Atari v Commodore

[Bryan]

I wonder why nearly all atarians had c64/128, but almost no 64er has a8 ?

I have one mainly because there are so many of them that I had numerous opportunities to buy them cheap. I once got a box with a 64, 1541, and 30 or so boxed games for $10 from a thrift store. Another thrift store had over a dozen 1541's for $5 each. I think those came from some educational lab. I rarely found A8's in the wild.

 

Maybe Atari users are just more open minded. I've owned many other 8-bits over the years, but right now I'm down to just my Ataris and a 64 system.

[Oswald]

the c64 IO speed never bothered me, because I didnt knew better. I couldnt eve imagine not even for god's sake it can be faster. that was normal, like the sky is blue

 

on to the usual nitpicking:

 

- dos2.5 and mydos doesnt sounds like out of box doses which you picked on the c64 side to compare with

 

"I never figured out how to .. on the C64 because there was no official DOS."

 

huh? there was. &RTFM. yes it sucked

 

"another issue was, that I got after a while extremely bored by the repeating style of most of c64 games."

 

frankly I dont believe someone as a kid can get EXTREMELY bored of c64 games in the mid 80s. in a few weeks.

[Bryan]

the c64 IO speed never bothered me, because I didnt knew better. I couldnt eve imagine not even for god's sake it can be faster. that was normal, like the sky is blue

 

on to the usual nitpicking:

 

- dos2.5 and mydos doesnt sounds like out of box doses which you picked on the c64 side to compare with

DOS 2.5 was the standard Atari DOS that came with the 1050 once DOS 3.0 was discontinued. Much has been written about the infamous DOS 3.0.

 

Atari released the new 1050 drive with a new completely incompatible and fairly cumbersome DOS. You can convert your old disks into the new format, but you can't convert them back. The new format used the cluster idea of grouped sectors, and therefore threw away a large amount of space when saving small files. 3.0 was quickly abandoned and Atari had squandered more development money. Later 1050's came with an improved version of the previous DOS 2.0 called DOS 2.5.

 

DOS 3.0 was really designed to support large devices, but wasn't very useful for regular floppy use. Atari should have licensed one of the many superior 3rd party DOSes.

frankly I dont believe someone as a kid can get EXTREMELY bored of c64 games in the mid 80s. in a few weeks.

Yeah, I had a lot of A8 software, but I only really played a few of them regularly. Both systems had tons of boring games.

 

-Bry

[Bryan]

You know what would funny, and more appropriate after 25+ years? For 8-bitters to rip into their favorite machines and say all the things they don't like. It would be a lot more honest an enlightening than the usual debate.

 

After all, despite their innovations everyone but Apple and the clone makers ran themselves out of business (or at least the computer business). Apple has managed to keep the Mac in production despite 2 complete exchanges of the underlying architecture (68K>PPC>x86). There's no reason why Commodore shouldn't be selling an Amiga descendant today. We may love our 8-bits, but we bought them from really stupid companies.

[twh/f2]

- dos2.5 and mydos doesnt sounds like out of box doses which you picked on the c64 side to compare with

"I never figured out how to .. on the C64 because there was no official DOS."

 

well DOS2.5 was default/standard dos and everybody had it. It was nothing spectacular but it was a good DOS. MyDOS came not "out of the box" indeed, but followed up the tradition of Atari Dos.

 

 

"another issue was, that I got after a while extremely bored by the repeating style of most of c64 games."

frankly I dont believe someone as a kid can get EXTREMELY bored of c64 games in the mid 80s. in a few weeks.

 

actually I'm not so old .. In the 80s I only had my Atari. No chance to get another computer at this time. My grandfather has made the decision here In the (late) 80s he preferred the Atari 130XE over the C64 because it had twice as much memory .. I think both systems were at this time on the same price (like 299,- Deutsche Mark). My grandfather is technical guy and as an engineer he always carefully compared the technical specifications and made -uhm- the right choice

 

when I got in touch with the C64 it was already in the 90s. I got a lot disks from my friend and was very excited to finally test and play all these great C64 games I read about in the magazines. But I was disappointed because I projected my Atari standards (sound, speed and color-diversity) to the C64 games.

