Atari XL/XE vs ZX Spectrum... And the winner is...

[Mazzspeed]

1 hour ago, _The Doctor__ said:

I hate to admit it, but on real hardware... emkay of all people is correct about the visual distortions.

 

Perhaps his visual acuity is up to the challenge and yours isn't. Just like some people have a greater hearing range... maybe some folks can see motion better than others... who knows... a trained ear can hear things by how they process the sound better than the untrained ear.

 

constant abuse can cause a person to go tone deaf, or impact hearing. Maybe video abuse can do some terrible things to the eyes as well...

Wow, anyone could get the impression you're trolling me? ?

 

Once again, as I've stated to you before, let's keep assumptions related to myself out of discussion. You don't know me, I don't know you, and as stated I see this as an issue on any 8 bit platform that was designed before 3D games really became a thing. Generally speaking, the example shown is no more than proof of concept and should be taken as such.

[+Stephen]

3 hours ago, emkay said:

 

For some case I hoped someone would step into this trap. Occasionally the right person ... 

 

You should read the post before answering.  

 

A clue afterwards: You should read every post ...

I do read every post.  Yours are the ones that stick out, because they are all so similar I think at times you are a bot.  I'd love to have a count of every time you posted "use Mode 7".  I'll tell you one thing - it's a few thousand more times than you have done any code, that's for sure.

[Faicuai]

On 2/24/2021 at 12:54 PM, emkay said:

Really, that wobbling/tearing causes nausea on the Spectrum

You are correct about the tearing... It is vertically oriented btw. It even shows on above videos.

 

But, in my opinion, it is not that detrimental. Considering everything involved here, the rendering is respectable, in many ways.

[emkay]

4 hours ago, Stephen said:

I do read every post.  Yours are the ones that stick out, because they are all so similar I think at times you are a bot.  I'd love to have a count of every time you posted "use Mode 7".  I'll tell you one thing - it's a few thousand more times than you have done any code, that's for sure.

The question is why your perception keeps it that way. 

I write in 2 special cases about Mode D or GR. 7 . It's when the CPU time is the missing part. This is when moving objects need to be more than 7 at one time on the screen, and when 3D projection comes in.

In games where fast movement is needed and blocky movement isn't the problem, I always propose any character mode.

 

And, well , I did code back in the 80s/90s. But my profession has nothing to do with programming, so there were not much projects. 

And, well, there are the intros, changing the content is coding , if you understand.

PPS offered me once a package for creating them, making things easier...faster.

 

But what are you doing? With your prejustice balanced judgemental Teacher urge, you are one of those people here on Atariage who constantly derail threads  .

 

[emkay]

2 hours ago, Faicuai said:

You are correct about the tearing... It is vertically oriented btw. It even shows on above videos.

 

But, in my opinion, it is not that detrimental. Considering everything involved here, the rendering is respectable, in many ways.

What I'm more about is that interleaved wobbling of the whole scene. Particular when the right wall gets one or two frames later drawn than the left one. 

Could be a video compression issue, but it's the same on the emulations. 

In Rescue on Fractalus, details inbetween get projected also one or two frames later. While on the Atari every frame is fully created before the buffer flipping gets done.

 

People also think that "Capture the flag" is doing 8 fps on the  VIC 20 . The Atari does it also in 8 fps. 

The difference is that on the Atari both windows get updated 8 times per second, while on the VIC 20 4 updates per window get done, while they get updated interleaved.

[emkay]

On 2/27/2021 at 8:46 PM, emkay said:

@XXL

Have you ever considered Mode 7?

You might need a DLI (or special charset pointer adjustment) for every Character line, but it offers a resolution similar to mode C, but then you get the benefit of character "double buffer" and "masking". 

Then you also get the possibility of using 4 playfield colors (plus background).

 

Hmm....

 

I'm still wondering of the benefit in 3D projection Mode 7 (Not Graphics 7  ) might give.

There is some loss due to the use of DLIs, but the mode leaves a lot cycles free to handle the graphics content.

The lineup could be done with characters, and there are 5 playfiels colors, to give objects a real defined color. 

 

xxl ?

 

 

 

[xxl]

handling this mode in a classic way takes up a huge amount of memory that Atari does not have. Handling an array of objects instead of a huge array takes a huge amount of CPU cycles.

