ceti331

Comparing "bang per bit" (bang per buck) i would say the C64 is one of the best machines ever. Its no good having all those colours if you can't use them well - halftoning with the c64 palette is IMO just as usefull as having the wider a800 h/w palette. a "photo to tilemap" vs "photo to scanline-palettized" converter will 'prove' this the C64 is a more impressive use of 8bits than the Amiga is of 16bits. other designs got more out of similar memory & bandwidths. A scaled up "16bit C64" would have wiped the floor with the Amiga as a games machine. [the amiga was a truly amazing home-COMPUTER though]

Another 'challenge' i'd be curious to see results of arbitrary image converter - take generic modern bitmap file, and convert to best possible still image graphics mode on the respective machines. (so i'm guessing raster based paletizer on the A800, and tile based palletizer on the C64). compare results.

Ok, so Show me screenshots (or mockup proof of concept) of Atari800 R-Type, Salamander. Better still, youtube vids. Games MOVE. multiplatform titles designed to be ported between different 8bitmachines dont count I conceed: the Atari800 might be able to display superior STATIC images, or 'demos' but until I see the above, I will continue to beleive the C64 is the superior *games* machine. The clear advantage is in the data encoding per screen. One fixed 16 color palette, with many independant 3 color elements, with some shared+unique colors. The tradeoff is the shared 16color palette, plus many different 4bit color selectors moveable around the screen more freely than the raster scanline changes of the a800. I'll reserve judgement till I see an R-Type mockup Where i'll agree with you: I think i'd definitely have greatly enjoyed an atari 8bit at the time, given the way I enjoy computers.

It's the latter, one byte per character with 7 bits selecting the actual definition (so only 128 characters in a font compared to 256 on the C64) and the top bit selects one of two playfield colours for the %11 bit pair. It has it's pluses and minuses, the DMA fetch for each character line is... [ahem] aggresive. so the C64 clearly has a lot more data per screen, and used very intelligently. More character/sprite map attribute data is infinitely preferable to raster effects. Hence the better graphics. I'm guessing A8 games mess around re-pointing the character definitions alot? must be alot of options for trickery there.

5 colors? is that 2bpp tiles, 4 colors across most of the screen, with 1 bit selecting an alternate color for some of the tiles? was it 1byte per tile (7bits tile index, with the upper bit selecting the alternate color) or what

i'll agree some of the titlescreens / set peices are prettier. for actual moving gameplay, the C64's sprite system is the clear winner. IMO, doesn't matter. Object detail in both cases appears to be ramps of 3 shades. Sure the C64 can look a bit muddy where its approximating with greys/browns, but the overall effect appears better due to the colour choice per sprite & background cell, producing more scope for object detail & variety. I guess you could always piss around with the color/brightness settings on the telly to tint it In the 16bit days I thought the bitmap brothers games were the best - for me they beat the psygnosis dual-playfield amiga-only titles (Gods > SOTB, Xenon > Menace, etc etc) The BB games all used very similar palettes, but it worked well.. lots of detail in the objects, much more interesting than other games with more varied palettes. (obviously 32color titles were my favourite) Yes the A8 & amiga were VERY similar in this respect.

Given the choice between the colours & sprites, i'd definitely choose the sprites. Those screenshots are mostly gimicky titlescreens; rasterbars can't replace real sprite/character colour choices for actual object detail. the C64 is clearly superior for *games*. a8 for 'tinkering with graphics' agree, but mainly similar in that the hardware sprites were only usefull for player character regardless, c64=8bit winner, amiga=16bit winner. wow. i'm being drawn into an argument about 2 machines i never owned! These debates will never wear thin. interestingly i think I would have been very content if i owned an atari 8bit machine at the time.

i have to admit from an unbiased perspective (i had a bbc micro) the c64 looks like the better machine overall due to superior sprites. It'll take an r-type clone or demo to convince me otherwise Nonetheless the machine interests me a lot.. does look like it had more trickery available. Its place in history & home computer evolution is very interesting. I see what you mean about it being able to produce more varied visuals, as such it would appear to have been the most interesting programmers/creators machine at the time

really does remind me of an 8bit amiga. the rasterbars, & limited sprites that usually end up being player sprite only I'd be really curious to see community homebrew attempts at an r-type clone, or even just proof of concept like the '800xl turrican engine' visible on youtube zybex was interesting.. was it making the compromise of software sprites only moving on byte boundaries? could the 800xl smooth scroll/doublebuffer a 160x192x2bpp Bitmap, or would you use character map modes

Greetings, I never heard much about the atari 8bit machines back in the day; I was curious to know what the best examples of r-type/gradius-esque side-scrolling shooters were on the machine - can't find many. Is there anything like armalyte on it ?