STE'86

ok in an attempt at fair play i have posted a link to this in various st forums. so u can have all you want of the non flammable flame war "discussions" u want. enjoy Steve oh and btw to anyone who's "watching". i am posting on multiple constructive threads running concurrently to this one. i do not just post on combative vs threads like certain posters on here.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/153845-atari-8bit-is-superior-to-the-st/ ok i am bored by the thread there sick of the fanboys telling everyone how crap the st is and how the a8 stamps on it. feel free to chip in. Steve

Did you read my start post? Read it again. And notice this part: I can not combine your contribution, with that... can you? thanks Marius LOL u have started a VS thread and u expect not to get flame wars when the whole thread is one huge flame war. u may well be as mad as he is. Steve

Wouldn't it be better if you addressed the argument rather than attack people? He's wrong in claiming both views are subjective. You can't understand that because you need that type of argument to support your own inferior machines that you use. so that would be a vote for option 1 then would it?

can we have another poll? my poll would be : is Atariski completely f**king barking mad? 1. Completely 2. generally 3. a little 4. Not at all but then i am psychotic too.

Sloopy, not sure if u know but Street Rod was also an amiga title. and it was even better than the 64 one i too played it to death on the amiga. one of the few amiga games i played alot of. street rod amiga and did u know it had a sequel? street rod 2 amiga Steve

ok stop now. those are all worse than the original. just use the closest match to a 64 which u had originally its what the graphics were designed and balanced around. it is also by far the cleanest and brightest screen u have displayed so far. it wasnt broken so why fix it. also in my opinion, lose the background colour to the panel. all u do by adding it is to make the display muddy and waste a colour. if u really want to add colour to the panel i would do something like this:

yes very good atariksi u do love your figures dont you? never done it practically but u do like figures coz they dont show up failed on screen i suppose? AND saying that the a8s hardware sprite system is better for games and u quote river raid and Joust? when the ST was being tasked with stuff like R-type? which the A8 would have no chance of doing under hardware. (even tho certain other "unmentionable" 8 bits did. Lets be frank the ST could and did knock the a8s hardware sprite capability it a cocked hat. and yes as 16 bit developers we would have traded much for decent hardware sprites on both ST AND Amiga. but then 10 years apart the paltry a8 hardware sprites are what u could call "decent" are they? Steve edit: actually your comment about the amiga routinely using hardware sprites is not really true. we considered them fairly useless as their size number and colour disadvantages made them pretty useless for much more than bullets, and why write another rotine just to display bullets? however if they had had the size and capabilities of sprites from the "unmentionable" machine it would have been quite different.

And this would be which game(s) exactly? are u seriously trying to convince me as an ex 8 and 16 bit developer that the a8s paltry sprite hardware, which doesnt even come close to a c64s sprite ability, is now also better than having an 8mhz cpu chucking sw sprites at the screen? so lets recap, u have: 4 tiny player mono player sprites and 4 even tinier mono missile sprites at 1.8mhz vs any size of sw sprite in 16 colour 4 bitplane or 8 colour 3 bitplane being whacked on the screen at 8mhz. which of these do u think a developer would rather have i wonder? and just how many 16 pixel wide a8 size sprites do u think an ST could whack onto the screen inside 1 frame? tell u what why dont u go and code it to find out? and lastly, if this a8 super multiplexing in reality any use, why does everything after 1984 have to use sw sprites? funny that isnt it? Steve

well, hardware scroll is most definitely a plus point, but in all honesty there are precious few a8 games that truly "smooth scroll" AND have any kind of sprite usage. simply because the a8s hardware sprite capability isnt up to the job and so SW sprites are pretty much mandatory. and once sw sprites are mandatory u can kiss goodbye to a 50hz scroller. most st stuff ran in 25hz. the only one i can definitely remember running in 50hz constantly was a UK demo version of uridium which was c64 perfect in the graphics department but didnt improve on it. the american conversion of uridium was utter rubbish. Steve

Seems to be a recurring theme on this forum. Pete I could pinpoint just exactly when that started, but then I'd be a retrotech-racist, but this kind of "theme" started when the Commodore kiddies came to play over here with us... yeah i think i would probably agree with that timeframe. but i think it should be described as "about the time when some folks turned up who had actually done some coding and challenged the cobblers which had been stated as gospel on these forums for years" Steve

i ask for another vote option: q. are you all on drugs? option 1 YES option 2 no (unlikely)

