Allas

I think this piece of music sounds very cool and has the distinctive POKEY style. It would be good if anyone can reproduce on an Atari machine.

What system do you have: PAL or NTSC ?

G2F is a great tool, it helps a lot on many ways on developing new software. On the other way, it's hard to manage all the complex ANTIC/GTIA graphics modes. With time, i'm sure this tool will increase with interesting options. As a game programmer I always need some little features on G2F: - In BMP mode I can crop areas, copy or move on other places. This copy/paste feature only work with char offsets (4 pixels), i usually miss there is a option to move easily the crop zone on 1 pixel by 1 pixel. - On EDIT CHARSET (ALT+H) window, i usually want a line the show the 8 hex values for the character selected on screen. Usually I want to select the values to insert on my programs. Actually I have to find on the fnt file, but it's tedious. - Another great step would be to support SuperIRG+ modes, this needs 2 G2F screens alternating by VBI. I think it should be easy to support, really it's hard to do without the appropriate tool.

I checked MONEX (nice game by the way and other examples based on flipping screens... MONEX looks nice on emulator... How clean is picture on TV ? Does it flicker? Checked Master of Lamp - where is that horizontal split ? Interlaced modes works better on Atari systems than others. Using the combination of colors with same luminance you reduce the flickering practically at nothing. There are some good examples of interlacing screen as CAPTURE THE FLAG (yes the 3D maze game, look the sky), VULCANO.... not really SuperIRG mode, because there isn't a editor for this type of screen still. However, I'm sure there are many examples that use interlaced effect and nobody can suspect when playing. To get a G2F Editor capable to work interlaced screen will be incredible. On the other way, we have a great tool to paint interlaced screens called LEPIX (http://lepix.sourceforge.net/) If you refer to a Basic Atari Graphics 12 screen mode (Antic 4), then yes, only can get 5 color per horizontal or vertical line. Off course, without using poke commands.

http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/sife/ That is a charset editor for "SuperIRG" mode. This mode is a relatively low-demand software charmode that allows 10 colors per line without resorting to DLIs. It uses a VBI to switch between two "graphics 12" IRG charmode screens. Actually, 15 colors if we consider the 5th color on combination. And 17 colors if we use another 1K map for screen.

I would like to know one more fact from the people who know Atari hardware ... I spent more than few hours reading about Antic,Gtia and whole atari graphic subsystem, and I would like to know if I got it right: As I'm thinking of making something nice for Atari I would like to use 160x192 resolution in as much color as I can get. Char mode (Antic 4) in multicolor looks like the most promising candidate. "So the four-color character modes treat the bits as pairs, so that two bits control each dot on the screen... The five colors. Each bit-pair has four possible combinations: 00, 01, 10, and 11. These correspond to the decimal numbers 0, 1, 2, and 3. A bit-pair with the value of 00 will cause the background color, stored at memory location 712, to be displayed. A bit-pair with the value of 01 will display the color stored at location 708; the bit-pair 10 (decimal 2) will display the color at location 709; and the bit-pair 11 (decimal 3) will display the color stored at location 710. There is a fifth color available. If a character is entered into screen memory in inversemode (the character number plus128), then any bit-pair 11 (decimal 3) in that character will display, not the color at 710, but the color at 711. This means that if you plan your character set carefully, you can have five colors on your screen at one time." so colors behave like this: 1. 00 - color1 2. 01 - color2 3. 10 - color3 4. 11 - charno <128 - color4 5. 11 - charno >127 - color5 So no character can have color4 and color5 inside the same byte ? And in one whole screen line I can use only those 5 colors ? Can these colors be changed in the middle of line and how much cpu intensive it is if it can ? I guess they can be changed using interupts after every vertical line... Thats how games get those shades of sky.... Is there a "better" mode or a trick that can show more colors in one line (but with the same resolution - 80 pixels in line is to ugly... ) I looked at screenshots of "Crownland" and I counted only five colors in one horizontal section. You need to use another layer of graphics with his own DL with new colors and set font. Example: MONEX

