Allas

On PAL A8's there artifacting does not work. I tried it with one of my XL's and a "Panther" tape original: No artifacting, clearly visible black & white pixel patterns (Panther uses artifacting for the score & lives display area). Those are games for NTSC market. "Tower toppler" for NTSC America, and "Nebulus" for PAL TVs (don't exist). Some games had versions for both systems, but here that it's not the case.

Jesus christ dude, you sound like a freaked out Vietnam vet. Nebulus - 1988, Blinky's Scary School - 1990, Green Beret - 1986, Rampage - 1987. So which of those are 'long after the death of the system'? Nebulus? Blinky's Scary School? I guess the atari was quite dead in 1990, but the c64 was still battling on. Or were some of those other titles not actually released at the time? Also, when you say "doesn't help your case", what exactly is my 'case'? I suggest you try to view my comment in the context of the quote I was replying to. Also, have you ever considered replying to people without quoting an entire quote tree? More advice from a 'noob' for you. The system really died after 1985. Great companies abandoned Atari due to problems that were bad managed for Atari. But appear on the market new little companies, without any experience on programming Atari design. So most of the titles are so crap with poor work on the graphics. Besides, it was a rigor to design the games with 48K as a standard. That's why Blinky's Scary have a simple screen with low res, trying to use only 4K on screen, even not using the 5th color, not use any DLI to color the screen, without music background. In other words terrible partings. Believe or not, a 64K version of Atari could be exactly as the level of C64 screens. About Nebulus, you need to post the real screen, because on emulator you can't capture the artifact colors (Yes this is a artifact Atari game). Have some nice colors, but still the C64 screen looks more colorful. Instead the bonus level is showing very colorful on Atari version. This game wasn't released officially on Atari 8bit line (ONLY FOR 7800), really a pity. Green Beret, what the hell with the Atari version, really that was the version you can do with Atari Basic compiled, really the programmers didn't enhance anything. Crap conversion. The C64 look very fine on sprites design (I believe so far what Atari version could do), but the game was bad programmed, is not playable, at least comparing to the playability of arcade game. Better, do a choice of games before 1985. Surely you found well programmed games on C64.

Emkay, about the game demo of copter it looks great, It's very addictive as the previous versions Fly1K+ and have great nice colors and nice parallax effects. The music sounds very strange, i guess because i can't test on my real NTSC (or maybe its only PAL production). With some other parallax movements, and automatic bullets (other levels) more enemies, it could be a lot fun more.

Great video Marius! I don't know exactly what is the problem with frame rates with youtube. Some captures go fine and acceptable, but some of them look very jerky, even when the original source is well done. Something mysterious on the youtube made this fail. I captured the Atari Amiga Boink demo for Atari and works very fine on my PC, but once on youtube is showed very jerky. I can't conceive a video on 50fps go down until 15fps, is unacceptable (talking about my video). It seems too much movements on screen degenerate on this, even if you play at HQ. I digitized the Atari videos with Microsoft RLE drive.

The 25 greatest pcs of all time

Fair enough, but there's also the romanticism of being able to say "Gee, the machine I bought in 1984/85/whenever could have done this back then if only this program were written at the time." Which kind of has more of an allure than "...if only this program and 320k RAM were available at the time." And you must admit, it's a little underwhelming when you see something like Yie Ar Kung-Fu on Atari, looking pretty much the same as the 1985 c64 version yet requiring five times the RAM. Too much problem with the RAM point. To have more RAM on Atari is the same thing that the Replay Cartridge on C64 users. So you find on every place Atarians trying to extend his computer with more RAM. But, for C64 users, a stock Atari 130XE (128K) is enough, and have still great amount of RAM. There only exist two games (on all Atari collection) that use 320K expanded memory: Yie ar Kung Fu and Bomb Jack. Other great games as Crownland (128K), Yoomp! (64K), Space Harrier (128K) works on Ataris without mods.

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I don't know have this name. I found it as Cygnus X1: Cygnus X1

Just a little tour to remember Atari games tour

mmm... could you tell me specifically in detail what do you see on those games (Crownland, Yoomp, Space Harrier, Bombjack) that didn't convince Atari is better?

