Some Hardware Comparisons between Atari and Commodore

[Great Hierophant]

That SID chip is very well regarded by computer musicians and hobbyists, however in some ways it was ahead of its time. Even with the one less voice (you could get 4 SID voices with a software hack) it was for more musical than POKEY. The POKEY has an advantage over the SID in that it is easier to create a variety of sound effects with it than fiddling with the SID's filters and modulation.

 

However, who in the United States ever heard a small sample of what the SID could do? The High Voltage SID Collection has rips of most of the great composers and themes from the Commodore 64 era, mostly games. But take a look at the timing for most of them and it will be PAL, not NTSC. Most NTSC tunes get thrown into the "undistinguished" GAMES subdirectory. From what most NTSC players could hear, the SID chip spouted the same "silly bleep bloop music" of the Atari, on the rare ocassions it was musical at all. Text based adventures, turn based strategy games, and role playing games of the era rarely lent themselves to music. For the most part, the SID chip was confined to simplistic little themes, (think Pac-Man) and sound effects. Not really until the Adlib sound card for the PC did games get music beyond arcade themes.

 

(It is important to note that sometimes we did get games with great SID tunes over here. Skate or Die! with Rob Hubbard's rock electric guitar main theme is a particular favorite of mine, and I hate rock. But the in-game music was not composed by the great Hubbard and sounds like it came from a quite inferior machine. This is one of the few exceptions to the "NTSC SID is crap" rule I know about.)

 

The PAL Commodore 64 has a particularly rich music history, but when were the users listening to that music? All European Commodore 64 software came primarily on cassette tapes because the disk drive was too expensive. Tapes take a long time to load, minutes even for a shump. During loading the loading tune, often done by the best composers, would play against a static, albeit nice looking, loading screen. Many times, the theme would be superior to the actual game itself, and these loading themes or intros kept European 64 gamers sane. Once the game loaded, then you usually got mostly sound effects or if an arcade port, arcade music of an obviously different pedigree. There are many exceptions to this, but don't think that Europeans got a record full of symphonies every time they loaded a Commodore 64 game. I also reiterate my philosophy, listening is not playing, watching is not playing; to play a game one must have meaningful interaction with the software. Waiting for a game to load, on both sides of the Atlantic (the C64 1541 disk drive is slower than Atari's or Apple's), is not playing a game.

 

As for the graphics, what he C64 lacked in flexibility and color palette it made up with relative ease of use. The Atari machines operated on a scanline principle, as opposed to the C64's tile based graphics. Scanlines are more difficult to work with in 2-D with than tiles, especially considering the time period and the games made then. I think its easier to point to the tiles and tell the VIC-II chip to draw them than to force the ANTIC and GTIA to update the color registers each scanline. (Very close to a space hogging bitmap at that point.) Tile based graphics were the way to display graphics for the late 8-bit through the 16-bit era.

[eobet]

I fondly remember the loading tunes to each Last Ninja level. You didn't mind at all waiting the 5-10 minutes (!) of loading every level on that game, because they were absolutely stunning.

 

In comparison, however, I found that the Atari had a much warmer sound, especially with tracks like the main menu of Rescue on Fractulus.

 

The SID chip was probably much more versatile, though. There's even something called the "SidStation" out there right now, which is a professional synthesizer with a SID chip. There's a Swedish synthpop group called Robot who has released a CD titles "Fake or Real" using it, and it sounds great!

[emkay]

The SID had always the "warmer" sound even by the fact there are external filter capabilities.

The main cause why musicians were highly active on the Sid was the fact of the available synthesizer-like interface.

It Is like Playing a big piano and then playing on a toy-piano.

It sounds different but you can play the same way.

 

Pokey does not have all abilities that the SID has. On the other hand Sid has not all abilities that POKEY has. Musically the POKEY is discovered at ~50%. SID is at 99%.

Why? POKEY isn't built with an interface that a musician can understand directly, so it was useless until a coder did a good Composing tool.

By the lacking information of the hardware, the creators of such Composing tools didn't implement all features of the POKEY.

Just take a look at the SAP archive. All songs(over 1600) are played correctly by the SAP. But when using some 16 bit filtering or 1,79MHz filters, it sounds weird or is simply not played.

