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PeteD

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Posts posted by PeteD

  1. Posted

    Armalyte is a great example of something that's impressive but doesn't try to show off about it, you just end up with a better experience. Even older stuff like Rambo (Ocean) in fact a lot of Ocean games use multiplexers and other tricks before I even knew what one was.

     

    Is it just Vice or do the sprites that "stand" on the background also not sync with the scroller? Not a major issue but another one that just lacks polish.

  4. Posted

    Feel free to code something better from that point of view with 3 layers of OVERLAID (ie 3 playfields) type parallax at any time

    Oky, why do you keep saying that Enforcer 2 has 3 layers of overlaid parallax? Can you explain how you arrived at three, because I only see two - all the red stuff being the 'back layer', and everything else being on the 'front layer'.

     

     

     

     

    I think he's talking about the level 1 demo where it's got the parallax ala the red stuff on level 2, the foreground AND some fast moving star looking 2 character wide stuff over the background ooooooo :)

  5. Posted · Edited by PeteD

    @barnacle boy

     

    You're right, my bad there are more than 8 sprites on screen. The reason why I presumed it was 8 was the movement isn't very complex and so I'll still stand by it not having a multiplexer (something that by the logic itself can take a fair bit of cpu), and whilst playing it didn't see any more than 8, didn't get round to pausing it every few frames. Also it isn't doing anything more than the A8 can do with it's players (of course those being of a lesser number). using 8 hires sprites for the score (they looked like chars to me originally but now when i zoom in reaaaaly close there could be background behind them). I'd also presumed (without pausing it at the right time) that the lightning was chars. Still a few splits down the screen and you've got as many sprites as you want, as you say as an old school demo coder I can do screens full of them as long as their vertical movement isn't too great. It really surprises me they didn't utilise it more. It was one of the first things I had planned and was also going to do other things with it (if I did a c64 demo) eg 1st sprite for player, 2nd to 6th split vertically (as many times as needed) for enemy sprites, 7 and 8 used for anything you fancy, eg split down the screen and use for 2 foreground layer sprites (to add one of those oh so special parallax layers over the top of everything else). Why split the screen to get more sprites then seemingly hold them off from coming on screen so there aren't too many there. As far as it being any more technical to display that many sprites without them moving around in weird patterns, any demo coder knows a lda and sta into x,y,definition and colour isn't too clever. Please remember I came here to defend the A8 and have only used enforcer 2 to compare it to as thats what a lot of the C64 guys are doing so I've looked at it a coding viewpoint and splitting the screen say 4 times on the c64 isn't very technical. Thats one of the reasons I keep mentioning Armalyte. It does the same but does it well.

     

     

    @carmel_andrews

     

    Sorry if I've been helping to hijack this thread. I came here orignally after seeing people on lemon64 forum talking about how crap the A8 obviously was and I thought I'd come to see if it was true (I used to long for an A8 when I first saw them lol) and started reading the thread a few pages in from the end, didn't read the start. Maybe we should start a new "Let's argue about stuff" thread :)

     

    As far as hardware bugs go you're right about asking 99% of users of one machine about the capabilities of the other. I'm excited to learn about them on the A8 but if they're mostly useless (not saying they are) then there's no point. As long as they leave enough cpu time to do an actual game. Great :) I've been scanning through the last ninja thread and seen a lot about this graphics converted thing that uses all the tricks to convert a c64 screen to A8 but if you have no control over what it's doing then its useless. I think last ninja could be done quite well on A8 without it being quite so colourful.

     

    The reason I still say the c64 is a better game machine is the majority of the games I've played on both systems (either back in the day or through emulation) have been more satisfying on the c64. Some have been better on A8 (basically anything that's mostly logic intensive) Lucasfilm/arts games. If I'd only ever had an A8 I'm sure I'd be quite happy with it. If the game logic is the same it's still as much fun to play but the better visuals on the c64 DO make a difference (at least to me) and thats without using hardware tricks of which I wouldn't class more than 8 sprites as one as that's been know as possible from the dawn of time :) Not sure if it's mentioned in the programming manual but it wouldn't surprise me, just as it's probably mentioned that because the A8 sprites are the height of the screen you can put more then 1 sprite into them vertically.

     

    All in all just because I still class the C64 as better (once again, IMHO) don't take me as a fanboy. I wouldn't be here talking about trying to do Enforcer on A8 and arguing with people about it if I was. I'd just never have joined this forum.

