Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

Heaven/TQA

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    11,578

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    4

Posts posted by Heaven/TQA

  3. Posted

    I'm not convinced that using a measure like "balanced" isn't missing the point entirely. All of these machines have trade-offs in one direction or other. If what you want to do doesn't routinely run up against one resource on a machine, then the machine will seem balanced to you, but that doesn't mean it's balanced for all applications.

     

    I always find it more fun to design around the machine's strengths, rather than looking for a machine that matches my first idea. The unusual trade-offs in the 7800 is what drew me to coding for it. (I owned a 400 back in the day) It's also why game ports rarely seem to be as good as their original version.

     

    But I do games, not demos, so take that with a grain of salt.

    Yes. Agreed. Btw thats why I was side tracked to 7800... as I found old demos by me on YouTube and even in MADS folder...

     

    I have a new goal as I want to code on each machine I have at home...

     

    So 7800 was now done

     

    Missing so far:

     

    GBA

    SNES

    mega drive

    Psx

    Atari STe

    Amiga OCS

    Amiga 1200

    Jaguar

    Dreamcast

    ....

     

    Xbox etc i dont care.... ;)

    • Like 2

  5. Posted

    .... pushing aside a huge buffer and a lot of comfortable sprite usage for enhancing 3D scenes ;)

    Ah yeah the huge buffer... code on the beast you quickly see how fast that buffer vanishes... 320x200 and double buffer and voila 128k of the 512 gone... then title screen and sprite data and other gfx... maybe another 128k etc etc etc.

     

    I really like the VBXE but the question was if I like Lynx or VBXE more and thats what I answered. No general debate.

  7. Posted

    Because a computer is defined by the hardware itself?

     

    I'm not willing to explain things that won't be understand anyways. But I can give a little example ;)

     

    Have a closer look at the Stunt Car Racer Game on the C64. Even if the CPU is slow, the "not 3D enhancing" Hardware allows to show a game that suggests a far faster CPU. Using the hardware as given, takes advantage on any machine.

    I was referring to Atari vbxe only and to fact that the cpu needs to shuffle too much data to vbxe. Nothing more.

  8. Posted

    Yeah, that's why I mentioned Atari-exclusive - Revision is mostly Hi-End PC and shaders, so when they switch to oldskool nothing compares to PC prods.

     

    They have the OldSkool category, but they mixed 16-bits with 8-bits, which just sucks, as it's totally unfair (I watched the Revision channel on YT, not sure how it feels in person).

     

    Are you short driving distance from Saarbrucken ?

    2 hours....

  9. Posted

    That nonsense has been read for decades when it comes to graphics cards in comparison to the used CPU on PCs.

    From that same point the VICII is overbalanced to the 1MHz 6502 CPU. At the end, it is that games using the graphics better, take advantage of the graphics hardware. Games that use the CPU better, run more fluent at that point, if the CPU is faster.

    Actually the 0,9mhz 6510 is heavy fighting to update and feed the VIC2 like updating all those sprite pointers and scrolling full screen plus color ram scrolling etc...

     

    Another thing on lynx...

     

    You have 64k no rom gets in your way... the FPU does all the nice 16x16 signed mul parallel to cpu and 4mhz cpu can prepare all shit for next frame.... no memory window like on VBXE gets in your way etc etc...

     

    If i would update the VBXE i would have given some maths function in the core...

    • Like 2

  10. Posted

    Thanks, that's very informative. I wasn't aware Lynx can depack on the fly, that's really neat.

     

    Do you plan to return to Lynx next year ? While I can't be exactly sure how much time I burn on jag (other than "a lot" : -) ), I finally put at least 200 hrs to 6502 last month (trying to fix something for 10Liners compo in extreme category, which gives us ~2.2 KB Asm) and I finally finished the 8-bit coordinate system including clipping, which is really fast and could be awesome on Lynx.

     

    Point being, if we could join forces, we could make some kick-ass demo for some major Atari demo party (not really sure if there's something bigger (yet Atari exclusive, or at least primary focus is on Atari) than SillyVenture (November), though). Something to think about.

     

    Unlike Games, demos have the great advantage, that even if I miss the deadline, there's simply one or two scenes less, and nobody notices anything :)

    Revision 2019 Easter 2019. World biggest demo scene event ;).

     

    Yeah why not?

    • Like 2

  11. Posted

    That nonsense has been read for decades when it comes to graphics cards in comparison to the used CPU on PCs.

    From that same point the VICII is overbalanced to the 1MHz 6502 CPU. At the end, it is that games using the graphics better, take advantage of the graphics hardware. Games that use the CPU better, run more fluent at that point, if the CPU is faster.

    Dont get it. Why nonsense?

  12. Posted · Edited by Heaven/TQA

    Simple answer:

     

    Yes. Lynx more balanced. 8k Video buffer vs 64k of the vbxe e.g.

     

    Vbxe is not well balanced to the stock hardware.... 65816 is better sister to vbxe.

     

    The Blitter can be used actually for 3d stuff but the main 3d like matrix mul and persp trans needs to be done by cpu.

     

    My actuall engine moved more to the blitter like calculating the slope and edge traverse and filling. But still slow 6502 needs to feed the vbxe.

     

    Ah and you quickly run into content issue on vbxe.... 320x240x256 artworks take huge amount of disk space even packed... while on lynx you deal with 512kb rom... vs 130kb slow disk drive... and the 6502 needs to depack while gfx ob lynx can be packed by hardware and depacked on the fly etc....

    • Like 2

  13. Posted

    Wow, that severely limits the style of games that can be implemented. Like, by an order of magnitude, easily...

     

    I guess, with 7800, one should just stick to the Maria's strengths - e.g. sprites from ROM - it can certainly have hugely upgraded sprites, compared to A800, but that's about it...

     

    I don't really have a problem with FrameBuffer clear, from performance standpoint - I have a code that unrolls clearing (at a memory cost, of course), so I can clear 160x96 in 15,360 cycles, and much less if I implement a smart clear.

     

    There's certainly a visual complexity threshold where one STA to clear 64 pixels is great, but once you hit that visual threshold, you're done...

     

     

    I just , obviously incorrectly, always viewed 7800 as a nice upgrade over A800, due to all those sprites, but in reality, none of the engines / environments I am working on (on 6502, that is), are remotely possible on 7800.

     

    The 6502 demo I am working on now, flushes almost 0.5 MB of tables and data within the 64 KB (7 seconds of precalc gives you over 10M cycles even with DMA on, which is -arguably- useable, and from player's standpoint still OK), literally none of those effect segments could be done on 7800, despite same 6502...

    Except for the plasma which itself needed a rework but not much most of my code does not run out of the box on the 7800.... I even thought the VIC20 code will do it but nope....

  14. Posted · Edited by Heaven/TQA

    Heaven: Given your experience and intros/demos across quite a lot of 8-bit systems, which 6502-based system do you think is best for generic CPU workload ? Especially when considering RAM upgrades.

     

    Is there a system that has higher-frequency 6502 (than 1.79) including 128-1,024 KB of extended RAM ?

    So far.... Atari Lynx.... 4Mhz and FPU/Blitter, 64k ram, 1mb rom with file system.

     

    Traditionally with ram extension Atari 800 or Apple 2gs.

     

    The Lynx is the well balanced system based on 6502 so far... the speed of the custom hardware plus 6502c on steroid gave enough power to feed the custom hardware... plus simple frame buffer in 4bit per pixel in 16 colors out of 4096 makes a perfect candidate imho.

    • Like 2

  15. Posted

    So, it's all char-based? Man, I hate that. It's a write-only code for me, as it usually takes me more time to figure out such working code than rewrite it from scratch :)

     

    I am in the middle of reading up that 7800 dev doc you linked, just quick question - so is framebuffer accessible (even if for write-only) or not?

    7800 has bitmap mode (the desire logo is bitmap or so called direct mode).

     

    Issue as well.... Maria wants data organized in 256 page aligned... so even the logo is 160x pixels (40 bytes) data must be layed out in x+256*y so putting bitmap into ram not possible to use that in a nice way... again thats why Fractalus put 2k ram extra on cart for that.

    • Like 1

  17. Posted · Edited by Heaven/TQA

    And another issue even coming from VIC20... most of my code even char based ones are using self modified code and ZP to max... first is no go on ROM and zp is just 40-ff thanks to 2600... ;)

     

    So for the plasma the SMC was moved into RAM... 32 stores into code means 32x3 bytes so ok... but again code wasted RAM due to self modified nature.

     

    But Triace did a nice work on TIA sound imho, too. His first track composed in 3 hours ;) me did the compo filler in 3 days.

    • Like 1

  19. Posted · Edited by Heaven/TQA

    One idea to over come that limit is a tech using so called dirty char rendering means you have an empty font and render directly into chars and use that for filling screen.

     

    So an poly filler would fill chars. I used that tech on VIC20 in the fractal part of Gnork demo.

     

    http://codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:filling_the_vectors

     

    http://www.codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:lines

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    Well I used 32k rom for storing code and tables and gfx like logo and font...

     

    Ram is main issue for the 7800 as the object list (display list list) needs to be in RAM and frame buffer...

     

    I used here well knew 4x4 layout means font holds the pixel definition in a font.

     

    The buffer is linear 32x32 byte array resisting at 1800-1bff so I can hold up up another buffer...

     

    The thing is that the 2nd half of the 4K is crippled and non linear due to 2600 backwards compatible...

     

    So actually me toying with bitmap Fx but most constraints are really the low RAM... one reason Rescue on Fractalus prototype has 2k ram extra there or summer games even 16k ram.

    • Like 1

  23. Posted

    we just relased Untum at Under Construction 2018 demo party

    Platform: Atari 7800 PAL console

    Credits:

    Code: Heaven^desire
    Music: Triace ^desire (TIA)
    Logo: Alien^desire

    the Atari 7800 gaming console is different to 2600 and 5200 or Atari 800 8bit computers:

    CPU: 6502
    RAM: 4k
    Cart: 32kb
    Grafics: MARIA chipset (very different from Jay Miner stuff)
    Sound: 2600 TIA (POKEY was not on "cart")

    another console in my basement now with code by me...

    Released at Under Construction 2018 demo party

    http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=79659

    https://youtu.be/E2U8-EgNsiM

     

    dsr_untum_2018.a78

    • Like 7

  24. Posted · Edited by Heaven/TQA

    Btw watching The Americans and arrived at 1983 and in S3E13 guy types in a C64.... and it seems a real one as he inserts a disk into 1541 and you hear the drive....

     

    Same with Arcade full of Centipede and PAC Man cocktails....

     

    Still think that those 80s American cars looking to me like 70s.... :D

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...