STE'86

err that actually makes no difference at all in law.

Actually i would say that Okys comment is pretty much bang on from reading all previous past history of elite remakes, source and cooperation. i too would say contact Ian Bell by all means. he has always been very keen to help anyone with Elite. and too i would say suggest u shy away from contacting David Braben about anything to do with a project like this. All his previous dealing with people doing things like this have been litigious, it seems from internet sources. Steve

Ah yes u could indeed rip out the c64 sprites but to do them as software u would have to make them 32 pixels wide so that they could be pre shifted. The Spectrum ones are all designed at 20 pixels wide to accomodate 4 pixels worth of pre shifting in 24 pixels. guess who Steve Day is and where they got them from?

thats easy. the Chewbacca defense is used to delay your opponent. by quoting it, no bugger wants to post after it, just in case somebody does actually knows what it means. Steve

June 1983. Dragon 32 (TRaSh 80 CoCo compatible to u yanks ) just like Andy Braybrook June 1985. C64. Dec 1985 1541. Jan 1986 Koalapainter. let the good times roll Steve

and just for the record, personally i was under the impression in the Hubbard thread Emkay got banned from that i was refuting his ridiculous claims in a historical context. which then escalated into even more bizarre claims of Hubbard lying to appease c64 owners. Steve

told u before Pete. he's mad as a fcking snake.

LOL ok then we will settle on delusional. i was giving u the benefit of the doubt. and while we are on the subject of oxymorons...."enhanced pokey sounds" ROFL btw i would check the history of the IK music if i were u before u make such ludicrous suppositions. Steve

LOL the "wrong" platform? so the most successful and famous musician in computer gaming history chose the most advanced soundchip available in any computer for 10 years and he chose the wrong platform did he? i very much doubt he would agree. and where do u get your supposition about him learning his trade on an a8? there have been an awful lot of interviews with the man over the years and i'm sorry to burst your bubble but nowhere does he say anything to even suggest that. you are being delusional or its just wishful thinking. Steve

so u have a high score, some music, a rolling road with no curve transitions, roadside objects or cars and a block sw sprited main car. but u DO have a glossy cartridge label designed? bloody priceless! do the inks used have a long colour persistence? coz they may be waiting for the final version for some time Steve

well ok whatever floats your boat. but as a VERY old hand at the demo and game retro thing when it wasnt retro, i just have to say its a bloody sight easier to get motivated to do stuff when everyone is telling u that its bloody awesome and they want it, than when u are working solo with no encouragement. the only problem with WIPS is when u havent got the time, inclination or skill to finish what u start. Steve

i am not really referring to the new modes tbh. just something "basic" like drawing (or importing) a 4 colour bitmap image compatible with 64 or an a8, converting the image into character set squares then building tiles from these characters. this is the kind of windows app i would expect there to be for cross developing 8 bit stuff 25 years after the event. like this example 1 of 4 colour gif ready to be converted to charset then assembled as tiles: or as in example 2 the paradroid tileset redrawn in a8 res Steve

well... from my own field of graphics i would have to say that my opinion is that u are no further advanced now than in 1982. in some ways i would have to say that the current generation are quite far behind in terms of developing graphics. the reason for this is fairly straightforward."back in the day" the developers had their own tools to draw graphics & levels which these days people don't have access to. however, apart from G2F there has apparently been ZERO work done on the pc to create any form of cross platform design sw. and to be perfectly honest g2f is in no way up to the task of filling this hole. so, while u have cross assembly from the pcs u have no comparable graphics ability. the atari is not alone in this tho. i was stunned last year when nobody on lemon could point me at any decent sw to do the same for the c64. it all seems a bit ridiculous to me that emulators are written willy nilly these days but no one in the last 10 years of XP has thought it might be a good idea to write pc based sw to actually mimic the graphics modes of any/all 8bits so we can actually draw something new with them. Steve

well... in all honesty, i joined AA in July last year and to not to put too fine a point on it, the "coders" u say are so busy, don't appear to have done jack s**t in those 6 months. granted there's plenty of talk but precious little action to be seen. so maybe they do need some inspiration or a kick up the arse? Steve

