DimensionX

We learned that mine is better than yours... no matter what mine is or what yours is. Mine is getting a cup of tea, does yours want one? While you get yourself a cup of (lipton? or jackson?) Try this... Want to make screenshot collections easy, like the ones i have posted? Use XnView XnView supports 513 different picture formats from old Atari 800 graphic formats to C64 graphic formats or the latest JPG2000. It's easy to make screenshot collections of Atari or C64 games like my own in this thread. You can also link XnView to Total Commanders internal viewer if you use that app. http://www.xnview.com/en/index.html To make Animated gifs easy, use Photoscape http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.php Both programs are freeware.

We learned that mine is better than yours... no matter what mine is or what yours is. What we actually learned was, "mine is better then yours" applies only for that particular person. In reality it isn't such thing as best, just different.

Can we come to final conclusion of this thread? What have we learned? Dear ladies and gentlemen... C64 is good at...what C64 is good at Atari 800 is good at...what Atari 800 is good at None of the machines is the better one, just different. Dear jury, i find the case impossible to carry on. Both computers are great and have been an importand part of the video game history.

[scratches head] i could get it fairly closely ported as long as i drop some of the white from the grey scales i think...? But like you say, it'll need the CPU working during the logo to generate the gradients where the C64 is sat idle. That's just a stock multicolour bitmap, there aren't any tricks being used. You beat me to it Off course it is, but not technical. We all have our tricks when creating art. Bitmap Brothers were the kings working with 16 colours on the ST, their games looked better then anything else by carefully choosing the palette and using small tricks to make it look better.

[scratches head] i could get it fairly closely ported as long as i drop some of the white from the grey scales i think...? But like you say, it'll need the CPU working during the logo to generate the gradients where the C64 is sat idle. That's just a stock multicolour bitmap, there aren't any tricks being used. I didn't mean technical. Nice logo. Art is by placing all pixels carefully.

I have seen quite many screens like that on C64 and it's always fun to see what you can do with a C64 using some tricks. You see, i'm not saying anything bad about C64 because i like both computers. Nice job. *thumbs up*

I agree, in some games gradients don't look good at all. The programmer used them without any sense. But proper use can enhance the look of a game. And still, it's no battle against anything else. I just wanted to show that gradients proper used isn't something bad.

The concept that one colour makes another speaks quite well in these screenshots. Chop Suey (the karate game) would have been incredible poor without the rainbow behind that makes the blue shines like that. You get a kind of glass look using gradients that makes other colours look better. In your opinion at least, I think it looks awful. For someone who says they don't like one computer over another you do seem to be trying hard to show how much better the Atari is If I posted a 16 colour complex C64 bitmap you'd probably just say it didn't have the range of colours the Atari has, the fact that you can have those 16 colours pretty much anywhere on the C64 seems to bypass most Atari owners. Pete No, i just wanted to show that gradients aren't as useless as some people think. If you use them right they can add a lot to your game. The ST had a 16 colour limit too. I'm quite used to it. And there isn't any complex 16 colour pictures. To get somewhere i had to use Spectrum 512 on the ST, which means 512 on screen colours. The only drawback was the 320x200 resolution.

If you take a blue square, and put a one colored black or green background behind it. You will have no depth. Now, put a gradient blue or green background behind it. You will suddenly have a lot of depth because it doesn't fit with a single colour. Graphic effects is both interesting and fun. I experimented a lot with colourcycling on the ST.

The concept that one colour makes another speaks quite well in these screenshots. Chop Suey (the karate game) would have been incredible poor without the rainbow behind that makes the blue shines like that. You get a kind of glass look using gradients that makes other colours look better.

seen one gradient, seen em all. I think my years of amiga ownership have made me automatically filter out background gradients You can see gradients as something separated from the actual game graphics because they differ too much to fit with the animated foreground, gradients adds atmosphere and depth to the complete game graphics. Often 16 colours graphics is very flat because lack of any nuances. When you look at a computer or console capable of producing thousands of fine nuances, the graphics becomes much more 3D. And that's the point using gradiants, to enhance depth and to make the game look more polished. Another way to get 16 colour graphics to shine is by having access to a quite large palette to choose nuances from, like on Atari ST. And even if you can't afford more then three or four different nuances, the game will have a much more professional look as a result. But then it isn't 8bit gaming, right?

