arok party ARKANOID AIR DOH Petscii

[Mr SQL]

 ARKANOID AIR DOH is a double entry in the Arok Party Dev competition for the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 Home Computer.

 

 

 

    
Commodore and Atari versions are both here along with the rest of the games, demos, music and remixes from the Party!

https://c64.rulez.org/pub/c64/Party/2023/Arok/gamedev/

 

Watch the live stream from the Party with the Atari 2600 version:
https://www.twitch.tv/arokparty/schedule

 

C64 version was improved with help from SingularCrew! 

 

Fun facts about the C64 version:

The C64 version is an enhanced Atari 2600 game with extra features.

The C64 version contains the original 6K Atari 2600 SuperCharger ROM binary bound to a 24K Atari 2600 emulator for the Commodore 64 that maps petscii graphics over Atari graphics. Try it without the loader for a Sharper image and artifact colors if you have an NTSC classic Television.
  
Here are some interesting features that are new:

When the game starts the boards foreground and background tile pixels are drawn using a four petscii character array each.

These petscii RAM arrays are redefined globally and then multiple times per frame at the tile pixel level and at the Display List level.

That means a lot of detail can be added to each tile pixel turning it into a 16x16 higher resolution tile sprite occupying the same space as 8x8 Atari sprites.

 

Petscii animations:
Catch the scrolling powerup and the scrolling board shows animated petscii and ascii replicated on all scrolling background tiles.

 

Petscii painter:
During this phase you can use your paddle to paint a petscii trail when you move back and forth, individual tile graphics can be set in this mode.  

 

Multiple zones redefined:
The background tiles below the bricks never change instead maintaining their pattern from the last new screen as globally defined, display list and individual tile transitions stack on top. 

 

Archon Idea:
A "Star Wars Chess" Archon style game could be created with these techniques and could run on the Atari 2600 too but would be abstractly blocky without the petscii extensions. The Atari tile graphics have addressable sub pixels too, but only 2 per tile pixel instead of 256.
 

[AW127]

Interesting. One question. Would it be possible, to run, for example the PAL-version of Atari-2600's "Phoenix" with it's own graphic on a C64, or is the C64 to slow, for something like that?

 

I ask, because the hardware, an emulator runs on, must be alot faster (10 times as fast for example) than the emulated hardware itself, so normally one would think, that a C64 cannot do this, at least not at full speed and when the Atari game should exactly look on the computer, like it looks on the console. I guess, even a Amiga-500 with it's 7MHz, will have problems with this, or am i wrong?

Edited July 21, 2023 by AW127

[Mr SQL]

On 7/20/2023 at 11:30 PM, AW127 said:

Interesting. One question. Would it be possible, to run, for example the PAL-version of Atari-2600's "Phoenix" with it's own graphic on a C64, or is the C64 to slow, for something like that?

 

I ask, because the hardware, an emulator runs on, must be alot faster (10 times as fast for example) than the emulated hardware itself, so normally one would think, that a C64 cannot do this, at least not at full speed and when the Atari game should exactly look on the computer, like it looks on the console. I guess, even a Amiga-500 with it's 7MHz, will have problems with this, or am i wrong?

 

Great questions. Yes it should be possible to run a game like Phoenix with it's own graphics at 100% speed.

 

It needs a custom graphics core to map the graphics to the VIC-II which plugs into the rest of the emulated TIA functions, system bus and RIOT. 

 

The 6502 runs the gameloop natively and talks to the VM at full speed allowing cycle precise and pixel perfect emulation.

 

I think the issue for the Amiga would be having to also emulate the 6502. 

 

But maybe the Amiga could emulate a 68000 based system with this design.

 

[AW127]

I haven't been here in a while, so the reply is a bit delayed.

 

On 7/22/2023 at 7:04 AM, Mr SQL said:

 

Great questions. Yes it should be possible to run a game like Phoenix with it's own graphics at 100% speed.

 

It needs a custom graphics core to map the graphics to the VIC-II which plugs into the rest of the emulated TIA functions, system bus and RIOT. 

