F*** the 64..

[GroovyBee]

I think the fact that clock for clock it destroys a 68k also plays some minor part in it...

 

True! Plus you could do an unrolled "stmia" line filler for rasterised lines of various lengths and pixel position in 32 bit word alignments.

[andym00]

Thinking about it some more (its been a long time since I coded on the ST) it probably does read/and/or/write at the left edge of the polygon raster line (if not 16 pixel aligned) then writes blocks of 16 pixels and then read/and/or/write to complete (if required).

 

Not sure, the spans aren't that long, so I'd guess it's not really getting a chance to shovel out big runs like you would in a more conventional (ie: longer spans) polygon filler..

[GroovyBee]

Not sure, the spans aren't that long, so I'd guess it's not really getting a chance to shovel out big runs like you would in a more conventional (ie: longer spans) polygon filler..

 

Its been a long time since I played Virus with any vengeance on the ST. I really should dig out the 3D stuff I did on the ST back in the day.

[roland p]

BASIC 'sucked' because Jack Tramiel used the same 1977 copy of Microsoft BASIC in all this computers and screwed Billy out of millions! Absolutely butt raped Microsoft by refusing royalties and insisting that ownership of PET(or VIC) BASIC was with Commodore to modify as they wished.

 

The guy was a genius, Clive Sinclair may look like Mr Burns on the Simpsons but the real genius was Jack Tramiel (RIP)

Spectrum was the only computer I could program when I was 6, because it had all the commands printed on the keys and I accidently pressed the right ones

[oky2000]

 

As for what machine is better, depends on how you look at it, to a person its how much fun and interest they get out of the machine, I loved the 1K wonders on the ZX81, I had great fun learning BASIC so at the time I loved the machine so that was the best machine for me. Now if you take it from the technical POV then the C64 will win but I prefer to look at it from the personal way, every machine has something to offer, its purely what the user enjoys.

 

Interesting, I don't really care much for the Speccy but having a lot of fun doing a ZX81 DVD. The games are quite fascinating due to the stark lack of colour/sound. But I guess even then I like the same age VIC20 and TI99 games more so same problem as Speccy vs C64 etc. ie were you too poor for the superior machine?

[oky2000]

BASIC 'sucked' because Jack Tramiel used the same 1977 copy of Microsoft BASIC in all this computers and screwed Billy out of millions! Absolutely butt raped Microsoft by refusing royalties and insisting that ownership of PET(or VIC) BASIC was with Commodore to modify as they wished.

 

The guy was a genius, Clive Sinclair may look like Mr Burns on the Simpsons but the real genius was Jack Tramiel (RIP)

Spectrum was the only computer I could program when I was 6, because it had all the commands printed on the keys and I accidently pressed the right ones

 

Funny thing......I wrote a few PETSCII graphic adventures because they were all printed on the keyboard too

 

(I should also point out Laser Basic is Based on Basic Lightning from OASIS software from early 1984)

[kenjennings]

Did anyone ever play that game? To me it always was an unplayable tech demo.

 

I have it in the Amiga. Yes, it is horribly hard to play. Yes, it's play value does last about as long as one can watch a demo.

 

The game is impossible between the fact the mouse just isn't a good controller for this, and that the avatar is in the center of the screen and it is often impossible to judge if other ships are in front, behind, or directly below.

 

As a game, it qualifies as punishment. As an interactive demo it's interesting eye candy when consumed in small doses.

[oky2000]

MK. Agreed. But everybody is free to code whatever he wants on A8. Even they are 2600 style sprites. oops.

 

Ofcourse. But there is the economic factor limiting what has to be done to reach the "game".

 

Games looked and sounded on the C64 easily better. So the coders, graphicians, musicians. looked like "gods" to the people. Space Taxi.... the game producer hadn't to do much with it, but it was recognized "wow". Letting the market growing on the C64 made it people think "C64 can do all". But SID, VICII and the slow CPU didn't help with ego view games. They still looked good... in Photo's of Newspapers, but they played like crap due to the low movement resolution... or due to the slowness at all.

People today remember "Driller" only by the Soundtrack... if you know what I'm writing about.

 

On the Atari, you had to do the "double work" . What the C64 had available in the Hardware, the Atari had to build -as good as possible- via software. And the "Sprites" never got there....

