92 replies to this topic

[Devin]

Jay Silverheels, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 4:20 PM, said:

Well, yes of course I know the Aquarius doesn't have programmable graphics.  Still, the graphics characters used in Tron are a far cry from ASCII art.  That's where my allusion to your exaggeration comes in.

It *is* ASCII art - its just a tad more picturesque than what the IBM could do. The "sprites" can only move 8 pixels at a time (since they are characters). It makes Aquarius games graphically poor and jerky.

Here, enjoy the fear, and horror, of the demon! "Oh noes, I haz planes for feets!"  

[Jay Silverheels]

Devin, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 4:30 PM, said:

Jay Silverheels, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 4:20 PM, said:

Well, yes of course I know the Aquarius doesn't have programmable graphics.  Still, the graphics characters used in Tron are a far cry from ASCII art.  That's where my allusion to your exaggeration comes in.

It *is* ASCII art - its just a tad more picturesque than what the IBM could do. The "sprites" can only move 8 pixels at a time (since they are characters). It makes Aquarius games graphically poor and jerky.

Here, enjoy the fear, and horror, of the demon! "Oh noes, I haz planes for feets!"  

It is no secret.  This was no secret to me when I was a ten year old playing Aquarius AD&D.

This just a semantics argument, but words mean what most people think they mean.

When you say ASCII art, people think this: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/

[Devin]

[quote name='Jay Silverheels' date='Sat Feb 12, 2011  2:32 PM' timestamp='1297549951' post='2208453'

It is no secret.  This was no secret to me when I was a ten year old playing Aquarius AD&D.

This just a semantics argument, but words mean what most people think they mean.

When you say ASCII art, people think this: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/
[/quote]

I haven't seen that in eons. Truly epic!  

[Jay Silverheels]

Devin, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 4:37 PM, said:

I haven't seen that in eons. Truly epic!  

Same here.  This discussion made me look it up.

Edited by Jay Silverheels, Sat Feb 12, 2011 4:38 PM.

[Mirage]

I agree that it's technically not ASCII art because it doesn't consist only of the ASCII character set. It's an extended character set. What it is, is character-based graphics.

[Devin]

Mirage, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 5:59 PM, said:

I agree that it's technically not ASCII art because it doesn't consist only of the ASCII character set. It's an extended character set. What it is, is character-based graphics.

Extended-ASCII art. It is the same as the old, old DOS games that made use of the smiley face, lines segments, etc.... to get "sprites". So, the Aquarius has basically the same graphics and sound functionality as the 1981 CGA PC in text mode (which gave 16 color characters). the only difference is the Aquarius extended-ASCII characters were designed for games; PC was not.

Still, the card symbols are much better done on PC than the Aquarius. The "club" never looked like a club to me. And, to make matters worse, the Aquarius doesn't have a spade. I guess they though developers could use the plane.

The PCs extended ASCII art has much better lines. The PC's extended-ASCII version of Pac-Man is far superior than anything the Aquarius can pull off. But, the PC could hardly get as good TRON: Deadly Discs.  

But back on subject.

Jay Silverheels, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 4:32 PM, said:

When you say ASCII art, people think this: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/

Most people don't know computer tech at all - that I realize. They don't know a byte from a nibble - nor the use of "hacker" vs. "cracker".

Edited by Devin, Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:30 PM.

[Devin]

Here's a picture of IBM PC Extended ASCII. It has much better lines - and scientific symbols. But, obviously, wasn't designed to be a console.

[Jay Silverheels]

Devin, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:15 PM, said:

Jay Silverheels, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 4:32 PM, said:

When you say ASCII art, people think this: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/

Most people don't know computer tech at all - that I realize. They don't know a byte from a nibble - nor the use of "hacker" vs. "cracker".

The people who would be reading about Aquarius Tron would be familiar with the term ASCII art, and would assume "ASCII TRON" means letters, numbers, punctuation, etc (like the Star Wars video).  If you simply said "non-programmable character graphics" instead of ASCII Tron, we wouldn't have to continue belaboring the point.  It would be clear.

That's really all I have to say about this very interesting topic.