[Bryan]

That SID chip is very well regarded by computer musicians and hobbyists, however in some ways it was ahead of its time.  Even with the one less voice (you could get 4 SID voices with a software hack) it was for more musical than POKEY.  The POKEY has an advantage over the SID in that it is easier to create a variety of sound effects with it than fiddling with the SID's filters and modulation.

 

Yes, SID is the better music chip, and Pokey is the better sfx chip. Pokey is extremely flexible, however, and capable of producing a variety of waveforms. Programming for SID is much more straightforward. The stuff done by Raster and Grayscale help show how underutilized Pokey was.

 

However, who in the United States ever heard a small sample of what the SID could do?

 

I've heard a lot of great SID music & demotunes. Heck, a lot of the great Amiga tunes used SID samples.

 

As for the graphics, what he C64 lacked in flexibility and color palette it made up with relative ease of use.  The Atari machines operated on a scanline principle, as opposed to the C64's tile based graphics.

 

The Atari does both. ANTIC modes 2,3,4,5,6,7 are Tile mapped. Modes 8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F are Line mapped. It just doesn't have the separate color map.

 

So, your whole message boils down to "the 64 is better." The 64 is also not a 1978 design. The 400 & 800 were designed to blow the Apple away, which they did nicely. The 64 was released in 1982 and was originally intended to be a next generation game console. The 800 would have been in a better position if Atari hadn't guarded the hardware specifications so tightly. I remember that most of my friends with Ataris only traded games while 64 owners were actually hacking on the things.

 

I still contend that the Atari was a better overall design, but had not secured enough market share when the 64 came out with the right features at the right price.

 

-Bry

[TMR]

Now me, i'm keeping out of this and... erm, hiding over there behind the sofa. =-)

[Tezz]

I beleive that the main reason why the C64 succeeded over the Atari was due to the difficulties using the graphics modes. My understanding at the time was that most of the gaming software developers used to concetrate on the game logic itself based on their knowledge of 6502 or which ever platform they happened to be working on that month, they did not use any special techniques or clever routines to make the games visually appealing (apart from a simply DLI) because for them it was a commercial project and they would have to meet deadlines and also quickly push out more titles to make them and the software house more money. There were a few exceptions of course with the earlier developers on the A8 such as Synapse, Lucasfilm, etc.. because the Atari was massive then but the later developers just churned out very plain and boring games. To me and all the computer users that I saw at the time, the look of the game was everything. There was nothing worse for a platform then 99% of the games coming out looking crap. The reputation of the Atari was diminished very quickly.

 

bryede The Atari does both. ANTIC modes 2,3,4,5,6,7 are Tile mapped. Modes 8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F are Line mapped. It just doesn't have the separate color map

Yes this is true the C64s tile mapped modes allowed for the pallette to be colour mapped on the screen. Even with attributes and limitations, this was much more flexable and didn't need an real in-depth knowledge of difficult routines and presise timing etc. So the C64 titles immediately looked better. That's not to say that the C64 was easy to program, there was a lot of clever routines used also but this was fuelled by the success of the titles in the market, the programmers could then invest the time in doing something special. It was kind of like a snowball effect of success.

 

With regard to the sound side of the argument, the SID is great but I think that if the Ataris graphics included a colour mapped tile mode the platform would have succeeded immensly and the Pokey would have had great routines developed for it just like the C64 did

[emkay]

Yes this is true the C64s tile mapped modes allowed for the pallette to be colour mapped on the screen. Even with attributes and limitations, this was much more flexable and didn't need an real in-depth knowledge of difficult routines and presise timing etc. So the C64 titles immediately looked better. That's not to say that the C64 was easy to program, there was a lot of clever routines used also but this was fuelled by the success of the titles in the market, the programmers could then invest the time in doing something special. It was kind of like a snowball effect of success.

 

 

Sorry for beeing rude, but this is one thing that makes me sick.

From 1978 until the end of the first period of A8 history in 1986-87 , there was really NO learning by doing effect on the A8 scene. Even from the main softwarehouses... ATARI itself puttet "Food Fight" in 1989 onto the market that looked like a Game from 1979....

