Wolfram

Yeps a real failure on the main market. With 18 million sold units... And with C128 selling another 4 million. May I mention that the entire A8 line sold just about 4 million too? Vic 20 a mostly non starter, Not C64, what can I say, the public often is not too bright. Sorry I don't know commonsore terminology. To me a vic means vic20. Your original statement was that the VIC was an utter market failure in the US. Sorry, but you got that wrong. VIC20 was the first computer to ever sell 1 million units. It was absolutely not a technical breakthrough, but more people could afford it than Ataris. If I remember right from the C= Book "on the Edge" VIC20 was originally a few weeks own hobby project of Bob Yannes ( SID designer). He just wanted to build a computer around the already existing but unused VIC-I gfx chip for fun. But when he showed it to one of his bosses, the machine got eventually made it to be seen by Jack Tramiel who instantly ordered it to be manufactured Sorry, you are wrong, it never got market penetration and most who bought it found they could not do anything much with it and there was little to no software and what little there was was very hard to find as nobody carried it. With Atari you could go lots of places like Sears,Service Merchandise, Burdines,Lazarus and most major retailers. Also I still hate SID sounds, really grates on my nerves. Sorry, you are wrong. The first computer to ever sell 1 million units had market penetration, and is/was a market success. Total flop and wholly unsupported at the consumer level unlike Atari. I know a few people back in the day that bought one as it was cheap. They however did nothing with it and could not find software for it. Yeah.. that a real success VIC20 was the first computer to ever sell 1 million units. It was a huge market success.

LOL Turrican is done 2 times more on the C64.... even by a team that does real miracles on the c64 (T3). And it suffers every time by the limited CPU. On the Amiga it clearly could have been better, as I stated before. The gameplay was limited to have it similar to the C64 game. The really advanced part on the Amiga was the Soundtrack and the "real" colours, and, ofcourse the >graphics resolution movement< of all objects, not this charmode shots and charmode sprites. Yes. Hard triggered enemies could be fixed, char based scenery collision could be fined to pixelwise so you dont have to jump if a pixel is in the way just walk over it, more sprites could be displayed, the scrolling engine could be freedirectional instead of the now used 8 way scroll routine. there's a lot of room for (doable!) improvement.

I wish you do not use the argument, that might apply to emkay's argumentation, to argue with someone else, who raises another point, than emkay did. Clear now? the original argument which you attacked I have written to emkay and was already ironizing. already in my first response to you I have written it was just irony. so in fact I have not used an emkay style argument against you, you have replied to my emkay ironizing argument which I have written TO emkay.

Clear thing. Turrican is 100% C64 optimised. So it will be "optical" worse on the A8, if only by the fact that it cannot be shown 100% same there. But we could use some optical enhancements as used in the Amiga version. Turrican could be much done better. Same goes for Amiga Turrican. Remember it was not a die hard fan project, just a game for money. Indeed you could use some rainbow coloring for the backgrounds.

Those are not my imaginations. Particular Lucas Games Department (later Lucasfilm Games) wrote the games on "Supercomputers" and then simply cutted all, until the software worked on the A8. There were no optimisations done to speed things up. If you're an Atari Guy you would see at the first sight, that they really did nothing special with the Atari. Just use stuff "right out of the book". On the C64 they did some code for some speeding up there, else the games wouldn't run as "fast" as they does on the C64. ah, so there's no "supercomputer calculations" on a8 at all. thanks for clearing that up.

This topic is 150 pages long. If you're trying to have a private conversation you'll have to announce that fact. looks like you dont understand the sentence you are replying to. read it again please.

there's nothing up there a c64 cant offer. You should have listed instead the faster (if we dont consider c64 speeders) disk I/O, more friendly disk os, autoboot, etc.

Your public fails to recognize the statement as ironic (my point and emkay's point are not close enough for that). Besides, it would be better, if you'd discussed your controversies with emlay with him, and not with someone else. infact it was you who has stepped into our converstion with emkay. if you whish me to discuss my controversies only with emkay, then dont do that next time.

