Graphics/character modes to use?

[phoney]

I've come a long way in the past few months with the help of this forum. I'm now on my third program, which is a weather app that shows pictures of what I should wear given the temperature outside, and a little bit of narrative. It uses Fujinet and Meteomatics, and I have the network code and narrative running.

 

I'm trying to figure out how to do some graphics of pieces of clothing. I wouldn't say I'm COMFORTABLE with display lists, but I can do 'em. So it's a question of which graphics mode to choose. Ideally, I would like to display up to four 32x32, multicolored objects on the screen, along with some lines of text. I'm ... having trouble figuring out how. There are just too many options. Bitmap draw them in a graphics mode? Create a character set or four and use PRINT? 
 

Part of what I'm trying to get into my head is ... are the pixels square? I am stupidly confused about whether the pixels are square. Some of the pixels seem rectangular sometimes? Like when you're designing a character set in GRAPHICS 1 - those pixels seem rectangular?

 

I'm using an 800, so I don't have access to ANTIC 4. (Or do I?)

 

In any case: let's say you want to draw four 32x32 objects on the screen and maybe move them around. What mode would you choose?

[TGB1718]

3 hours ago, phoney said:

I'm using an 800, so I don't have access to ANTIC 4. (Or do I?)

You should have it, you probably won't open GR.12 in BASIC, but you could create your own display list.

Try this to check:-

 

10 GRAPHICS 0
20 DL=PEEK(560)+PEEK(561)*256
30 POKE DL+3,68:REM LMS + ANTIC 4
40 FOR I=DL+6 TO DL+28
50 POKE I,4:REM REMAINDER ANTIC 4
60 NEXT I

3 hours ago, phoney said:

are the pixels square? I am stupidly confused about whether the pixels are square.

No, they are not all square, it does depend on the graphics mode, the most rectangular modes

are GRAPHICS Modes 9 and 11 where each pixel is 4 bits wide.

If you use ANTIC 4, I think each pixel is reasonably square in each character.

[+Cafeman]

Antic 4 has rectangular pixels. The players and missiles have rectangular pixels. Zoom in on this image. 
 

[+MrFish]

I created a chart of all Atari Graphics Modes and posted it in this thread: Atari Graphics Modes

It gives descriptions about what type of pixels are used for each one (among other useful information).

 

The post that follows the one I linked to also includes a chart for various RAM boundaries that are necessary to know about.

 

[phoney]

Thank you! I am using GRAPHICS 7 for now.