 

grtx,

\twh

[peteym5]

(Bump)

 

Wow, we are over 55 pages and approaching 1400 posts of this battle. With what I read from the last 2 pages... Of course the Atari games will run faster because it has more CPU time and help from the Antic chip.

 

With the whole sprite thing, it is possible to simulate more than 4 players with a multiplexer with alternating between frames and with DLIs. I have tested a routine that uses self modifying code and got over 20 sprites, only time there was a problem was when they congregated on a single line. I am going to make it a standard technique for future projects I develop. The A8 has almost double the clock speed of the C64, so even if the multiplexer consumes CPU time, a ML game can still do many things. Not many people know this about the Atari, if you disable the OS and write custom NMI with self modifying code that vectors for DLIs and VBIs, it will give you a good head start. Yes, you can say the A8s can get around limits with DLIs and other interrupts. Aren't there raster interrupt techniques with the C64 to get more sprites on its screen? I maintain it comes down to the programmers knowledge of each machine over the machine itself to get around certain limitation.

[Albert]

I wonder why nearly all atarians had c64/128, but almost no 64er has a8 ?

This certainly wasn't the case for me. I was part of two Atari user groups in different areas (at different times) and for the most part all the people I knew with Atari 8-bit machines did not have a Commodore 64 or 128. These machines (and associated peripherals) were not cheap at the time, so people tended to stick with one or the other.

 

..Al

[Tezz]

With the whole sprite thing, it is possible to simulate more than 4 players with a multiplexer with alternating between frames and with DLIs. I have tested a routine that uses self modifying code and got over 20 sprites, only time there was a problem was when they congregated on a single line. I am going to make it a standard technique for future projects I develop. The A8 has almost double the clock speed of the C64, so even if the multiplexer consumes CPU time, a ML game can still do many things. Not many people know this about the Atari, if you disable the OS and write custom NMI with self modifying code that vectors for DLIs and VBIs, it will give you a good head start. Yes, you can say the A8s can get around limits with DLIs and other interrupts. Aren't there raster interrupt techniques with the C64 to get more sprites on its screen? I maintain it comes down to the programmers knowledge of each machine over the machine itself to get around certain limitation.

I'm very happy to read this and I think it's great that you'll be using this as standard in your future projects. To me it's the better choice over software sprites. I totally agree that there is no big problem using these routines either as people seem to suggest. I've never understood why people are so against these multiplexing routines and talk it down whenever it's brought up. The other (much more used) alternative of software sprites are far more consuming and limited to me, the limitations that they bring with Atari's 1/2 char set alone is one big reason to avoid them.

 

BTW. Are you guys looking at using the new Corina cartridge for Tempest Extreme? You could really go to town on it with the resources it brings.

Edited December 7, 2008 by Tezz

[peteym5]

BTW. Are you guys looking at using the new Corina cartridge for Tempest Extreme? You could really go to town on it with the resources it brings.

 

 

What is a "Corina" cartridge?

Edited December 7, 2008 by peteym5

[Heaven/TQA]

(Bump)

 

Wow, we are over 55 pages and approaching 1400 posts of this battle. With what I read from the last 2 pages... Of course the Atari games will run faster because it has more CPU time and help from the Antic chip.

 

With the whole sprite thing, it is possible to simulate more than 4 players with a multiplexer with alternating between frames and with DLIs. I have tested a routine that uses self modifying code and got over 20 sprites, only time there was a problem was when they congregated on a single line. I am going to make it a standard technique for future projects I develop. The A8 has almost double the clock speed of the C64, so even if the multiplexer consumes CPU time, a ML game can still do many things. Not many people know this about the Atari, if you disable the OS and write custom NMI with self modifying code that vectors for DLIs and VBIs, it will give you a good head start. Yes, you can say the A8s can get around limits with DLIs and other interrupts. Aren't there raster interrupt techniques with the C64 to get more sprites on its screen? I maintain it comes down to the programmers knowledge of each machine over the machine itself to get around certain limitation.

