CENTRON 3D - End of level screen shot

[José Pereira]

Hmm... special mode 'digitized pics' at the tope and GTIA GR.9 at the bottom? to reduce flicker?

Then where's the sprites? at the bottom, like Buck Rogers or Cignus X1?

 

????

Yes, I know that we have to wait and that once again you will not answer my questions!

Grrr!...

[rpc_games]

@Jose: No GTIA GR.9 mode. Using our CMODE72.

 

Pete

[José Pereira]

@Jose: No GTIA GR.9 mode. Using our CMODE72.

 

Pete

Thanks.

Yes I noticed it but was trying to get other answers from you

and it seems that I can't fool you

[Shawn Jefferson]

Graphics modes (even if a "new" mode) won't sell your game, or make people want to play it, so not releasing information on the graphics mode or even demo code makes no sense really. Gameplay is what makes a great game...

 

Frankly, and not meaning to put a damper on anything, the graphics are a bit "blocky" and will likely flicker as well, so sitting on this graphics mode because you don't want it to "leak out" is a bit crazy. I do hope your game gets completed though. More games and software for the Atari 8-bit is only good for the community.

[danwinslow]

Edited June 19, 2014 by danwinslow

[Mclaneinc]

Dan, that's off the scale

[Jetboot Jack]

What a horrible bunch of people we Atarians are - give these guys a bit of space - let's judge the final product rather than getting all pompous and negative based on a couple of teaser screenshots and the usual "I can't do it but I'll tell you how to do it" know-it-alls that fill the forums.

 

It's a behaviour that seems to have grown wonderfully prevalent as we all hide behind our keyboards, none of you would dare be so confrontational and over assertive if you were face to face with the developer.

 

sTeVE, always amazed at how entitled people are..

[tschak909]

What a horrible bunch of people we Atarians are - give these guys a bit of space - let's judge the final product rather than getting all pompous and negative based on a couple of teaser screenshots and the usual "I can't do it but I'll tell you how to do it" know-it-alls that fill the forums.

 

It's a behaviour that seems to have grown wonderfully prevalent as we all hide behind our keyboards, none of you would dare be so confrontational and over assertive if you were face to face with the developer.

 

sTeVE, always amazed at how entitled people are..

I would gladly tell this to his face. For every one man who _does_, there are 10 boys who talk. This is simply the way of things.

 

I do not ask for an entitlement, what I can't stand, is shameless promotion, simply for the sake of attention.

 

I view this place, among many other places I visit, as a community. This community is a group of people who stuck by each other, long after the people who only sought to make money, have left. And somebody coming in, with no track record, promoting at the top of his lungs, with the intent to make money, with little teasers, yes, this is going to get the full brunt of my skepticism.

 

No demo? No discussion of techniques? As a hacker, I'm not interested.

 

-Thom

[Jetboot Jack]

"No demo? No discussion of techniques? As a hacker, I'm not interested." - forgive me, but so what, perhaps this game is not aimed at hackers?

 

Bottom line this is a game, made by someone who want's to engage with the community and offer a commercial(?) product. Of course it's promotion, you're meant to be interested enough to buy or download

 

"yes, this is going to get the full brunt of my skepticism" - perhaps, I get that but I also get that this is all negative - you are only one voice amongst many.

 

As a game maker I often decline to explore my techniques, creative decisions, processes and tools with the people who purchase my products.

 

Why - because the world if full of opinions and I have enough of them myself and in my teams without accruing those of others with less knowledge of the process. I let my work talk for me and the discussion is therefore about the success of experiences I make and invite you to enjoy, users and journalists will provide the feedback I need to understand my success or failure.

 

sTeVE

Edited June 19, 2014 by Jetboot Jack

[Mclaneinc]

..

none of you would dare be so confrontational and over assertive if you were face to face with the developer.

 

This is the only bit I disagree with, but its a personal thing, I simply speak my mind and am well known in my estate for making a stand against stuff such as drug dealers, bad mannered youth and people who throw rubbish or spit everywhere. Telling a dev I thought they were messing people around would be a piece of cake compared to what I'm used to

 

BUT, as there's been a date set then Pete will either show or not, till then no matter what niggles there are we still believe that no one is guilty until proved so or not.

Edited June 19, 2014 by Mclaneinc

[flashjazzcat]

All that sets my nostrils twitching, for what it's worth, is the relentless use of capital letters and exclamation marks ("This is going to ROCK!"), the attempts to pre-empt the reader's response ("...and YES: It's using the new CMODE"), and the apparent assumption that the screenshots kind of sell themselves. Sure we have plenty of people promoting their latest projects, but usually along the lines of "this is what I've done; what do you think?" rather than "This is totally awesome! And if you can't see that, you are MISSING OUT!". Of course, commercial considerations tend to give self-promotion a different texture, and if the intention is to provoke speculation and intrigue, then job (it would appear) done. Share this and you could win one of ten brand new 15" MacBook Pros!

Edited June 19, 2014 by flashjazzcat

[popmilo]

Only thing I don't like that much is that screenshot with "C Copyright" text...

I'm all for appreciating other peoples work, but C word sounds so last century...

 

Simple 'Made by' would tick all the right boxes

[Marius]

Whatever RPC_GAMES will create for games, he did create really hot-topics. I remember myself being very skeptical, and even a bit rude from time to time.

 

I changed my attitude about it, since RPC_GAMES indeed showed something, and I appreciate his motivation to continue what he is doing.

 

I see some things different than he does, but I decided to give him the space and time to do whatever he thinks is good.

 

I'll buy the game anyway. a8 development needs money to keep running.

 

The only thing I must add (and someone else already wrote that) ... to be honest, I'm not so interested in good quality graphics (I only would be interested in that, when someone ported Secret of Monkey Island, which absolutely NEEDS perfect GFX). I'm interested in gameplay.

 

In my top 10 of greatest atari 8bit games ever, there is no game with outstanding GFX; only games with excellent gameplay.

 

1. Millipede (there is nothing cooler than this game)

2. Drelbs

3. Seaquest (2600 port by phaeron) -> excellent game!

4. Midnight Magic (also a 2600 port by phaeron)

5. Stampede (again a 2600 port by phaeron) -> this games looks like sh*t, and it is SO MUCH fun

6. Ocean Detox (ok this game actually looks very good, but it is the gameplay that makes it cool)

7. M.U.L.E.

8. Pac-Man (arcade update)

9. Nerm of Bemer (this is even a BASIC GAME!)

10. Spy's Demise

 

Except for Ocean Detox, all these games lack good GFX, but those games live forever. So I hope the gameplay of CENTRON 3D will be cool too!

[popmilo]

I changed my attitude about it, since RPC_GAMES indeed showed something, and I appreciate his motivation to continue what he is doing.

He indeed showed something (how ever small it is..). His 'two weeks to 3d demo' sounds great, hope he does it.

 

That would really be impressive. Like 12300% speedup compared to current average idea-to-code time

[+Stephen]

There's certainly no reason for the hate. Mild skepticism - sure. But let's take the worst case scenario (which I don't think will happen). RPC Games delivers nothing. What has that cost anyone on this forum? Zero! No money has been laid out for a product which has not been delivered. No pre-orders have been taken. Nobody is out anything except some wasted time to read a hobby forum.

 

I don't like trolls, but at this point I certainly don't put these guys in that category. Even if the game is released and it is shit, that's still more than most have done.

[rpc_games]

What do I say about that. You guys ROCK !! oops, my punctuation Sorry about that, that's just how I talk

 

Why haven't I explained how CMODE72 works? Hmmm, Do I have to? Would KFC tell everyone their secret herbs and spices?

KFC = Kentucky Fried Chicken for those of you that didn't know.

 

You guys are smart enough, work it out for your selves or create your own colour graphics mode instead

and stop winging about mine.

 

@ Everyone with a positive attitude to Centron 3D. Here's a big THANK YOU for being patient.

You can't rush a good game, specially with Centron 3D. It's highly graphics intensive and this does

take A LOT of time to do. Specially with 72 colours on screen at once. The more colour the more

time to spend drawing, shading and animating. So thank you guys for your patience and support.

 

Now have a game of Pacman while you wait

 

Pete

Manager

RPC-Games!

[snicklin]

Pete,

 

I love your positivity and how you've taken some of the comments on here.

 

However you may find that due to promising so much at the start, *whatever* you produce, no matter how good it is, someone will moan about it not being up to scratch. Take a look at the Space Harrier thread, technically the finest game we've had and took 10 years to write and the main thing people spoke about was the flickering on the title screen.

 

Anyway, whatever it is that you produce, it will definitely be interesting due to the new mode. It will pose questions such as if this new mode is suited to the style of game that you produce. I think that some will love it, some maybe not. But at least we get an answer as to how WE individually feel about such a game style in such a mode. You are entering (as far as I know) unchartered territory which makes this interesting to me.

[Marius]

I have wondered myself where my own skeptical and sometimes rude behavior comes from in this case.

 

I have an explanation, which might sound a bit crazy.

 

I think that I care a lot (or perhaps even too much yes) for my little atari 8bit. I must admit that my atari 8bit computers are almost always somehow in my mind. It is a bit like a child to me.

 

All the great stuff people created in the past for my little atari made it grow, develop and was like good food for the atari.

 

When rpcgames introduced the game with all his enthusiasm I think I had to protect myself (and the atari haha) for disappointment and also some kind of irritation since all the software created in the past had been like milestones and very important for me (and my so beloved atari)

 

It's weird behavior and now I am typing this I realize how this hobby grew a bit over my head the last 20 years.

 

I am not crazy (in case someone started wondering about that haha) but I think that this is why I responded the way I did a while ago.

 

I was definitely not trolling or trying to discourage rpcgames.

 

I appreciate his motivitation to continue and I hope he can finish the game one day.

[Rybags]

CMODE72 - how it works:

 

Gr. 10 screen relying on frameblending. A given image is displayed with only the colour data on the first frame, then the luma data on the second one. Fixed background colour, shared across both images.

First image allows 8 hues + the shared one (black), second one 8 lumas: 9 * 8 = 72

 

To achieve the 80x48 resolution, VSCROL stores via DLIs used - same as the various existing techniques used to stretch Mode F pixels to an arbitrary height.

Edited June 20, 2014 by Rybags

[Xuel]

Rybags, it seems like what you describe would only produce 9 colors, no? You'd need two different images to get all 72.

[Rybags]

The reliance is on frameblending to get the 72 colours. It's sort of like APAC except the pairings are on adjacent frames rather than scanlines.

Relies on the fact that most LCD TVs and capture devices will blend 2 frames together (see pic I posted elsewhere of it from my TV).

 

So, you have the one image which is shown for 2 frames minimum, then just the palette change is required each VBlank.

 

Oops - changed previous post - you do in fact have 2 seperate images, one for hue and one for luma.

 

A similar effect could be done by showing Gr. 11 then Gr. 9 image to give 256 colours.

Edited June 20, 2014 by Rybags

[Xuel]

Right, but if it's the same image, then you'll always be mixing the same two colors from each palette. For example, the lightest gray will always mix with red and the next lightest gray will always mix with blue, etc. You need two images in order to get the Cartesian product of the two palettes.

[Rybags]

Yep... I kind of rushed that first explanation.

 

Sort of a mystery why they'd choose 2 * Gr. 10 screens when the other method would give much more colour at the same memory cost.

Possibly it could have to do with the fixed luma nature of Gr. 11 - by using Gr. 10 you could vary the luma on the colour providing screen if needed.

Edited June 20, 2014 by Rybags

[Mclaneinc]

 

However you may find that due to promising so much at the start, *whatever* you produce, no matter how good it is, someone will moan about it not being up to scratch. Take a look at the Space Harrier thread, technically the finest game we've had and took 10 years to write and the main thing people spoke about was the flickering on the title screen.

 

 

Yes, have to agree 100% on that, hats off to Sheddy for producing something that no one would ever have thought possible on the Atari, Space Harrier, speech and all. A simply amazing bit of programming but yet it was given a rough ride over the flickering. I wish I had a hundredth of the programming skills Sheddy has, to be honest I'm in awe of all our 8bit devs in here, be they programmers, musicians or artists, they show such talent and skill.

 

To quote Pete, you guys ROCK!

 

Actually I can see how annoying that is...Pete, stop doing it!!

[rpc_games]

@McLaininc: Here's a suggestion. Why not play Space Harrier on a LCD TV. No flicker with LCD TV's. Problem solved

 

Pete