frogstar_robot

[quote name='Jetboot Jack' date='Wed Sep 23, 2009 3:28 AM' timestamp='1253690910' from being a third generation personal computer. The 800 was a first generation machine, it's contemporaries are the Apple 2, TRS 80 and PET chronologically. True but in its debut era it was a designed as a powerful expensive machine with as few compromises as possible. The chipset was particularly designed to overcome the biggest shortcomings of the 2600. It's competitors from the debut era weren't in the same class either graphically or sonically. Time, economy of scale, and consolidation of hardware functions got the original stratospheric pricing down. The C-64 though a later design was intended from the get-go to be inexpensive though it still benefits from almost 4 years of advances. The Apple II, PET, et al don't even begin to compete with it though the A8 still can with a mixed bag of shortcomings and advantages. Though I'm curious where you get "third generation" from. If anything I'd call machines like the Altair and Apple I 1st, Apple II, A8, et al 2nd, and Speccy, C-64 and so-forth 3rd.

If the sprite hardware of the C64 is problematic for A8 ports then porting certain 7800 titles would cause major fits. Maria is pretty much a hardware sprite engine with token playfield support. So much so that it seems playfields are used to enhance sprites on the 7800 rather than the other way around. I bet games like Galaga and Food Fight are pretty much swinging tons of hardware drawn sprites around with little regard for the problems of doing things either in charmode or linear bitmap mode. Games of that sort are pretty much in the 7800's sweet spot and probably wouldn't directly port well even to the mighty C64 . Yes, yes, I know other approaches are perfectly viable on the Commie......

You had things like Gloom for the Amiga but it really struggled to do it and you had to cheat a lot with a small viewport on a lower spec Amiga. And that was just to implement a Wolfenstein style raycast engine. Matching Doom or Descent was almost completely out of the question. I got a 486 with 16MB ram and a 540MB hard drive in '94 to replace my 520ST. It had Cirrus Logic 5446 video and a SB Pro clone sound card. In all it was a low range machine for the time but it made most of the STs and Amigas I'd seen look sick. There were scads of smooth running 32-bit extended DOS games that used the 320x240x256 pixel mode and at least Adlib sound. This machine could mostly pull the original Descent off. Win 3.x was still mainstream and laughable compared to even GEM as implemented on my ST but for gaming our beloved STs, Falcons, and Amigas were on life support.

Atarian, you really really need to learn how to trim quotes or start doing it on the odd chance you don't. They nest like this [Q] Flamebait snarky post [Q] raging reply [Q] more snark [slash Q] [slash Q] [slash Q] Remove the lines that start with "quote" and get the matching closing tag on the same level. Repeat until your reply doesn't take up an entire page that consists of four other posts.

Ah! I remember it well. Ever hit the Gold Mines at the Huntington Mall?

I wouldn't want to type on it either but it is good enough to play a game like Star Raiders. The 400 was a lot like the Odyssey2 in that regard. That is something about the 5200 that never made much sense to me. A 400 redone with a lower cost single board with the cartridge games emphasized would have made much more sense as a console. It could even have been detachable ala the XEGS but still with the membrane design which is fine for single keypresses in a simulation type title.

We have an unfortunate overloading of a word here. When Rybags speaks of "interlace", he's talking about a 480i mode that he's wrung out of the A8 chipset. It actually is interlace as the term is spoken of in a generic video context. This is not the same as "interlace" as commonly used by Atarians and Amigans which are software modes derived from the hardware modes. Rybags mode IS a derived software mode but he is doing true interlace at the video field level.

That is quite far fetched. In historical context it isn't. The first widely sold "home video games" were Pong variants. The earliest ones were mostly done with discrete logic and the market for them exploded when pong-on-a-chip parts hit the market. The hardware in the TIA really was originally intended as a programmable-super-pong-on-steroids. You have sprite hardware objects designated as "players" and even a "ball". And many of the original 1978 launch titles have a distinctly Pong look and feel to them and it took devs for the system awhile to quit thinking in those terms. The A8 chipset was originally slated for a 5200like successor that would have been out about the time Home Computers eventually hit the market. The success of Tandy, Apple, and Commodore in the market caused Atari to rethink their plans for the hardware...and the 400 was very consolelike regardless. In any case, the A8 hardware is mostly an obvious expansion of the TIA.

It was a suggestion to the mods not a command to them as though I could do that anyway. And yes, I really believe this. When it gets hot and heavy I see what seems to be a dropoff in posting on other topics in the A8 forum. That is just it. The thread saw no posts for about two weeks and was revived by someone who apparently joined simply to post flamebait in it. This sort of behavior presaged some of the worst back and forth in the thread. Like you I enjoyed the other sort of posting here but to see the thread go quiescent only to be woken back up by the sort of post we left behind 300 or so posts ago doesn't encourage me. That and this thread isn't the first place I'd think to look to see what is happening with the obscure corners of POKEY and so forth.