 

Pete, question...as I have written a multiplexor some time ago I managed to get around 16, 8x8 1 colour sprites around freely. what is your engine capable of?

[Tezz]

BTW. Are you guys looking at using the new Corina cartridge for Tempest Extreme? You could really go to town on it with the resources it brings.

 

What is a "Corina" cartridge?

It's a great new development. Here's the recent thread:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=135561

[Crazyace]

(Bump)

 

Wow, we are over 55 pages and approaching 1400 posts of this battle. With what I read from the last 2 pages... Of course the Atari games will run faster because it has more CPU time and help from the Antic chip.

 

With the whole sprite thing, it is possible to simulate more than 4 players with a multiplexer with alternating between frames and with DLIs. I have tested a routine that uses self modifying code and got over 20 sprites, only time there was a problem was when they congregated on a single line. I am going to make it a standard technique for future projects I develop. The A8 has almost double the clock speed of the C64, so even if the multiplexer consumes CPU time, a ML game can still do many things. Not many people know this about the Atari, if you disable the OS and write custom NMI with self modifying code that vectors for DLIs and VBIs, it will give you a good head start. Yes, you can say the A8s can get around limits with DLIs and other interrupts. Aren't there raster interrupt techniques with the C64 to get more sprites on its screen? I maintain it comes down to the programmers knowledge of each machine over the machine itself to get around certain limitation.

 

I'm using software sprites - mainly because I dont want any flickering , There are 4 ghosts each each 14 pixels wide with 3 colours , and Pacman which is 13 pixels monocolour - too wide for normal h/w sprites, but ok for soft sprites with h/w underlays. Multiplexed h/w sprites are quicker - and better in a lot of cases, but they wont solve the problem of 5 wide sprites on the same line. ( Even on the C64 you would need 8 sprites just for the ghosts )

[potatohead]

Sorry to go slightly OT, but I was wondering about software sprites and DLI's. It would be possible to follow the software sprites with a DLI to change their color. If they were vertically seperated, then lots of colors are possible. When they end up on the same scan, use a common color. No object flicker then, just color loss.

 

Just musing here.

 

Sounds like a great engine Peteym5

Edited December 7, 2008 by potatohead

[potatohead]

I had Ataris for a long time. Each of us as kids got what our parents picked. So there was Ataris, a few VIC's (and we liked the VIC's), C64's, a CoCo or two, An Apple or two plus the ones at the school, and one guy with a TI.

 

Ended up with a C64 when somebody gave it away. Liked it, and ended up making a few C64 friends. Played the newer games, then moved on from 8bitters for a lot of years. PC, SGI for the longest time

 

I'll bet a whole lot of this comes down the same way music does. You hear what you hear as a kid, and get attached to that. True enough for me.

[Fröhn]

779 games?

779 everything.

How lame.

It is you who is lame.

[peteym5]

I'm using software sprites - mainly because I dont want any flickering , There are 4 ghosts each each 14 pixels wide with 3 colours , and Pacman which is 13 pixels monocolour - too wide for normal h/w sprites, but ok for soft sprites with h/w underlays. Multiplexed h/w sprites are quicker - and better in a lot of cases, but they wont solve the problem of 5 wide sprites on the same line. ( Even on the C64 you would need 8 sprites just for the ghosts )

 

Doing Pacman with software sprites, sounds a little complicated. Sounds like you are using 320x192 mode. Why would you need 8 sprites for the ghosts on a C64. It does have multicolor mode, so you can use 4 with the white&blue eyes. I am wondering if its possible to do the Ms. Pac Man technique with putting a quad width missiles behind the players for the white eyes.

 

Tempest Extreme uses a multiplexer routine the divides the screen into 8 zones and the DLIs set the color, position, and width for each section. When a sprite is between sections, it sets both zones to common values. It cycles through witch sprite it starts with on each frame, so if more than 4 sprites are required in a zone, different ones "sit out" each time. So if 5 sprites are in a zone, only 1 is cycled out. Don't thing blinking becomes noticeable until it gets to 7 or 8. In Tempest Extreme, that mostly happens when you have a bunch of flippers on top of you and you're caught at that point.