 

The 6502 runs the gameloop natively and talks to the VM at full speed allowing cycle precise and pixel perfect emulation.

 

I think the issue for the Amiga would be having to also emulate the 6502. 

 

But maybe the Amiga could emulate a 68000 based system with this design.

 

 

Sounds interesting. I am such a big fan of the Atari-2600 version of "Phoenix", that I've been waiting for years, for someone with programming-skills to port this version 1-to-1, either to the C64 or to the Amiga-500. But really 1-to-1 in terms of graphic and playability, because no changes are necessary to this game. There are a few good ports of other Atari-2600 games to the C64 so far, but always completely reprogrammed, even if some of them have the graphics almost unchanged, to the Atari-2600 version.

 

But an emulator, with which you can use all Atari-2600 game-roms directly, would of course be superb, for use on the C64 or the Amiga. I guess, the Amiga with 7MHz, should be technically fast enough for something like this, while i am not sure, if the C64 with it's 1MHz is it too? Actually i'm a bit surprised, that there isn't such an Atari-2600 emulator for the Atari-ST yet? Maybe this is more difficult to implement than expected and you really need faster systems, on which the emulator then has to run, to have a really good and faithful emulation in the end?

 

Maybe you could somehow expand your current emulator, so that certain Atari 2600 games, can use their original graphics on the C64 too? Or is such a technical conversion of the existing emulator, associated with too much effort?

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by AW127

[Mr SQL]

6 hours ago, AW127 said:

I haven't been here in a while, so the reply is a bit delayed.

 

 

Sounds interesting. I am such a big fan of the Atari-2600 version of "Phoenix", that I've been waiting for years, for someone with programming-skills to port this version 1-to-1, either to the C64 or to the Amiga-500. But really 1-to-1 in terms of graphic and playability, because no changes are necessary to this game. There are a few good ports of other Atari-2600 games to the C64 so far, but always completely reprogrammed, even if some of them have the graphics almost unchanged, to the Atari-2600 version.

 

But an emulator, with which you can use all Atari-2600 game-roms directly, would of course be superb, for use on the C64 or the Amiga. I guess, the Amiga with 7MHz, should be technically fast enough for something like this, while i am not sure, if the C64 with it's 1MHz is it too? Actually i'm a bit surprised, that there isn't such an Atari-2600 emulator for the Atari-ST yet? Maybe this is more difficult to implement than expected and you really need faster systems, on which the emulator then has to run, to have a really good and faithful emulation in the end?

 

Maybe you could somehow expand your current emulator, so that certain Atari 2600 games, can use their original graphics on the C64 too? Or is such a technical conversion of the existing emulator, associated with too much effort?

 

 

I'm a big fan of Pheonix too, it's really well programmed and the graphics and gameplay shine on the 2600 architecture.

 

I think Pheonix could run in this emulator with it's original graphics. But because it has a unique graphics kernel that core would have to be ported natively to the emu's graphics card library to interact with the rest of the 2600 architecture in the emu.  It's gameloop would need no changes to the code and it would run pixel perfect with the gameplay cycle precise, but would still lack most of the color in the 2600 version. 

 

Abstract Assembly development kits and BASIC programming languages are ideal for this type of emulation because they share the same graphics kernel so implementing a few cores can enable many games to run that are written to those frameworks.

 

They also utilize a subset of the TIA and system bus architecture while the classics may utilize features outside that subset that would also have to be mapped in the emulator.

 

I've recently expanded the emu to add support for Atari Flashback BASIC to run Defender III. I'm working on adding support for batari BASIC 2K and 4K ROM's which will allow many more games to run in the emu. 

 

I think emulating the Atari 2600 on the Amiga or ST would be much harder because the 6502 would also have to be emulated.

Emulating just the CPU would be very challenging with a 7 Mhz platform particularly emulating a RISC CPU on the 68000.

The 6809 might be mapped more easily in real time to the 68000 series than the 6502.

 

I think the Atari 400/800 could run an emulator like this even more easily than the C64 for having similar architecture.

 

[AW127]

Okay, interesting informations.