at the risk of this turning into yet another a8/c64 thread, i have to say u are completely entitled to your opinion and i am very happy for you, tho why you keep having to bang it home i am not sure. also i would guess it differs somewhat from most of the rest of the forum. Even on here the coders and games players appear to hold the c64 as the "yardstick" by which a game is judged. the games players WANT c64 conversions on their A8's. This cannot be denied, the forum is full of posts wanting c64 stuff. The coders who write for the a8 aim their products to be "as good or better than the c64". again this cannot be denied the forum is full of it. so are the foreign ones. finally i have seen you quote this "arcade perfect" sound on more than one occasion now and i do feel it needs a bit of clarification. the a8 doesnt use the same chip as arcade machines for any other reason than its the cheaper option for the arcades at the time. the SID chip was a much more costly bit of kit than a POtentionmeter KEYboard reader that just happens to be able to do the job of basic music and admittedly "zappy" sound effects. lets take a for instance. do u honestly mean to tell us that Capcom would have stuck with the AY sound on something like Commando if they could have had the Hubbard c64 version pounding out of their arcade machines for the same price? and i do hate to break this to u, but have u heard the Pokey experimental stuff recently. its all trying desperately to sound like a Follin SID tune. Oh and to try and keep this on topic(ish) i always loved the ST with Degas Elite to develop graphics on for 16 bit machines. i always felt it was a much smoother and stabler platform to use than say the Amiga (i loathe dpaint in all of its versions and platforms). so much so i have badgered the Atari-Forum a couple of times to do a windows version of Degas Steve

well i dont know about the rest of u but i am convinced. so all it leaves is to ask at what point atariksi is going to point us at something a bit more advanced than Hero or River Raid or Joust that shows us all a practical demonstration of the hardware thats in his Cray- sorry Atari 800 box thats sitting on his desk. u do HAVE something more advanced than 1983 to prove all this rhetoric i assume? u must have. coz only a complete dickhead would go to all this trouble of proving in words a machine is streets ahead of a 10 year newer computer and not have a game or demo up their sleeves which proves its superiority completely wouldnt they? wouldnt they???? oh... Steve

Awfully difficult to digest, though, let alone fit into a cup. yes but he isnt allowed caffeine as it interferes with his medication

by classic i mean the original c64 version not the abortion that graftgold made into "90" i just wondered if anyone ever did this as a "garage" project. been looking at the tiles with a view to an a8 conversion recently and found myself dividing up an ST 16 colour palette in my head while doing so Steve

only 312? PAH! Atariskis personal copy of joust does over 400 WITH 4096 onscreen colours AND 8 way directional scrolling. HE laughs at your pathetic attempt of one upmanship. Steve

no no please feel free to get into the software side of things. but when u do i want to see practical demonstrations of whatever u post not just twisted figures and theoretical rubbish u have trawled from elsewhere. thanks. Steve

I already pointed to you proof regarding ikbd performance. I can't do the experiment for you. Scientific method means, I do the experiment and YOU have to go and repeat it and prove that my experiment was false. Or the other method is logic but some people here can't seem to follow that. LDA/STA HPOS cannot be done at same rate in software on ST. Overscan another hardware feature is inferior on ST. Etc. Etc. As far as usefulness goes, modern platforms and XBOX, Playstation, etc. all use overscan. now then as u appear to be totally ignoring Pete i will post this from him: "LDA STA HPOS, sooooo useful for moving sprites left/right. Now, how about stopping ignoring me and telling us how you'd use that to move them vertically? If you stopped being so purposefully obtuse and ignoring the pertinent points of people's posts I'd stop disagreeing so much." now on to me. firstly i really dont give a monkeys whether the ST, a8 or a casio calculator can read the joystick fastest. as long as when u read it the value is correct and it doesnt blitz your cpu to do it, does it really make any difference? (please bear in mind when replying to this bit, i have NEVER in any post i have written here made ANY reference to your precious joystick read fetish) what i do object to as a graphics developer on 8 and 16 bit machines is someone insisting to me that FOUR MONO 16 pixel hardware sprites are somehow better to have than an 8mhz cpu capable of displaying more than 4 16 colour sprites of ANY size. u keep telling me its faster than the ST to display. but they are MONO and there are FOUR and the ST is 4x faster just on clockspeed let alone efficiency but according to u this does redress the balance of the a8s paltry hardware sprites. and i say BULLSHIT YOU PROVE IT. show me any A8 multiplexing game that the ST cant match technically. Steve

SHOW us some evidence of anything u claim or belt up. i ask FOR THE 3RD TIME... some examples of your claims PLEASE. Steve

bloody hell u are off AGAIN. having 1970s hardware graphics chips in it does NOT under ANY circumstances mean that the A8 is better than the ST at games in general. the sprites are MONO and u have FOUR that does not even compare favourably to a 64 let alone an ST. to ignore the fact that the ST's processor is 4x faster clock speed and a WHOLE generation more advanced as a processing unit is just ludicrous. i ask u to post ONCE AGAIN a selection of A8 games which the ST cannot produce or have a equivalent of. Steve

4: without the "i am psychotic too." oh here we go tweedledee has arrived to partner tweedledum as usual. the "competition" is still of course open to u too. welcome. Steve

Stating facts is not flaming in my language. I don't care if you post my remarks on CNN. but its all u ever do. u just talk and argue u show or construct nothing. the invitation to show us practical applications of this "vast" theoretical knowledge quote is still open should u want to take any of us up on it. Steve