Allas

Maybe not the best graphics, but for sure the best overall games. Along the time line we have... 1979 Star Raiders / Basketball / Outlaw - Horwitzer 1980 Space invaders / 3D Red Baron Dogfight Flight simulator / Scram 1981 Frogger / Caverns of Mars 2 / Missile Command 1982 Blue Print / Jungle Hunt / Preppie! 1983 Alley Cat / Capture the flag / Rainbow Walker 1984 Dimension X / Seven cities of Gold / Pitfall 2 1985 Alternate Reality The City / Elektra Glide / Ballblazer Atari in all his splendor! The best quality games ever, all Lucasfilm titles came from 1985. 1986 International Karate / Ninja / Timeslip 1987 Alternate Reality: The dungeon / Henry's house / Mirax Force 1988 Tagalon / Tiger Attack / Mario Bros XE 1989 Commando / Black Lamp / Crack up! 1990 Plastron / Cavernia / Yogi Bear and friends in the greed monster 1991 Draconus 2 / Jocky Wilsons Darts Compendium / Monster Hunt 1992 Darkness hour / Line-up / Magia Krysztalu 1993 Last Guardian / Dwie wieze / Caveman 1994 Inside / Olki / Gunhead 1995 Jaskiniowiec / Technoid / Puzmania 1996 Pyromania / Strip fun maze / Ketchup This year really sucks! No productions 1997 Dynakillers / Gem Drop / Brutal karate 1998 Robbo 98a / Taifun / Well 1999 Beyond Castle Blackthorn Really nothing to view here. Demo scene grow and production of games is zero. 2000 Multi-dash 2001 Multris / Asteraxis 2k / Freecell XE 2002 Space Harrier / Multirace / Tripeaks 2003 Mental age / Superfly 1k / Hexxagon XE 2004 Castle Crisis / Dyna blaster / Jellybeans 2005 Yie ar kung fu / Monex / Beef Drop 2006 Flowersmania / Getris / Nibbly 2007 Crownland / Yoomp! / Mind blast 2008 Animal Party / Bomb Jack / Ik Plus 2009 Deflektor 2 / Loops DX Still on the road....

Now y'see... at this point i think we're talking at cross purposes; i'm talking about changing something like a playfield colour halfway down a character line, nothing more complex than that - and since graphics artists sometimes supply stuff without checking what can and can't be done and graphics are converted from other machines that can perform arbitary colour splits, it happens pretty often in the real world. Yeah, because i'm the only programmer ever who wanted to do this... Color changes on every raster line in a single mode line are very common. Every multi-color character you see in games, high-score tables, title screen is done that way, and they are almost 99% using DLIs with WSYNCs. Which, of course, you know. f.e.

Chimera is not 100% an isometric 3D game on C64. The main character is a sprite. I'd still class it as isometric though, the world is in the usual viewpoint, the player moves around it masking behind walls etc, doesn't really matter how it's done but I think the A8 version is just poorley coded as there is no reason for it to be that slow. Colours, the A8 could do equivalent to the C64. This thread all comes down to what are people actually comparing? Games, in which case yes C64 Chimera wins imho if only for the speed, the A8 one is toooo slow, or hardware which is a more subjective matter. I won't comment on other games like Milk Race as to which is better because I haven't played them. Sprites being a bit bigger and a few more colours doesn't make the "game" any better but shows the "hardware" is more capable. The only time those two become linked is when the game requires lots of sprites and colours. Pete Yes, it's important. Because he claims c64 can do isometric games better than Atari. And that's false. Chimera isn't a real isometric game on C64 version. Maybe he could compare "Molecule Man", that's a real isometric game, and C64 version looks nice.

Chimera is not 100% an isometric 3D game on C64. The main character is a sprite.

Yep, with the high quality of many flash or simply web games these days.. is like sometimes some of them talk to you.. "port me.. port me please".. maybe I'm hearing things.. For example GTIA 9 (or G15 + some DLI's), hi speed horizontal scrolling, a wide screen.. and this one: http://adamatomic.com/canabalt/ Regards. (no C64 programmers, we saw it first!.. well, well you can have the doves in better resolution.. go ahead) Great choice! It's addictive and fast. It remember me the simply Superfly game on Atari.

So much technical discussion without any objective. Instead talking about old glories... Why don't talk about the technical detail on porting in every machine a game not previously programmed? For example, the very successful game Tower Bloxx from Digital Chocolate. Video of Tower Bloxx 3D version Article about the original 2D version on mobiles http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060707/ranki_01.shtml

Not all are games to determine which computer is better. For games Atari have his own strengths as: - Faster CPU (good advantage, use with wisdow) - More colors (despite the 5 colors factory, with DLIs and sprites good game projects manage at least 12 colors on screen from a palette of 128 colors) - 128K with 16K banking (That's the most important thing, the extra 64K, Atari can save a lot of speed with this extra RAM or can create more complex games) - Flexible internal design for programming (Always let us to save memory and create interesting effects on screen) If you use all these features on an Atari game, you have a clearly winner. For example: and it's only 64K example with 27 colors in action. Imagine what more it could be with a 128K version.

