Bryan
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Posts posted by Bryan
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In my world, the one Commodore 64 feature that caused me the most jealousy turned out to be a very simple one, and it is a shame because I don't think Jay's team would have had any problem pulling it off: a full-colored graphics 0 text mode.
The Atari chipset was designed to bridge the gap between a game console and a computer terminal. For games, it would use 160x hardware based on the video generation methods used in the 2600, but with a dedicated DMA engine (Antic). For applications, it would also have a basic 320 mode with minimal features. This was considered sufficient in the late '70s. The real crime is that Atari spent millions on various projects that never saw the light of day, but the development of their graphics capabilities ended with GTIA (and the subsequent chasing off of their best engineers). That was the beginning of the end.
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For my own information, what are the C64's advantages from your perspective? Never had the system ... honest question.
Well, the sprites beat anything the Atari has. There's eight of them and they're multi-color. The screen has a color attribute per character cell so you can put all 16 colors on the screen without tricks. Those are the main advantages. You can get really colorful stuff on the Atari if you throw the CPU at the screen, but then you lose the freedom of movement the C64 has.
To me, the C64 feels like a klunky budget machine in every other way, but the VIC II chip is impressive. SID is impressive too, but I think a lot of the game effects were better on Pokey.
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It's a tough choice. I think the Atari has a better overall system architecture, but the C64 has features that allow for better looking games. And, of course, the Atari was available from the beginning of 1980.
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Oh, wow. That's sad to hear. People come and go from the boards but you rarely know why.
We should all leave instructions with someone of where/how to post a parting message if we go.
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I wrote some stuff to demo it a long time ago. I'll see if I can find it. It gave me roughly 9-bit pitch and sounded pretty good for lower notes, but higher ones needed a faster switching frequency to sound clean.
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Also remember that Todd has given different explanations of how he got his time, including shifting into 2nd before the race starts.
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I mostly want cool new software tricks for the old beast.
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It seemed to me that the low frequencies were cut off pretty bad in the ST. Even with a direct line out, it still sounded much thinner than Pokey.
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Just making sure my math is right here, but the reason all possible cases cannit be tested is that the possible permutations are in the range of 18 trillion.
6 possible joystick states.
Button UP/Down * Joystick Left/Neutral/Right
30 frames per second when JOY status is checked * 5.5ish seconds.
165 P 6 = 18 trillionish
I dont think it is necessary to test all test cases, because Todd already proved himself a liar by stating he started in 2nd gear, which the game code shows is impossible.
It really isn't that bad because you can easily throw out cases with inputs that the game doesn't care about and sub-optimal progress is pretty easy to cull out (like not accelerating for a frame). Once you're down to only the permutations of meaningful actions, you could write a program to run through them all.
The only other possibility becomes if someone finds a bug that makes a poor run suddenly return a good time.
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Again, you may have gotten close, maybe close enough to fool Activision, but I highly doubt you could have gotten it pixel-perfect. Also, give me an example of a paint program you would use for this, and what image format did it save in? When you opened the saved file, what program opened it, and did it open in "full-screen" with no element of the program that opened it being visible? I assume it would at least have to be saved and then opened, because while working on it in the paint program it seems that there would need to be some element of the program visible, else how would you select drawing tools and colors? And to save you would need to have a separate storage device (e.g., a floppy drive), because the Atari 8-bit computers didn't include one by default, and neither did other affordable home computers of the time, such as the Commodore 64, TI-99, VIC-20, and so on (not that I know of anyway).
I don't see this as a likely scenario for even one person to have done, let alone three. Home computers were less common than Atari 2600s in '82, and many, if not most, of them that were out there were used only for video games; paint programs weren't exactly "killer apps" for them. Storage devices were even less common than the computers themselves, and I figure that kids who were hell bent on fabricating a Dragster score were rather uncommon too, as were kids who were computer savvy. So you have a lot of uncommons that had to come together three independent times in the span of time between the fall and winter of 1982.