 

I had some theories of how do something like this with other hardware like the C64, 7800, NES, etc. Issue with the C64, is lower CPU speed and 3 sound voices. Be hard to make something as intense.

[Bryan]

[Artlover]

I was used to boot system software/games and had with DOS2.5 or MyDos

Exactly, you were used to being spoon fed.

 

Having started with the C64 first then going to the 800XL later, I personally found that menu driven dos stuff to be very annoying. CLI dos was ok, but I still perfered the low level nature of the C64. I never even jumped on the C= JiffyDos bandwagon or any of the Basic+ upgrade wedges. I don't think I started to appericate DOS till I went PC, and even then only as CLI.

 

Besides, I don't think it's a fair comparison because Atari doses were still what?? A piece of software that had to be loaded. What did you have when you just turned the computer on to basic? The same LOAD and SAVE commands like you had on a C64.

 

No offence to anyone, but if you want to use a computer, then learn to use it. An auto boot menu driven disk is not "using" a computer, and doesn't "teach" you anything. I to this day resent Windows for the same reasons. Put most modern computer users infront of a CLI, and they will just break down into tears because all they know is how to click on an icon. Seriously, once during an job interview, I was asked only two questions regarding using a computer: Do I know how to launch a program and do I know how to close a window.

 

that I got after a while extremely bored by the repeating style of most of c64 games

It was hard to find titles which broke out of this scheme

How is what games the C64 any different then what the A8 had? Arcade ports, racers, shooters, rpgs, platformers, fliers, sims, adventures, pinball, sports, creators, etc., etc., etc.

 

Did you not have a modem and a local pirate BBS to call?

 

I've got 10's of thousands of games for both. I see no real difference of choice between either. About the only standout that comes to mind is MegaBlast. Now I loved me some MegaBlast. Tobad there isn't a single emulator that can handle it with the digisynth properly. That's one for upgraded real hardware only.

 

- I had no upgrades/cartridge hardware for the C64 to make the horrible slow 1541 floppy drive a bit more usable.

The fact that you didn't have one doesn't change the fact that they existed. Assuming one had a problem with the speed to begin with. This is another one of those subjective arguments I've even gotten into with people I personally know face to face. So your system loads something faster then mine - AND? I don't care. It was better then tape, and that's all that mattered. Besides, it's not that the they couldn't have been faster, they were intended to be so. Blame CBM's componete distributers who f--ked them in the final momenets.

 

Also, many games had built-in fastloader routines. So if you were wasting your time with those crappy software "run me first wedge" loaders, you were likely breaking those and making them slower.

Edited December 7, 2008 by Artlover

[Bryan]

Doing Pacman with software sprites, sounds a little complicated. Sounds like you are using 320x192 mode. Why would you need 8 sprites for the ghosts on a C64. It does have multicolor mode, so you can use 4 with the white&blue eyes. I am wondering if its possible to do the Ms. Pac Man technique with putting a quad width missiles behind the players for the white eyes.

The hardest thing about combined player/playfield sprites is the priorities when then pass over each other. If all the missiles are one color then they're also one priority. They won't intersect with playfield portions of the sprite properly unless they are manually cropped which takes extra time and effort.

[atarian63]

I wonder why nearly all atarians had c64/128, but almost no 64er has a8 ?

I never had them, my company sold them (sadly) used the money for better Atari stuff.

[atarian63]

I was used to boot system software/games and had with DOS2.5 or MyDos

Exactly, you were used to being spoon fed.

 

Having started with the C64 first then going to the 800XL later, I personally found that menu driven dos stuff to be very annoying. CLI dos was ok, but I still perfered the low level nature of the C64. I never even jumped on the C= JiffyDos bandwagon or any of the Basic+ upgrade wedges. I don't think I started to appericate DOS till I went PC, and even then only as CLI.

