Prince of Persia

[ilmenit]

Isn't that example with Shakespear (et al) a bit extreme ?

 

I just tried to show that reasoning in the statement was wrong. If a technique is known it does not mean it is easy. It can be easy for somebody who mastered it by hours or even years of work. If the previous example was extreme then take a look at this topic: http://www.atariage....-mwp-technique/ The MWP technique is known for years but it is hard to use even for the most skilled programmers.

 

So, an unfortunate effect of that is, that I consider PoP thing, quite literally, easy from the gameplay standpoint (note, that I'm not referring to all those gfx-mode combination techniques researched recently), since it is barely 1% of effort I put into the 3D stuff

 

Are you sure about that 1%? I meet frequently opinion that coding for 8bit platform must be easy comparing to current PCs, because effects of it look so simple. Knowing both worlds IMHO 8bit coding is much more challenging. From the design phase to coding you have to struggle with very limited resources. In a bigger project every byte matters.

 

Thank you for the compliment on RastaConverter :-)

[snicklin]

I know a little about the above conversation....

 

In my final year of university, I wrote a 3D engine in 'C' with no libraries, just pure 'C' on it's own. I probably spent around 2hrs a day coding it for 3 months. The task was extremely complex and mathematically heavy. There was a lot to learn and took a lot of time away from my actual final year project. Thankfully I got a 90% score for it.

 

To me, coding on the Atari in itself is very difficult in that you're trying to do so much with so many constrictions.

 

With the PC, the constrictions are not there, but you will probably attempt to complete a more expansive task than on the Atari.

 

Overall, I think that a PoP game and a fast 3D engine with no hardware support on a 400mHz PC are about equivalent to each other.

 

I haven't actually coded a PoP game (or any other decent M/L game) though.... so how could I be qualified to answer this??!!!

[VladR]

I just tried to show that reasoning in the statement was wrong. If a technique is known it does not mean it is easy. It can be easy for somebody who mastered it by hours or even years of work. If the previous example was extreme then take a look at this topic: http://www.atariage....-mwp-technique/ The MWP technique is known for years but it is hard to use even for the most skilled programmers.

Very interesting technique - I must have missed this gem ! I now see what you mean - the complexity - right ? You are correct - just because something is known, doesn't mean its implementation complexity is low (in absolute terms). Relatively it can be, though.

 

Are you sure about that 1%?

In terms of total effort ? Absolutely. Please don't ask me how much time I devoted to all versions of my engine and games across all HW platforms in total, because it's anything but funny

 

I meet frequently opinion that coding for 8bit platform must be easy comparing to current PCs, because effects of it look so simple.

Don't worry, I'm not from that camp. I know Atari800.

 

23 yrs ago, I created an editor and compiler of an Assembler on a real Atari at Atmas II. It had pretty nifty features - syntax check right after you pressed enter, it could move itself dynamically to any memory location of your choosing (at runtime) and blazing fast compilation speed, since the code was immediately tokenized, after pressing Enter (save for special cases). From what I remember it was about 20-50 times faster in compilation than Atmas and even 30-50 pages code didn`t take more than about a second or so.

 

The biggest A8 challenge ? You can't fit that sh*t to memory alongside Atmas II, so I had to learn machine hexa code and just write the rest in pure hexa for weeks (it was during summer break).

 

Was that hard ? Not really, because I was so excited about it, I didn't really have time to think about complexity.

 

 

Knowing both worlds IMHO 8bit coding is much more challenging. From the design phase to coding you have to struggle with very limited resources. In a bigger project every byte matters.

Every byte and every cycle.

 

When I worked on 80286@12 MHz, I wrote an incomplete raycaster in pure ASM, and even though I had 6 times rough performance than on Atari, the resolution jumped to 320x200.

So, in the end, all rasterizing functions had to be rewritten several times to squeeze every cycle of the machine.