You're right. What about to compare only productions from this century? (2000-2009)

The answer was written 100 pages before. Real Atari software with giant companies, died on 1986 for Atari. After that, only some little companies continue producing games for the little market on Atari 8bit. Most of these companies were inexperienced in developing at the high Atari hardware levels, so most of his software are simple. On Atari barbarian version we can see great routines for software sprite as on Spectrum software. But a low effort using of sprites and DLIs to colorize the screen, no text mode screen, so no 5th color. Polish software started on Atari software seriously on 1990, this is just one of these nice early attempts. Nowadays, we all know how great are the polish productions. I think, even could be done an Atari Barbarian hacked version colorizing the screen with sprites and DLIs. Any experienced C64 programmer could say, Atari can do better that THIS C64 VERSION (off course the old and classic version).

The most funny thing is that Atari version could be done so far better that the C64 version. Maybe with 32-64 colors on screen, just this C64 game is easily to port with more colors and speed.

I have the same problem. I found some way, but i don't know if could be better. 1. Create a New blank picture on AIS 2. Export as BMP picture 3. Use a external editor to load the blank saved picture 4. Save the palette 5. Load your own BMP picture and reduce the colors at 8-bit density 6. Load the saved palette 7. Save the modified BMP 8. Load with AIS the modified BMP But, it could be better to find a good software that allow to use all the palette to get a good conversion.

Really good work. Now, it seems we can use our painting editor with the IMPORT tool. I got a "Wrong indexed palette" error when I trying to import a BMP picture. What conditions is needed on a BMP to import on AIS?

Great work! It looks fantastic. Thanks!

This is a masterpiece pokey song. Very nice composition and contains all the new great sounds that I've heard on a pokey chip. Congratulations! Now, I think we can say... we need a software tracker supporting those sounds.

This is far the most impressive game work on Atari 8bit machines. Good graphics, good motion, and an addictive fps of all times. Nobody tried to do the same thing on games before. For a first demo promise so much. Congratulations! and please, keep the work!

3d-engine of Project M (Wolfenstein 3D clone):

Nice game, addictive and easy to play. The best on 1K that I had seen before.

That's a lot of memory. You waste 25K on 25 lines.

There is no efficient software to create sprites by hardware or software. The best way to do is using G2F editor for software sprites and excel for hardware sprite. On excel I convert my own grill and draw the sprites picture, values are calculated automatically. These tools are not very comfortable, but helps a lot. Other way, I think you can choice a game that only require hardware sprites. It's more easy to do, and you can learn a lot of Atari architecture. There are many ideas about this, so i'm sure you can find a good game that use few sprites.

Nope. It´s never too late for anything. I never made it to program something for the A8. But I want to. So I just started learning Assembler. Perhaps I will never write a simple program or demo. Perhaps I might write a great game within a year. I don´t know. What I know is: When I don´t try to do it, I surely won´t do it. Jose, maybe you need to join on a project on developing stage. For example the Gridrunner topic from Heaven. It's a good exercise to try to understand what the people discuss about a real project on developing. Maybe you can add some ideas. Before I programmed my own Atari games, i usually read and collaborate on Boinxx Atari project and was very fun.

Star Raiders was the most advanced game in his time (1979), a truly 3d game with 60fps motion. Simply spectacular at the eyes of anyone and a great piece of programming to keep the work with only 8K. Star Raiders 2 came 6 years after and was programmed on 48K with very nice Atari graphics. Surely have his own set of good tricks on animation, but the gameplay is not the same as SR1, instead there are others interesting thing added on gaming. I played SR2 first and is very fast and intuitive what you need to do. Instead SR1 is hard to play without the manual, so you need more patience if you want to game seriously this game. After playing both games, I only have to said that SR2 is amazing and the best version, but don't forget to take a look on SR1 because you have a great control over the ship.

Yes,... it's the most funny I've seen for years. Fandal is a very dangerous player. Those hits must hurt so much!

That's exactly the same way games as Animal Party, Mappy, Bombjack were done.

En el modo GR.12 se utiliza el set completo de fonts de Atari para ser impreso en pantalla. Es una caracteristica de los fonts de Atari de ser de 128 caracteres, por lo que los numeros que los represntan son del 0 al 127 y el octavo bit queda descartado. Técnicamente, si imprimes fonts del 128 al 255, entonces el Atari vuelve a rpetir la misma data de lo que corresponde del 0 al 127, poque solo considera los primero 7 bits. En el caso particular del Gr.12 Modo texto multicolor Antic, el Atari hace uso del 7mo bit (el que no se usa), para indicar el uso de un color alternativo en esa celda, es un cambio de registro de color (o sea sigue siendo 4 colores, pero da la opción a escoger). El caso de los graficos 1 y 2 son algo parecido, los fonts de Atari se reduce a 64 caracteres (no se usan los bits 6to y 7mo para definir la data del font), pero en vez se usan para obtener el font impreso en diferentes colores. La prueba más fácil para distinguir la técnica es ir al BASIC y hacer: GR.12 y en la ventana ejecutar: ?#6;"ATARI" ?#6;"[tecla video inverso]ATARI[tecla video inverso]" y notarás la diferencia de usar el 7mo bit, el primer ATari tiene unas coloraciones azulk y en vez la impresion Atari en video iverso (con el 7mo bit activo) tiene una coloración violeta. Y si no se nota mucho, un POKE 711,15 dejará mejor claro eso. Ahora, toda esta maravilla no funciona en los modos graficos bitmap como el 7 o 15. Ahí solo queda el uso de 4 colores y a cambiarlos por fila con DLIs.

Great! Interesting example of a dramatic increase of performance on original assembler programming. Fandal, could you give some interesting details on your analysis,... for example why the original code render so slow the field?