OK. OK. I just checked the boss scene on youtube and it looks like this: Big boss (15 chars wide and more than a screen high) made out of sprites (3 colors). Background made of chars (couple of colors - not so important - a pattern made out of 4x4 chars. So you can do the rol/ror, move thing on that pattern and background is done... but for the chars that boss sprites are not covering... You could make "Occupied by boss chars" black... (like a shadow to avoid color clash on speccy) and that would be it. Or you can (rough estimate) mask out the char on the left side of boss and the far right char of the boss correct (proper masking, or sprite data ...etc...). That would make 20 rows times 2 chars =40 chars or more of data processed with shifting and proper masking.... I think Atari could do that. But what about the scene in wich the boss shows up for the first time? Hero is flying upwards across background (some kind of a tower with a "fence" behind him) and than this gigantic robot comes from the bottom and flyes past you behind that fence ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veR1q3bhBms...feature=related (look at 6min 48 sec) Than you would need to properly draw 20 rows of aproximatly 15 chars = 300 chars ... fortunately no shifting needed Just the lda and ora sta .... I think some of you coder guys could calculate it or compare it with some demo or game that is doing the same thing (if that kind of thing was ever done).... So how do we do big characters over background on Atari? Is there a game or a demo that shows it ? It's a different challenge, but not more difficult. The borders are tiles that could move down changing set font pointers. Boss moves up thanks to hardware scroll, and the narrow fence could be Atari sprites to give the appearance boss is behind. As I can see Turrican character doesn't move, so it could be a software graphic for this effect transition. Rest of the level is the same.

Interesting. This Delta counter is a internal register on ANTIC? I suppose it can't be changed with a program. This trick affect the data sprites too?

Good work! I love all pencils examples.

Good work, just what is need to start a good port of tetris. The PM overlay consist on 4 layers of Player+Missile (10 pixels wide) at the maximum wide. You need an OR effect of player + background and you have 6 colors per block (with his own 2 extra color for border shadows). On the graphics you waste 3 colors for black background+grays for shades, and finally you have 2 colors free (for background, or additional color blocks or a mix of both) Maybe you could start to add on you own graphic the 4 layers of sprites covering all the ingame area.

What do you mean with "Chars with background ?" Just to clear out - this is a tech question and there are no hidden meanings in it Well, my way to do the last scene is: 1- Main character Turrican use sprites 2- Grand Boss Enemy is done it with chars at 4 colors, i use the scrolling the Atari Hardware scroll to move the chief across the screen with fast speed. I don't remember, but if the boss moves, then i change the pointer of font set to give fast animation. 3- The background are the rest of screen with chars, and I use ROL/ROR and move vertical lines on those chars to get a scrolling that neutralize the main scroll of the boss. In this way the background stay quiet and you have the illusion the boss only moves across the screen, fast and easy. I use the 5th color for background to give a smooth color. It's a first approach, but I think it could work.

If quantity and quality of colors are not important on a design game, then Sinclair ZX Spectrum is the #1 of all 8bit computers, because their games were very advanced for his time.

THE CITY is the best version of both. There are more factors inside the game, the music is better on THE CITY, really I remember those detailed graphic effects and the music create a Terrific ambient. On DUNGEON version the game was a port, so colors were reduced to 4,5 on screen. The game overall was convert to a "arcade style". I think is an excelent game but not as brutal as THE CITY (on Atari computers I said), maybe other computer found DUNGEON the best game. However the DUNGEON Atari version looks as the C64 version, nothing more, nothing less.

English is not my native language so maybe I should use whole sentences instead of one word. "reproduced" in my vocabulary does not mean 100% correct replica. For example if you would show me on Atari, Turrican made in 4 colors, but with the same game mechanics, weapons, enemies, speed... I would be cheering! Have you seen boss at the end of C64s Turrican 2 ? its 2 screens tall, 15 chars wide. And its not made of characters... Its made of sprites so it flies over and under colored background. Is there a boss like that in any game on Atari... I haven't seen one. But if you show me a game that has 256 colors and plays like poo... And than reduce number of colors to two.... and it still plays like poo.... well thats a difference Im ready to ignore... Guys..... maybe Im just saying gameplay is more important than number of colors on the screen. Yoomp is a great example of this. Take a time to think, the last boss on Turrican II could be done with chars on Atari with the background. Always there is a solution to do some things. Don't expect that should be done at the "C64 style" Colors and gameplay are important on games. And the color experience not only has perceive counting the amount of colors per frame. It count too, the variations of colors along the gameplay, borders, change of colors between levels. If you count all this, for sure Yoomp have to count more than 64 colors for all gaming experience. A C64 gaming experience only give me 16 colors per game, so I finish the game and don't feel I have a great experience about the colors. As I said before we Atarians looks some C64 games as tha smae way you C64 users look the Spectrum games. The palette is not enough, and most of the games have ugly colors, if it not, there are combinations that has been used thousand of times before.

Could you please point me to that demo. Would love to see it. It was a quick test from Heaven if i don't remember bad. But, what's the point? What do you expect to see there? Any computer that have ROL or ROR assembler command could do Parallax scrolling. Other programmers use banks to change the set font and do more complex parallax scrolls.

lol. Try adding sprites flying around on top of the Atari vertical pencil image, full stop. It's already multiplexing a bunch of PMGs to get those colours (with only 10 pencils, might I add). Meanwhile the c64 one could have a whole flock of sprites flying round the screen... but oh me oh my... at certain points one or more of the colours in a sprite might be the same as a line of pixels in the background under that sprite, so it is all ruined. Ruined I tell you! I'd rather have no sprites left than have to put up with that! Obviously an Atari game designer use the horizontal pencils as background, is ridiculous to choice the vertical pencils design for a game on Atari. However, the sprites on C64 easily mixed on the background, so you need to reduce the 16 colors of you background at least at 13 to avoid this problem. Less colored pencils, but work still.