I have a completely different opinion about pumping the visual part of the game at the expense of the game itself (unfortunately, on such limited equipment you have to choose or balance). Look at chess - if you had chess that is graphically perfect e.g. in 3D but the game engine itself is weak and chess with symbolic graphics but correct in terms of playability, what would you choose. I approach this topic in the same way on Atari - so what if you can prepare a great graphic scene if you don't have enough memory or time for the rest. This is the case with this labyrinth that I showed - in my opinion it is graphically great (although monochromatic) but there is almost no room for gameplay ...

Again - for example: Bomb Jack on Atari - graphically brilliant but compare its playability with the graphically very poor version on ZX Spectrum. Although the one on the ZX is so poor graphically, it beats the Atari version thanks to its gameplay.

The graphic side of the game consists of sprinkles, herbs added to the dish ... but the dish itself is meat. Even if the meat is only slightly salted, it will still be delicious and better than a soybean chop in the finest spices.

 

 

Edited March 11, 2021 by xxl

[emkay]

18 hours ago, xxl said:

 

 

What has this video actually to do with the 3D engine in the discussion?

 

18 hours ago, xxl said:

 

handlng this mode in a classic way takes up a huge amount of memory that Atari does not have. Handling an array of objects instead of a huge array takes a huge amount of CPU cycles.

 

Antic Mode 7 is the charater mode that uses 16 scanlines for one character. 

IF you use a new charset every character line, it would take up to 7680 bytes+the screen memory for 15 lines .

20 bytes per scanline means 300 Bytes. You also get the possibility of masking by the characters .

Resolution is the same as Mode C or D. (4800 bytes for the visual screen - character masking) 

 

 

18 hours ago, xxl said:

I have a completely different opinion about pumping the visual part of the game at the expense of the game itself (unfortunately, on such limited equipment you have to choose or balance). Look at chess - if you had chess that is graphically perfect e.g. in 3D but the game engine itself is weak and chess with symbolic graphics but correct in terms of playability, what would you choose. I approach this topic in the same way on Atari - so what if you can prepare a great graphic scene if you don't have enough memory or time for the rest. This is the case with this labyrinth that I showed - in my opinion it is graphically great (although monochromatic) but there is almost no room for gameplay ...

Again - for example: Bomb Jack on Atari - graphically brilliant but compare its playability with the graphically very poor version on ZX Spectrum. Although the one on the ZX is so poor graphically, it beats the Atari version thanks to its gameplay.

The graphic side of the game consists of sprinkles, herbs added to the dish ... but the dish itself is meat. Even if the meat is only slightly salted, it will still be delicious and better than a soybean chop in the finest spices.

 

 

Not really sure about your intention. But Bomb Jack needs 320K just for the better visuals.

Several games use  1MB carts. 

Why should this be a problem for any 3D game?

 

Btw: Why do you think the Speccy version of Bomb Jack is better in the gameplay? It's horribly slow and has nothing to do with the original gameplay. 

[xxl]

I thought you were writing about a different mode. now I understand.
Yes, an interesting idea, and would actually do the job of quickly erasing the screen - much like it has the place for ZX in the attribute memory. You can expand the idea to 3 lines from the set on the screen (60 characters + 1 space) - the vertical band is drawn faster in the consecutive bytes of the set.
ADG
BEH
CFI
I see two problems so far ...
First, I will write why there is an illusion of a fluid action more than it is in reality: If you draw with vertical stripes WITHOUT deleting the content on the right, it does not have the effect as if you were drawing with horizontal stripes, you cannot see where you are drawing at the moment ... I use this effect - it is similar in DeathChaseXE. If we delete the whole image with a space (in practice, only the sky), it will be visible over the entire height of one character - it seems to me that this can be eliminated by double buffering. The second problem is inserting sprites - they are pasted at the end because only then we have a full 40 bytes of the Z buffer ... but this is the problem of address-to-character conversion - it can be solved. I see a big advantage ... you can set different colors within the limits of the sign - of course there will be colorclash but when used cleverly it can give good results.
I have to think about it longer.