 

Besides, I don't think it's a fair comparison because Atari doses were still what?? A piece of software that had to be loaded. What did you have when you just turned the computer on to basic? The same LOAD and SAVE commands like you had on a C64.

 

No offence to anyone, but if you want to use a computer, then learn to use it. An auto boot menu driven disk is not "using" a computer, and doesn't "teach" you anything. I to this day resent Windows for the same reasons. Put most modern computer users infront of a CLI, and they will just break down into tears because all they know is how to click on an icon. Seriously, once during an job interview, I was asked only two questions regarding using a computer: Do I know how to launch a program and do I know how to close a window.

 

that I got after a while extremely bored by the repeating style of most of c64 games

It was hard to find titles which broke out of this scheme

How is what games the C64 any different then what the A8 had? Arcade ports, racers, shooters, rpgs, platformers, fliers, sims, adventures, pinball, sports, creators, etc., etc., etc.

 

Did you not have a modem and a local pirate BBS to call?

 

I've got 10's of thousands of games for both. I see no real difference of choice between either. About the only standout that comes to mind is MegaBlast. Now I loved me some MegaBlast. Tobad there isn't a single emulator that can handle it with the digisynth properly. That's one for upgraded real hardware only.

 

- I had no upgrades/cartridge hardware for the C64 to make the horrible slow 1541 floppy drive a bit more usable.

The fact that you didn't have one doesn't change the fact that they existed. Assuming one had a problem with the speed to begin with. This is another one of those subjective arguments I've even gotten into with people I personally know face to face. So your system loads something faster then mine - AND? I don't care. It was better then tape, and that's all that mattered. Besides, it's not that the they couldn't have been faster, they were intended to be so. Blame CBM's componete distributers who f--ked them in the final momenets.

 

Also, many games had built-in fastloader routines. So if you were wasting your time with those crappy software "run me first wedge" loaders, you were likely breaking those and making them slower.

C64 just always seemed a pain, not to mention that the lack of DOS and common drive alignment problems were a negative for most people, CLI was much better suited for PC's.

You cant brush away the drive issue, it was slow and having to spend more to make it work as it should was a deal breaker for lots of customers.

It just had a "cheap" overall feel in the experience. We had them on display and at first in the later 80's it seemed like, wow, new cool games but it just had that cheap feel, hard to put my finger on it.

I remember the EA rep coming in and had these list of new titles, she would say why bother, they wont buy it, they'll just pirate it. Oh she knew all systems did it but C64 was soooo rampant even the manufacturer knew towards the end it was a waste. Customers would come in and buy the system and no software knowing they were going to get the stolen stuff from friend of relative. That was what drove C64 sales later on was all the "free" software.

[Fröhn]

Having started with the C64 first then going to the 800XL later, I personally found that menu driven dos stuff to be very annoying. CLI dos was ok, but I still perfered the low level nature of the C64. I never even jumped on the C= JiffyDos bandwagon or any of the Basic+ upgrade wedges. I don't think I started to appericate DOS till I went PC, and even then only as CLI.

Same for me. I never understood why this DOS booting was considered "good". I rather have the long loading times of the C64. But for anyone using a C64 the loading times quickly became a no-issue because everybody bought a Final Cartridge 3 or Action Replay quickly, and after that you had lightning speed loading + F-keys for directory, load etc. In the end you have to type lots more to load a file on A8. On C64 I simply press F7 for directory, then move cursor to dir line with file I wanna load, press F5 to load and F3 to run it. That's it. 3 keys + cursor movement.

 

Besides, I don't think it's a fair comparison because Atari doses were still what?? A piece of software that had to be loaded. What did you have when you just turned the computer on to basic? The same LOAD and SAVE commands like you had on a C64.

Actually not even that, because you have to boot DOS first to have LOAD and SAVE for disk stuff.

 

Also, many games had built-in fastloader routines. So if you were wasting your time with those crappy software "run me first wedge" loaders, you were likely breaking those and making them slower.