 

SID Sound, Sprites, colours - to handle easy with only some enhanced coding skills .... made the C64 the most preferred platform for "coding beginners"....

 

But in Ego view games, the work has been "the double" on both machines, while on the A8 things got rather more fluent, due to the processor and Antic's features.

So, because "A" didn't work, "B" has been missed. And only people who really liked the A8, pushed it to some PC like quality in 3D/Ego view regions, showing the economic aspect is on the Atari's side there...

 

Firstly VIC-II and SID were not exactly stretched in 82/83 so not as easy as you make out, until Galway/Hubbard/Whittaker started pushing SID by machine code it was just 'nice' ditto with multiplexing mono and colour hardware sprites etc. OK today even I can multiplex sprites but someone had to do it first.

 

3D games are cock even on ST/AMIGA/286 PC so if you want rubbish polygon games in lego pixels you're welcome to them being 5fps on A8 vs 4ps on C64. Before Pentium or Saturn/PSX 3D games like Driller were crap. 256 colour Zarch on 8mhz Acorn Archimedes is the only exception.

 

There was a massive improvement in C64 arcade 2D games from 1982 to 90s. That is why it lasted so long, people were always surprised. It is just as hard to program game engines like Mayhem or Enforcer 2 on C64 as Crownland and Space Harrier on A8. You can blow 95% CPU cycles on either machine to emulate features in the other machines custom chip.

 

Think of poor Amiga users, 10000 commercial games and technically 9990 of them are just pure shit, they even use the same 25 fucking instrument samples in the music lazy cunts, get a sampler and CD player. Amiga Gauntlet and Outrun should have looked 95%identical to Sega Megadrive/Genesis for fucksake not the turds those talentless English software companies sold for £25. Piracy was born right then especially as most early Amiga games were technically better! And nobody is writing anything above PD quality on Amiga today, it's all Backbone/SEUCK/Blitz Basic code!!

 

A8 people, nay any 8/16bit retro machine fan, shouldn't be so bitter to others because we all lost, today all you can buy is Microsoft or Apple based crap!

Edited May 4, 2012 by oky2000

[oky2000]

Atari 8bit had more colors, better sound, and was more robust. The Atari ST had more memory , 3.5 inch diskdrive, midi.

Not quite, the ST had 512 colors and if the sound is worse or better is a matter of taste. The ST seriously lacked hardware features. No sprites/PMs, no character modes, no hardware smooth scrolling, no display lists or copper etc.

 

I still prefer the Atari 8bit vs Atari ST.

Yup.

 

I prefer Gauntlet 1, The Pawn and Backlash to A8 versions of said games so hardware specs mean nothing. The GUI is the icing on the cake

[oky2000]

I'm not either.. I had a pop at doing a Zarch floor on the 7800 some 10+ years back, and just handling handling the floor and translating and projecting all those points wasn't quick to say the least, and that was using MARIA to do the line fills, with me only having to scan convert the edges (with no clipping!) and with some seriously unrolled code in ROM as well, and some excessive tables, I think it was 128K ROM size I was working with.. Mind you I was aiming for 50Hz with it.. There's a lot of edges to rasterise in a normal scene from that..

Possibly with lego mode and 25Hz (or less) it might be doable.. Just it'll look crap at that resolution, unless you're stood 10 feet away and squinting..

And that'd be just the floor, before you've added any 3D objects on the surface, which will be nothing more than a few random pixels at that res..

Plus as Sack intimates, reading the mouse isn't exactly performance friendly on the A8..

 

As for playing it, I never played the Arch version, but I did love it on the Amiga in its Virus form.. Brilliant little game, though not particularly fast when compared to the Arch. version..

 

Also, as an side, I was just looking for a video of Conqueror (same graphics system), and stumbled across this side by side of the ST version of Virus Vs. the Arch version..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjVeZ9c9fLM&feature=related

I love how the Archimedes just absolutely demolishes the ST framerate wise, even running at 256 colours

I'd forgotten what a stunning little machine it really is..

/me heads off to fleaBay to buy one..

 

 

edit: Small world that it is, this video from the 80s came up on hackaday.com today, all about the ARM processor, complete with awesome 80s synth music

 

Just ran Virus on STEEM and as suspected it is a little smoother than in the video. Thing is the Archimedes has chunky pixels not bitplanes and the 8mhz Archimedes at £999 in 1987 ran similar to a 16-20mhz 68020/030 too. Sadly hardly any nice arcade quality games were done for the Archimedes.