     

     

    Pete

     

    *edit*

     

    Urgh just woken up when I wrote that and then just realised 8 hires sprites for the score!? am I mad lol just cuz there are 8 digits in total. that's 3 sprites. doh

  7. Posted · Edited by PeteD

    lol why did I expect nothing better from you than changing your argument (yes, you challenged me to prove Enforcer wasn't that great by showing you what I could do, not just on the A8), you resort to calling me a prick and a nob then hide from any replies I might post. After reading some of your posts on other threads your response didn't surprise me at all. What was it "The Wii is for retards, homos and girls?" Well my friends kid is what you'd call a "retard" some of my best friends are "homos" and oh, I know girls (sounds like you probably don't). I'm really glad I get the choice to not know you personally.

     

    I mention Armalyte due to it's polish. It's doing more in terms of "clever" stuff than Enforcer and looks like it isn't a big mess of squares and black bits and flickering sprites.

     

    From what I can make out on the A8 taunting on this thread the "technical features" of Enforcer are ALL people are using to show it's a better machine, it's even your own argument 1/2 the time, you can't keep changing your mind just to argue with someone you don't agree with, ooo look at all the objects on screen and the 3 level parallax and all the sprites, the A8 can't do that! The gameplay itself is arse (yeah, my opinion which of course is diametrically opposed to yours and is obviously wrong, just like everyone's who doesn't agree with you 100%). Still good on them for writing a new c64 game but my argument still stands.

     

     

    Anyway as its now pointless me proving you wrong because of course I'll be using everyone elses source code and changing the graphics then I'll presume you won't be looking at it when it's done, but damn it's already got 1000 objects on the screen and that's after an accident in coding. Oh wait, those are called pixels. I've already said the Atari doesn't have the colours to compete and that's one of the reasons for me saying IMHO the c64 is a better game machine, it's also one of the reasons for me saying the c64 can do enforcer in its sleep and the A8 can't and the reason I registered here in the first place to try to get some machine info to try it. Very sorry I haven't learned the machine and written a game since yesterday to please you. I'm really sorry you're so threatened by me being here, enjoy the rest of your day ;)

     

    Please feel free to ignore me all you like and I'll be happy to return the favor.

     

     

    Oh, PS cock nob prick! lol stunning use of the English language.

  10. Posted

    See that's not far away from Enforcer. If there were more chars used for the background for the multi-layer parallax that'd be sorted then just need to spit out more software bullets to make it look all impressive (cuz the more bullets moving around, the better the game lol).

  11. Posted

    I suppose it'll depend on the size and number of sprites on screen. That enforcer 2 demo never has more than 8 sprites (c64 hardware) that I can see and they're never all on the same line (or anywhere close most of the time) or anywhere near each other horizontally. I suppose it's akin to a c64 multiplexer where even if your multiplexer is good you've still got to be very careful where you let sprites go. If I recall correctly the Armalyte coders spent a lot of their time editing attack patterns just so there was 0 flicker in any possible situation.

     

     

    I'm just digging out some old code and c64 manuals and I'll do a quick demo on c64 (I also want to test some code optimisations for some things and I know c64 better so can get started faster) but I've already thought of a couple of things that will look better than Enforcer at least one of which would work on A8 probably better than c64.

     

    Anyone interested in helping out with graphics (I have no problem in admitting I couldn't draw anything better than a 5 year old) let me know. If I'm going to start doing enough code to do a game demo I may as well make something that can be a full game eventually.

     

     

    Pete

  13. Posted

    Yeah, I noticed that. I'd read it somewhere and it had stuck in my mind and then when I started thinking about software sprites and how fast you could make them and so relating to how many you could plot on screen I suddenly thought, hold on, there wont be enough characters available to plot all the sprites into, at least if u make them c64 size. Isn't there some way to split the screen into say 4 vertical areas and use a different char bank for each one? That to me is a c64 concept which would work easily but I don't know if it's possible on A8. The backgrounds themselves don't seem that complex but it certainly wont leave enough for sprites too, unless you move them on char boundaries and don't mask/or with the background and that would just look nasty ;)

