Gorf

What does AI stand for? Since no one will answer you properly, I will...AI stands for artificial intellegence. It is the code the programmer writes to simulate the movement of enemies and such. For instance, the ghosts in Pac Man are driven by code that simulates them chasing or running from you.

Finishing a Jaguar game and it being as bug free as possible. @ Super Judge.....yes the Jaguar has some of the best video output there is in a console. I had brought it to work when I worked at Modulation Sciences which manufactures broadcast quality video and audio equipment and hooked it up to some very powerful test equipment. The owner of the company was rather blown away by the clean and clear signal of the RGB video.We hooked it up to a broad cast quality studio monitor and the pixels were crystal clear and you could make out the squareness of each pixel quite easily.

But that goes against everything Atari stands for. Someone invents something without getting credit for it, somebody else steals it one way or another, then the inventor finally gets credit for it many years later. Not enough time has gone by. Yes but let's not make the same mistakes Atari made. Plus Owl and I are not Atari...if that were the case you could bet the 7800, Jaguar and ST line of computers would be in much better standing...or that would be our(at least my) hope. @ RevEng......thanks for the confirmation of my point. It's well appreciated.

Unfortunately for Al Gore, unlike Owl and I, he does not deserve that credit. @ Gooch...... Im afraid you wont see much of that ...its been almost a year since that info was released and so far the only two people making use of it are the same two who discovered it. Not unlike the source code Curt released.....no one touched it yet.

Now how can you possibly say this? Surrounded! and Gorf Classic used this technique long before anyone else made any such claim. In fact it was then after I made this announcement that Owl contacted me and said he too may have found this workaround. The rest is in the blog at his site. There was no such website or text document. If you think so..please do find it and post a link. Make sure you know what you are posting. As far as I know it does not exsist. I was the first one to bring this idea to the attention of the community. I nor Owl would not be the first ones to discover a feature or ability of a machine that was once thought to not be possible. It is certainly possible that someone else before either of us found a way around the bug, but they never told anyone. I assure you I independently invented the technique through trial and error. There are no documents previous to my discovery and announcement that I know of. I then compared notes with Owl, whom also independently discovered this technique and we found out that we both had something to offer each other to 'perfect' the bug fix. I think Starcat put it perfectly. I/Owl did not create anything...we discovered something that was already there but just not known, or at least not publically. In fact my sole motivation was to prove Atari was wrong and that there HAD to be some way around the bug. Luckily for me, the bug is a hardware issue and consistant which makes the workaround possible. In fact even before Surrounded, I discovered the workaround by writing a wireframe tie fighter like demo to test its integrity. Surrounded was devised to make sure it was stable, using it for a much more robust application..ie .. a fully operational game demo... its actually a ful game and the release is 'locked' into demo mode. One more addition..... Dactyl Joust indeed supposedly used main code, but from what I understand, it was code that was still flipped into the local to run. Forgetting who actually did that game, I will say it was High Voltage off the top of my head, supposedly they wrote a C compiler that did the flipping of code stored in main to the local. Even so, they (whomever they are) never let anyone know what they actually did or even how to do it. All of this as far as I understand is hearsay. It would be great if any former HV guy could come in and set the record straight on this.

I feel it does..... I appreciate your clear-minded response to this subject matter.

I feel it does.....