No, it is your logic, as it was you who called the 320K "nonstandard". The thing I am telling you (and Frohn) is that you, as C-64 guys, are not in the position to come here and tell us, what's standard on the Atari and what's not. IIRC, emkay has nowhere said, that replaying samples on SID is "nonstandard" and therefore it is lame to use that. I have already wrote it was irony. ironizing emkay's false logic. take it easy.

Haha. Archon exists, but to say it in C64 freak's words: It is not possible... But as a not C64 biased guy I'd say "it is possible due to the accepting of missing and or dropped parts" Just like Dropzone, that handles the whole level like a life simulation. The C64 fails by this due to CPU limits, and some moving objects were reduced. Even the shots didn't use bitmap movement, but charmode movement... and so on. I've written it before in this thread. Due to the limits of the CPU, Turrican is hard triggering enemies. So it is possible to make a game that looks manifold. Also, many people blame the AMIGA version for this hard triggering, but the game had to be somehow similar to the C64 version. But Games like Starraiders were, from the beginning, built to simulate something. Even the Lucasfilm Games were intended to be simulations with supercomputer calculations, put onto the Atari, while the C64 version got CPU and graphics speed optimized for the C64. Nontheless the Atari version kept faster or even more colourfull, just like Koronis Rift. turrican is the prime example of what the a8 is not capable of. supercomputer calculations on a8? yeah. give me a break. can you talk about the real world instead of your imaginations?

So, following this logic, if I turn 65XE into 130XE by expanding it to 128K with soldering, then you will call this "nonstandard expansion", and I won't be "allowed" by you to use such 128K because you claim that nonstandard expansions cannot be used. At the other hand, if I have regular 130XE, then this is a "standard expansion" and you deign to allow me to use this, even though both computers (the expanded 65XE and the regular 130XE) are identical for software. Your statement is both illogical and arrogant. Illogical as above. Arrogant, because you apparently think, that C-64 scene standards are universal enough to try to enforce them also on the Atari scene. They are not. And by the way, Atari RAM expansions (like 320K RAMBO) do not need soldering, you can do them as external modules attached to the CART/ECI port of the XE. They are mounted internally just for convenience and better reliability. So your argument falls flat here. its not my logic. its emkay logic. he says as the SID digi sound is not a standard built in feature, it doesnt even exists. It was just an ironic response to his bull***t. so dont take it seriously.

turrican has much more replay value and fun factor if you ask me. or stunt car racer, or defender of the crown. well the list can go on endlessly. Well, AMIGA and C64 were from the same age of system development. Turrican is written in the same time. But the C64 version plays like on a ten years older machine /emkay mode on and a8 ROF plays like a 50 years older machine compared to call of duty 2. /emkay mode off LOL, your mixing of independent stuff is getting funny more and more. Last year, children played Yoomp! on the Games Convetion. Most said, it plays like on a today's PC And, well, Rescue on Fractalus actually plays better on the A8 than a Call of Duty 2 on a 10 years old PC if we can get back to our topic finally: amiga turrican is as much better as c64 turrican, as much better c64 turrican would be if a8 turrican existed.

turrican has much more replay value and fun factor if you ask me. or stunt car racer, or defender of the crown. well the list can go on endlessly. Well, AMIGA and C64 were from the same age of system development. Turrican is written in the same time. But the C64 version plays like on a ten years older machine /emkay mode on and a8 ROF plays like a 50 years older machine compared to call of duty 2. /emkay mode off

Still not right. C64 wins hands down with sidescrolling action shooters and hires colours & demos A8 wins hands down with 1st person games and 3D demos, and the huge colour palette, making it possible to have a depth of 16 shades for 3D objects. Others were mostly taste depending. People say there exists an Archon version for the C64. But it is no complete one. Remembering, seeing Archon played at GIGA TV. The moderator said "hey look, the shot can go through the blue bush" ... No, it wasn't the "blue bush" it was the fact that a dark sided shot can go easily through dark elements, and cannot cross lighted elements. Good Lord. The whole gamelogic is wrecked on the C64 by the missing colours there. But it is a C64 classic yeah okay, archon doesnt exists on the c64 then. you can calm down with that now