  14. Posted · Edited by PeteD

    @oky2000 Sorry, I was under the impression from what I have read of this thread that it's the Enforcer 2 level 2 demo that everyone was touting as the best thing since sliced bread but I'll respond anyway as you obviously know more about c64 coding than me. As far as my "coding the c64 since 1985" brain sees it, it's the same as level 2 ie nothing groundbreaking, 8 hardware sprites for the aliens (the skulls and animating ships) the huuuuuge asteroids and many layers of parallax are all a character based scroll (something that every game does) with some parallax routine to make the star background), character based sprites to do the fast moving background strip (2 character wide star) things and player bullets. Why you mention the asteroids and the rods connecting them as two different things I don't know, they're the same screen mode, character based just like the A8 can do. As I said before, nothing new, nothing anywhere near as complex as lots of games have been in the past. Your "feel free to code something better" taunt seems nothing more than that of someone who doesn't know that it is in fact easy to do and would be a waste of my time. I'm here because I'm interested in doing some A8 coding not to prove what I already know about my own c64 coding skills ;)

     

    I'll just break down whats going on with either Enforcer level and how much cpu it would take on the c64. First, full screen scroll, well pixel per frame so you've got 8 frames to build the next screen. Maybe 1/8th frame cpu. 8 hardware sprites, negligible, just the time to set the hardware registers. Parallax, as it's mostly slower than the screen scroll you've got even more time between changes than the 8 frames to do the screen (funny that how everything is spread out over lots of frames) you can either rotate the data through a couple of characters per "depth" or just store the pre rotated data and dump it lda,sta style into the characters. So far we're up to maybe 2/8ths of available cpu time per frame. The bullets, character based, character boundary movement, no masking with the background, so you've got the time it takes to work out their position on screen, store a byte to screen ram, then clean them up afterwards for the next frame. The volume of the char based sprites is the only thing that takes cpu time in this instance but even then you're not going to be using more than 1/2 a frame cpu for everything so far. Add to that music/sound effects code, max another 1/8th frame, game logic, not much going on, get some attack patterns from a table when the level position reaches a certain value, check for collisions (course checking first with char based bullets would be fastest). And that's my breakdown of what is going on. Basically if the Armalyte coders had thought the background would've looked prettier with a char boundary parallax scroll I'm sure they would've done it and then you'd be using that as your technical masterpiece and in that instance I'd be a bit more inclined to agree.

     

     

    I don't know you, don't know if you're a coder or just a user, am not here to get drawn into an argument or have to prove myself to you (no offence but if you were someone I knew and respected as a coder I'd take up your challenge). You're entitled to your opinion, despite it being wrong ;) If I get time to code anything it will be a conversion of Enforcer to the A8 to prove people wrong NOT a whole game on c64 to prove YOU wrong. Of course if you want to do the graphics for a whole game and send those to me I'll be happy to write a game with them and sell it, make myself some money maybe :)

     

    This is (hopefully) my final post on the c64 version of Enforcer. I know how its all working, I'm not terribly impressed on a technical level, if you don't agree how about you prove to me (explain it in technical terms like I have) how it's so amazing, don't just tell me "hey, its better than you could do, dare you to do better".

     

    Pete

     

    In fact, I'll add an edit here. As both machines are 6502 and I'm more familiar with the C64 architecture I might do some of the code (logic, scroller, parallax, software bullets, player/enemy movement) on c64) basically as much as is possible to reuse on A8 (did you notice I learned you can call it A8 and I don't have to keep typing Atari all the time? lol) Not sure what to do about graphics as it seems pointless asking someone to do a whole set of c64 ones to prove a point to one person then another set to conform with however I do the A8 as far as colour production goes. Still, any offers for some multicolour char backgrounds would be welcome. If you're reaaaaly unlucky I'll draw them myself lol

  15. Posted

    Thanks for all the welcomes and the links to info, I'll download it all and start reading. I don't know when I'll get time to do anything, work wise I'm all quiet at the moment but I've got to decorate/tidy/pack up my house so I can sell it.

     

    Like I say bout Enforcer, I've not looked at the code, I'm not bashing the coders but honestly I wouldn't rank it anywhere near the best c64 games either graphically or technically. I've shown it to a couple of other "old school" c64 people and they agree. It doesn't help that I keep reading a lot of hype about it like it's as good as an amiga game or a dual 68000 arcade machine lol please. If it plays well then thats all for the good but it isn't doing anything any more complex than games were in the 80s. But anyway, I'm repeating myself and I don't want to go in depth on the technicalities of Enforcer. My main point was, apart from colours I'm not seeing anything the Atari can't do. I've read a couple of calculations for the amount of cpu time free on the Atari compared to c64 and I think the Atari would have enough time to do most of the sprites from the c64 version in software. It all then depends on what methods could be used to add some more colour and how much cpu they steal.