Was it hard ? No, because it was a real cool fun seeing textures with double resolution being rasterized faster than Wolfenstein on same machine

[emkay]

My last post was at the 11th.

So I had a look again into this thread..

 

 

Useless personal attaks

sack-c0s 1

potatohead 1

ilmenit 1

 

 

Useless replies

 

Stephen 1

potatohead 1

Creature XL 1

 

Offtopic follower (caused by useless personal attacks)

 

Tempus 1

sack-c0s 2

VladR 3

potatohead 1

ilmenit 1

snicklin 1

 

 

 

Nice.

 

 

[emkay]

 

Isn't that example with Shakespear (et al) a bit extreme ? There were thousands of great artists, who produced phenomenal work, yet were never famous, despite the quality of their work. It's art after all.

 

 

Well , I have my own "proverb"

 

Der Bildungsgrad trennt den Chirurgen vom Metzger

Das Ansehen trennt das Genie vom Narren

 

Seems, the best lesson here at Atariage is that you can learn one fact: People always project their own thinking into others. Particular ilmenit seems to have a very authistic thinking. You can find that in the converter. Calling me a troll just by not understanding what I was writing about.... is self explaining.

And , without any personal meaning, best artists always were gay. It's a human/natural thing.

There is also some interesting part when it comes to José Pereira. While he seem to learn slowly, and didn't know anything (referring to the writings), the same guys that don't like what I'm writing, accept him as someone "serious" when it comes to game coding...

 

.... and so on...

Edited February 17, 2013 by emkay

[José Pereira]

Because I try to work with others and you don't accept others opinions and the way they do their work.

And you talking about me or using my name it seems you're jealous of me.

[miker]

No, he is trolling here, nothing more.

[emkay]

No, he is trolling here, nothing more.

 

So, please tell me what was the cause for you to add your comment, if not for a trolling cause?

[miker]

Only to watch you doing something at least A BIT more productive than you do actually.

[emkay]

Only to watch you doing something at least A BIT more productive than you do actually.

 

You know, you may think of 1000s of things at one time. But you only have two hands and two legs to do something.

 

[potatohead]

Did you know you can't stomp a snake with both feet in the bucket Emkay?

[emkay]

Did you know you can't stomp a snake with both feet in the bucket Emkay?

 

Actually, the bucket protects you from being bitten by the snake, when stomping ....

[Irgendwer]

I would reply something very convincing, extremely entertaining and highly accepted here, if I only had a tool which could provide such post.

It would be better the internet hasn't been invented at all!

Edited February 17, 2013 by Irgendwer

[Tezz]

it seems sadly there are many tools here to provide such posts

Edited February 17, 2013 by Tezz

[snicklin]

it seems sadly there are many tools here to provide such posts

 

Tool Automation in Linux:

cat /dev/urandom

 

And for the sake of everyone else's sanity:

cat /dev/urandom > /dev/null 2>&1

[emkay]

I would reply something very convincing, extremely entertaining and highly accepted here, if I only had a tool which could provide such post.

It would be better the internet hasn't been invented at all!

 

Writes someone, sitting at a PC, using hightech electronics, a world wide web for information transports, using a dedicated and rather complex tool for writing a message ....

 

A question, how much has to be filled into such a brain, to make it empty?

 

What's so hard to understand that, IF you want to have better results, and want to have Artist doing stuff on the A8, you have to have Tools they can easily understand?

This also could help other coders in developing games faster.

Edited February 17, 2013 by emkay

[+Stephen]

My last post was at the 11th.

So I had a look again into this thread..

 

 

Useless personal attaks

sack-c0s 1

potatohead 1

ilmenit 1

 

 

Useless replies

 

Stephen 1

potatohead 1

Creature XL 1

 

Offtopic follower (caused by useless personal attacks)

 

Tempus 1

sack-c0s 2

VladR 3

potatohead 1

ilmenit 1

snicklin 1

 

 

 

Nice.