The first years of the C64 were one revolution (in coding achievement)after the other.

One created a piece of new software.... the next pushed the idea with some more achievement.... the next did it in enhancing with this knowledge ... etc.

The A8 technology was still there for about 5 years before the C64 arrived, and there never was a piece of software to set a PAR between those machines (in coding achievement).... because that "learning by doing" effect was still missed.

 

Only the eastern europe A8-scene did this learning by doing progress and gave the A8 a "new" life.

[Heaven/TQA]

international karate f.e. is from 1986... does anybody know if the atari version was the 1st one? imho it pushes the hardware to some extend...

[TMR]

international karate f.e. is from 1986... does anybody know if the atari version was the 1st one? imho it pushes the hardware to some extend...

 

From memory, both International Karate and Dropzone were A8 titles first and then ported to the C64 (although i think the music on the former went C64 to Atari during the development process). Sadly, the rather shaky contacts i had at what used to be System 3 aren't there any more so i can't do any checking...

[Mindfield]

The one thing I found with any platform is that hardware limitations almost always produce the most interesting results from clever coders bent on finding ways around them. The C64 was a more limited machine than the 8-bit Atari, graphically. Atari's ANTIC chip was capable of some pretty damn cool things straight out of the box -- the ability to build your own display list to mix graphics modes added to ANTIC's 128-colour pallette that was, with a few simple DLIs, capable of being displayed all at once (even if only on horizontal planes) could do some pretty stunning results. Just look at Alley Cat or Alternate Reality for a couple of great early examples. The C64 was far more limited in its colour pallette and had no display list. Where the A8's extended capabilities bred complacency, the C64's limitations fostered innovation through adversity. Most programmers worth their salt (which is to say, coders who coded for the love of coding, not because it produced a paycheque) regarded limitations as challenges to overcome them. The more they encountered, the more they wanted to prove that they could beat them. That's pretty much what created the demo scene in the first place: A showcase of a coder's talent to prove that they can make the machine do things its original designers probably didn't think it could do. The C64 was a good machine to do this on simply because it provided more limitations (and therefore more obstacles to overcome) than the A8.

 

By contrast, the A8, while still having a demo scene that produced some very engaging demos, didn't have anything that could really be considered innovative until the late 80s/early 90s. I remember being truly impressed with the release of the Veronica demo -- until then I couldn't have even begin to imagine that the A8 was capable of not just playing digital MOD music, but doing so without disabling ANTIC, and still display scrolltexts and effects to boot. Now that was pushing hardware. Of course it only got better from there, but "there" was a great deal further down the road than the C64's scene, which began pushing the hardware much earlier.

 

It's difficult to lay any kind of blame on the A8 because it was a late bloomer where pushing the envelope was concerned. It didn't have the same kind of limitations programmers regarded as challenges to overcome that the C64 did, thus didn't present any kind of challenge to programmers until they had fully explored what it was already capable of out of the box.

[TMR]

The C64 was far more limited in its colour pallette and had no display list.  Where the A8's extended capabilities bred complacency, the C64's limitations fostered innovation through adversity.

 

Without wanting to get into the "which is better" argument, that's overstating things a little; the C64 has weaknesses but also strengths, for example it's better at handling sprites than the A8 (they're bigger, easier to move vertically and have twice the horizontal resolution) so once the raster interrupt system is learnt in the same way that display lists and the DLI need to be learnt it isn't massively complex to do something pretty impressive.

 

Also, the colour depth on a single line is better, all sixteen colours on a line can be done without any form of interrupt and eight sprites are still available afterwards; Reaxion A8 manages eight colours a line if memory serves but has to use half the players just to add more colours to the status panel and the other two are supplying one extra colour for the player's soft sprite and being recycled at the top and bottom for the pulsing lights. The C64 version just shoves a bitmap up, changes a couple of attributes for the lights, writes into the bitmap every other frame for the scores and only needs to move one sprite every frame, dead easy by comparison...

 

It's pretty easy to get something startlingly good looking out of the C64, same as it is with the Atari - just different techniques and different startlements (is that a word...? =-)

[Goochman]

The A8's problem was direct Apple ports were simple and it was very easy to create 'something' with color and move it. The C64 made it easier to create things with even more color hence they tneded to look better.