Most fastloaders simply kill everything in their path. They replace what was there before, hardly ever had "compability problems" with previously installed fastloaders (FC3 etc).

[Fröhn]

C64 just always seemed a pain, not to mention that the lack of DOS and common drive alignment problems were a negative for most people, CLI was much better suited for PC's.

I found it more painful to use those weirdo DOS'es. And the "drive alignment" problems of the C64 are a myth. In 22++ years of C64 I encountered exactly 1 misaligned drive. Whenever I encountered somebody with a "misaligned drive" it was just the drive RW head moved to track 36++ which the 1541 DOS cannot handle. Simply enter OPEN 15,8,15,"I":CLOSE 15 to move head back to a valid track and the problem is solved.

 

You cant brush away the drive issue, it was slow and having to spend more to make it work as it should was a deal breaker for lots of customers.

The drive itself wasn't slow, and since everybody who owned a C64 also owned a multi function cart like FC3, AR etc that was a no issue. With those carts, the 1541 was much much faster than anything connected to the SIO bus.

 

It just had a "cheap" overall feel in the experience. We had them on display and at first in the later 80's it seemed like, wow, new cool games but it just had that cheap feel, hard to put my finger on it.

Pretty much biassed. A8 and C64 are both cheap ass computers (otherwise no parent would have bought it for kids). To say the C64 was cheap implies the A8 wasn't, but in fact: BOTH are cheap crap for consumer market.

 

That was what drove C64 sales later on was all the "free" software.

Just like with any system. Piracy is not a C64 phenomenon, it's what people do no matter what system they own.

[Heaven/TQA]

I'm using software sprites - mainly because I dont want any flickering , There are 4 ghosts each each 14 pixels wide with 3 colours , and Pacman which is 13 pixels monocolour - too wide for normal h/w sprites, but ok for soft sprites with h/w underlays. Multiplexed h/w sprites are quicker - and better in a lot of cases, but they wont solve the problem of 5 wide sprites on the same line. ( Even on the C64 you would need 8 sprites just for the ghosts )

 

Doing Pacman with software sprites, sounds a little complicated. Sounds like you are using 320x192 mode. Why would you need 8 sprites for the ghosts on a C64. It does have multicolor mode, so you can use 4 with the white&blue eyes. I am wondering if its possible to do the Ms. Pac Man technique with putting a quad width missiles behind the players for the white eyes.

 

Tempest Extreme uses a multiplexer routine the divides the screen into 8 zones and the DLIs set the color, position, and width for each section. When a sprite is between sections, it sets both zones to common values. It cycles through witch sprite it starts with on each frame, so if more than 4 sprites are required in a zone, different ones "sit out" each time. So if 5 sprites are in a zone, only 1 is cycled out. Don't thing blinking becomes noticeable until it gets to 7 or 8. In Tempest Extreme, that mostly happens when you have a bunch of flippers on top of you and you're caught at that point.

 

I had some theories of how do something like this with other hardware like the C64, 7800, NES, etc. Issue with the C64, is lower CPU speed and 3 sound voices. Be hard to make something as intense.

 

my first works in terms of dynamic multiplexors can be found here:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...mp;hl=multiplex

 

and the latest can be found here:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=108089

 

so I am not a fan of having "zones" but maybe I should think about...

Edited December 7, 2008 by Heaven/TQA

[Artlover]

Also, many games had built-in fastloader routines. So if you were wasting your time with those crappy software "run me first wedge" loaders, you were likely breaking those and making them slower.

Most fastloaders simply kill everything in their path. They replace what was there before, hardly ever had "compability problems" with previously installed fastloaders (FC3 etc).

Notice you said "hardly"

 

I've ran into it a few times. The problem is if the initial load overwrites the memory being used by the fastloader. It corrupts the routine and everything stops there. What you say is true if the initial load is below that high memory and can complete/execute first.

 

Granted, I didn't have the problem much on disk based commercial software. It was mostly on my own stuff, .PRG disk rips, and other high mem IRQ latching wedges.