I'm not going to address all of this other than to say I had a personal computer then and I had friends who did too. Most of us had lots of copied software and getting our hands on an art program was no big deal. I knew even more people with 2600's. We could have easily pulled this off. You keep saying it's too uncommon, but I never said Activision was getting a fake photo from every kid in America. I was just saying it would have been possible for me and some others I knew, and I also knew kids who were always lying/bragging who would have done it if they could. It was never meant to be more than a theory.
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What would you have used for reference? It isn't as if you could have just grabbed a raw pixel-dump from Stella. Looking at the Atari 2600's RF output on your TV screen wouldn't have been a very good reference. You may have gotten close, maybe close enough to fool Activision, but I highly doubt you could have gotten it pixel-perfect.
We're talking 160 resolution max and some clever kids trying to cheat. Fire up a paint program and put a ruler on the screen. Flip back and forth until you can't tell which is which.
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The idea that it was common for people to fabricate scores is even more far-fetched. Neither of the methods (doctoring a photograph or creating the digital image from scratch to display on a TV) were easy in the early '80s. Suppose you had a home computer with RF output, you would also need a paint program for it as well drawing ability, or programming skills plus drawing ability if you want to generate the raster via writing graphics code.
Never said it was common, I'm just saying that I bet they got some laughable fakes and a few good ones. I had an 800 at that time. I could have made anyone a perfect looking Dragster photo.
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Also, why did those first two guys both happen to choose 5.51 as the time to fabricate? The progression of the records published in the newsletter had been 5.61 and then 5.57, so if you're going to fabricate a time, why 5.51?
You're assuming these were the only fabricated results they ever got. They probably knew how the scoring went so they could throw away impossible scores. From what was left, there were a few 5.51's that looked like they might be legit, so they published them and Crane went back to the code to try and calculate a perfect score.
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Cheating on the part of those other two guys is a rather far-fetched theory. See post #138 and #140.
I believe something isn't right, though. No one has been able to prove 5.51 possible, and seeing your name in print is a compelling reason to fake a photo. It's also possible that there was a clerical error at Activision which has never been 'fessed up to. Has anyone ever produced a 5.51 certificate? The one Todd produced was shown (TG forum) to be a modified version of one of his others with a certificate number that is out of sequence with other known certificates.
EDIT: Here's what I think probably happened. In any large contest there are cheaters. It makes total sense that Activision would get faked photos and someone had to sort them out. David Crane has stated that they did some internal tests to try to determine the best possible time. They determined it was 5.54, one tick off of the 5.57 given by code analysis. Why did they do this? Probably in response to some sketchy photos. They got 3 showing 5.51 which was a possible increment (I'm sure they probably got some with illogical times too), and after Crane's analysis they probably took Dragster off the charts completely.
Today, David stands by the Todd's time but it's probably more to avoid being in the middle of a sh!t storm over a 35 year old game.
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Three different people getting the same score would seem to indicate that the score is possible.
Or that Activision was easily fooled. Remember that they then removed the other scores and listed only Todd's and we don't know why. If I were going to cheat, I'd just use a home computer (the A8 has the same resolutions and colors available) and draw whatever game screen I wanted. Dragster isn't very colorful, after all.
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We need modern mmorpg for Atari! Maybe same for A800 / ST... Using sio2pi for xl/xe or nullmodem st cable to pi...
Imagine metaverse just for Atari fans...
I think it would be a lot more fun to make something that had several 8-bit clients.
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There was a lot of incestuous scorekeeping in the early days of TG with the top players verifying each others results and my bet is that everyone who is going down has the ability to take many others down. It'll be interesting to see what shakes out in the end.
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It's been proven that different people have different sensitivity to pitch. Some people can hear very small deviations and some are completely tone deaf. There's an online test you can take to find out how sensitive you are:
http://jakemandell.com/adaptivepitch/
I can hear down to about 1.5Hz @ 500Hz. This is one of the reason there's so many opinions regarding Pokey music. However, there are easy ways to get around Pokey's limitations. Alternating between two adjacent pitches quickly causes the note to sound like a middle note. Since the pitch value is loaded into the counter each cycle, this works cleanly. The speed at which this must be done depends on the pitch, but 60/50 times per second works in many cases and 120/100 is cleaner for higher pitches.
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Got it sorted. Some of these old sockets are strangely constructed and the lifted TIA pin 6 was still touching even though it was out to the side.