Not to compare with anything else. And i do not battle C64 either. I just want to show you that gradients aren't as worthless as you think. If you use them proper they can actually enhance a game quite a lot. The will do several good things for your game. 1.The add a certain depth 2.And even if the foreground is very simpel, those gradients will make it look better 3.They will add a certain polish to the look of the game PNG, 684x996px, 38 KB (0.04 MB) Speeking of dithering. It's always the last way out. Because you will never get any clean colours using dithering and besides that, you will half the resolution using that method. I did it a lot on the ST with mixed results. 16 colours became 48 or even 64 using dithering. Atari 800 is capable of some descent dithering too. PNG, 684x492px, 40 KB (0.04 MB)

For retrobuffs like us, who was there, a game is so much more then just at game. We have all the memories and associate a certain game with lots of happenings around us. Todays youngsters doesn't have that. For them, it's just a game, no more, no less. To be able to get the most out of a game like Pac Man, you must have been there and been a part of the magic. Not to say that Pac Man isn't a good game that todays children can play. But don't expect them to like it as much as you did. I'm a hardcore retrogamer but i'm also well aware of that these games never will present them same magic for todays kids as they did for me. (sad enough)

Exactly. This type of thing goes on here a lot and on probably every other Retro site, people have a favourite machine and they're happy with it and nobody can change their mind, not that that's anyone's intention. What you have to be REALLLLY careful of though is getting facts wrong Pete He he I agree. To tell you the truth, i don't dislike any computer and plays both Atari 800, C64, Amiga, Atari ST and Spectrum via emulators. All of them are good in their own special way. At the same time i can understand a person who really want "his" machine to be a bit better. But in the end, computers are just different. I'll better log out now, time is 0.01 in Sweden and i must up early tomorrow.

Put very simply, the ST has many more colours than the A8 but fewer shades of each colour. Hasn't the ST got a bit of a crappy RF out as well? I always thought it looked a bit dull and washed out. Pete I never used the RF but a composite cable. Besides that, you'll see the same thing running ST from STeem 3.2 Certain computers have a certain type of display?

The point for me to post in this thread was to show that C64 isn't superior to Atari 800. Both machines are good in their own rights and it depends on what you're looking for. I made the misstake myself by underestimated both C64, Spectrum and Megadrive. Big misstake from me. DimensionX - Ha, SNES is superior to Genesis, Genesis have a palette of only 512 colours and a limit of only 64 on screen colours. You can't compare it to SNES. DimensionX *is testing Sonic II* DimensionX - Ooops, i must by myself a Genesis...

Please don't start the 4 vs 3 again. Yes, physical channels, 4 vs 3, but you can't brush aside the bits like that, 16 bit is a MASSIVE difference to 8 bits for accuracy, 65536/256 so saying it doesn't matter when you're trying to get a note in tune and an 8 bit channel can't manage it means either you're happy with out of tune music or you're just trying to brush it under the carpet. Also, HVSC only contains around 38k tunes, so 100,000 is a BIT of an exaggeration, no? Pete No, 46 MB in total, zipped. Sap archive is 8.9 MB in total

Atari 800 Pokeychip plays... Jatatap.sap (mp3) (i rendered in winamp) http://www.speedyshare.com/files/22125056/01_jatatap_tm8_song_1_of_1.mp3 Their site http://grayscale.scene.pl/en_index.php It is two real Pokey chips on this song which is played by two XL or XE computers. The rest is skill from the musicians. http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-programs-support-stereo-and-upgraded-sound_77.html All of that just goes to prove that a standard Atari that you would've owned back in the day couldn't produce those sounds. If you combine 2 SIDs.... I think you'll find most of us know this stuff already so don't assume we're arguing or disagreeing coming from an ignorant background. We're all retro fans, multi-platform, some of us have worked on these machines for a living, some have done homebrew/demos across a wide number of them. Pete This wasn't to make anything look bad, just to show that you can make good music with pokey too, if you're skilled enough. Most of Grayscales songs sound surprisingly good. SID have all the power and fatness in the sound that Pokey lacks, but Pokey has one more channel and is a bit better at generate ringing sounds. But if we look at it general, Sid wins quite easily.

Some nice tunes there. I think most of those are minimum stereo POKEY (in other words your old Atari couldn't sound like that) and probably called multiple times per frame to create a more "waveform/envelope" sound. Other than that I'm not commenting. To me SID wipes the floor with POKEY in most cases and I don't see the point in turning that into an argument Pete These tunes was made with a special pokey tracker and probably they used the double mode for the pokey chip to get things in stereo. Atari 800 has 4 channel sound, and that extra channel shows. SID has better quality on the sound, but not in the solo area. SID is perfect for fat bass sounds and fat analog synth sounds but very bad at ringing sounds. I have noticed that the pokey chip seems to be very hard to get right tuned. If we're talking facts again POKEY has 4 8 bit channels, c64 has 3 16 bit ones. C64 can play IN TUNE on any of those channels. To play in tune (and yes, there's a range where it's "mostly" right in 8bit) on POKEY you have to combine 2 channels to form one 16 bit one, therefore to get 16 bit accurate (ie, in tune, something quite important with music) notes you really only have 2 channels The reason most people like to use stero POKEY (and once again, it's not a standard, either 2 machines or 2 chips on 1 machine) is because you can combine those channels (now and end up with 4 again I won't go into the C64's standard effects, waveforms, adsr, filters, pwm, ring mod, etc etc that POKEY doesn't have. I think there's another misconception with A8 owners that SID can ONLY do bass notes. Until you've listened to at least 10% of the thousands of tunes in the High Voltage SID Collection I don't think you can judge that, it sounds like the same thing I read over and over from A8 owners. Pete SID has 3 physical channels, Pokey has 4 physical channels, the "bit" of them is irrelevant to the number of physical channels. And yes, i have about 100.000 or more sid chiptunes and the whole sap collection. SID is good for certain type sounds like all sound generators. You will not find a single chip in any synth who could do all sounds, that's why we have FM, AM, Ringmodulated and hundreds of other synth types. SID always sounds a certain way, it's called the SID sound. SID is good for certain types of sounds but less good on other. If you want good ringing sound, choose FM (frequency modulation) for exemple. Like in good old DX7 and Sega Genesis.