/emkay mode on or rescue on fractalus. shitty, almost no colors, slideshow framerate, not enough visibility, piece of junk compared to Call of Duty 2. but who cares about all that? 128 colors proves all if you're a8 biased. /emkay mode off Harharhar. IT's the vice versa. I said, the ROF version runs better on the older system . You wrote, A game on a 25 years newer machine looks better. You better should rethink all your argues. Really! nope, you were comparing a c64 game to its amiga version, so you could say its crap. well, I can argue like that aswell. lets compare games to ones on much better systems, so we can say they are crap. hurray...

right. finally someone unbiased. games - c64 wins hands down demos - a8 wins hands down

thousands of superior games on c64 proove quantity and both quality being better there. You can just close your eyes and say its not true. Nobody can stop you from doing that. Yes of course, you are right. 1000s of quality C64 games. I am closing my eyes, I can see them now, 1000s, no millions in fact. I'm floating, I am smoking what you are smoking, this is some good shit indeed. Pall Mall

turrican has much more replay value and fun factor if you ask me. or stunt car racer, or defender of the crown. well the list can go on endlessly.

/emkay mode on or rescue on fractalus. shitty, almost no colors, slideshow framerate, not enough visibility, piece of junk compared to Call of Duty 2. but who cares about all that? 128 colors proves all if you're a8 biased. /emkay mode off

Still crap. You can force shorter character cells on both machines. And, on non-badlines in normal width mode, it's Atari=45, C-64=72... still nowhere near 2x on the a8 shorter cells are not really an advantage. while c64 makes higher color density out of it. and 90 vs 72 is near to 2x. not nowhere near.

... and all c64s comes with 4 8 bit I/O ports, not just some. as for HW extensions regarding c64: 16megs with 20mhz cpu, IDE HDD&CD ROM, mmc card readers including IDE ones, 1541 emulator on cart using mmc to store disk images & cartridge emulation, true TCP/IP HW, c= factory ram expansion with DMA, SCSI HDD support, quad sid, the list goes on and on. fact is c64 scene is bigger than a8, and because of that none of the HW add ons became a standard, someone has this someone has that, it makes only sense to develop stuff for the standard HW. if the a8 scene were in the same situation: large quantity of games being produced into the 90s (for standard hw) with large user base, the situation would be the same there too.

thousands of superior games on c64 proove quantity and both quality being better there. You can just close your eyes and say its not true. Nobody can stop you from doing that.

How? 80 accesses for screeen/charmap, 20 bytes of colour nybbles, 8 bytes sprite pointers, 24 bytes sprite data = 132 btyes Atari maximum = 96 accesses for screen/charmap, 5 bytes PMG data, 3 bytes Display List = 104 bytes And, in that worst case scenario, the Atari still has 9 cycles free for the CPU. I was assuming 40 char wide mode, and that the a8 doesnt read character pointer each line, only each 8th. if these assumptions are correct then on each 7 lines out of 8 we can compare 40 charmap access+5pmg+3 display list vs 132 on c64. it looks like a ridiculous comparison, but in fact this is what makes it possible to shrink the color cells on the c64 and put sprite overlays on picture to make color density really close to true 160x200x16.

in fact lack of colors are present on a8. 128 colors makes not much sense when you need to be in 2009 and use a pc (g2f) to display more then 4-5 of them in a sensefull way on a picture. Its a bad design compromise. c64 compromises cpu speed and color palette for graphics that can display 16 colors with almost no effort. A8:you have cpu speed and many colors, which you can hardly display. urgh. give me the machine which can display its palette without having to sweat and swear and code the whole display, and which can display more colors than the other which has a bigger palette. no thank you. I dont need many colors when I cant use them. also cell based bitmap modes are real graphics modes. why wouldnt they be ? you can use them. they are there. they display more colors than a8's "real" modes. and by the way the VICII when it came out was the best GFX chip on the market. Sitting in a computer which was amongst the cheapest models of the time. The SID was the best sound chip aswell. There's no wonder the c64 was a huge success.

those modes are too complicated to write them down in detail each time mentioned. they use 8x2 color attribute cells, and on top of them a 160x sprite layer with additional 3 colors, or it can be a 320x sprite layer, with changing sprite colors for each sprite column. This is what comes out of the fact that the VICII can be made to read more then twice as much data per scanline as A8 gfx chip does. Also this costs the CPU to run at 1.0 mhz only on c64.