Heaven/TQA Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 pure speculation... same like my personal impression of code. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 (edited) That is a most interesting fact here: You discovered Rescue on Fractalus is not that optimized. Compare it to the C64 version. If the C64 version had been just adapted, it would run even slower. Depending on the fact that the C64 doesn't have a linear frame buffer and the slower CPU, ... do the math.... We all know the sad story behind the first two LucasArts-games on Atari. They leaked before they had a chance to get released and instantly spread around the world. Sad story? Imagine, someone packs a Million Dollars (in the early 80s) on your table and then you have to just rewrite a program that already exists on a supercomputer. (Ah... and add some fireing option ) Ask other people, how much they got for their overal new written piece of software... well, I guess, that's a sometimes sad story ... Now think twice: How much enthusiasm was there on the side of LucasArts games and on the side of the programmers to put EVEN MORE time and money into the development of the game to release them? Hm? Simple as that: Make the program even better, control the leaking and sell the game for real. The only game from Lucasfilm Games in local stores was Ballblazer. No chance to get a "Box" of Rescue on Fractalus in that time... Edited January 28, 2015 by emkay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Creature XL Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 I've always used this doc for cycle counting: http://www.beipmu.com/Antic_Timings.txt Very nice. Used it to fix my DLI. In DITCH you can see a flicker in the water on the right screen boundary sometimes. Your list has (almost) the same info as Altirra HW manual, but I prefer the ASCII version to use with VIMs cursorcolumn/cursorline Maybe my findings are interesting for "newbies" (although only verified with Altirra debugger, not real XL!) The 4th cycle of the STA is the actual change in the register. And the change gets used by GTIA one COLORCLK (half cycle) later! And a gotcha: depending on what instruction was executed when the NMI request reaches the 6502 the first cycle of the DLI is different. In my tests the maximum difference is 10 cycles!. So I rearranged the DLI code. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Creature XL Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 [..] and then you have to just rewrite a program that already exists on a supercomputer.[..] You should have put the "just" in quotation marks. Without them you sound like someone who has never coded 6502 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chilly Willy Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 I don't know the story about the backgrounds of the people who post regularly on this site - but I'll take a wild guess that none are present who commercially developed - back in the day, on these fabulous Atari 400/800 computers etc. That those people here - are what you can call the "enthusiasts" as such - and they are a special category unto themselves. My VERY FIRST commercial program ever was for the A8. Didn't get much for it, but I was a college student at the time and didn't care so much as I wrote it in my spare time. After that, I moved into the Amiga for most of my early work. But nothing ever quite matches the feeling you get on your first sale. I am usually unimpressed by monochrome styled graphics in any game - and only if the graphics are exceptionally designed - that it would stand out to me. Even then - I'd wonder what if the graphics were done in some colour mode - how much better it would look? Use of artifacting is a bit different - I never thought too much of it, since I was always a PAL user - and would only rarely see a NTSC Atari 800 in action. Having done a little with artifacting - I can appreciate it is useful - if you work within it. I discovered artifacting independently... and thought my Atari was bad. I took it to a dealer and showed him via a BASIC snippet what was wrong, and we tried it on several more Ataris with the same result, thus realizing that was actually not a bug, but how it was supposed to work. I never heard the term until after I was already on the Amiga. I called it Color Aliasing since that's what a TV repairman would call such a thing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synthpopalooza Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 (edited) Artifacting makes for some cool effects too. I found that if you blend colors from opposite sides of the color wheel in hi-res mode, the artifacted colors will also blend and make your basic 16 colors ... two shades each of red, blue, green, yellow, cyan, magenta, and 4 grey. Edited January 29, 2015 by Synthpopalooza Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Artifacting makes for some cool effects too. I found that if you blend colors from opposite sides of the color wheel in hi-res mode, the artifacted colors will also blend and make your basic 16 colors ... two shades each of red, blue, green, yellow, cyan, magenta, and 4 grey. Could you share some xex file of those experiments ? (or code) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 You should have put the "just" in quotation marks. Without them you sound like someone who has never coded 6502 I'd still use it without "" , because I don't like to sound like someone who has only it's own point of view If you're doining something from