Im not going to read those, thank you.... Want to finish Yoomp for c64 this year thank you... What's improved with more colors in these games? Why did you show basketball? does it have more than 16 colors? I counted 8-9... Sky fading effect is nice on three pics... but does it have important influence on quality of the games? Im more impressed with 3d wolfenstein like graphic on the far right pic. And what's with two pics on the left? what is it... My question still stands. Is there something like parallax scrolling from C64 Flimbo's quest or Hawkeye on Atari ? I found this: But its rather simple... p.s. This is response I like. Show me pics, show me vids of something that I haven't seen so far... p.p.s. Excuse me but I really don't have time to read all plus 200 pages of this... oh sorry, but, you arrive too late. Actually Atari->10 C64->1 Parallax scrolling on Flimbo's Quest is simple, even there is a demo on Atari replicating just the Flimbo screen with the parallax effect. There is nothing there (and on other parallax effects) that cost any cycle more on Atari. Is a technical resource perfectly viable for both computers at the same cost. And I'm referring to the parallax scroll with shift fonts. If you are trying to talk about multiple scrolling of different lines, Atari is a clearly winner there.

Lets focus on palette and clarify that what I tried to say: Show me a game on Atari that used its color palette to improve gameplay in such a way that it couldn't be replicated on Commodore gameplay wise. You have to read the first 2000 posts. But, I can put little examples that cant beat on C64: Basketball 4 players every one with his own joystick can play simultaneously Bumpomov's dogs Has a nice split/join screen ingame. Every window with his own scrolling 4 direction. Triple screen shooter with many colors Capture the flag Nice dual window for 3d game for 2 players Alternate Reality The best 8bit adventure 3d with lot of colors Midi maze First fps on 8bit computers. Could be connected on net with others Atari computers, including 16bit Atari ST.

This picture is out of the possibilities. If a background of pencils would be necessary on a game, for sure C64 choose this picture and Atari his first horizontal background. Both look nice, and every one have his own advantages against the other. Every computer has his own advantages according his internal design, this test not show how good is Atari or C64, also show how insufficient are both systems.

Good work Mapa, looks very colorful. Well, Archon on C64 is not like the Atari version, but it a reasonable porting. Really, I don't think there is a game that can be do absolutely only on a machine. Every piece of software, can be enhanced on certain areas according to the specs of the machine. Enforcer II is a production created for a C64, and is well brained for his features. It's a good game, but I don't see why it couldn't be ported on Atari. Most of the details are tricks well known. Despite some technical difficulties on emulate sprite, rest of game was easy to emulate and can be enhanced with more colors than the C64 version. Personally I think C64 did a bad choice to work this game on hi-res because loose quality, maybe is good to see a game shooter at hi-res on a c64, but looks like a spectrum shooter. It could be valid because there are not many shooters at high res on C64, but I think it could be done with better aspect on mid-res. Maybe someone could say what is the spectacular thing on enforcer that did the difference with others C64 shooters. The multiple parallax? the giant rock moving? the overall hi-res graphics?

Do you have to press anything to select the mouse or is it auto-detected? On a real machine, you need only to connect the st mouse. But i have not tested. On a emulator\, you need to configure the PC mouse as ST mouse. ONce enter the game you should press F12 to active/desactivate ST mouse simulation

Do you have to press anything to select the mouse or is it auto-detected? On a real machine, you need only to connect the st mouse. But i have not tested. On a emulator\, you need to configure the PC mouse as ST mouse. ONce enter the game you should press F12 to active/desactivate ST mouse simulation

Oh... I remember years ago this demo, thank you for posting! If you have the xex file, it would be welcomed to my collection.

Hi, I'd like to take a look at your file... but I'm not really familiar enough with the A8 to know how to run an IMG file. I tried changing the filename extension to XEX or ATR and running that in the emulator, but no luck. What do I do? Thanks... It's just a boot disk with sectors saved as an IMG file. It should boot right up if you can write it to a floppy disk or run from a disk simulator. It does not have any header so don't rename it to ATR. I don't use emulators so don't know what it's problems are but CrazyAce was able to run some previous image disk I posted with an emulator. By the way, the above shows the 9 of the 16 chromas with up to 16 shades without dithering or interlacing. Those are solid colors in that program.

More Atarian images, including Hannah Montana for C64 users: