"aritfacting necessary for optimal display" games

[TheRaven81]

Is there a list of such games? The most commonly known example of a game like this, is Lode Runner. I ran into this when I was playing it yesterday. I happened to be using S-Video for the output of my Atari 800XL, and it looked like this:

 

When I switched to a composite signal (a Yellow RCA plug) then it looks like this: 

Which seems more like what it's supposed to be, and a major difference.  
 

Are there any other games that are like this? Games that have a major difference in how they look depending on what type of video signal you are using for your display?

 

[Dinadan67]

3 minutes ago, TheRaven81 said:

 

Are there any other games that are like this? Games that have a major difference in how they look depending on what type of video signal you are using for your display?

 

Ultima 1-4, Hard Hat Mac, Drol, AE, some Pinball games come to my mind. I am sure there a more games from the early days that made use of artifacting.

[zzip]

Any game using hi-res mode (320x192) is prone to this. 

 

A few off the top of my head:

A.E.

Flight Simulator II (Instrument panel only)

The original Choplifter (not the XEGS update)

Ultima II, II and IV

 

[+kheller2]

Droll?

[+MrFish]

Mr. Do

 

Although the gameplay area uses Antic 4, the upper and lower score and information areas use hi-res artifacting for various portions (extra Mr. Do's, colored text, etc.).

 

[zzip]

19 minutes ago, MrFish said:

Mr. Do

 

Although the gameplay area uses Antic 4, the upper and lower score and information areas use hi-res artifacting for various portions (extra Mr. Do's, colored text, etc.).

 

True,  but the artifacting use is minimal and doesn't hurt the game much if you don't have it.

[+MrFish]

There's really a lot. Mainly anything that uses hi-res and was developed for NTSC systems is going to use at least some artifacting -- with few exceptions. PAL hi-res development is going to be completely the opposite.

 

You can generally tell something that has intended artifacting by consistently spaced vertical stripes/lines and/or dots, in various areas of objects, etc.

 

Some others are...

221B Baker St. - Uses it on the character selection screen, and in the character graphic at the bottom of the screen during gameplay. The main gameplay/board area uses Antic E. 

Jawbreaker

Threshold

Diamond Mine

 

I guess a lot of Apple II games came over using artifacting, as that's the primary means of getting color on that system.

 

[+MrFish]

14 minutes ago, zzip said:

True,  but the artifacting use is minimal and doesn't hurt the game much if you don't have it.

Yeah, it's minimal; but I like seeing the extra Mr. Do's in color.

 

    

 

[+MrFish]

Some of the hi-res games that use artifacting have been converted to use Antic E instead. This gives you a game that will be in color on either NTSC or PAL, no artifacting needed; so, you can use it with your s-video connection on NTSC if you want too.

 

I don't have a lot of these; I've also never actively sought them out; but I know there are at least a few more out there, or even more than that (since PAL users have a good reason to hack them).

 

Note: the Lode Runner games with "Color Toggle" in the filename are able to run in either hi-res (Antic F) or 160 color (Antic E) mode. You can toggle the mode by pressing <OPTION> from the title screen.

 

 

Anti F to E Games.zip

 

[DavidD]

5 hours ago, MrFish said:

Some of the hi-res games that use artifacting have been converted to use Antic E instead.

 

 

Dumb question time -- what is "Antic E" mode, exactly?  I feel like I haven't heard of this...

[+MrFish]

44 minutes ago, DavidD said:

Dumb question time -- what is "Antic E" mode, exactly?  I feel like I haven't heard of this...

You can find out about all of them (supported by the OS) here: Atari 8-Bit Computer - Standard Graphics Modes

 

[DavidD]

2 hours ago, MrFish said:

You can find out about all of them (supported by the OS) here: Atari 8-Bit Computer - Standard Graphics Modes

 

Ah -- it's the half-resolution 4 color "mode 15" mode.  The "Antic E" thing confused me for a bit.

 

I would think that dropping from 320 to 160 would have a negative impact on many of the games that were designed for 320, though...

[Mclaneinc]

It made them ever so slightly blockier, but for PAL users that change from F to E gave us colour where there had been none before, and the nice thing was that it was a really easy fix to do.. There's even a PAL version of this artifacting that I hope someone can remember the PAL game that uses it, think it was to do with car racing, top down, not sure but used a variation of artifacting on one of the screens (Title I think)...Anyone remember it's name?

Edited December 17, 2022 by Mclaneinc

[TheRaven81]

14 hours ago, MrFish said:

Some of the hi-res games that use artifacting have been converted to use Antic E instead. This gives you a game that will be in color on either NTSC or PAL, no artifacting needed; so, you can use it with your s-video connection on NTSC if you want too.

 

I don't have a lot of these; I've also never actively sought them out; but I know there are at least a few more out there, or even more than that (since PAL users have a good reason to hack them).

 

Note: the Lode Runner games with "Color Toggle" in the filename are able to run in either hi-res (Antic F) or 160 color (Antic E) mode. You can toggle the mode by pressing <OPTION> from the title screen.

 

 

Anti F to E Games.zip 256.35 kB · 4 downloads

 

OH awesome. TY for these. And yes, it is a little blockier, for sure. But personally I think it still looks nicer. A LOT nicer than I could get it to look through the Composite cable, anyways.

[+MrFish]

12 hours ago, DavidD said:

Ah -- it's the half-resolution 4 color "mode 15" mode.  The "Antic E" thing confused me for a bit.

Unfortunately Atari BASIC mode numbers don't coincide with Antic's order. $E is just hex (14 decimal).

 

12 hours ago, DavidD said:

I would think that dropping from 320 to 160 would have a negative impact on many of the games that were designed for 320, though...

Concerning artifacted colors, no: it has zero impact. If pixels in Antic F need to be spaced every-other pixel to achieve artifacting, then it ends up looking just like Antic E pixels. The impact comes with blobs of Antic F pixels (usually where you see white). Even though there is a similar requirement to obtain white pixels -- in that there needs to be two pixels (or more) adjacent to one another -- they can be offset from one row to the next, giving the half color clock resolution from one row to the next; although even with that, you're going to seeing some color shadows on the edges of the white pixels (when using composite or RF on an NTSC system). Also, movement of the white pixels can be at half color clock distance; but artifacted colors will be restricted to movement at Antic E width; and this will include white pixels, if, for instance, you have a sprite with artifacted colors and white combined (such as the enemies in Lode Runner). White blobs that take advantage of half color clock shifts from one row to the next will necessarily look a bit strange in Antic E.

 

Now, when it comes to systems using a (clean) s-video/chroma-luma signal, where you have no artifacting happening, or intended to be used, then you just end up with 320 x (whatever) pixels of a single color on some background color. As I said before, PAL (and some NTSC) hi-res productions are made this way; and there's no reason or benefit to making an Antic E version in this case. You'll basically end up with a bunch of sloppy, unintentional color blobs when changing it to Antic E (or even using it on an system displaying artifacted colors, in Antic F); but it is partially dependent on the graphic design; some hi-res designs can accidentally look decent in Antic E or artifacted Antic F; and it can also depend on the level of artifacting that the particular system displays; a system with low saturation will show muted artifacted colors, whereas the white color areas (two adjacent pixels, or more) will remain strong.

 

[+Stephen]

13 hours ago, DavidD said:

Ah -- it's the half-resolution 4 color "mode 15" mode.  The "Antic E" thing confused me for a bit.

 

I would think that dropping from 320 to 160 would have a negative impact on many of the games that were designed for 320, though...

Don't forget that even though the Atari can display 320 pixels in hi-res mode, it only scrolls in colour clock increments (i.e., 160 pixel resolution). Also, player/missile positioning is only at 160 pixel resolution.

[ClausB]

A2-FS1 has 2-bit pixels in Apple's HGR mode, so I was able port it to ANTIC E with no loss of resolution.

[R0ger]

Pal artifacting was discussed in this thread

 

As for games, Runaround 2 was mentioned.

Edited December 18, 2022 by R0ger

[+MrFish]

17 hours ago, R0ger said:

Pal artifacting was discussed in this thread

Yeah, I recall that thread; and I didn't mean to imply that artifacting was non-existent on PAL systems; although, it is, nearly, based on how many software examples are available in games or animated demos. It differs enough from NTSC artifacting that the games designed for NTSC artifacting are pretty useless for PAL artifacting. So, I was basically avoiding it here for that reason.

 

I'd like to see more examples of PAL artifacting used, in either games or animated demos. There really are quite a few colors available (much more than NTSC) -- albeit with a variety of patterning attached. It's a really interesting and obscure beast; basically ignored. Hats off to @phaeron for caring enough to make it happen in Altirra.

 

[Mclaneinc]

9 hours ago, R0ger said:

Pal artifacting was discussed in this thread

 

As for games, Runaround 2 was mentioned.

Thanks @R0ger, that's the game I could not remember the name of and been asking about...At least I remembered it was a car based game

[zzip]

On 12/17/2022 at 2:32 AM, DavidD said:

Dumb question time -- what is "Antic E" mode, exactly?  I feel like I haven't heard of this...

Yeah It's confusing because people who started programming with Atari BASIC often refer to graphics modes by the number used in BASIC (graphics 15) while others refer to the ANTIC or GTIA number.     They don't translate 1:1

[Mclaneinc]

If you code it's more 'normal' as you deal in HEX all the time which is where the 0E (14 decimal) and 0F (15 decimal) etc come in..Not so much the name of the mode, but the number the mode uses. Makes even more sense if you look up how a DLIST (Display List) works, Basically depending on the mode it will use blocks of a number to represent that screen resolution, so if it's a NTSC aftifacting mode (Hires) you want, the part of the DLIST for that screen will be a series of 0F 0F 0F etc etc. After that it's down to the programmer to plot the points to achieve the aftifacting effect.

Edited December 19, 2022 by Mclaneinc