Is there any distinctive serial number that could read on Atari memory from VBXE. As a programmer I interested in develop exclusive software on VBXE, but it could be a good idea if there is a way to avoid the illegal copies.

To me that 320k "standard" just tells that you are not satisfied with the original Atari HW. It's mainly used to compensate the problem having only 2 sound channels during loading. This is a interesting poll about Atari machines, (didn't include votes from most of the polish people) : http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...ari+poll+memory Is a mystery for me, what made the Atari computer have to be upgraded with more memory. This happens even on early 80's. However, I from the idea that an stock 130XE is enough to show the power of Atari. More memory that's no make a real change on demos, because the CPU only manage 64 a the same time, and the extra memory is only used to get fast access to next sequences.

Edge of disgrace is a nice demo to view, well worked. But as i can see 95% on it, could be done better on a Atari machine (some of them had been did it), rest of 5% who knows. Really it's not a challenge. Some portion of the demo open the borders, and that a great feature for a C64, but not for Atari.

Pure bulls**t. The VIC2 has been designed to be the most competitive sprite engine of it's time and that's just what it is. ... It's competitive but that doesn't mean it wins in all cases. There are many events in the olympics so just because you have a faster backstroke/freestyle swimmer doesn't mean you'll win all swimming events. Get the picture? Your logic is that when Atari shows it's better at sprite useage in vertical direction or in overscanned cases or other cases, you're going to show wider sprites at more resolution although the event calls for something else. So when we talk about collision detection of 60 bits vs. 8 bits + 8 bits of vagueness, you're still going to use your freestyle swimmer. P.S.: for those that don't know there's a C64 register for sprite detection called the "Vague sprite collision register": whenever a sprite collides with another sprite, it sets the bit for both sprites that collided. So if sprites #0 and #1 collide and sprites #4 and #5 collide, you end up with 4 bits being set. And now if sprites #0 and sprites #4 collide and sprite #1 and sprite #5 collide, it sets the same 4 bits and so on. So to calculate what collisions actually took place, you can do the following algorithm: eenie, meenie, minie moe catch the sprite that is colliding so if it's not colliding, you won't know but who cares if you let one go ... mmm... this require the knowledge of Fröhn or TMR. I sure there is a satisfactory answer. Other way, on Atari we can distinct the collision with background graphics, doing distinction over each pixel color. I guess on C64 is not posible.

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In 1979 Atari designed his 8bit line very carefully, the idea was to be the most powerful 8bit computer in his time. And I think it reached the objective, Have a lot of new nice features and the best performance in every topic that we could discuss. And there isn't a computer that equal in his time. In 1982 C64 came, and was designed with nice features for his time. But was not built as better in every topic, some things like video (VIC II) and music (SID) was planned carefully, but others have my disappointment (CPU, palette colors, BIOS, no-booteable, default slow disk access and a long list of minor things) Every computer have the top in his time, but i prefer the older computer Atari, because his design is very elegant and despite the years is very competitive against the C64. It's like cars, I prefer the old good car against the recently good cars. However I understand, C64 users can't share this point of view, because most of them not live the 70's time on 8bit computing, so for this reason not feel how big and powerful is the Atari design.

No it hasn't. It's 128 colors in most modes + PMs. 256 only works in one GTIA mode and the 256 color mode which only works on PAL machines. No to mention that 160x200 = 4 colors and 320x200 = 2 colors. Doesn't matter what palette, 4 colors will always look like 4 colors and 2 colors will always look like 2 colors. You right, I must type 128/256 better. 128 palette color is the most adequate for the most software existing. But, the GTIA 256 color modes works on NTSC too. GTIA modes was create on NTSC first and for American market. C64 have the same features on graphical modes 160x200 with 4 colors, and 320x200 x 2 colors. The map color give the difference (i write as a feature on C64). The omission of map color on a Atari computer is a directly consequence of the old 1979 tech. The way Atari can handle the manipulation are the DLIs, not as practical as the map color, but help a little. This sentence is not about how much color you can display, because every computer have his own method with advantages or disadvantages. Only means about the palette color where you can make a choice of colors. Which loses many cycles to ANTIC. So in the end it's just 20% faster than the 0.985 MHz CPU of the C64. Nothing left of the "2 times faster" which atariski dreams of. As a programmer you know, every extra cycle is important. There are most of these 2D games that Atari can do it better because the extra cycles. Meanwhile not use the extra cycles on games that require to equal the 8 sprites of C64. I could pull out the C128 now. Or I could mention that no XL and no 400/800 has 128k. Here a brief of C128 review: Mode CP/M : Not used intensive and can't compete with Atari on over all the type of software on the market. Mode C64: Just what is on discussion, but have the same 64K. If someone cand use the extra 64K, well it not has enough popularity to be considered as a feature. Mode C128: In theory better than Atari, but who cares, reduced amount software below the minimum levels, do the C128 a great piece of garbage, only remembered for his C64 mode. ( I have one)