[oky2000]

i think that with over 10000 games , somebody could program the C64,

just not in Basic...

 

Real men use assembly.

 

 

Does anyone else remember "100% machine code" written on the old cassette game covers?

[oky2000]

Did anyone ever play that game? To me it always was an unplayable tech demo.

 

I have it in the Amiga. Yes, it is horribly hard to play. Yes, it's play value does last about as long as one can watch a demo.

 

The game is impossible between the fact the mouse just isn't a good controller for this, and that the avatar is in the center of the screen and it is often impossible to judge if other ships are in front, behind, or directly below.

 

As a game, it qualifies as punishment. As an interactive demo it's interesting eye candy when consumed in small doses.

 

Playing Zarch/Virus by mouse is the same as flying the helicopters on PC Battlefield 2. Tricky but very playable and great fun. ST and Amiga mice were not great though in 80s (70DPI?)

[Irgendwer]

Plus as Sack intimates, reading the mouse isn't exactly performance friendly on the A8..

 

Really no big deal:

[andym00]

Really no big deal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnwpMZAuxZo

 

uhuh

[sack-c0s]

The Archimedes has the polygon filling advantage because it doesn't have to read/and/or/write for each pixel like the ST has to.

 

Thinking about it some more (its been a long time since I coded on the ST) it probably does read/and/or/write at the left edge of the polygon raster line (if not 16 pixel aligned) then writes blocks of 16 pixels and then read/and/or/write to complete (if required).

 

It's a 256 colour mode (I think) so it's going to be a byte per pixel. I've not done ARM for a while now, but I think I'd probably use byte writes to bring myself up to a word boundary, fill the registers with the colour and have an optimised STMIA R0!,{R1-Rn} unrolled section to fill the polygon which weighs in at N+1 cycles (N being the amount of registers written) to fill N+4 pixels, and then byte writes to finish the line off again. No read/modify stuff needed.

 

That said I heard somewhere that Zarch just writes out single bytes in a loop to do its polygon filling so is running about 25% of the speed it ought to.

 

I wasn't hinting at anything regarding mice on the Atari - I was just asking a very open question because I don't know *anything* in that regard - I assume there's some way of doing it but I was unsure if it was trivial to implement, a pain in the ass, if there's one standard mouse people use, or many, or if they are common/rare... Those kind of things were running through my mind.

 

Maybe if we're looking for an Archimedes game to resurrect for the Atari 'Arcturus' might be worth a look?

 

(The interlace effect is the video capture/youtube upload - it's doesn't draw alternate fields to keep the speed up)

 

Maybe dropping the texturing and doing that for the A8 would be better? The game wasn't such a hassle to control* and the action a little gentler so it should be a little less harsh on the 6502 trying to deal with it.

 

 

 

 

*That said, Zarch was how I first learned to use a mouse - I was flying that thing around before I was using a desktop.

[GroovyBee]

It's a 256 colour mode (I think) so it's going to be a byte per pixel. I've not done ARM for a while now, but I think I'd probably use byte writes to bring myself up to a word boundary, fill the registers with the colour and have an optimised STMIA R0!,{R1-Rn} unrolled section to fill the polygon which weighs in at N+1 cycles (N being the amount of registers written) to fill N+4 pixels, and then byte writes to finish the line off again. No read/modify stuff needed.

 

Sorry if it wasn't clear I was talking about the ST way of handling things. As for Zarch great minds think alike

 

True! Plus you could do an unrolled "stmia" line filler for rasterised lines of various lengths and pixel position in 32 bit word alignments.

[Lazarus]

Thinking about it some more (its been a long time since I coded on the ST) it probably does read/and/or/write at the left edge of the polygon raster line (if not 16 pixel aligned) then writes blocks of 16 pixels and then read/and/or/write to complete (if required).

 

In Virus/Zarch, hardly any polygon is 16 pixel wide, and if it is it often crosses word boundary. That optimization only works on bigger polygons.

[Mclaneinc]

As for what machine is better, depends on how you look at it, to a person its how much fun and interest they get out of the machine, I loved the 1K wonders on the ZX81, I had great fun learning BASIC so at the time I loved the machine so that was the best machine for me. Now if you take it from the technical POV then the C64 will win but I prefer to look at it from the personal way, every machine has something to offer, its purely what the user enjoys.