Jose have u considered looking at the bbc micro version or the apple version of this game to source some of your graphics from? they will probably limited palette at the right rez for what u need and its far easier to add colour to a limited palette than it is to take it away from an extensive one. i used the bbc version of the "buddah statue" screen in Exploding Fist when coverting it for the atari format a few months ago because it was much easier to edit than the riot of colour and pixels that was the c64 one. also u will find that the bbc sprites (if u can find them) should be exactly what u need in 160 res and u wont have to convert anything. Steve

Cool!!! so at least c64 port is on the way... well in all fairness the same data can be used to do 4/5 colour a8 graphics. also even if POP is a non starter, simply because of the large amount of ram going to be consumed by the sprite frames. it doesnt stop someone using them as a base to do some other platformer with. Steve

POP sprite 8 bit conversion to 3 colours is now complete (i think) rename the .txt extension to .zip. good luck Steve pop sprites c64.txt

ah right best of luck redrawing 200 MSdos frame conversions to POP 2 standards. u must have found a graphic designer i havent seen on here yet. a word of advice from someone long in and out of the industry tho, drawing 200 frames of sprite data without a definite idea how the coder is actually going to implement them is destined for heartache. Steve

well the problem is u dont have all the frames tho really do u? what u actually have are 2 sheets full of sprites whose colour usage and and resolution level are far in excess of your machines capabilities. u would be far better advised keeping it simple and aiming for an apple look than wasting your time discussing pie in the sky ideas of converting POP 2 sprites when in reality the basic POP ones will push your machine to it very limits to accomplish. Steve

more crap Steve

excluding the sword fighting sprites, in which the sword is added separately, the largest sprite i have found so far is as stated 51 pixels wide (hires 1:1). the tallest is 53 pixels high, but when that happens the player is only about 14 pixels wide (hires 1:1 (7 multicolour) ). however the frames i have converted never exceed 48 pixels (or 24 2:1 multicolour) which is the edited version of the 51 pixel sprite in the long jump. Steve

a real doddle til u work out that the sprites just for u take up about 50k then it becomes somewhat more stressful but as long as u can comprees the backgrounds, the engine and the music into 14k then you are away Steve

i am not sure if this is common knowledge, but a "tile" on the pc version is 64 pixels high and 32 single (16 double pixels) across. the total screen is 3x64 (192) high leaving an 8 pixel strip at the bottom for energy bars. total horizontal width is 10x tiles 320 pixels which would equate to 160 doubles this is exactly the dimensions u need for an a8/c64 conversion so work your tile blocks around that or the game dynamics will not work. Steve

more junk for this thread standing jump animation converted: and a basic c64 3 colour + background test. no stonework detail to try to cut down on the amount of chars it will generate in a "live" conversion.(ignore the torches they just look nice) Steve

err no sorry the ST/amiga/pc and probably apple are all 1:1 pixel aspect. 320x200 res. what the c64 and a8 needs is 2:1 aspect (effectively 160x200 res c64 multicolour mode) whic i think only the cpc uses. but the cpc is so colourful that its easier to convert the high res low colour versions Steve

this is a simple method to fairly quickly convert the MSDOS graphics to 3 colour in photoshop CS: 1. load the msdos bmp in 2. make sure its width is an EVEN number. crop by a pixel if necessary (preferably off the left) 3. use [image-size] and HALVE the horizontal res 4. change the pixel display ratio to 2:1 5. convert to an rgb image 6. convert back to an indexed colour image using a c64 palette by now the image will look like a c64 sprite. replace any light grey pixels with white and any brown/orange with pink. retouch any areas as u see fit. 6. when u are happy with the sprite use [image-size] and double the horizontal res and save using this method its quite possible to covert a frame in 2-3 mins. which isnt bad. Steve

well i thought that too. but from the screenshots i have access to in "zoom" on PS, they look like the sprites have a 1:1 pixel ratio which neither the 64 or the a8 would be able to use as the modes needed on both will be 2:1 aspect. i could be totally wrong here tho as the screens were really badly jpeged. if they are 1:1 tho, they will need just as much editing as the msdos version and the ms dos one is if nothing else easily accessible graphics wise. Steve