Let me just preface this post with the following...... This post i snot intended to incite a flame war nor to cause any further rift in the devloper side of the community....but enough is enough....I need to set this right....also...and more importantly.... Atari Owl is a brilliant coder and I tip my hat to his coding prowess and wish I had half his knowledge on how to deal with 3D math. However, knowing the kind of decent and honorable man he is, I am sure he would want to be sure that proper credit is given where due. I also consider Atari Owl a dear and valued friend and I would not take his due part of the credit from him and I suggest those of you still bitter refrain from doing the same to me. Truthfully, I could care less if you have any respect for me...but at least show respect to Atari Owl byt being honest and accurate...if you are even capable. You know who you are. Now onto the reality of the matter..... It seems there is a certain web site that likes to print many and several inaccuracies about many things concerning 3DSSS and myself. One is who the 'true inventor and master' to put it as 'they' do, of GPU main RAM code execution..... Also, There is another inaccuracy claiming, other than Atari Owl, no one else has use this workaround. I'll deal with the later first. Gorf Classic CD uses GPU main RAM code execution long before I announced it was possible. Also Surrounded, a released 3DSSS demo is 95% GPU main code RAM executable. The only 68k code is the set up code which is recommended by Atari and a wise choice and the a vblank handler. To set the former part of the record straight(i'll ignore the other out and out BS and sour grapes for now) and will post from Atari Owl's project blog site....his own words in writing..... Perhaps this tormented person missed this most important admition from Atari Owl himself..... Atari Owl is responsible for the masterful feat of jumping to and from Local and main RAM and kudos and bravo to him. You can read the rest of the FACTS right here....From Atari Owl's own description of who is and is not "true inventor and master" of GPU main RAM code execution. http://atariowlproject.blogspot.com/2009/12/merry-christmas-and-happy-new-year.html I thank you for taking the time to read this, Sincerely, Gorf

There were a hell of a lot moer Atari games than the dozen everyone likes to mention. Atari still had plenty up their sleves as well as the 3rd parties to rely on. Atari Joe, you should really change your name to Nintendo Joe. No one is whinning about what ifs. I'm simply saying that Atari had the better hardware and the idiots running Atari sat on it as well as their brains. Had they been less cocky and thinking that their name was good enough, they would still be king today. The major point is Nintendo was handed Atari's ass By Atari, Nintendo was in the right place at the right time and LUCK and bad decisions gave them the upper edge. Atari Did not want to win because even with the exclusive monopoly of Nintendo, Atari could have if they really wanted to, come back and destroyed them.....Unfortunately for Atari, they did not realize what they needed to do. Instead they simply repeated the same mistakes. For your information, Atari fell from grace long before the NES was even heard of. They blew is WAY back with the 5200....a horrible disaster. That is where Atari went wrong. Nintendo was just the result of Atari's bad decisions. They got lucky. and were wise enough to play on Atari's mistakes...Their hardware was garbage in comparison and most of the software was too. I never wanted an NES as the game were less than exciting to me.

No one is demoaning Nintendo's success. What is fact is that Atari's 7800 is a superior system and with a little less head up ass syndrome on Atari's part, the NES would have gone nowhere mainly based on techincal merits of the system AND the software by Nintendo themselves. By the time Nintendo practiced their illegal monopolistic licensing, Atari did not have any choice but to deal with their own classic titles which are by far more playable than anything Nintendo has released. For those Nintendo fanboys that have the balls to dare bitch about Atari and their rehashes, no one has milked off of one theme as much as Nintendo's Mario... Don't believe me...read for your self... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mario_games_by_year ...that poor cows udder was worn out a looooooooooong time ago. Atari one the other hand since the 80's have at least 100 completely different themes that are hardly worn out. From Asteroids to Centipede to War Lords to Agent X and on and on. Even Sega did better in the originality aspect than Nintendo did but not by much. What this tells me is the more you wear out a theme the more popular you become....If Atari only had practiced the use of these over 100 ver unique titles over the year, esepcially with the Jaguar, they'd have done worlds better than the Mario dead horse beating brigade.

Why CA, Im quite impressed....and for that you get a big fat red juicy.... BINGO!

And apparently the Tramiels were not willing to battle.

Sorry Guys....I like the chosen label.....mainly because it's NOT like all the other silver bordered 7800 cart labels.

I bet you can do this real time no problem using the GPU. My guess is there is some way to stuff this into a matrix, which the GPU OR the DSP would be excellent at in real time.

I dont know about that Mili but what you will see if I have my way are 7800 games that will show the NES for what it really is.....hokey.