 

Interesting, I don't really care much for the Speccy but having a lot of fun doing a ZX81 DVD. The games are quite fascinating due to the stark lack of colour/sound. But I guess even then I like the same age VIC20 and TI99 games more so same problem as Speccy vs C64 etc. ie were you too poor for the superior machine?

 

Although I'd just got married when the ZX80 was out I had the cash for better stuff but I just loved the 81, what they could do on it in 1K amazed me, my first credit card purchase was a 16K ram pack, horrible things...

 

I just love what a machine can do as opposed to how it compares to other machines, that's why I have a wide collection of consoles, fan boy is for fools.

[oky2000]

 

I just love what a machine can do as opposed to how it compares to other machines, that's why I have a wide collection of consoles, fan boy is for fools.

Couldn't agree more

 

There are similarities between machines, eg I noticed when doing my VIC-20 website archiving gameplay video for every game rescued into the TOSEC, how similar the attitude to sound was to the VCS. The VIC-20 games had the same sort of brutally loud SFX that added to the games just like the iconic VCS carts.

 

But yes it is the differences, not just specs but in actual use, I don't have a working ZX81 currently but using one for real just reminds me of the 1982 computer club after school we had (5 ZX81s and a ZX80) and playing those 1kb games typed in on that kooky keyboard. Sometimes emulation is only half the story. This is why I want an Atari 400, to actually know what it's like to use this machine.

[atarian63]

The C64's biggest weakness was that it required almost godlike programming skills to bring out the full capability of the hardware, and worse, not even a reasonable subset of those abilities could be accessed from BASIC without POKEs that were easier to implement in ASM.

 

My air has almost gone, reading this. It's exaclty the vice versa. No other platform made it that easy to have colourful games with moving objects on the screen and play some 3 channel music to it.

Hmmm... or do you mean "less brainpower = more godlike" ?

 

Look here:

 

Remove the level design and concentrate on the hardware programming:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXtt974Iofk

 

and this one....

 

http://www.pouet.net...php?which=59225

 

It's done by the same "brain" , telling us he likes to code on both machines.

 

Best what he got:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEkj1AMANQc&l

 

 

got it?

looks quite nice!

[oky2000]

 

My air has almost gone, reading this. It's exaclty the vice versa. No other platform made it that easy to have colourful games with moving objects on the screen and play some 3 channel music to it.

Hmmm... or do you mean "less brainpower = more godlike" ?

 

Look here:

 

Remove the level design and concentrate on the hardware programming:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXtt974Iofk

 

and this one....

 

http://www.pouet.net...php?which=59225

 

It's done by the same "brain" , telling us he likes to code on both machines.

 

Best what he got:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEkj1AMANQc&l

 

 

got it?

looks quite nice!

 

I didn't really listen to emkay's flaming of TMR's game because his comments are flawed on two counts

 

1. Not every programmer can program two machines to exactly the same level

2. The two machines have mutually exclusive benefits/drawbacks and there is a limit to what you can overcome in software on an arcade game engine.

(3. he still hasn't posted his A8 conversion of the Enforcer 2 C64 shootem up game engine either)

 

You can't make extra colours magically appear in the C64 palette by software as far as 60/30 FPS game to give lovely DLI type graduations in games or an extra shade of purple and ditto you can't magically make the A8 screen display hardware work in the same way as the C64 4 colours per 4x8 double sized pixel mode.

 

It's why I don't see the point of making programs that hammer the CPU to make Pokey sound a little like SID, it will never work the same way and will never be usable in a game and doesn't really sound like SID. The VIC-20 can do renditions of Rob Hubbard tunes using the SID-VICIOUS program BUT it uses so much CPU time it is a waste of time anyway.

 

People need to appreciate every piece of code written on every machine that isn't one of those Apple/Microsoft based turds we call computers today.

 

As soon as the internet is ruined by the USA and UK government with censorships that make China look like a utopia I will be back to bulletin boards and 8/16bit computers from the past. I can probably send/receive emails on a 21kb VIC-20

[emkay]

I didn't really listen to emkay's flaming of TMR's game because his comments are flawed on two counts

 

 

[yawn]There is no flaming of TMR's game[/yawn]

 

1. Not every programmer can program two machines to exactly the same level

 

But he did already more on the A8 with that game....

