Heaven/TQA

Aaah famed. Was on my VIC20 list...

Have you ever thought of that your written turned based games (jeopardy like game and tic tac toe like war game) might be totally different than a Plattform engine? And that using Atari Basic or Turbo Basic might be as well totally different experience than writing games in pure Maschine code? Me eh can not justify shaders on PC as I have no clue how they work basicly (yes, i played with shadertoy). So I never would go into discussion with coders doing shaders... And for the records I am not a professional coder either and did not learned that at Uni either.

Hotel by Ariolasoft

... i will not answer that... as I am not sure if that's ironic... and yes... I never used multitasking... that's for pussies... using VBL, IRQs etc... and thanks for your proof that VIC20-16k is more capable than A8...

I can tell you why... because my goal is "a released product is better than a non released product" and a demo/game is always a constraint of time vs budget... so at some point I make a decision to finish it... simple. sometimes my knowledge is not good enough... as I code on A8, C64, VIC20, Lynx, PSX, PICO-8,... I know you don't care but you see me on 3rd place.... (and last man entering the stage...)

Yeah ok. I thought your standards are higher....

We could ask PeteD?

For me I define an engine: - player control - some kind of physics (hit, falling, collisions) - base game mechanics - Enemy state engine - ... And THAT is why I dont believe you do that in 15 minutes in basic...

@emkay Maybe define the scope what you see as engine? Putting 8 sprites on screen and have a scrolling background? Or is it more?

Why dont we ask NRV how long he worked on his platform engine? Or The guys of Crownland? I find it strange that how ppl underestimate such things. Popmilo could answer as he is actually coding a platform er.... Or ask TMR.... how long it took his first SMUP engine on a8 and on C64?

another game written over weekend?

i am a big fan of Arcade Moon Patrol, played even the 2600 one to death and later the A8 version... the Car sprite always annoyed me but enemy sprites should be like in arcade... maybe simple hack would be to alter the sprite like it is at the moment ingame. another thing I personally would like to changed... Atari Font to the Arcade font... then switch playfield area to widescreen if possible (needs to be checked if it scrolls by copy data etc) as I hate DLI color bands and sprites going into border while playfield is reduced...

ah ok... then I am not worthy... I am not worthy...

honestly... how can you say 1 weekend? it's a nightmare to code a game engine with all those elements in Sam's... sometimes I don't get where your estimations come from...

in 1 weekend? aha... then I must be bad as coder like hell...

yeah. I looked in some VIC20 games I wanted to port after Gridrunner and Metagalactic Llamas... and most needed massive rewrite due to 256 chars... so i sticked to 3,5kb games as they usually have less chars...but there are still many Llamasoft games out there which I would like to see on A8, too.

and did we ever get a clue why A8 has only 128 chars instead of 256? what was the real reason? can not be the 5th color imho... even crappy VIC-1 in the VIC20 has 256...

ah good that you know what make it hard for me... but truth is... yes... similar to Amiga vs ST... and not ST vs Amiga... when you are used to some feature set and it get hard on another platform... but I tell you what... when being on C64 you suddenly realise what A8 is missing... and in a normal game scenario of the 80s (not talking about Capture the flag, Fractalus, etc...) C64 has more horsepower to get the job done... it has colors/colorram, can scroll (even you need to shift data around... but you would need to do it on A8, too... neverless the display list feature) and the slow 6510. the 16k VIC bank can be a limit (but not in a game scenario I am sure)... then 56k vs 66k or even 48k vs 66k.... etc etc etc... stable raster IRQs, all possible, too on c64 so WSYNC is nice but not necessary... 128/256 color range? ok... nice but you can live with the 16 "global fixed" colors... etc etc... the c64 really give A8 a punch with the sprites... look... Miner's "sprite tech" live on in Amiga with same "uselessness"...

Maybe to get a feeling for the machine?

aaah... good old Jet Boot Jack... had it on tape

And regarding C64 is easy... everyone who ever tried to code on that machine... at least for me as soon as you start to try something decent you always hit a limit limit in scrolling power (screen+color ram in 50 fps) VIC 16k Bank limit, bad lines etc etc etc... ppl tend to say a8 is cheating Btw Eye of the beholder on C64 looks marveleous. Have a chat with Veto how complicated and much work went into his adventure... just if you think C64 is easy.

Oh... at least someone who actually coded games . What a8 games did you developed?

P. 240 VBXE pattern size is 64x not 128x as it just uses bit 0-5. The chart/table is correct.

Thanks Avery! I can not say if all of my releases since Arsantica would not have benefited of your work. Still say (and I use VICE and UAE, Handy and STeem in other projects) that Altirra debugger is one of the best debuggers out there I came along in Homebrew scene. Others work with simple color bar debugging we work with profiler, source level debugger etc And you have saved my ass 2x with Improving VBXE emulation (last year Nordlicht demo and this year!) And if that is not enough Kudos.... THE standard reference programming and hardware book is Altirras hardware Reference manual. Forget De Re Atari or other classic books.

Sikor I have some of the FX running on 64k and on 128k machines.