Atari 800 Pokeychip plays... Jatatap.sap (mp3) (i rendered in winamp) http://www.speedyshare.com/files/22125056/01_jatatap_tm8_song_1_of_1.mp3 Their site http://grayscale.scene.pl/en_index.php It is two real Pokey chips on this song which is played by two XL or XE computers. The rest is skill from the musicians. http://www.atarimania.com/faq-atari-400-800-xl-xe-what-programs-support-stereo-and-upgraded-sound_77.html

One question What puzzles me a bit about Atari 800 is the quality of the colours. Not even the ST can produce such crystal clear colours even if Atari ST can show the same amount of colours on screen, using some tricks. Even if Atari ST show 512 colours on screen at once it isn't those clear colours that we can see on Atari 800. Is that the because of the GTIA + Antic chip? In fact, the only computer i have seen that could produce that clear shiny quality on the colours is Amiga. Not to say that the ST is bad, but it can't produce that type of colours as Atari 800. I have watched countless of Atari ST demos but non of them can match the display on the 800.

Some nice tunes there. I think most of those are minimum stereo POKEY (in other words your old Atari couldn't sound like that) and probably called multiple times per frame to create a more "waveform/envelope" sound. Other than that I'm not commenting. To me SID wipes the floor with POKEY in most cases and I don't see the point in turning that into an argument Pete These tunes was made with a special pokey tracker and probably they used the double mode for the pokey chip to get things in stereo. Atari 800 has 4 channel sound, and that extra channel shows. SID has better quality on the sound, but not in the solo area. SID is perfect for fat bass sounds and fat analog synth sounds but very bad at ringing sounds. I have noticed that the pokey chip seems to be very hard to get right tuned.

Just so you know, a Color Computer 3 can do those screens almost exactly. It's 8 bits, released a bit late, but totally capable of that graphic style, text, the whole deal. See my blog for "Atari Style" graphics on that machine. There was then, and we are in the now. Lots of things are known about these older computers that were not known then. So, here's the thing: You really like that style --Atari style. So do I, and most people on here agree. The same is true for the other machines, and their hardware impact on the games. That is what was so cool about that time in computing. Each machine had some texture to it, and that played out in gaming in ways we don't see much today. Personally, I love that style, and the great games from the era. So do the other retro fans, with their machines of choice, meaning these VS threads do more harm than good, unless they are kept to hardware tricks, where we bend one machine to do the work of another that shouldn't have been possible. Those are kick ass, which is why I have that CoCo stuff in my blog, and Groovybee has just posed up some 7800 tricks... That's where the magic is, and that's where the hearts and minds are won, just so you know. I've been watching the 7800 stuff, and I'm growing intrigued. The fact that somebody really likes another machine shouldn't threaten your love for yours. Maybe that invokes a challenge, or something, and that's good, but it shouldn't cause the mess these things can cause. People walk on that, and look around! There just aren't that many of us, meaning we can and should take care of one another --at least that's how I see it. Thanks for lots of sensible thoughts. I agree in what you're saying. Why battle? We are all retro freaks in one or another way who remember the old games and computers and still love them as much as we did then. I will take a closer look at Color Computer 3, thanks for the tips.

It was Atari 8-bit programming, but i've not decided if i'll be bothering with it any more. My honest opinion is. Deal with the computer that you like best, all computers have it's own charm to work with. I have also been working as a programmer a couple of years ago but on PC with Visual Studio writing database applications and such stuff. But i'm not really the programmer type and rather work with apps like Photoshop and FL Studio. Every retro computer freak have my blessing no matter what computer they like or work with. Have a good evening TMR, i whish i was as skilled as you at programming older computers. Heck, i even struggle to type everything in english.

Ain't going to happen. Well... It's your own decision. I have nothing to say against that. You can hate me how much as you want, i don't hate you at all and are more then happy to shake hands with you anytime. And between us, i can understand why you are quite mad at me. I can also understand why i'm not. Think about that for a while, even if i suspect that you already know. No more battle. From now on i'm going to post about other things, and thanks for some real good information about C64 vs Atari that i didn't knew. But i hope that you have learned one importand thing under this conversation, never ever underestimate a computer. If you had been more open minded this discussion had been a lot nicer. But creative people like you and me often have a hot temper. I whish you a good day TMR and good luck with your C64 programming.