2. The two machines have mutually exclusive benefits/drawbacks and there is a limit to what you can overcome in software on an arcade game engine.

 

(3. he still hasn't posted his A8 conversion of the Enforcer 2 C64 shootem up game engine either)

 

 

The difference between the A8 and the C64 here is that the A8 was able to play Arcade stuff when it arrived 1st.

But, You're right. Both machines are too different in benefits/drawbacks. But we still don't have enough people pushing the benefits of the A8.

 

 

You can't make extra colours magically appear in the C64 palette by software as far as 60/30 FPS game to give lovely DLI type graduations in games or an extra shade of purple and ditto you can't magically make the A8 screen display hardware work in the same way as the C64 4 colours per 4x8 double sized pixel mode.

 

It's why I don't see the point of making programs that hammer the CPU to make Pokey sound a little like SID, it will never work the same way and will never be usable in a game and doesn't really sound like SID. The VIC-20 can do renditions of Rob Hubbard tunes using the SID-VICIOUS program BUT it uses so much CPU time it is a waste of time anyway.

 

 

No one is "hammering the CPU for making POKEY sounding like SID" . The SIDs sounds like POKEY in several ways. Don't forget POKEY was 1st there. It's just the logical programming of POKEY's features that costs some CPU cycles, to have cleaner sounding and sounds with more "depth" and variations.

[oky2000]

Sorry I thought you were saying his C64 looks much better.

 

And when I say arcade games I mean of the quality of mid 80s arcade games, which neither the ZX/A8/C64/CPC/MSX managed for a couple of years at best IMO. For example the games like R-Type or Salamander.

 

I posted some effects heavy SID tunes in your other thread, the ones I already heard are conversions of basic SID tunes which don't even use half the features of the SID (unlike some of the tunes in the videos I posted). My only real reference is the Panther/Sanxion and Warhawk tunes I have heard and those three don't even sound as close to SID music as the VIC 20 SID VICIOUS SID emulator playing Rob Hubbard's Commando title music that's my point. The two chips work in a different way, Pokey is not a 12 oscillator phase accumulator design.

 

Anyway I thought we were talking about the Spectrum

Edited May 5, 2012 by oky2000

[emkay]

Sorry I thought you were saying his C64 looks much better.

 

It actually looks better, because it uses the benefits of the C64, where the A8 reaches the limits.

 

And when I say arcade games I mean of the quality of mid 80s arcade games, which neither the ZX/A8/C64/CPC/MSX managed for a couple of years at best IMO. For example the games like R-Type or Salamander.

 

 

So you may realize where it goes? The C64 was a cheap design of it's time, not the "top notch"....

Arcades originally come from the 70s... as the A8 does.

 

I posted some effects heavy SID tunes in your other thread, the ones I already heard are conversions of basic SID tunes which don't even use half the features of the SID (unlike some of the tunes in the videos I posted).

 

 

Isn't it interesting? It's just a corelated programming of the modulation abilities of the POKEY to get there?

And, well, particular the Hard-Software tunes are really from "SID" .... they just run in some "emulation-environment".

 

Do they sound like SID to you?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5xjrUDaq7Q

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4xgXVzP91o

 

 

My only real reference is the Panther/Sanxion and Warhawk tunes I have heard and those three don't even sound as close to SID music as the VIC 20 SID VICIOUS SID emulator playing Rob Hubbard's Commando title music that's my point. The two chips work in a different way, Pokey is not a 12 oscillator phase accumulator design.

 

I don't like the sounding of the A8 versions there.

And still the old argues.... ofcourse SID is a newer chip, built on the available chipdesigns and with better technical environment. That's why SID has it's regions, POKEY cannot go to.

But, as you might have realized, POKEY has several sound generators and they can be switched/overlaid together in different combinations. The biggest flaw with POKEY is still the real bass generator, of which I sometimes think, the creator of POKEY had no idea of capacitive actions in electronic circuits. Same with the creator of GTIA... being not aware of anything outside NTSC...

Edited May 5, 2012 by emkay

[high voltage]

There were numerous C64 games made in UK where it was mentioned the game/graphics was bad, but the music is ace. They why most companies hired people like Hubbard or Martin Galway. Shitty game, great music....