) - however at best I would label myself as extremely limited in my 6502 coding skills, but enough to understand what is going on (mostly), and enough to write code to support my prototyping (half basic half MC back in the day) - I've been working on a little side project for a software sprite based shooter, but given up as 48K and no real debugger has drained me! Since the late 80's I have not coded (unless you call UML/XML/LUA/PYTHON/RUBY/MEL etc stuff coding) - however I have shipped games with my art in them, designed, produced and directed over 20 published games, managed animation, design and art departments etc etc and currently I am Creative Director of a new development startup in the UK. sTeVE Edited September 28, 2009 by Jetboot Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 (edited) At least give me a clue All of the stuff on his site (8 bit stuff anyway) has got other people down as coders. I know he's been a designer and producer but not seen him mention coding anything. Pete I don't know* what he coded-only, produced-only or designed-only, but he's an all-rounder alright. *I know most, but sometimes attention's going (must visit 4chan to get those glasses) Yes, and by the same lack of exact information you don't know what I coded, produced, etc from the C64 days through to now Pete Exactly, and Heaven/TQA has the same lack of information about the A8 posters here. Point proven. What point exactly? There are no C64 game coders on here? Wrong. Or Heaven's point that it's only the non coders (apart from Atariksi) arguing? Correct (making your "point" incorrect), JBJ isn't one of the people constantly embroiled in the arguments, you've only got to read through the thread and it becomes obvious who he's talking about. Pete Edited September 28, 2009 by PeteD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Exactly, and Heaven/TQA has the same lack of information about the A8 posters here. Point proven. We-ell, that logic falls over a little; you don't actually know what Heaven knows about the A8 posters here, do you? What point exactly? There are no C64 game coders on here? Wrong. i believe the confusion comes from frenchman's definition of "coder"... i think you have to be published to qualify as a coder in frenchman's book and even if there's a cut-off point of "within the commercial lifespan of the machine" i've still got one game i coded entirely and two more where i assisted and wrote the sound effect engines to my name, so i'm a coder in frenchman's eyes - fantastic! i've got to renew my passport soon, i'm torn between putting "coder" and "journalist" under occupation now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 (edited) Most of the stuff I was working on on C64 got shelved due to the boss having this habbit of letting a game get to 75% completion then going, let's start something new. But at the very least some of my code is in Lunari (ESP/Esprit Software), check the highscore table, JCB There's also code of mine in Crystal Beacon, Search for Sharla (one of the most wanted unfinished C64 games) and various other C64 bits an pieces. Then it's on to ST/Amiga, CD-i, PC, little bits in 3D0 and Mac games, PSX, GBA, god knows what else, I did bits of code for most machines. Oh yeah, I was doing IK+ on PS2 until System 3 decided they wanted something more akin to Tekken and so that got ditched (along with Last Ninja which John Twiddy was working on at the same time). What else? Producer for EA Australia, based in UK at the company responsible for the Total War franchise as well as EA Cricket, Rugby, Ausie rules football. If you want more info then get googling cuz I can't be arsed going to the hassle of justifying me credentials to someone who has no clue. *edit* not forgetting of course all the scene stuff, demos, emulators, etc Pete Edited September 28, 2009 by PeteD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 (edited) All I can tell you is we had many an A1000 return. Could not fix. The ST also has problems but only the loose chip thing, quite an easy fix. I have no opposition to the A1000 construction. It was light years ahead in quality. Being a close relative of A800 did not hurt either. ST loose chip issues were resolved for customers in 20 min or so. The Amiga issues.. As you said probably were software. The machine was rushed to market to attempt to compete with Atari,the early units did not have enough ram and we had people bitching about the ram upgrade..the front installed module to make it 512k.Yes Atari had to wait a month after release for TOS on Rom,but it was a fast fix and way ahead in the timeline compared to a1000. Also lots of buyers remorse having to deal with kickstart, then WB and the GURU. The A500 yes was a cost reduced machine but that did not occur for years. I personally have owned several of each model, I used it exclusivly for games. Which is fine, I really like games! The