macgoo

Why is a technology that is supposed to involve more of your body than just your thumbs considered crap? I've enjoyed the Wii with its motion controls. I get to bowl, play tennis and shoot archery with my kids, right there in my living room. Not to mention, I have used the Wii-Fit board a few times. It's not perfect, but at least I'm not sitting on my ass all the time. I don't have an XBox 360, but if I did I might consider getting the camera. My kids would probably love all the dancing and other full-body games. Well you just answered your own question with 'I don't have an Xbox 360' because playing need for speed most wanted on Wii is just a piss about party game type thing with highly innaccurate control of your car on screen, certainly not pixel perfect control, playing the same game with the 360 joypad on Xbox however becomes an art form and demonstration of pixel perfect placement of your front wheels at the corners apex to balance and steer the car PERFECTLY to 1/1920th of the width of the screen.....ipso facto not just a toy but a very satisfying feeling of 100% BEING IN CONTROL of your car on screen. So like I said it is junk for real gaming. Wii owners are not interested in real games, it is just a party toy like pissing about on karaoke machines in the bar. It certainly is nothing like games of skill like all gaming has been from 1977 on VCS to 2007 when Wii came out. In fact Kinect is the same rubbish as those 1987 childrens TV game shows using an Amiga 1000, realtime digitizer, genlock and video camera where the child sees themselves on a big television genlocked over a spiders web and they have to hit the fly and kick it. These are not my kind of games and require 50% luck because the control is not accurate. When we can do what they do in The Matrix let me know, until then you can flush my reserved Wiimote and Xbox Kinect down the toilet and hand me my 360 pad and a copy of Colin McRae Dirt 3 or something thanks Edit: Accelerometer/free space controllers and camera based gaming is not new, Google Le Stick (looks and works bit like Wii-mote but as a digital joystick) and also "The Games Machine" magazine A1000 TV show BUG to see how they work. I don't have a problem with them as an additional things to have but my god imagine if the Sega Dreamcast ONLY had those silly fishing rod and Maracas controller games and no other games like VF3, Soul Calibre, F355 challenge, Sonic Adventure etc etc. Fun is OK for a while but then I want my controller back to play proper games not something to replace the Twister mat/Karaoke machine on party night.

The BBC one looks just like the real thing I chose to do the trees/rocks etc as char graphics for speed and it makes the multiplexing engine much simpler. Sprites can go behind the char graphics and char graphics are fast like on C64 Power Drift. Still with only 1mhz I think it will be maybe 50-33% speed of Atari ST original and maybe 20% speed of NTSC Amiga version of Lotus 2. So as the cars will never go over clouds and trees are not sprites there is no flicker possible due to bad line on multiplexer, and only one single interrupt to achieve the 16 sprites on screen at the switch between blue and green. The road is only one colour, again raster interrupts are used to stripe the grey road on the green background land = green/light green and grey/dark grey. The car was changed a little, this is now just two sprites expanded from 21 lines to 42 lines. This leaves 6 free sprites, small cars in distance = 1 sprite each, cars overtaking close to you = 2 sprites same as your car. I didn't want to expand any more. With the colours you give for the cars this will not work, as you need 3 colours including the red lights of car. so you must lose the light grey colour probably. I haven't thought any more about it but Black and red = multi colour 1 and 2 for us. Free colour is 3 for car colour so red green yellow white blue etc. This means you loose the exhaust pipes in grey and block between red lights. Also there are no mountains on my picture but in ST/Amiga game there is mountains on horizon to scroll left right with chars, this could work but as trees go over sky your multicolour 1 and 2 then must make mountains AND trees AND rocks because trees go over mountain line hmmmm. Rocks must then be black and grey or black brown and grey but still needs tweeking on last draft I drew (attached) I like your seat colours on A8 better I'm not 100% sure still how the A8 colour system works as this is all new to me technically on the Atari, but this is a good idea to try and learn I think. Clouds are only 2 colours but I can use a third colour still, I am thinking Defender of the Crown C64 clouds from James Sachs