Embedded Atari Technology in XL/XE date from 1979 , C64 is from about 1982 . ( i take argument i could read in that thread somewhere ) . So Atari 's programmer had 3 years more than C64 programmer to master the knowledge of their machine. I was referring to years of effective working on the machine. For every year (365 days) of continue work on a C64 machine, maybe there are a couple of days of Atari development. Just the consequence of the success on the sales. Other way, it should be interesting to compare how much money was invest to create Mayhem on Monsterland, maybe a $5000? or more?... And how much was the sales earnings. Crownland is a freeware production. No invest, no earnings (ok, the $250 on ABBUC contest )

Crownland seems very short for a game and don't seem to be really challenging for a game. Seeing the video, it looks like more an very nice interactive demo. But i can be wrong , i will try to test it as soon as possible. I also agree it is ridiculous to compare Atari and C64 . But guys here pretend the opposite and want to compare, so it is why i ask to prove what they say by fact and not theory. Personnaly i really love the 2 machines. The only thing i can say is that both are very good. which one is the best... commercially it is cleary the C64 , in term of overall quality of commercially released games it is also the C64. But Technically i could not say each machine having their own domain where they are better than the other. Exactly, you have seen the demo of Crownland. The completed version is not on youtube. Both games have some similarities, but you have to consider that Mayhem is the top scrolling platform game reach on a C64 (at 99% of his features) after years of knowledge experimenting with different techniques. Meanwhile Crownland is the first seriously attempt on Atari to do this type of games. Despite all, Crownland have some nice features as: solid 13-18 color on screen, triple parallax movements on some stages, transparency simulation on the water. In general, technically there are a lot of differences on both machines, but the most important are: - C64 has map color (letting use 8 or 16 color on screen) - C64 has better engine sprite But Atari have: - Atari has 256 palette colors - Atari has 1.79Mhz CPU - Atari has 128K On software as Utilities, Applications, Educative programs, Operating Systems, Tools, you have the better possibilities on Atari computers, because there is no major influence of sprites and map color on this type of software. Instead, the features of Atari are very welcome. On game software, there are basically: - 3D games: Isometric, vectorial, FPs or another type of games that needs calculating and extensive use of CPU, Atari have the con here. - 2D games: Here C64 have the power, at least of 70% of type games that could be created. Meanwhile, you use more sprites and more color background you get more advantage. And the 99% of discussions, came just for this topic.

Without too much effort it could be easy to view new productions on both platforms. Easily yo can see what is the new on Atari and C64 on: http://www.rgcd.co.uk/ And test the quality software on real platforms.

it may look crap due to his poor "scrolling" but this game is really really excellent . it is one of the most famous game on msx. But this type of game was done on C64 hundred of times and on Atari dozen of times. It's not a challenge. Maybe a better idea is to propose a style game with no precedence on both systems. And this game have to be a pattern with high quality details. It's not a good idea C64 or Atari version improve other details that not exist on original game, only those version should try to get the most near possible to the original.

The idea is good, but the game proposed is to simple. Maybe this could be better to port: But I think is very hard for a C64 computer

Looks great, I've never seen before. But 1st image haven't 16 colors, maybe you can send the exact C64 pictures, or better send a link to the executable to view on the real C64.

i like those TIP pictures with lot of colors.

Thanks for the screenshots, I take in consideration the next time i do some software for Atari. It's great to have the register PAL on Atari.