Games that use Apple II-style artifacting for colors

[atarian63]

I don't think many games used it apart from some of the Apple ports, its not really a nice look and very restricted, even with changing things like Drol in PAL land from 0F to 0E in the display list still looked ugly. Stuff like Apple ports suffered from the wish to do a simple port and also keep it like the Apple look rather than using the better host machine.....Its a nonsense that runs through computer history, think Peter Johnson's ST to Amiga ports, totally lazy in terms of using the hardware but the volume of work he had made it very easy for him not to venture in to support the Amiga hardware more, page screen scrolling on the Amiga, disgusting...

 

He hated seeing us at the shows because he knew it was going to be "oy, sort out the Amiga please", same with Steve Bak (Goldrunner fame), so lazy ports..

Was fun for us ST guys to poke the Amigoids back then!

[GlowingGhoul]

 

Where does Alternate Reality use artifacting?

 

My point was the lack of being able to display high resolution text on the same line as multi color graphics meant AR had a lot of wasted space on either side of the tiny "action window", compared to Ultima III which was able to use a much more efficient layout.

Edited March 16, 2017 by GlowingGhoul

[+MrFish]

My point was the lack of being able to display high resolution text on the same line as multi color graphics meant AR had a lot of wasted space on either side of the tiny "action window", compared to Ultima III which was able to use a much more efficient layout.

 

OK, I misunderstood what you were saying, obviously. So you'd rather see AR's 3D viewport done in hi-res?

Edited March 16, 2017 by MrFish

[GlowingGhoul]

 

OK, I misunderstood what you were saying, obviously. So you'd rather see AR's 3D viewport done in hi-res?

 

Low res text looks terrible, and can be very difficult to read on the A8, IMHO. Obviously, I wouldn't sacrifice the quality of graphics in AR for a larger window, but the inability to use high res text on the same line as multi-color graphics forced some hard compromises. One of the few things I think worked to the C64's advantage was 320x200 hi-res mode specifically because it could display multi-color high res text, at least for the kinds of games I preferred.

[ZylonBane]

Obviously, I wouldn't sacrifice the quality of graphics in AR for a larger window, but the inability to use high res text on the same line as multi-color graphics forced some hard compromises.

 

No, it didn't. Even with the limitation of no text next to the viewport, the text area is still mostly blank. It's just a single-character RPG after all.

[+MrFish]

My point was the lack of being able to display high resolution text on the same line as multi color graphics meant AR had a lot of wasted space on either side of the tiny "action window", compared to Ultima III which was able to use a much more efficient layout.

 

I have to go back to this first and ask why you're posting a screenshot from the Apple II version rather than the Atari?

 

I thought the discussion was about the Atari's hi-res mode? The Atari can't display this many colors in hi-res via artifacting.

 

Edited March 16, 2017 by MrFish

[+MrFish]

Here's what Ultima III looks like on the Atari:

 

 

 

[+slx]

Didn't Flight Simulator II use artifacting for the artificial horizon?

 

There was PAL artifacting, too, but with different colours than NTSC (blue-green?), so the original choplifter looked a bit strange in PAL.

Edited March 16, 2017 by slx

[_The Doctor__]

I thought it displayed orange, blue, black, white....

[Mclaneinc]

Well, I love the way (intentional) artifacting looks in A8 games.

 

Choplifter - the delicate, single pixel pulsating stars in the background, and the overall crispness of the graphics.

Ultima III - High resolution text on the same horizontal plane as multi-color graphics. Even my loved Alternate Reality is kind of sloppy in this regard, wasting space on either side of the main window.

 

Don't think we would have gotten nearly as much software early on if artifacting wasn't available making conversions much easier. I'm skeptical software houses would have gone through the expense of converting to Atari's lower resolution modes on an unproven system.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have had what was done than nothing but like any owner of a machine that cost a bomb back then I wanted software that showed that cost and claims, yeah maybe it was naive back then but when you get stuff that looks exactly the same as the Apple and in the case of AE had missing screens it sort of felt like I'd been short changed.

 

As for Alternate realities sloppy use of the screen area, careful sir, there are still many members of the secret chamber of Alternate Reality who would draw blood for any attack on it

 

(I played it, loved the idea but was awful at it so I never got in to the secret chamber )

 

Of course software porters will do the least work (especially back then) but you always wished they had bothered.

[Bryan]

Here's what Ultima III looks like on the Atari:

I played Ultima II and III on an 800 and the blue water/green trees combo looked very nice.

 

Here's the colors produced by different machines.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/204355-artifacting-isnt-it-weird/?p=2624664

 

[Mclaneinc]

Was fun for us ST guys to poke the Amigoids back then!

 

Andd we poked back as well

[Goochman]

U3 artifacating was pretty decent - this is how it should look

 

[Bryan]

I don't think there's any way to say how it should look since it was different on every machine. All you can say is that they expected the colors to be those of a machine that had been released at that time.

[GlowingGhoul]

I don't think there's any way to say how it should look since it was different on every machine. All you can say is that they expected the colors to be those of a machine that had been released at that time.