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I keep finding myself grabbing my head, wondering why the fuck anyone cares if these people cheated or not. Will it change your life? No!
I'd feel this way if it was just some stats on a website, but we're talking about a Guinness World Record. The gaming community has always pretended to have an interest in the validity of the results, so why is it a problem if people actually start looking for signs of cheating?
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His composite is working correct? So that would mean the color burst as to be making it to the UAV. I don't know anything about how the UAV is constructed, but I guess the issue is that the color burst isn't getting split properly to provide the chroma output, hence his black n white images.
And that install method on your 800 is pretty slick. Though for the amateur it might still be a bit tough with getting the soldered on leads to line up properly. I've wondered if there were a way to perhaps provide small jumpers kinda like small staples to fit into those vias and just hit them with a bit a solder as they lay in there? With those small jumpers in the holes, the solder would just flow to them naturally and bridge them easily. Wouldn't be easily undone, but then who is going to likely remove a UAV from an install once in place? Be easier to just buy another UAV for another project in most cases right?
My understanding is that he's not getting color no matter what. When the 2600 outputs color he just sees the color carrier in the picture (dot pattern). This means the TV never received the colorburst and is in B&W mode. He sent me a pic of his color signal out of TIA and the burst is squashed compared to the rest of the color. This usually means that the blanking pin (6) has not been lifted, but the pictures he sent me show pin 6 lifted. Still a mystery.
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I installed the UAV in my 1200XL and it worked very well on the first try. I went ahead and installed it in my 6sw 2600 and am having problems. I am just going to use composite out. For some reason I am only getting black and white. When I select the color switch on the Atari to B/W it works great. When I select the switch to color the screen is still black and white but it looks like it skips lines. So what might be causing the color not to work correctly? Here is a picture of what I am talking about.
Just want to let everyone know we're working on this. The colorburst isn't making it to the monitor so we'll find out if it's the UAV or something else.
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One big problem is that Q*Bert allows up to 3 possible colors on the top of each cube. Then, you need 2 more colors to draw the fronts of each cube. That's why it does the dithering. The only way to allow 5 colors + background is to reduce the resolution and use GTIA 10, or get really creative with a full-screen kernel.
One of my back-burner projects was to try to make the pyramid completely out of PMG manipulations leaving the normal graphics for software sprites.
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Atari 800 update:
Here's how I just installed the UAV in my 800. Leave the 4050 in the circuit. I prefer to attach the wires to it instead of the PCB because it can easily be replaced and will provide a support for the UAV.
1. Remove the 4050 and attach power wires to pins 1 and 8.
2. Attach solid bus wire/component leads to pins 5,7,9,11,14.
3. Bend them so that the following pads & leads line up when the UAV is roatated 180 degrees from the 4050:
0 = p5
1 = p92 = p143 = p11S = p74. Slide the UAV over the pins and solder them.5. Attach the 5V and G wires to the pads (remembering that they'll be crossing each other with the chip turned).6. Attach wires for Chroma, Luma, Composite, and Color In to UAV and then install it in the 4050 socket.7. Lift right side of R189(75 ohms), L104, L105. These three components are next to each other.8. Solder the wires to the board:CV = empty pad of L104Luma = empty pad of R189Chroma = empty pad of L105Color In = Right side of R196EDIT: After this, I moved the ground wire going to the UAV. The new wire picks it up off the board and then goes to the G pad. I believe this yielded a small improvement in the picture, so I left it that way. See the last pic.
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C64 - A reappraisal 2017
in Atari 8-Bit Computers
Posted
How you remember the C64 depends on when you got into it. I had an 800 in 1981 and some of my friends had C64's starting in late 1982 or early 1983. At that time, the 1541 was miserable. You'd start a game loading and walk away for a while. If you didn't hear any activity for a while, you'd pop the door open to see if the drive went nuts meaning it was still loading. If you didn't have good ventilation around the drive (like shoved onto a desk shelf with other stuff around it), it would get incredibly hot and and stop working. I didn't know anyone with a Fast Load until a couple years later (it was released in 1984), and even then it didn't work with everything. At least a software solution was possible, though.