Correct thread: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/147727-atari-and-commodore-versions-of-the-same-game-which-is-better/ There is nothing "painful" about your exposition of C64 Barbarian. We've seen and acknowledged any number of titles that were superior on the C64 or only exist on the C64. We've even been comparing and contrasting with videos. Have you troubled to read this monster in it's entirety before weighing in with your pearls of wisdom? So Rockford is going to come here give us Atarians tough love with "painful truth"? LOL. We need to be ready for more manly pain as only Rockford can dish it out? Give me a <bleep> break. On the bright side there has been lot of lore being swapped and even experimentation though other threads will serve that better. This thread sucks the oxygen out of other topics when someone can't help but revive it. I suggest locking it and maybe even making it permanently pinned as pretty much everything Atari and Commodore fanbois can fling at each other has been aired in it and the other vs thread we had about a year ago. We could just refer everybody to them when this sad sad GM vs Ford type stuff comes up again as it must from time to time.

No one here doubts Oswald is talented. But he wasn't banned from this topic and forum for being talented. He was an arrogant ass who dismissed any Atari advantage that couldn't be utilized in C64 terms and he usually did so in the most crass way possible. Behavior of that sort isn't anything most here would care to learn from him. If all you wanted to do was tout C64 Barbarian then there is a more recent thread where only the quality of the game at hand and not the platform it runs on is on topic. But you didn't post in that one. You joined simply resurrect this thread; and I'll note you bring absolutely nothing new that hasn't already been said in over 7K posts. C64 had a better Barbarian; so what? I'm still not throwing out my Atari gear and I'm still not regretting passing on Commodore gear I had to friends.

You are a scholar and a gentleman!

The mouse and keyboard aren't original if you are going for an all original system. The original iMac came with the infamous "hockey puck" mouse and a keyboard trimmed in the same "bondi blue" color. http://vectronicsappleworld.com/collection/bondi.html

I have to put in a vote for dying in Q-Bert. The original cabs had a ball bearing or something inside that would make a loud clunk if Q-Bert fell off the pyramid. The other game that was really cranked loud back in the day at one of favorite arcades was Wizard Of Wor. You could hear that dirgy tune and the Worluk from anywhere in the arcade.

Linux users tend to have little fear of that.

Yep. It's the Atari IIGS. I know the problem isn't insurmountable but doesn't Bob's upgrade need some tweaking to co-exist with VBXE?

Not wrong necessarily but he was dismissive of any A8 advantage that couldn't be used with C64 style programming and he made it very obvious that he thought anyone who preferred A8s lacked the good taste he has. He also exhibited the common Commodore fanboi pathology of only thinking Jay Miner a genius when his work carries a Commodore nameplate. Any Atarian who thought Miner a genius for the 2600 and the A8 as well was just stealing glory from Commodore....etc....etc....etc... I do not disparage his Commodore knowledge. He is a very skilled C-64 demo coder. That doesn't absolve him of being abusive and arrogant here though.

Um. Just so you know in case you didn't but Curt is A and pretty much THE: http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/admin.htm Besides which he definitely knows his stuff.

You could drop the RockStar Brains to get the cost down to the level of say a Lamborghini Countach. I know it's not as sexy but you could do the bank switching with a 64K SRAM that only costs a couple of bucks. Besides you're only going to find used RockStar Brains and those have already been pickled in metric tons of cocaine and thousands of litres of alcohol. They're sexy as hell but can't be terribly reliable.

The PIA and drive missing isn't as big a factor for the 400. The 400 was practically a game console. Yeah one can do disk based gaming on the 400 but I really don't think that was what Atari had in mind. The 400 seems more like an Odyssey2 on roids. There are a great many carts and smaller bin games that could be ported to the 5200 though ones that use OS calls could prove extra challenging. The PIA missing does mean that the control logic has to be completely redone. The PIA provided hardware support for digital sticks. With it lacking, POKEY reads the analog axes and GTIA is used to read button presses. In principle there is no reason why scads of titles ported from the A8 couldn't be on it. The reality is that A8 computers are supersets of the 5200 and porting is less messy in that direction. Apart from Adventure 2, the entire 5200 library is available on the A8 and A8s can be had cheaply enough. Also porting games to the A8 generally means the 5200 titles get standard DB-9 digital joystick control by default. Few titles were improved by the 5200's analog sticks so the motivation is largely damped. Though 5200 Star Raiders has proportional steering and that sounds like a blast to play.

Once the Atari Gold is complete, we can play this on it: Though I'll note that image by Atariboy2600 represents more actual work than this is likely to see.

I will grant that the CV controllers are much more reliable than 5200 controllers but that is it. When I played CV at friend's houses, I found them literally painful to use after awhile. If I ever own one project the first will be modifying the controller so I can plug something less stiff in and still use the keypad, a Slik-Stik perhaps. They hurt then and would damn near kill me now. On the other hand, I do have happy memories of puttering around with my buddy's ADAM and we both loved Super Buck Rogers Planet Of Doom.

Your post is eight words. Even this reply is a bigger post. I wouldn't say that you are a troll or that you spout anything more than mild venom but duuuuuuuude step away from the keyboard and tot up your post count. You've been something of a monomaniac. Or even more aptly: http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorsh...essrebutter.htm Let some of this go. We're having a nice summer this year. Check it out!

Sure it's possible but both shell and 7800 board would need some fairly serious alteration to make a clean job of it. In the end, you wind up with a 7800 that is easily mistaken for a 2600. I'm not sure why someone would want to do that.

I didn't say he was untalented or doesn't know his stuff. He obviously does. But talent doesn't preclude arrogance which he also has in abundance.