your youngest childhood on, and if you bring a small talent , things get easier to you as to anyone else. I remember, when someone bought an Atari 800 , I wanted to show some game, but hadn't a Disk ... So I wrote a small game with Joystick controls in about 15 minutes right out of the head. My 1st Lessons about computer programming I learned when I was 18.... and it didn't take years to understand that. Projecting that on people who grew up with computers and programming.... someone should be able to write a 3D fractal engine in some weeks... or less... Example of "Talent and Support".... In "our culture" you would expect a 10-12 year old... or even older Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 I'd still use it without "" , because I don't like to sound like someone who has only it's own point of view If you're doining something from your youngest childhood on, and if you bring a small talent , things get easier to you as to anyone else. I remember, when someone bought an Atari 800 , I wanted to show some game, but hadn't a Disk ... So I wrote a small game with Joystick controls in about 15 minutes right out of the head. My 1st Lessons about computer programming I learned when I was 18.... and it didn't take years to understand that. Projecting that on people who grew up with computers and programming.... someone should be able to write a 3D fractal engine in some weeks... or less... In that case with your mega-awesome talent, why haven't you written your all encompassing tracker, rather than bitching at everyone who hasn't done it in the last 5 years for you? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Artifacting makes for some cool effects too. I found that if you blend colors from opposite sides of the color wheel in hi-res mode, the artifacted colors will also blend and make your basic 16 colors ... two shades each of red, blue, green, yellow, cyan, magenta, and 4 grey. It would have been cool if Atari had actually made artifacting a reliable feature with consistent coloring. Also, a handy feature would have been the ability to shift the colorburst to the different color phases, thus changing the relationship to LUM pixels and the artifact colors. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synthpopalooza Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 I will try to get something up tonight. It's basically the same as PAL blending, but you alter PF2 between red-cyan, purple-green' or blue-brown, then alter PF1 between 6 and 8 luminance each scanline. Plotting different artifact colors on the neighboring scanlines makes them blend. I did similar experiments in ICE Super 0, albeit with full frame flicker. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 In that case with your mega-awesome talent, why haven't you written your all encompassing tracker, rather than bitching at everyone who hasn't done it in the last 5 years for you? Not sure what you mean with "mega-awesome talent", but for sure I've mentioned it several times before... the reason is that a day has 24 hours. It was a hobby back in those days and my "real life" takes all time of a 24h day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 What makes me wonder: If Crownland looks colourful and nice playable to many people, what , if someone puts a Turrican that way onto the A8 ? Particular referring to the flicker method. Would you like it or not? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Creature XL Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 What makes me wonder: If Crownland looks colourful and nice playable to many people, what , if someone puts a Turrican that way onto the A8 ? Particular referring to the flicker method. Would you like it or not? I guess you know that perfectly, however, I say it in case someone wonders this for real. "Crownland" can be so colorful as it is purely vertical layouted. "Turican", "DITCH" or similar games have ceilings which should have the same color as the floor. So Not easy to use DLIs as effective as "Crownland" does. Of course you can do it like "RGB" putting randomly colored objects everywhere and like I did in "DITCH" with different green tones or mushroom/flowers or the water. But as effective and beautiful as "Crownland" it is impossible or at least very hard. Well using zones would work as well. But all this are is what I regard as the "typical DLI-look". In case of flickering sprites, which is the real problem for an "A8-Turican", I think I'd rather have single color sprites with a bit of flicker then MC-sprites flickering like hell. But in the end both version aren't worth it. I think. Lastly, the player mechanics can of course be optimized in "Crownland". they work, but are far from perfect. Let alone the missing horizontal collision check. But than can very well be a design decision. Although I rather thing it is for reduced complexity of collision checking. But I am not judging! On a side note: One POSSIBLE reason for all "negative" things about "Crownland" could be the ABBUC-deadline. Imagine you have game which is in a state like the released "Crownland". I for one, would feel the urge to push it out to the public (and contest) instead of waiting one year to add 3 more levels and what not for kind of features. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 (edited) Actually the flicker wouldn't be worse than with crownland, as you have to consider to use some characters for Shot animations and particular the big bosses. And, not all enemies were at the same scanline... When using the 40 bytes wide screen , you could use 96 bytes(characters) for the scrolling, and 32 characters on each charset, looking the same, for "easy" screen handling. Edited January 31, 2015 by emkay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheNameOfTheGame Posted January 31, 2015 Author Share Posted January 31, 2015 But as effective and beautiful as "Crownland" it is impossible or at least very hard. Hmmm...impossible=/=very hard. Interesting! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 If Flicker is allowed, there is ofcourse a chance. The limit of available moving objects is set much higher then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 What makes me wonder: If Crownland looks colourful and nice playable to many people, what , if someone puts a Turrican that way onto the A8 ? Particular referring to the flicker method. Would you like it or not? I would like any attempt on game similar in style to Turrican for A8 Imho flickering PMs could have limited use (maybe for bullets or power ups) in such scenario. There is 'only' 4 Players and would probably be better used on Player sprite. 10 sprites at screen close to each other is like a norm for Turrican. Viable method would be soft sprites (in 4 colors). Could be 25fps, could be with empty background, important is that action doesn't suffer... ~Ten two by two character sprites is possible probably... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 (edited) I would like any attempt on game similar in style to Turrican for A8 Imho flickering PMs could have limited use (maybe for bullets or power ups) in such scenario. There is 'only' 4 Players and would probably be better used on Player sprite. No, no and nO It would end as 99% of all demos. Put all PM into the "Player Sprite" and create software sprite enemies..... in a "Demo" that has nothing to do with a game. It would be much useful to create the main "Player" on software and multiplex the small enemies with PMg. Even more usefull: No use of Softwaresprites and create every moving object on PM multiplexing. For that, pokey timer at 15kHz would help to reduce the flicker and reduce it to the scanline where the PM objects were used more than once. 10 sprites at screen close to each other is like a norm for Turrican. Viable method would be soft sprites (in 4 colors). Could be 25fps, could be with empty background, important is that action doesn't suffer... ~Ten two by two character sprites is possible probably... 25 fps would be ok though. Edited January 31, 2015 by emkay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 ... multiplex the small enemies with PMg. Even more usefull: No use of Softwaresprites and create every moving object on PM multiplexing... Something like this looks good: 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 Something like this looks good: Hi Vladimir, that's using Pr0be's same multiplexer from Crownland. It was one of the examples he showed to demonstrate it in practice at the same time he demonstrated Ripper, Mario Bros and, Contra. I have the executable if you'd like to look through it 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
popmilo Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 Hi Vladimir, that's using Pr0be's same multiplexer from Crownland. It was one of the examples he showed to demonstrate it in practice at the same time he demonstrated Ripper, Mario Bros and, Contra. I have the executable if you'd like to look through it Sure I'll take a look. Emkay does point at less mentioned fact - that sprite multiplexing is very rare on Atari... Looking at thousands of NES games one would think someone would do it on A8 also... I remember someone was working on PM multiplexer couple years ago and wrote about it here on AA, can't remember who exactly... Aha! Found it! It was Andy in 2009 Post: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/39806-pm-multiplexor/page-8?do=findComment&comment=1906934 Xex file: whatamess.zip Did anyone try anything similar since ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Adam+ Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 (edited) Did anyone try anything similar since ? There are games with sprite multiplexing that are not finished yet (but the demo versions were published): "Atari Blast!" (formerly "GTIA Blast!") by Paul Lay, "Delta Space Arena" and "Secretum Labyrinth Kings Gold" by Peter J. Meyer. Edited January 31, 2015 by +Adam+ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tezz Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 .....sprite multiplexing is very rare on Atari... There's a fair few games back in the day using multiplexing, Pacman, Ms Pacman springs to mind for example. Bomb Jack/Jake also has multiplexing for the soft sprite overlays btw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 Did anyone try anything similar since ? Callisto uses a sorting multiplexer (three player/missile objects generating up to six objects and the other player/missile handling the ship) and Battle Eagle has a non-sorting system (two players for the player, two for all of the enemies and objects write into a table of X positions for the scanlines they want to use). i've also got a "proper" six object sorting multiplexer which does 8 by 16 pixel objects and uses all four players, but to date that hasn't been pushed into a game; the "plan" there was a software sprite for the player to avoid conflicts. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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