frenchman Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 Yes, I know that there are some really unknowledgeable people working for that mag And you have no idea if i'm "really unknowledgeable", Well judging by some of your replies so far..... Ah, so you feel that because i dared to disagree with you that makes me "really unknowledgeable"... not much ego going on there, then. Not just those unknowledgeable replies you gave me, but in general, towards others. As for my ego, I know, isn't it swell? seems fine to me! Many thanks 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rockford Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 Yes, i know it's a UK magazine... i've been writing for them since issue 51, it's sort of hard to avoid noticing after about eighteen months. =-) Yes, I know that there are some really unknowledgeable people working for that mag And you have no idea if i'm "really unknowledgeable", Well judging by some of your replies so far..... but if you are one of the few knowledgeable contributors to RG, glad to hear it. Well, if TMR is "unknowledgeable", then frenchman got lost somewhere in the way between the stage of embryo and suckling. ...and outsmarts you by a long shot Yeaaah, teach me again about "digitalize" ROTFL If you still have trouble spelling, can't help you man. Blame it on the dictionary or your illiteracy. LOL http://www.thefreedictionary.com/digitalize Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 Yes, i know it's a UK magazine... i've been writing for them since issue 51, it's sort of hard to avoid noticing after about eighteen months. =-) Yes, I know that there are some really unknowledgeable people working for that mag And you have no idea if i'm "really unknowledgeable", Well judging by some of your replies so far..... but if you are one of the few knowledgeable contributors to RG, glad to hear it. Well, if TMR is "unknowledgeable", then frenchman got lost somewhere in the way between the stage of embryo and suckling. ...and outsmarts you by a long shot Yeaaah, teach me again about "digitalize" ROTFL If you still have trouble spelling, can't help you man. Blame it on the dictionary or your illiteracy. LOL http://www.thefreedictionary.com/digitalize If you still have trouble spelling, can't help you man. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 (edited) Today another classic copyrighted by Atari !!! as always especially for number 63 ATARI ATARI ATARI Hey atarian63, what happened this time ? I love you, if only for the classical Atari early 80s green screen nonsense that is Gauntlet 8 bit that you present to the world Supreme example of what you can do with 256 shades of green, and not a solid colour between the.. Edited October 6, 2009 by andym00 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analmux Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 [Reply on post 9917: Wooaaa, that was a long one, and still not 100% sure if I understand it all correctly] ...Yes, and just by storing the collision results at the end of each displayed sprite (coincidently the time we load the next sprite) we're only seeing collisions that have happened since the last sprite was started, resulting in a known number of bits in the collision register being of interest, specifically those X bits to the left (or right) of us.. And maintaining the eor'd version in the next interrupt, you can at any point, check the number of multiple collisions with one lookup, and (as in 99% of cases) if there's one, then it's a lookup and a load to get the collision result.. In this case it's faster since we only have to process only one byte of information.. If there's multiple collisions we have to process more (but in these cases it's more passes of the same data stepping back by one in the array to resolve it).. Now, onto the downer.. I found (even on the A8) having all the collision registers packed into one, led to a faster collision resolve.. But that's not counting the additional cycles spent reading those registers, which isn't insignificant.. With 64 sprites, you're looking at per sprites reading 4 registers storing them, and clearing the collision register, so minimum of ~36 cycles (versus 8 on 64).. And that's assuming you're only interested in Player to Player collisions, you throw the Missile to Player collision registers in there as well (for a total of 8 moving objects) and you're expending ~68 cycles just to read your collision registers each time.. My point is this.. With 64 sprites (only player to player collision), you've got an instant cost of nearly ~2300 cycles which is just the data moving cost of your collision registers before you've even started to process them.. On the 64 it's more like ~512 cycles.. You're ignoring the fact that every data move on this pissy little processor costs us, and some techniques don't scale well.. Having collision registers like you have is great, but there's times when they're not the best solution..... First of all, of course you're right, given the situation you describe. But, isn't it a highly theoretical situation, when we have say 64 sprites onscreen and we need to check all of them if they collided with one another? (be it in groups of 8, because of the 8-per-scanline-limit). And if so, then of course the VIC-II wins, when we're just looking at used CPU time. However, in many situations, we have a player and an army of enemies. Most