Glad to see I made your watch list again. Here's another useless reply.

 

Back to your old ways as usual. You come in, derail a thread, put down work done by others, offer nothing yourself. Then it gets turned around to you being the victim. At least you are consistent

[emkay]

 

Back to your old ways as usual. You come in, derail a thread, put down work done by others, offer nothing yourself. Then it gets turned around to you being the victim. At least you are consistent

 

Show me where I derailed the thread.

[Irgendwer]

What's so hard to understand that, IF you want to have better results, and want to have Artist doing stuff on the A8, you have to have Tools they can easily understand?

[potatohead]

Is it possible for ANTIC to actually do the Apple screen layout?

 

The Figure 1 shows the memory map for the standard hi-res graphics mode.

Horizontal Offset
Base | $00 | $01 | $02 | $03 $24 | $25 | $26 | $27 |
_____|_____|_____|_____|_____ _____|_____|_____|_____|
$2000| | | | | | | | | |
$2080| | | | | | | | | |
$2100| | | | | | | | | |
$2180| | | | | | | | | |
$2200| | | | | | | | | |
$2280| | | | | | | | | |
$2300| | | | | | | | | |
$2380| | | | | | | | | |
$2028| | | | \ \ | | | |
$20A8| | | | \ \ | | | |
$2128| | | | / / | | | |
$21A8| | | | / / | | | |
$2228| | | | / / | | | |
$22A8| | | | / / | | | |
$2328| | | | / / | | | |
$23A8| | | | \ \ | | | |
$2050| | | | \ \ | | | |
$20D0| | | | | | | | | |
$2150| | | | | | | | | |
$21D0| | | | | | | | | |
$2250| | | | | | | | | |
$22D0| | | | | | | | | |
$2350| | | | | | | | | |
$23D0| | | | | | | | | |

Figure 1 - Standard Hi-Res Memory Map

Note: This memory map is in Chapter 2 of the Apple IIe Technical Reference,
First Printing, January 1987.

Figure 2 shows the box subdivisions for the memory map in Figure 1.

Offset Bit
from LSB
base | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
_______|___|___|___|___|___|___|___|
+$0000 | | | | | | | |
+$0400 | | | | | | | |
+$0800 | | | | | | | |
+$0C00 | | | | | | | |
+$1000 | | | | | | | |
+$1400 | | | | | | | |
+$1800 | | | | | | | |
+$1C00 | | | | | | | |

Figure 2 - Box Subdivisions of the Standard Memory Map

Note: This figure is the inset of the hi-res graphics display map in
Chapter 2 of the Apple IIe Technical Reference, First Printing, January 1987.

For example, the first memory address of each screen line for the first few
lines is as follows:

$2000, $2400, $2800, $2C00, $3000, $3400, $3800, $3C00, $2080, $2480, etc.

Each of the 24 boxes contains 8 screen lines for a total of 192 vertical lines
per screen. Each of the 40 boxes per line contains 7 pixels for a total of
280 pixels horizontally across each line.

 

Essentially, each line needs it's own screen address definition. Has this been done? Seems to me this is possible to do.

[potatohead]

Actually, the bucket protects you from being bitten by the snake, when stomping ....

 

Seriously? It was just a bit of fun with "anecdotes" or "slogans", etc... Usually that kind of bumper sticker type stuff doesn't mean much, which was the point.

[sack-c0s]

Emkay - you aren't the victim, you are the problem.

 

my last post regarding you was factually correct and if you feel hurt by that then I suppose that's what raw facts, laid out and backed up with evidence will do for a man if he doesn't like the picture it paints.

Edited February 17, 2013 by sack-c0s

[mrsid]

Signing off... I wish we had a C64 forum like this one...

[potatohead]

I do too.

[snicklin]

Can everyone agree on one thing? That is - Whatever you are doing for the Atari (programming, playing games from it, reading about it, anything), thank you for spending your efforts on our system and that your time is appreciated?