The road is 1 background of green + 1 free chosen colour of grey. Trees and rocks are 2 global multicolour colours and 1 free colour per 4x8 char block (eg tree is green brown and black with transparent/background for 4th in pic). Sky could be blue background (saves CPU time blocking out colour 1 and allows trees to cover sky) which a raster changes it to green at horizon. The background colour fixed unless you limit UDG chars too just 64. Clouds = sprites x8, all multiplexed at blue/green sky horizon split for re-use by the cars. If you made it a rally game with no cars to overtake you can have the car sprite as is. Speed is the issue. Maybe 25-30% of Amiga or 33-40% of ST Lotus II speed at worst

No, I did this screen based on abilities of another machine at 160x200 rez

Strange, I see it in my post and your quote. http://s18.postimage..._Lotus_2_x2.png

I dunno Wanted Monty Mole is the best Monty Mole game IMO. The C64 version of AMC is technically shit, even AMC 2 sub game on Batalyx is only a half arsed improvement he admits. Anyway the C64 is not simple to code, different and easy to access 4 colour only screens BUT good C64 games use complex SID tricks, very complex hires/multicolour mixed mode graphic screens (lots of weird restrictions), devious memory maps (never enough as ROMS etc sit inside 64kb and unlike a Commodore Plus4/MSX/Amstrad little is left) and elegant sprite multiplexing kernal. If the C64 was easy to code then all Game maker/SEUCK games wouldn't look shit. Truth is they are just both complex in different ways and both need much skill. Unlike ST vs Amiga.

José you make some great posts about conversions I wonder what you make of converting this double wide aspect pixel 160px wide 8 colour game screen I made?

I will ignore director's opinions because most of them knew fack all about technicalities of machines, it was all $$$$'s to them. Crowther is interesting he is a very good programmer (even worked on Battlefield 2 for Xbox 360!) and yet Crowther's C64 games look, sound and play better than the A8 games like LOCO, go figure. I would have thought Jeff Minter's vocal opinions would have been mentioned too to be honest. AotMC for Atari is one of the best looking shootemups on any 8bit IMO. You do realise Julian Rignall, the most talented of all reviewers, played A8 games a lot? I remember talking to him on the ZZAP stand (trade pass so we weren't hassled for being teenagers) and he owned a lot of cool stuff. He was also one of the first people in the UK to get the NEC PC-Engine/TurboGrafx console.

I am well chuffed, blagged eleven more CVG issues from 81 to 83 to fill in some gaps in my collection. Last month found a few more. I love this magazine, it is the BEST for old computers and the Coleco/VCS/Intellivision era full stop. Really looking forward to reading the real mags again, those blurry blocky JPEG' compressed to buggery scans are not my cup of tea. It's worth the money to have the real magazines. I may even type in some games for more obscure computers from them now that I will be able to read the damned listings

I've played quite a few Thomson M05 games actually, they were quite Sinclair Spectrum/MSX ish looking but some nice games on it. Might record and upload some to Youtube one day.

All I can say is on the Amiga behind the scenes look at a trade show there was a 10 or 12 line program that allowed you to blitt shapes around the screen using the mouse and pressing the button to activate blits. It was fast too, very similar speed to anim brushes on Dpaint 3. So unless people are bitching and moaning about not being able to write Sword of Sodan quality games on Amiga Basic I don't see the problem. I know Acorn Basic inside out and it is no different to the version of Amiga Basic I saw on an Amiga 1000 in 1985 IMO. It was more like FAST Basic on the ST than the version bundled in with the first 520ST/1040STF IMO The problem is nobody expected you to write games in Basic any more on the ST/Amiga, this is why you have hardware reference manuals/rom kernal manuals all with C or ASM source code NOT Basic. Basic has one saving grace, when trying to write games on an old 8 bit computer like the Amstrad/Spectrum/C64 if you use ASM you need to be very careful about memory maps, if you use Laser Basic on either of those three most popular 8 bit machines you don't. It's a real pain in the ass getting half way through something and then realising the improved graphics won't go in without a massive change of source code/memory map. It IS slower but it IS more flexible. C is shit, most commercial ST/Amiga games were written in C and they look pathetic. C is for scientists only IMO not game coding. I have no respect for game programmers in the 80s who didn't bother to learn 68k and get a hardware reference manual sorry.