[Bryan]

I beleive that the main reason why the C64 succeeded over the Atari was due to the difficulties using the graphics modes.

 

I don't think these kinds of things really mattered in 1980. People had pretty much no idea how computers worked, and just wanted to buy one that was going to be around for a while. For this reason many people spent big bucks for Apple II's even though the graphics were much worse.

 

If your brand name wasn't oozing professionalism and stability, then you needed to offer a "real good deal." Commodore 64's were selling well before people even knew much about the graphics or sound capabilities. It was just a well marketed and inexpensive. People figured that even if they were making a mistake, it was one they could afford to make.

 

Atari was really in the middle. They offered an expensive computer but didn't have the brand image of Apple, and their cost-reduced offering (the 400) had too much of a "you're gonna regret this" feel.

 

-Bry

[Tezz]

Emkay Sorry for beeing rude, but this is one thing that makes me sick.

Hey emkay, it's not rude to me ! I think you maight have got the wrong end of my point there emkay . It makes me sick also. What I wrote was an observance of what went on, not my personal opinion.

From 1978 until the end of the first period of A8 history in 1986-87 , there was really NO learning by doing effect on the A8 scene. Even from the main softwarehouses... ATARI itself puttet "Food Fight" in 1989 onto the market that looked like a Game from 1979

Absolutely, it was a travesty that the software houses employed lazy programmers who did not seem to want to achieve anything on this platform.

One created a piece of new software.... the next pushed the idea with some more achievement.... the next did it in enhancing with this knowledge

Totally my point with the sucess of the C64 market. The acheivements of the programmers pushing what was possible snowballed the C64 scene. and because in mid to late eighties the C64 had a big following so their hard work was rewarded by a large audience. I think that the software houses employed un-interested A8 programmers because of the small market who mainly did bad conversions and ports.

Only the eastern europe A8-scene did this learning by doing progress and gave the A8 a "new" life.

Yes, totally. The demo scene in particular showed what can be done and that commercial programmers should have done more.

Mindfield The one thing I found with any platform is that hardware limitations almost always produce the most interesting results from clever coders bent on finding ways around them

Yes I agree, that's the fun in coding, but for some reason the Atari was ignored

Where the A8's extended capabilities bred complacency, the C64's limitations fostered innovation through adversity.

hmmm I see where you are coming from but the A8's extended capabilities were just not utilised I don't think it was complacency I think it was laziness or the fact that the software houses didn't care about the A8 platform and just pushed out quick and simple ports.

I remember being truly impressed with the release of the Veronica demo -- until then I couldn't have even begin to imagine that the A8 was capable of ..

Yeah, it was great to see the A8 finally pushed. For me I knew that the A8 was always capable of doing this and and found that very frustrating. IT IS A TESTIMENT TO THE EASTERN EUROPEAN PROGRAMMERS THAT THE ATARI 8-BIT NOW SHINES I am very happy to see these great routines. I can rest now knowing that the Atari was proved to be more than the terrible games that were released in the later years

but "there" was a great deal further down the road than the C64's scene, which began pushing the hardware much earlier.

Yes that will always be a great shame

It didn't have the same kind of limitations programmers regarded as challenges to overcome that the C64 did, thus didn't present any kind of challenge to programmers

Gotta disagree with that, I think it was a bitch to do something good on the Atari. It was limited in what it could do without inovative routines. I just think the platform fell by the way side along the lines and lost too much of it's market to get any interest from software houses.

 

It is a sad fact that the software houses are commercial ventures and not done out of the love of programming like the demo coders showcasing their tallent. although for me, this is striking yourself a killer blow. Without development and inovation, the buying public willl loose interest fast.

 

TMR C64.. it's better at handling sprites than the A8 (they're bigger, easier to move vertically and have twice the horizontal resolution) .... Also, the colour depth on a single line is better, all sixteen colours on a line can be done without any form of interrupt and eight sprites are still available afterwards ... It's pretty easy to get something startlingly good looking out of the C64, same as it is with the Atari - just different techniques and different startlements (is that a word...? =-)

Completely agree with everything you have said there.. Very well expained Couldn't have put it better myself!!!

