Tempus

1. Seeing "Star Raiders" for the first time (around 1980). From that time I dreamed about having an Atari Computer. 2. Getting my Atari 800 (without tape drive - with Basic Cartidge only) in Winter 1981/1982. It was sooo expensive for me. 3. Playing "Shamus" on Cassette for the first time in Winter 1982/1983. Unbelievable gfx! 4. Working all the summer holidays in 1983 in order to buy a Floppy drive. 5. Playing "Wayout" for the first time after generating a defect sector by floppy speed adjustment in order to bypass the copy protection. 6. Playing "Defender" when a friend came to me in order pick me up for going outside - I got my record - I played more than one hour - my friend was a little bit frustrated :-) 7. Playing "Archon", "M.U.L.E." "Necromancer", "Vanguard", "Ballblazer", "Pharaoh's Curse" and all the other fantastic games. 8. Reading about the new ST Computer line in spring 1985. Amazing gfx capabilities and the powerful 68000!!! 9. Getting my 520ST in summer 1985 and starting with "C" language. 10. Programming the 68000 in Assembler for several years. Now I'm back to my Atari roots, but not at 16-bit

...thanks for all the productive inputs. I think I'll start with GR#9-11. If the achievable frame rate is high enough, I can try to get a higher resolution using the GTIA shift error or switching to GR#7 and using DLIs. PAL blending is an interesting technique, but I'd like to have the same program running on PAL and NTSC machines without modification.

...wouldn't it be possible to generate a TIP like gfx mode based on GR#9-11, not in order to gain more colors, but to increase the hres?

sure - less pixels -> faster game...But would it be nice/playable with a gfx of 96x96?

...some kind of raycasting game, but I'm at the very beginning . Therefore I'm asking for an approriate gfx resolution. For my understanding character modes are not useful for doing this due to the raycasting algorithm. Anyway I need as much CPU power as possible. The four standard colors of GR#7 are not enough, GR#9-11 offer more (I guess enough) colors, but a poor hres, even when using wide playfield. Therefore I'd like to have a hres of 160 with >4 colors...

But the is also a NTSC version of Project-M. How is the coloring done?

Would it be possible using this and building something like TIP mode, i.e. getting a multi-color resoluton of 160x96?

One idea. The A8 is faster than an Apple II. May be as a first approach the Apple screen memory could be converted to A8 GR#15 in real time. The Apple has a hires of 280 pixels, which could be mapped to 140 pixels in GR#15. Perhaps there would no need for converting all the graphical objects to A8.

Understood. But what about the colors? 4 colors seem not to be enough for a Project-M in GR#7. Many DLIs will slow down the program. PM color enhancements are limited, too. What do you propose?

I thought, Project-M is using APAC mode?

Is it possible to get GR#9-11 doubling the scanlinies like GR#7 without additional CPU/DMA load (i.e. not by using VSHIFT or LMS doubling)? If not possible, what would be the way with minimum CPU/DMA load?

Hi, I'd like to have custom graphics mode with the following features: - HRes 160 - VRes 96 - Colors > 4 - Available for NTSC and PAL - Minimum CPU/DMA load - Easy color handling (no complicated color computations) - Minimum screen flickering Any suggestions how to achieve that? Somewhere (I don't remember where) I've read about some clever Polish programmers who used the GTIA phase shift error to get a HRes of 160 in Antic mode F. How is this mode called? How does it work? Which software is using this feature? Emkay gave me the idea of using GR#7 due to the low (CPU/)DMA load (automatic scan line doubling by Antic). Is it possible to use this feature also with Antic mode F? Or are doubling the scan lines with Vshift or doubled display list entries the only possibilities to achieve that?

Annotations from a newbie. I've been here for round about two month and I really like this forum, because of the a many A8 enthusiasts I found here. I also like the discussions here. In order to keep a discussion running, different point of views are needed. Even if dont agree with every input of Emkay, but if all opinions would go into the same direction the sticking points couldn't be figured out as well. Sometimes even a 'wrong' way leads surprisingly to a new solution. For me respect is most important, even if the viewpoints differ. Hey, we all still like A8! Therefore I'm looking foreward to the next discussion...

Thanks a lot! So it's possible to get the best of both worlds into one program!

What's your preferred solution to integrate MADS with cc65?