The NES offered a "real" resolution that was more than half again that of the 7800 (the 7800 can kludge a 320x200 screen, but motion and transparency are determined on a 160-pixel basis). It also offered better native sound capabilities. While the 7800 does offer a few advantages, the NES is a technically superior platform in many ways. My 7800 sure didn't seem superior to me back at the time. I was playing "Ms. Pac-Man" and "Dig Dug" when the NES had games like "Super Mario Bros.", "Metroid", "Contra" and "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out". All I wanted was a NES. Not that the 7800's anemic library was necessarily a result of hardware inferiority, but still... It would be interesting to see if someone could homebrew a "Contra" or SMB style game on the 7800 that would put NES to shame. I know that some graphically impressive shmups have been recently released for it. All the NES titles you mentioned are uniteresting to me. PAC-Man, Dig Dug and most other 7800 titles were smash arcade hits. I never liked the MArio platformers....Donkey Kong is still the best 'Mario' game to date. Every game you mention can be done on the 7800 and they wont flicker your eyeballs out doing it. @ Drac Um....the title of the thread "I think now I understand why the NES beat the 7800" is clearly what this thread was from the start....a 7800 vs NES thread.

The NES offered a "real" resolution that was more than half again that of the 7800 (the 7800 can kludge a 320x200 screen, but motion and transparency are determined on a 160-pixel basis). It also offered better native sound capabilities. While the 7800 does offer a few advantages, the NES is a technically superior platform in many ways. The NES is garbage who's success is based on Atari's failure to run with the ball. Again, it is a headache inducing flicker fest. It is not superior in many ways. It may have a higher rez in some instances and a better sound than the TIA offers but the POKEY, even if its put out on cart is by far superior. NES's higher rez is a joke because it like all the other rezolutions are flicker riddled and the color is garbage. Nintendo's NES success is nothing more than Atari's failure and not because of Nintendo.They were in the right place at the right time. The MARIA Is an arcade quality chip, which can not be said about the Nintendo VDP. 64 8x8 or 16 x 8 flicker riddle sprites versus MARIA limited by memory only screen sized sprites without any flicker. That plus NES can't play the 2600 library. The best claim the NES can make is it's wide selection of software, which could have been Atari's, had they beat Nintendo at the exclusive dev game....right time at the right place...not due to technology...which Atari was always superior at.

Good job Bob! I hope folks enjoy it! Nice work as usual.

I like to write my code from scratch. I dont mind using another piece of code to get my head around something but I tend to write my own code from scratch. It's much more satisfying. In the case of the Jaguar I do use the start up code they supplied as it works quite well and keeps things safe. However, outside of recommended hardware set ups, I much rather roll my own. That is not to say I dont do a bit of cut and paste where necesary or more practical. Then again, there is no GPU main code RAM execution libraries out ther yet....until I possibly release mine. IF only Jagmod would finish the 3D renderer or if I got off my lazy arse and wrote one myself.

Ditto head.....get a 7800 anyway. Its a killer machine and worth the investment. If I ever have my way, you will someday play all atari console games on a single console. That is games from the 2600 all the way up to the Jaguar (possibly ST and A8 games as well.)

Not since 8bitdomain went away. No kidding, they took my money and never sent the adapter. Mitch that is just plain lousy. Sorry to hear that man. I hope the expansion module for the 7800 more than makes up for it. I think you will(and the rest of the fans who get one) will be quiet satisfied. I will be giving Curt an app to show off on it when he demos it.

The 7800 has one thing the NES dont...MARIA. Enough said.

You can probably use vectoring and forget the sqrt all together. I am assuming you want to know how close you are to the black hole/star? Then from that you want to adjust the speed of the ship to emulate it being pulled toward that black hole/ star? if that is the case xv = x2-x1 and yv = y2-y1. xv and yv now become your ship's vectoring delta's. There is a little more to it than this but it will certianly be much more efficient than trying to compute sqrt's.

Not for nothing Groovey but the rotaries should be a much higer priority for 7800 Tempest. Just my $0.02, is all.

Why use the 68k when you have to much faster much more powerful RISC processors at your disposal? Anything in that article can certainly be applied to the two Jaguar RISC's. You will do much better at sqrt and multiplies in the RISC's, seeing that the RISC's have single cycle multiples and even better a serious matrice multiply. I bet you could come up with a seriously power algorithm for what you are trying to do a lot more efficiently using the GPU or DSP than you could ever hope for with the 68k.