I recall the colors changing when I switched from a 600XL to a 130XE. Green grass or blue water, but not both

[GlowingGhoul]

 

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have had what was done than nothing but like any owner of a machine that cost a bomb back then I wanted software that showed that cost and claims, yeah maybe it was naive back then but when you get stuff that looks exactly the same as the Apple and in the case of AE had missing screens it sort of felt like I'd been short changed.

 

As for Alternate realities sloppy use of the screen area, careful sir, there are still many members of the secret chamber of Alternate Reality who would draw blood for any attack on it

 

(I played it, loved the idea but was awful at it so I never got in to the secret chamber )

 

Of course software porters will do the least work (especially back then) but you always wished they had bothered.

I thought you and the other non-NTSC users did not have artifacting (hence the complete disregard for it by many modders based in PAL countries, like VBXE or the GTIA in FPGA projects)? Didn't games that used artifacting appear black and white for you?

[Bryan]

Artifacting isn't really useful in PAL. In composite, single pixels will have some color fringing but you can't get the solid colored areas because you can't generate the 4.43MHz waveform using a pixel pattern.

[GlowingGhoul]

Artifacting isn't really useful in PAL. In composite, single pixels will have some color fringing but you can't get the solid colored areas because you can't generate the 4.43MHz waveform using a pixel pattern.

Not only are you the savior of Atari 8-bit video quality, you're also the high-priest of artifacting! I can't tell you how pleased I was to see the artifact color adjustment pot on your UAV! Finally, someone recognizing the value of providing a good video signal while maintaining support for the most retro of programs!

 

One of these days you're going to make a board that outputs a perfect HDMI signal, with proper scaling, scan line support, and an algorithm that recognizes and displays artifacted colors (with selectable colors, of course, to properly display the various "Ages of Atari artifacting". I have a video card for my Apple II that converts artifacted colors into solid color VGA pixels, with a selectable palette.

Thank you Bryan, your efforts to modernize our favorite computer, while maintaining a genuine experience, is invaluable to the community.

[zzip]

 

My point was the lack of being able to display high resolution text on the same line as multi color graphics meant AR had a lot of wasted space on either side of the tiny "action window", compared to Ultima III which was able to use a much more efficient layout.

 

AR was clearly a game designed on the Atari, with extensive use of DL's, DLI's and other feature, the ports of the game to other systems suffered,

 

The problem with porting a game like the Ultimas to the Atari was Apple could produce 4 colors via artifacts (redish, green, blue, purplish) Atari could only produce two of those-- which two varied by machine, as posts in this thread showed.

[zzip]

U3 artifacating was pretty decent - this is how it should look

 

U3Title.png

U3Land.png

U3LB.png

 

I think ideally the foliage should be green, and the frame should be that purplish color that could pass for blue water or red brick.

[Bryan]

Not only are you the savior of Atari 8-bit video quality, you're also the high-priest of artifacting! I can't tell you how pleased I was to see the artifact color adjustment pot on your UAV! Finally, someone recognizing the value of providing a good video signal while maintaining support for the most retro of programs!

 

One of these days you're going to make a board that outputs a perfect HDMI signal, with proper scaling, scan line support, and an algorithm that recognizes and displays artifacted colors (with selectable colors, of course, to properly display the various "Ages of Atari artifacting". I have a video card for my Apple II that converts artifacted colors into solid color VGA pixels, with a selectable palette.

Thank you Bryan, your efforts to modernize our favorite computer, while maintaining a genuine experience, is invaluable to the community.

 

Thanks for the kind words.

 

The proper way to generate clean digital video is the FPGA route with a redesigned GTIA. Any other kind of up-conversion would be equivalent to what a small external box could do. My main focus is improving the existing analog video and getting the best out of the native chips.

[+MrFish]

Obviously, I wouldn't sacrifice the quality of graphics in AR for a larger window, but the inability to use high res text on the same line as multi-color graphics forced some hard compromises.

 

I think the decision to have a small viewport in AR was made in order to keep the framerate decent. If AR was an overhead 2D game, like Ultima III, then the viewport could have easily been extended to both sides of the screen, as were other AR graphic layouts like this.

 

Edited March 17, 2017 by MrFish

[_The Doctor__]

the smaller view port was a hold over from the original 3d movement he was implementing and then was told not to do.... too far along and not wanting to re-write everything the size was left as is... did you forget that?

[+slx]

 

Thanks for the kind words.

 

The proper way to generate clean digital video is the FPGA route with a redesigned GTIA. Any other kind of up-conversion would be equivalent to what a small external box could do. My main focus is improving the existing analog video and getting the best out of the native chips.

We'll need that sooner or later as analog input displays are bound to die out together with new consumer devices requiring them. Of all TVs listed on a popular price comparison website here, only 2/3s are listed with analog input (and analog tuners are not even mentioned any more).

 

Seeing the evolution of video interfaces, even a mod capable of HDMI or DP output might not last forever as these two will probably be replaced by something else within a decade or two, long before our Ataris die

 

 

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[+MrFish]

the smaller view port was a hold over from the original 3d movement he was implementing and then was told not to do.... too far along and not wanting to re-write everything the size was left as is... did you forget that?

 

I'm not sure I ever knew it. More info?