If you have an Amiga 1200 or 600 it's very easy to find compatible PCMCIA network cards and then network your Amiga to the rest of the world. OK easy is a relative term, easier than getting an IBM PC-AT with DOS 6.22 or an Apple Mac v1 that is

Probably because few people bought one in the UK, same deal with Apple II in the UK, although Apple were ripped a new one by Commodore in Europe for their overpriced RRP policy at Apple.

Best to be on the safe side if you are only keeping digital copies of your work though I know of the Memotech MTX WAVs but they were 44.1khz as they were meant to be put on CD and therefore they used the same sample rate to write to CDDA so people could use CD players to load their games reliably on that machine otherwise there might be errors when upscaling from a lower frequency sample to 44.1khz by the software burning the CD audio discs.

Was STOS ever updated to use DMA samples/scroll registers/4096 colours/hardware blitter at all? I wrote some very nice routines in STOS that just needed a little bit more help (or a 16mhz 68000 CPU) like Konami style shootem up full screen transparent parallax playfields that turned out a lot better than I thought they would at the time. I have a 1040STE but it's probably the least used machine of all the STs I own, my favourite was my Mega STE with 16mhz CPU but had to sell it as it started to get 'stuck' in mono mode even if you connected an SC1224 monitor.

Problem is you can't have a mono AND colour monitor attached to the ST to swap willy nilly so using them just out of curiosity is a massive pain in the ass on an ST with two monitors on one desk, it's just not feasible at all to have that as a permanent set up for most people. The intros don't stop the games I tried from working, if you know the game you want is number 3 on the menu you just press three and it dumps you back to the GEM desktop and you double click the icon to boot them so they should work. I also tried games where the only intro is like a boot block virus checker and it comes on the same number of disks (ie 1) as the original. Zip zilch nada nothing. It's a real shame for people who are just interested in seeing some mono arcade/action games.

50 rubbish games and an incompatible version of WINUAE emulator you can download for FREE sold for £30? No thanks only an idiot would buy that cack. Get yourself the Retrogenius Ultimate Amiga DVD with 22000 games, mags, music, box scans, and a version of the emulator that needs no installation and runs from the DVD. Farking sweet or what? Funny though, how can play Mastertronic's Ninja or Bruce Lee be better than playing Sword of Sodan anyway, man you should go get your brain MRId or something original poster

I owned a Colecovision, then a VIC20, then a C64, then an ST (no more typing) then an Amiga 1000 (bloody hell smooth multitasking) then an Amiga 1200 in 1992 (1280x580!!) and then a 33mhz 486 PC in 1992....What a pile of JUNK that was seeing a white cursor on a black screen like a 1981 Acorn BBC Computer! It reminded me of the Star Trek 4 movie when Scotty has to use the keyboard after attempting to talk to the computer and he has a pissed off look on his face and then cracks his knuckles. That's exactly how SHIT DOS PCs were compared to Amiga 1000-1200 period of 1985-1994. Sorry if you are a DOS lover but whilst the games were good the OS and general use of a machine was 20 years behind Amiga...and they crashed A LOT. Oh and then there was the purchase of 3rd Party software like QEMM386 so you could just get enough of the first 640kb to play a game....nice thanks for that cock memory map microcock software! So yeah you can play all those games with a dual boot system or DOSBOX and were pretty horrible to use, oh and up until about 1990 the Amiga version was better than the PC version of action/arcade games anyway so pretty much a waste of space before Doom was released in 94 to be honest People forget what junk PCs were, especially when Windows version 1/2 or 3 didn't load and you had this black screen with a little cursor flashing at you like a 1978 CP/M machine in 1994 sitting next to an Amiga 4000

MP3 really wouldn't work on a C64 or Sinclair game due to the massively increased baud rates. I have to ask, is 8bit sampling used for space saving reasons? I can't see any other reason you would specifically state 8bit as the format? You probably don't need 44.1khz either given the max pitch rate output is not 22khz, I doubt it goes much above standard VIC20/C64 save/load from BASIC so 32 or 22khz will more than likely work reliably.