 

 

[emkay]

2 minutes ago, xxl said:

I thought you were writing about a different mode. now I understand.
Yes, an interesting idea, and would actually do the job of quickly erasing the screen - much like it has the place for ZX in the attribute memory. You can expand the idea to 3 lines from the set on the screen (60 characters + 1 space) - the vertical band is drawn faster in the consecutive bytes of the set.
ADG
BEH
CFI

 

 

Antic Mode 7 only has 64 characters. So the character set is limited to one scanline, or 2 scanlines on a 32 bytes width.

The charset boundaries are 512k .

On a 40 bytes wide screen, you need 40 chars and have 24 for something else left. 

 

Quote

 

 

I see two problems so far ...
First, I will write why there is an illusion of a fluid action more than it is in reality: If you draw with vertical stripes WITHOUT deleting the content on the right, it does not have the effect as if you were drawing with horizontal stripes, you cannot see where you are drawing at the moment ... I use this effect - it is similar in DeathChaseXE. If we delete the whole image with a space (in practice, only the sky), it will be visible over the entire height of one character - it seems to me that this can be eliminated by double buffering. The second problem is inserting sprites - they are pasted at the end because only then we have a full 40 bytes of the Z buffer ... but this is the problem of address-to-character conversion - it can be solved. I see a big advantage ... you can set different colors within the limits of the sign - of course there will be colorclash but when used cleverly it can give good results.
I have to think about it longer.

 

If the Illusion of 3D is there, the goal is reached

[xxl]

8 minutes ago, emkay said:

Antic Mode 7 only has 64 characters. So the character set is limited to one scanline, or 2 scanlines on a 32 bytes width.

The charset boundaries are 512k .

On a 40 bytes wide screen, you need 40 chars and have 24 for something else left.

I did not understand it. this mode takes 20 bytes per line, i.e. 60 in 3 char lines, and this is 3x2x8 = 48 scanning lines?

[emkay]

9 minutes ago, xxl said:

I did not understand it. this mode takes 20 bytes per line, i.e. 60 in 3 char lines, and this is 3x2x8 = 48 scanning lines?

Ofcourse. 20 bytes. My fault

 

Above I wrote it: 4800 Byte per screen. 

20(Bytes)x16(scanlines)x15(charset lines )

 

Edited March 12, 2021 by emkay

[emkay]

Hehe...

Imagine such a 3D background (black/white) , and in the foreground, with separated colors some Tetris style game on the character resolution

Parallax of it's own

[Gury]

It's The Spectrum Show...

 

 

Excellent show, highly recommended for watching, even for non-Spectrum fans 

[carlsson]

On 2/27/2021 at 10:35 PM, Stephen said:

Been a while since we had a Mode 7 post.  It's such a powerful mode we should have Quake by now.

Jeff Minter might be working on the A8 version of Quake in his sleep:

 

[Mclaneinc]

I doubt very much that it's to do with playing too much Quake..

 

Unless he's given up on the hallucinogenic pastimes these days..

[Pokeypy]

At age 12, I started with a Spectrum, then bought an Atari 800 XL system two years later, later went on to the Amiga 500.

 

The Spectrum was cheaper especially in that sense, that you didn't have to buy a floppy drive like the 1050 for it (which was about the price of the computer once more), to get decent results.

 

The Atari with its custom chips definitely had a video games background.

While the Spectrum had originally been created as an educational machine to introduce teenagers to the world of computing. And then was "misused" by the public as a gaming platform.

 

The Spectrum had an easy to understand memory layout, just a fixed resolution of 256x192 pixels, no hardware sprites, and just a simple beeper for sound. It didn't have any special text modes either, letters were also drawn (in that only fixed resolution), so you could just mix text and graphics freely. That system was much easier to understand and more accessible than the complex ANSI/GTIA/CTIA/POKEY-system of the Atari.

Even today, I still think in Spectrum categories. It's just such a lovely little system. I would even recommend it to young people today, when they're supposed to learn the basics of computing.

I don't think in Atari categories. They're too complicated for that. I don't think in 15 graphics modes, countless POKEY filter settings or player missile graphics memory addresses. Would be just too much to remember. Although it sure is nice to have such capabilites at hand, when you want to create a game.

Edited August 31, 2021 by Pokeypy

[Gury]

I understand you completely. ZX Spectrum is second-best 8-bit machine of my chosing. Fast, little machine, with good and playable games.