of the time we don't care if, say enemy 45, collided with enemy 57. OK, if we have just 8, I think it makes more difference when there were multiple collisions. Maybe sprite 0 is the player, 1&2 are some bullets, 3-7 are enemies. Then f.e. 1&6 and 0&4 could be a real situation. One enemy dies, and the player dies. Now suppose we have 1 player, 6 bullets, and the rest of them (57) are enemies (enemy bullets also count as an enemy). Then we can simply ignore a 57 * 57 collision table, can't we? And what IF we wouldn't ignore that. Say, we need to check a 57*57 collision table. Some games (see a simple one: Super Mario Bros.) have interaction between enemies, be it a simple bounce. Then, IF we see an enemy2enemy collision took place, we'd need to execute logic after that, to simulate the effect. Well, the collision of 57*57 isn't the most work for the CPU then. And, seeing the world through Atari-eyes: 64 PM objects is already much. Just only moving all the data around is an enormous task. By the time the 64th has finished drawing, all frame time is up. So, in this situation an atari coder would already have made the step from using PM to software sprites (in many cases). At least using character-clusters, see f.e. Dropzone, then the CPU load will be less. When using f.e. Antic 4 with some charclusters, we could make the switch to player2playfield collision. We could stick to one of the 4 bitpairs to trigger some action, after collision took place. That's really another advantage of the GTIA, we could check collision between players/missiles and PF0-3 separately. There's no way to solve this on C64. We could choose between different bitpairs to trigger a different action....f.e. PF0 is an enemy, PF1 is a powerup, PF2&3: IGNORE (!). ...You then decided I was being too specific.. Obviously there's scenarios where the A8 collision is better, in fact most simple uses of them it's better.. But forgive me I'm wrong but we're not talking about simple uses are we ?... I'm sorry, but to me it wasn't clear we were talking about a specific usage. Someone (save2600) just said in general C64 sprite collision is better. That's not really the case. My original post on that was a reply on save2600's post. So, I'm not sure how you interpreted we were talking about 64+ sprite multiplexers. If you're implementing wacky PRIOR modes, the underlayed/overlayed sprites won't necessarily contain the collision shape you're interested in because of graphical shortcomings That's a very universal statement, as if it has only disadvantages. The feature could also be used as an advantage. For example, how many games were published where the protagonist had to kill a large final boss, by hitting him at some specific place? I played many. However, don't get it all personal, but in a sense you're trying to turn an advantage into a disadvantage. We could compare it to C64's colour features. Almost every C64 user visiting this thread makes the statement "colourcells is superior", or at least start laughing when an A8 user doesn't see that, or doesn't want to see that . However, when scrolling you need to move twice as much data. And that's only in the present days, when VSP scrolling is there. There's however only a handful of games making use of that. Many of the older ones use double buffers, for playfield and colourcell field, and all the char-tiles/colour-tiles needed to be shifted by CPU. No wonder Turrican II didn't have enough cpu time for in-game music (except for the flying levels), and the scrolling isn't even 50, but 25 fps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rockford Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 Yes, i know it's a UK magazine... i've been writing for them since issue 51, it's sort of hard to avoid noticing after about eighteen months. =-) Yes, I know that there are some really unknowledgeable people working for that mag And you have no idea if i'm "really unknowledgeable", Well judging by some of your replies so far..... but if you are one of the few knowledgeable contributors to RG, glad to hear it. Well, if TMR is "unknowledgeable", then frenchman got lost somewhere in the way between the stage of embryo and suckling. ...and outsmarts you by a long shot Yeaaah, teach me again about "digitalize" ROTFL If you still have trouble spelling, can't help you man. Blame it on the dictionary or your illiteracy. LOL http://www.thefreedictionary.com/digitalize If you still have trouble spelling, can't help you man. Some patients constantly repeat the same phrase or sentence. Establishing a definitive diagnosis can be very difficult as patients can appear normal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rockford Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 Today another classic copyrighted by Atari !!! as always especially for number 63 ATARI ATARI ATARI Hey atarian63, what happened this time ? I love you, if only for the classical Atari early 80s green screen nonsense that is Gauntlet 8 bit that you present to the world Supreme example of what you can do with 256 shades of green, and not a solid colour between the.. There will be more of that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