Hmmm would that be the same idiot who wrote the Amiga 1000/500 article claiming the 500 had more advanced improved chipset? LOL It's the same F^%$ing shit from A1000 1985 minus a WOM memory area and a new case and PSU on the floor with power switch (how elegant NOT)

EPAL = hardly an improvement IMO. So the colours will be more or less identical unless it is a 16 greyscale game and there are still only 16 colours anyway so the graphics would look the same. I suppose a game that only has EPAL next to it at least is compatible.

I already tried many of the arcade games listed there (moon patrol, starglider, starglider 2 etc) and using multiple disk images and not a single one worked on any emulator I tried when you start it in mono. You have a hell of a lot of adventures on there, fish/jinxter/myth/silicon dreams etc and a lot of RPG stuff too

The Amiga. Simple choice really. You have no restrictions on what sounds it makes beyond them being 8bit data samples, you have no limits on placement of colours beyond the maximum for that display mode and modes can be mixed as you like per scanline, and the CPU is plenty fast enough to match mid to late 80s arcade games as far as ASM goes and it is a really elegant CPU in terms of the 68000 instruction set. The challenge then? Well that's simple, getting the most out of this most complex of chipsets to achieve maximum chipset bandwidth. If Commodore had the foresight of Sony and their Playstation 1 optimization analyzer tool Amiga games would be much easier to write. Memory compression and chipset timing are rare black arts necessary for Amiga coding however, a very very rare skill to find (and one that is not present in any coders currently producing Amiga homebrew like that Downfall for Amiga junk *bletch*).

Typical response. Care to point to any photo-realistic colour images on the A8 in 320*200? Typical response.... comparing final stuff with work in progress... Imagine this one in interlace.... emkay-demo100.xex C64 needs interlace for more colours. A8 needs interlace for more details. Yes C64 requires interlace for more colors (although some additional mixes can be presented non-interlaced via pal blending) Can the A8 display 320 hires pixels horizontally in interlace however? Not sure if one of the frames can be shifted 1 pixel hires increment. if it cant, it will always be x2 horizontal res maximum. Can you provide me with the original of that picture you put. I just want to see how it looks non-interlaced on the c64 via my converter. :-) I am not trying to have a grudge match etc. C64 is great, so is Atari, each have their strengths and weaknesses. Algorithm you are new here, but I know your work from csdb, but emkay is well known here for being full of shit and never delivering [anything other than underwhelming] 'amazing' examples when pushed and nothing but a dick head troll with zero talent and very little understanding of anything outside his blinkered flaming fanboy world of Atari 8bit....the most mighty machine in the whole world which apparently has ZERO compromises and is BETTER than a 68k Amiga amongst things in his tiny mind It's a shame because he seems to ruin every thread he posts in between 1% and 100% Oswald gave up on his antics here longgggggggg ago PS welcome here and thanks for all the great tools you've released for us mate.

Hey it's not Atari's fault that the Transputor developers got no help from their government at the time. UK is piss poor at developing great ideas but they do come up with some great 80s CPU designs. ARM is one and Transputor is another CPU that our dumb govt let slip through their fingers. Atari's hope was it would soon enough come down to top end IBM PC money and essentially give them the CGA PC vs Amiga 1000 advantage in the early 90s. The OS team is also partly from the developer (Dr Tim King of Tripos fame IIRC) who helped C= with the Amiga KS/Workbench system.