 

Just to round this off, I wish that Atari would had have included a colour mapped tile mode that allowed for at least 16 colours to be used from the 256 pallette and also that the hardware sprites were at least 16 pixels wide with 3-four colours available to each. THE ATARI 8 BIT WOULD HAVE TOTALLY DOMINATED.

[emkay]

 

 

TMR C64.. it's better at handling sprites than the A8 (they're bigger, easier to move vertically and have twice the horizontal resolution) .... Also, the colour depth on a single line is better, all sixteen colours on a line can be done without any form of interrupt and eight sprites are still available afterwards ... It's pretty easy to get something startlingly good looking out of the C64, same as it is with the Atari - just different techniques and different startlements (is that a word...? =-)

Completely agree with everything you have said there.. Very well expained Couldn't have put it better myself!!!

 

Just to round this off, I wish that Atari would had have included a colour mapped tile mode that allowed for at least 16 colours to be used from the 256 pallette and also that the hardware sprites were at least 16 pixels wide with 3-four colours available to each. THE ATARI 8 BIT WOULD HAVE TOTALLY DOMINATED.

 

Big Sprites... color cells....SID

Well... you easily can do games like "Mayhem in Monsterland" or "Turrican (3)"... with cool SID-Music.

It is done...it does show the abilities of the C64.

 

Take a slight look at the "3D-Game" thread....

Fast CPU ... complex graphics controller for easy fullscreen movements .... fast enough vector based routines....

And don't underestimate the ability of hardwaremixing 4 voices for creating scene-depending ambient sounds and nice music.

It is not done.... it does not show the abilites of the A8.

[andy_bernstein]

Tezz,

 

Sure, the East European programmers did (and still do) incredible things on the Machine but I do believe that the Brits did their share with Elektra Glide (back in 1985) then Tynesoft (Winter Olympiad 88 ) then Zeppelin Games (Zybex, Draconus).

 

Gotta say that I loved Zeppelin's decision to release under their brand name a bunch of Polish Games -> it was a stong sign of acknowledgement toward the East European imagination on the A8 platform.

 

When it comes down to the first period of the A8 (mainly US software), some still rank among the best (all Lucasfilm Games, some Synapse, some Datasoft...) but, yes, it's too bad that near the end of the U.S. life of the A8 platform, they provided some so-so conversions (the last batch of EA titles for instance).

 

Anyway..... back to programming.

 

AB.

[www.atarimania.com]

The main problem was that the A8 didn't sell well enough in the UK to ensure interesting software development, simple as that. Because of the booming home computer market (mainly with the Spectrum and C64), something like 90% of the technical creativity came from the UK at that time and the Atari had no chance. We did get Elektra Glide, Mercenary, Encounter!, Zeppelin stuff... but got virtually nothing apart from that. No Ocean, no Imagine, no Thalamus, no Mirrorsoft, no Hewson...

 

--

Atarimania

http://www.atarimania.com

[andy_bernstein]

Bonjour Atarimania !

 

We did get Elektra Glide, Mercenary, Encounter!, Zeppelin stuff... but got virtually nothing apart from that. No Ocean, no Imagine, no Thalamus, no Mirrorsoft, no Hewson...

 

Or let's say nothing significant: Ocean -> Head Over Heels (interesting)

http://www.atarimania.com/detail_8bits.php...FT_LIB&SENS=ASC

 

Imagine -> Leggit (does not qualify -> around 83/84), Green Beret (awful conversion - De Re Soft ?), Arkanoid (fun).

 

Mirrorsoft -> Spitfire 40 (still don't have an opinion about this one).

 

Hewson -> Nebulus (officially unreleased).

 

We did get some conversions from Domark though.

 

Additional note -> While growing up in Paris, I went every Saturday to Coconuts (Métro Oberkampf / Boulevard Voltaire) and, while the XL/XE offering was only 1/4 of the ST line or the C64, it was still a blast to discover "in real time" Star Wars by Zeppelin Games or Winter Olympiad 88 by Tynesoft. I do cherish these moments in my childhood (+ the 30 minutes return trip to my place to try these things was a pure imagination exercise about how good these games were going to look !).

 

Ah............. The late 80's / early 90's........

 

AB.