     

    I'm sure there are a lot of talented coders on this forum and the fact nobody has just replicated enforcer 2 demo yet (just to stop this constant "you can't do it" stuff) makes me think that to trick the hardware into producing enough colours wouldn't leave enough cpu to run the sprites/collision detection/game logic etc Then it all comes down to does a game have to have lots of colours to be a good game?

     

    Thinking about it, one plus for using software sprites over the C64 hardware ones is whilst masking (I use graphics data and a mask of the same size, yeah more ram but faster) you can also mask areas that would be transparent on c64 but on Atari if the mask is set the background wouldn't get drawn "through" them so in a way you're gaining a colour. You can also add an outline to the sprite in the same way using just the mask to make it even more visible. I think something like that would be needed if the sprites had to be the same colour as the background.

     

     

    This is what I love about coding, especially low level stuff. The possibilities for optimising code/methods are almost endless and I find it fun to think up new ways to do things. When I was writing Splam (c64 emu for gba) I rewrote the screen rendering code countless times and ended up with something that could draw and scale the c64 screen in any mode down to the gba screen size faster than the gba could draw and scale it in hardware.

     

    Pete/JCB ;)

  16. Posted

    Hey all,

     

    I'm new to this forum (and have barely any Atari experience apart from the ST) but I registered after reading some (yeah, not all lol) of this thread after seeing it mentioned on Lemon64. I'd like to ask a few questions and also input my 2p worth.

     

    Firstly I really can't see why the C64 guys (and I class myself as one) are using that Enforcer demo to show off the capabilities of the c64 and brag about how it's so much better than the Atari. IMHO it's a mess, yes I know it isn't finished, but please, It's a simple smooth scroller with some expanded sprites, a parallax background (which I think after reading this thread everyone knows that's easy enough to do) software (not even masked) sprites for the bullets, I doubt a multiplexer as there don't seem to be enough sprites on screen and what are there flicker sometimes. So really the only impressive "looking" part is the parallax, which is simple to do and has been done much better (hawkeye for example, but that cheats using a bank switching method) and (at least on vice) flickers?!?! why?? Don't get me wrong, I'm not hammering the coders who wrote it because it's good to see people still working on the c64 but like I say, why use something that isn't that impressive to prove a point.

     

    As I say I'm pretty much an Atari noob but so far I see it this way, the c64 has more colours and sprites (without doing weird stuff) than the Atari. That's about it. (oh yeah, and SID of course). The Atari has taller sprites, hmm I don't really see a plus there, a simple raster split gives taller sprites on the c64. Also the Atari's sprites are mono? and only 8 pixels wide? The Atari can have wider "playfields" and set an offset into them to scroll? (so saving cpu time having to rebuild the screen as often).

     

    From memory (which is pretty bad these days) I'd got a pretty fast software sprite routine back in the 80s running on c64 and could probably do an even faster one now (my coding chops haven't stagnated over the years) and with the extra cpu time the Atari has I think you could just about replicate the hardware sprite usage from Enforcer on the Atari. So now you're down to colours again. This is where I'm getting lost in this thread with all the Atari tech talk of modes and players overlayed on the screen and somehow the Atari's "sprites" managing to cover the whole screen horizontally.

     

    What I'm interested in is finding a good source of technical info on the atari, different modes, methods of producing more colours on screen, cpu time available etc because I quite fancy having a go at replicating the enforcer demo (or at least something very like it) on Atari.

     

    Anyone interested in my credentials before they start slagging me off for piping up in this thread and being yet another person talking about the possibilities of the Atari. Well, I've been a game coder since about 1986-7, I work in assembler on just about every platform (when possible), the C64 VSP hardware trick (mentioned a few times in this thread) was first used by me and was named by me (VSP and IK+, Meanteam demo), I've written emulators (although not all got finished) splamsid (6502+sid emulator for gba) and splam (c64 emu for gba) which never got completed due to "real life syndrome" and also the first CD-i emulator for PC that actually played anything (also another casualty of real life).

     

    All in all my point is this. IMHO the C64 IS a better gaming machine from nearly all aspects but putting the Atari down based on a reasonably poor example of C64 coding prowess just isn't on. I've kind of got the 6502 coding bug again reading all this stuff and I love a challenge and might well have a go at digging out (or rewriting) my software sprite code, some parallax, a scroller, software bullets etc but as I say I have no idea of the best (if any reasonable) way to get more colours on screen. Any pointers would be appreciated.

     

     

    Pete

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