analmux Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 ...Some patients constantly repeat the same phrase or sentence. Establishing a definitive diagnosis can be very difficult as patients can appear normal. Some doctors visit Atari forums. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 (edited) Some patients constantly repeat the same phrase or sentence. Establishing a definitive diagnosis can be very difficult as patients can appear normal. Whilst others use the same emotions over and over and over.....etc. Difficult to cure, some even say beyond help. Edited October 6, 2009 by frenchman 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 Too drunk too reply right now, but you're going to love tomorrow mornings reply to all of this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 ...Some patients constantly repeat the same phrase or sentence. Establishing a definitive diagnosis can be very difficult as patients can appear normal. Some doctors visit Atari forums. And some Ataris visit doctors.. "Doctor doctor, I want to be a C64 when I grow up" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 If you still have trouble spelling, can't help you man. Some patients constantly repeat the same phrase or sentence. Establishing a definitive diagnosis can be very difficult as patients can appear normal. Whilst others use the same emotions over and over and over.....etc. Difficult to cure. Failure to quote properly is punishable by a life sentence of Aquarius use.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 (edited) If you still have trouble spelling, can't help you man. Some patients constantly repeat the same phrase or sentence. Establishing a definitive diagnosis can be very difficult as patients can appear normal. Whilst others use the same emotions over and over and over.....etc. Difficult to cure. Failure to quote properly is punishable by a life sentence of Aquarius use.. well, don't do it again you have been warned (anyway, fixed, I'm only little you know) Edited October 6, 2009 by frenchman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andym00 Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 If you still have trouble spelling, can't help you man. Some patients constantly repeat the same phrase or sentence. Establishing a definitive diagnosis can be very difficult as patients can appear normal. Whilst others use the same emotions over and over and over.....etc. Difficult to cure. Failure to quote properly is punishable by a life sentence of Aquarius use.. well, don't do it again you have been warned You started it with your misquoting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 (edited) You started it with your misquoting I leave misquoting to C64ers. Edited October 6, 2009 by frenchman 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 (edited) ...Some patients constantly repeat the same phrase or sentence. Establishing a definitive diagnosis can be very difficult as patients can appear normal. Some doctors visit Atari forums. And some Ataris visit doctors.. "Doctor doctor, I want to be a C64 when I grow up" Doctor replies 'why become a BMW 3 series when you are already a Porsche'. Edited October 6, 2009 by frenchman 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 (edited) Some patients constantly repeat the same phrase or sentence. Establishing a definitive diagnosis can be very difficult as patients can appear normal. Whilst others use the same emotions over and over and over.....etc. Difficult to cure, some even say beyond help. anyway, fixed...professional, me Edited October 6, 2009 by frenchman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 I had a thought about Rybag's 480i mode. I'm NOT parroting the following speculation as fact. I'm wondering if it is possible. In 480i, the A8 can take advantage of alternating fields to double vertical resolution. So we can have potentially a 320x480 interlaced 2-bit color screen. At least if I understand what has been done thus far correctly. I know the 160 modes can be doubled. It seems to me that rather than double the vertical resolution of the 320 mode, the luminance possibilities could be doubled. I assume DLIs can still only be set over a full field of a given mode so two successive lines of a 480 mode would share the DLI. What if we treat each 1x2 "cell" as one pixel? This object would have four states: both on, both off, top on only, bottom on only. So that is four color states per line if we treat such a screen as a 320x200 display. Additionally, each "cell" is also subject to artifacting rules on NTSC composite displays. It seems some nice pix could be made this way. (I could care less if the results aren't seen as "good" by C-64 fans.) This much is an obvious use of Rybag's technique. If DLIs can at least sometimes be set on just the individual field lines then even more interesting possibilities open up. Alas, I suspect it can't work that way though I'd love to be proven wrong on that. I tried a few things in that mode... the thing with Interlace is you really need to have 2 pixel thickness (height) lines to defeat flicker. I guess there could be some interesting possibilities that might work, e.g. have each field slightly different in luma, and use groupings of 2x1 or 1x1 pixels on alternate scanlines, although you'd probably want to have at least 1 pixel set per scanline in a 2x2 grouping. I tried APAC mode with Interlace, but really, the best looking version I could come up with doesn't use Interlace, it just alternates each scanline between colour and luma, ie - have a blank line at the top of screen that alternates between 7/8 scanlines. I also tried a system of 2 sets of Playfield colours with common background to give 7 colour hires screen... but the thing with such a method is that any luma above 6 will flicker too annoying. I guess though that it still might allow a screen with some extra colour, e.g. BG=0, plus 4 colours of low luma that alternate per field, plus 1 static colour of higher luma. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted October 7, 2009 Share Posted October 7, 2009 35 - FOOTBALLER OF THE YEAR The C64 version has better music.... Not really. I remember loading the game on the A8 just to listen to the tune. It has something really .... call it a "definition" You are wrong, listen to this music on C64 and you will hear the difference. No, he is quite right. It has something good that c64 lacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted October 7, 2009 Share Posted October 7, 2009 An Italian singer (leader of group Bluvertigo) in the September 2009 issue of Vanity Fair. Notice the shirt. He looks a bit gayish to me, that's all. And I am just sure if he was wearing a commodore shirt it would be all good in the hood with you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted October 7, 2009 Share Posted October 7, 2009 Today another classic copyrighted by Atari !!! as always especially for number 63 36 - GAUNTLET C64 C64 C64 The C64 version has better graphics, handling, more colours and plays smoothly. The Atari version is anemically slow and it has limited number of colours (all monsters, chests etc. are always in the same colour as the background ). C64 defeats Atari again. BTW, It's really amusing how an Atari game looks and plays better on C64. ATARI ATARI ATARI Hey atarian63, what happened this time ? Same as always a piss poor job post golden age, you really are a dullard. Did you miss my c64 Hard Drivin post? now there is some great c64 for you. 1988 even.. mmm so quality.. Just ofr you Rockey. Oh, aren't you dead yet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted October 7, 2009 Share Posted October 7, 2009 An Italian singer (leader of group Bluvertigo) in the September 2009 issue of Vanity Fair. Notice the shirt. He looks a bit gayish to me, that's all. His last girlfriend: http://www.dgmag.it/foto/maddalena-corvaglia-11212 Wow, she must have been attracted to the ATARI shirt, can't be anything else! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted October 7, 2009 Share Posted October 7, 2009 Yes, i know it's a UK magazine... i've been writing for them since issue 51, it's sort of hard to avoid noticing after about eighteen months. =-) Yes, I know that there are some really unknowledgeable people working for that mag And you have no idea if i'm "really unknowledgeable", Well judging by some of your replies so far..... but if you are one of the few knowledgeable contributors to RG, glad to hear it. Well, if TMR is "unknowledgeable", then frenchman got lost somewhere in the way between the stage of embryo and suckling. ...and outsmarts you by a long shot Yeaaah, teach me again about "digitalize" ROTFL If you still have trouble spelling, can't help you man. Blame it on the dictionary or your illiteracy. LOL http://www.thefreedictionary.com/digitalize If you still have trouble spelling, can't help you man. Some patients constantly repeat the same phrase or sentence. Establishing a definitive diagnosis can be very difficult as patients can appear normal. Sounds very like your behavior in your posts Rockey... Maybe you should seek professional help.. oh and move from mama's basement probably would help as well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted October 7, 2009 Share Posted October 7, 2009 Here is some c64 love for our "freind" Mr "aren't you dead yet" Rockey the c64 loon. Here is the fantastic Ikari warriors circa 1986.. He he! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted October 7, 2009 Share Posted October 7, 2009 Today another classic copyrighted by Atari !!! as always especially for number 63 36 - GAUNTLET C64 C64 C64 The C64 version has better graphics, handling, more colours and plays smoothly. The Atari version is anemically slow and it has limited number of colours (all monsters, chests etc. are always in the same colour as the background ). C64 defeats Atari again. BTW, It's really amusing how an Atari game looks and plays better on C64. ATARI ATARI ATARI Hey atarian63, what happened this time ? Whilst Gauntlet is an Atari arcade game, Jack Tramiel's Atari had nothing to do with it so really they are not related. Old stuff like Battlezone and Asteriods etc was the same company as the makers of the home computers yep but by this time (1985 onwards) it was a totally separate company. C64 Gauntlet is actually pretty good for US Gold, they're UK output was pretty pathetic half the time on the C64...probably the best 8bit version (better than Amstrad, not seen it on MSX) As fun as this is I don't think looking at games UNLESS they are games with a clear technically stunning bit of programming in them (regardless of what ports of it look like on other machines) is going to tell you which machine is better. Look at Gauntlet 1 on the Atari ST and then try not to piss your pants when you look at Gauntlet II running on the Amiga Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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