funny thing in all this is the inbred mess that was created with Atari and Commodore. You would think C64 guys would love the St and Atari Guys would love the Amiga but from a retail standpoint it did not work out that way. The name or Brand was the primary thing. Will say both camps in the day really hated MAC! Being in the EU we had to wait for PAL machines which were pretty much bug fixed/sorted. I have one with a serial number in the 2xxx range and it has the same chipset as the A500 slim Agnus with EHB 64 colour mode. My troublesome ST was taken to Compumart dealers some 100 miles away (mail order and Atari were no help) at which point the vibration of the car journey had re-seated the chips and it worked perfectly when tried there! What a nightmare that was for mail order customers but to be fair it worked very nicely with the requisite 6 inch drop onto the desk up until 1999 and then I gave it to my cousin who was 12 and interested in my Neochrome drawings all the time Anyway the A500 wasn't really delayed for EU launch so it's probably less than 1.5 years between 1000 and 500/2000 models for us in 87 It's interesting talking about the C64 successor, whilst clearly the Amiga is very much on the same sort of lines as the A8 the ST and C64 have nothing in common, probably because Shiraz Shivji had little design input into the VIC-II and SID. A real successor to the C64 would have been something with the sprite manipulating capabilities of the Sega Genesis/Megadrive or Sharp X68000 and would have had some sort of analogue synth on a chip with full ADSR and filtering and effects for each of it's say 8 channels etc but nobody made a home computer like this. The trouble is the VIC-II and SID designers left very early on and never worked for Commodore again...one of them created Ensonique the synthesizer company but either way I don't actually accept the Amiga is the spiritual successor to the C64 (soundchip gives you no control, sprites are weak and screen layout/tricks are more like A8) and neither is the ST (no sprites, basic YM soundchip off the shelf from inferior 8bit micros, no 4-way pixel scrolling registers etc). Apple's use of a sophisticated Ensonique sound chip is a hint of what may have been if Bob had not left MOS Technology. The 1991 C65 prototype has minimal VIC improvements over the 1982 C64 and only dual SIDs no new soundchip. Sorry you has such a bad experience. The easy fix was to pull MMU and Glue on the ST, Stretch or edge the pins out to the edge of all 4 sides and reinstall perfectly straight. The official fix later was to put on a tension clip on the socket. Really you should do both, we did anyway.. The sign you gave tells me they did not do that as that was the symptom early on but almost entirely with 520st with external drives. The later units of 520/1040 seldom if ever had this problem. On A500 CIA and paula went bad frequently so we always kept a stock of them, easy fix also. Yes, we had the same problem with our guy Jay switching to the dark side. However who can blame him, with Jack Tramiel coming to Atari he probably thought it best to go with the deeper pockets. The whole era was a mess,but it sure was fun! Edited September 28, 2009 by atarian63 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Most of the stuff I was working on on C64 got shelved due to the boss having this habbit of letting a game get to 75% completion then going, let's start something new. But at the very least some of my code is in Lunari (ESP/Esprit Software), check the highscore table, JCB There's also code of mine in Crystal Beacon, Search for Sharla (one of the most wanted unfinished C64 games) and various other C64 bits an pieces. Then it's on to ST/Amiga, CD-i, PC, little bits in 3D0 and Mac games, PSX, GBA, god knows what else, I did bits of code for most machines. Oh yeah, I was doing IK+ on PS2 until System 3 decided they wanted something more akin to Tekken and so that got ditched (along with Last Ninja which John Twiddy was working on at the same time). What else? Producer for EA Australia, based in UK at the company responsible for the Total War franchise as well as EA Cricket, Rugby, Ausie rules football. If you want more info then get googling cuz I can't be arsed going to the hassle of justifying me credentials to someone who has no clue. *edit* not forgetting of course all the scene stuff, demos, emulators, etc Pete Seems to me you would be a good candidate for software on A8? Please! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Both ST and Amiga suffered from loose chip syndrome. My miggy case was never screwed together cuz I constantly had to poke it. A repair guy I knew used to charge £25 to fix them when people bought them into his shop. He'd take them out back, make a coffee so it seemed like he was taking a while, pick the machine up and drop it about 6-8 inches onto a rubber mat on his workbench, switch it on and 99/100 times it worked again Back out to the front of the shop to the waiting customer. £25 please. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Seems to me you would be a good candidate for software on A8? Please! It's in progress Exploding Fist is kind of 1/2 done. Software sprite routine is done and as optimised as I can make it, grabber for the sprites is done, code to emulate C64 raster splits using a timer is done. The big task is getting my background editor finished. It's kind of a G2F thing only different and it seems like every time I sit down to work on it I get sidetracked Other than that I've got another 2 games I want to port then some cross platform C64/A8 original stuff. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Seems to me you would be a good candidate for software on A8? Please! It's in progress Exploding Fist is kind of 1/2 done. Software sprite routine is done and as optimised as I can make it, grabber for the sprites is done, code to emulate C64 raster splits using a timer is done. The big task is getting my background editor finished. It's kind of a G2F thing only different and it seems like every time I sit down to work on it I get sidetracked Other than that I've got another 2 games I want to port then some cross platform C64/A8 original stuff. Pete Well, that is really cool! I want to take a moment and thank you for doing this and other things. Not being a coder but having been in the industry, I am guessing that once you have these processes in place then it is much easier to setup new games? If you decide to do cart versions I'll be happy to buy. Am a frequent buyer here and am happy to support hard works and new stuff! Thank you so much! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 i found Frenchman's post little bit unfair or at least I was wondering... when I am knowing that TMR has published games (Reaxxion f.e.), JBJ is already credited on many games at mobygames, Pete has done multiplattform stuff (I am still playing from time to time IK+ on PSone I have to admit, not ps2)... and if you enter Karolj Nadj on mobygames you might see me, too... Then there is Bryan and others... of course I do not know the rest here... but I am little bit tired of being pushed by non-coders telling me doing this, doing that... or at least draining energy by involving me in a senseless discussion... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rockford Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 (edited) Today another high budget game from the "golden era of Atari"....unbelievable...another one ???? HORROR, TERROR, DECADENCE 28 - Q*bert C64 C64 C64 The C64 version has better hi-res graphics, animation, sprites and colours. The atari version has grainy graphics in muddy colours, small and ugly sprites and works in low-res (needless to say that everything is smaller on Atari ). C64 jumps higher again. ATARI ATARI ATARI Another poll for atarian63 This game is better on C64 because : A - bad Atari programming B - it was published in 1983 (during "golden era of Atari") C - the budget was too high or too low D - it is obviously better on Atari Take your pick Edited September 28, 2009 by Rockford 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 (edited) Another poll for atarian63 This game is better on C64 because : A - bad Atari programming B - it was published in 1983 (during "golden era of Atari") C - the budget was too high or too low D - it is obviously better on Atari Take your pick Aren't you dead yet? Choice of dullard Rockford Errors a: Can't understand marketing at any point in time b: Doesn't get that 1% of the titles from that era does not his case make.. c: Needs to pull head from A__ d: All the above Edited September 28, 2009 by atarian63 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 (edited) Try another Parker Brothers.. Gyruss 1984 Smoother and better game play than the c64 version. C64 is improving at this stage but still not as good as A8 For sure as I also own this arcade machine and play it frequently. Stuff that one Rockford. Aren't you dead yet? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA1PERH9i8Q&feature=related Edited September 28, 2009 by atarian63 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 (edited) This game is better on C64 because : It's 16k whereas the atari version is 8K on ROM? The C64 version uses an undisclosed amount of the system RAM and the A8 version will work with only 8K of RAM? sTeVE Edited September 28, 2009 by Jetboot Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 (edited) next post Edited September 28, 2009 by atarian63 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 28, 2009 Share Posted September 28, 2009 Here is some c64 Dig Dug.. Eshhh@! Squished, bad colors, slow play... This is the c64 I remember Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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