[Devin]

Jay Silverheels, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:36 PM, said:

The people who would be reading about Aquarius Tron would be familiar with the term ASCII art, and would assume "ASCII TRON" means letters, numbers, punctuation, etc (like the Star Wars video).  If you simply said "non-programmable character graphics" instead of ASCII Tron, we wouldn't have to continue belaboring the point.  It would be clear.

That's really all I have to say about this very interesting topic.

Fair enough. Needless to say, we all can agree that the Aquarius is - without a doubt - poor in the graphics department.... and the programming.... and the keyboard layout.... and...

Edited by Devin, Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:42 PM.

[Jay Silverheels]

Devin, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:41 PM, said:

Jay Silverheels, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:36 PM, said:

The people who would be reading about Aquarius Tron would be familiar with the term ASCII art, and would assume "ASCII TRON" means letters, numbers, punctuation, etc (like the Star Wars video).  If you simply said "non-programmable character graphics" instead of ASCII Tron, we wouldn't have to continue belaboring the point.  It would be clear.

That's really all I have to say about this very interesting topic.

Fair enough. Needless to say, we all can agree that the Aquarius is - without a doubt - poor in the graphics department.... and the programming.... and the keyboard layout.... and...

I didn't realize that was the topic at hand, but sure.  I thought that was already established.

[Mirage]

Devin, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:15 PM, said:

Mirage, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 5:59 PM, said:

I agree that it's technically not ASCII art because it doesn't consist only of the ASCII character set. It's an extended character set. What it is, is character-based graphics.

Extended-ASCII art. It is the same as the old, old DOS games that made use of the smiley face, lines segments, etc.... to get "sprites". So, the Aquarius has basically the same graphics and sound functionality as the 1981 CGA PC in text mode (which gave 16 color characters). the only difference is the Aquarius extended-ASCII characters were designed for games; PC was not.

Still, the card symbols are much better done on PC than the Aquarius. The "club" never looked like a club to me. And, to make matters worse, the Aquarius doesn't have a spade. I guess they though developers could use the plane.

The PCs extended ASCII art has much better lines. The PC's extended-ASCII version of Pac-Man is far superior than anything the Aquarius can pull off. But, the PC could hardly get as good TRON: Deadly Discs.  

But back on subject.

Jay Silverheels, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 4:32 PM, said:

When you say ASCII art, people think this: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/

Most people don't know computer tech at all - that I realize. They don't know a byte from a nibble - nor the use of "hacker" vs. "cracker".

Yes, I suppose you could say extended-ASCII art, because it's beyond the ASCII character set. ASCII is a standard. It's a standard set of characters. Anything beyond that is extended. If you want to say extended-ASCII or character-based, it's exactly the same thing. It's beyond the standard ASCII character set.

http://www.asciitable.com/

Agreed, this is belaboring the point, and is a matter of semantics at this point, but to say it's strictly ASCII-art is not true.

But. Back to the Aquarius!

I think one thing most or all of us see is that sometimes limited is interesting. Otherwise, none of us would be interested in old computers at all, and would throw them all out and only focus on the most powerful of modern computers.

[jaybird3rd]

Devin, on Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:41 PM, said:

Fair enough. Needless to say, we all can agree that the Aquarius is - without a doubt - poor in the graphics department.... and the programming.... and the keyboard layout.... and...

BUT ... on the positive side, you can display characters using any combination of colors that you want, with as many different colors on a line as you want, which is something that several other computers and consoles of the time could not do.  Also, complex displays--made up of many different combinations of characters and colors--could be created without any CPU overhead whatsoever, since the display RAM is interrogated directly by the character generator and rendered independently of the CPU.

[RedRaider]

Just purchased a nice bundle last week, hoping it arrives safely by weeks end.

I will definitely post up some pics this weekend.

[doctorclu]

"This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius... age of Aquarius..."  

[Intymike]

Finally I made a few photo´s of my Aquarius collection.

[revolutionika]

Wow Mike!   Pretty cool stuff.

[revolutionika]

Pac Mr.

[theloon]

Oops!  I missed this topic.  I got an Aquarius specifically for jaybird3rds creations.  Bought the multi-cart.