Kurt_Woloch
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Posts posted by Kurt_Woloch
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Are you sure it was me who mixed them up? Well, I told you the manual for "Sea Master" was in the bag of another cart, so I suppose it was in that of "Missile War" and vice-versa. So maybe the labels got mixed up instead of the manuals? If you look closely at the artwork shown on Atarimania, the artwork of "Missile War" fits more to the sea bombing game than the horizontal shooter, and that of "Sea Monster" fits more to the horizontal shooter than the sea bombing game. And I'm pretty sure that my cart labeled "Missile War" played the sea bombing game, and the one labeled "Sea Monster" played the horizontal shooter, not vice-versa.
Further it occurs to me that none of the "Astro Attack" screenshots on Atarimania show the labyrinth screen. And they also seemed to mix up something... If, from the link you gave, you click on "Galactic", you get the "Galactic" I had. If you click on "Black hole", you get a description without screenshots, however, if, from that page, you click on "See also: Galactic", you get NEARLY the "Black hole" I had, only that it shows "GALATIC" on top instead of the "GOLIATH" it showed on my version. And "Challenge of Nexar" is a slight variation of the same game with the kernal slightly altered so that it shows the horizontal lines coming out from the middle instead of the multi-colored border. Oh, and the word on top has again changed to "NEXAR". :-)
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Well, for here in Vienna, Austria... in the really early days, I think the most popular computer was the Sinclair ZX-81 (until about 1982), but that was when computers were still for "geeks". From 1984 on, it was probably the C-64, which was outrun by the Amiga 500 in 1987-88. Then from about 1992, the PC's took over. As for game consoles, the most popular one was probably the Atari 2600, followed by the Philips G7000, which some classmates had, and one cousin had an Intellivision. Before the Atari 2600, the popular electronic games were handheld games in the style of Nintendo Game & Watch, though some people found Pong clones at yard sales. The Colecovision I only saw in stores, however, as I did with Creativision, SMS's, Mega Drives and NES's... at that time we all had C-64's and Amiga 500's instead. The next popular "console" probably was the Gameboy, which spread pretty far. As for other computers people had... one classmate had a ZX-Spectrum, one had a Laser (don't recall the model #), and one had an Amstrad CPC 464. There also were some TI-99 users in Vienna if you looked for them, but none among my classmates, at least when it was still produced. I never met anyone having an MSX computer, a Sharp home computer (though I did see some of their pocket computers in people's hands), an Atari ST or an Atari 8-bit computer, though I learned that Atari ST's were the usual equipment in music studios before they switched over to Macs and finally to PC's. And businesses probably used PC's much earlier than hobbyists. This, of course, is out of the eyes of someone who still went to school back then.
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Ah yes, Hot Shot! I used to have some of their games too, but swapped them with a collector. These were the first "cheap" games sold here in Austria for about ATS 200 in January 1984. We got alert of them by a newspaper ad which lead us to a small shopping centre in Simmering called Massa (if I remember right). The manager (!) of the shopping centre had the carts in his room which you had to buy "in the bag" without being able to try them (he had no Atari set up anyway). They came in a plastic bag instead of a box - along with instructions printed on a small sheet of paper. The instructions were text only and much too "generic" to really describe steering, scoring etc. They only said what you have to do in the game in 1 or 2 sentences.
The titles I picked up were:
"Missile war" (you had a ship at the top and had to shoot various objects down in the sea which fire back at you - the bottom of the screen said it was by Bit Corp.)
"Astro Attack" (?) (a little like Vanguard, first you have to battle helicopters and other enemies, then you fly through a labyrinth and have to dock to your mothership)
"Galactic" (a bit like Galaxian, but you can't shoot the formation, and all in all it's pretty bad and monotonic)
"Black hole" (things come out from the center which you have to shoot using a crosshair which shoots into the black hole - a little bit like Gyruss, this one, according to the screen, was by Goliath)
"Sea Monster" (much like Astrosmash, only that the enemies come from the right instead of the top)
They even mixed up the instructions somewhat... the one for "Sea Monster" was labeled "Sea Master" and in the bag of another cart, while the instructions for that other cart were in the bag for "Sea Monster". But I somehow had the feeling that these instructions didn't really describe the correct game anyway.
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OK. Just found THAT thread and, having used the TI for a long time, I do have some comments...
1. Seems like funny little unit.
2. About the dumped cartridges... I have some of them myself on TI disks... and most of them load using Editor/Assembler. They have already been created back in 1984 or 1985. Some have a menu, and some games load directly. My memory's a little sketchy by now, but I think some of the modules that originally use 16K of CPU ROM are stored on disk as 2 PROGRAM files, which have the advantage that they're the fastest to load from Editor / Assembler (I think it was menu option 5, RUN PROGRAM FILE). For those files, the TI loads the whole content of a file into VDP RAM and then copies it over to the 32K expansion (I suppose the reason for doing it this way is that the TI can't communicate with the RAM expansion and the disk controller at the same time, or the DSR's in the disk controller are programmed to load into VDP RAM, since that's the only RAM guaranteed to be there), while for other file formats, they are loaded block by block, which is slower (and Extended Basic again does it MUCH slower than Editor/Assembler, if it works at all!). For some games I have I even don't know if they were originally module-based or not. Some games also are enhanced compared to their respective module version, for instance, Demon Attack has speech in the disk version, but not in the module version, and Burger Time has got two different bonus items in the disk version (don't know if I have that one, though), while the module which I have only ever shows the same bonus item on every round. And some probably aren't complete, for instance, Shamus crashes at some point.
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OK, some comments here anyway...
The line of parcels on the belt as shown seems undoable to me, since they use four different colors on a black background, but you can have only four colors on a line, unless you rewrite them on the fly. Anyway, with the size and distance of the parcels you currently have, it seems undoable to me since the parcels are also too close together.
But given some constraints, something like this could be possible. The outcome depends on if you want the player sprite to be able to be visible on the same scanline as the parcels or not. If you do, you can only use Player 2 and Player 2's missiles and the ball for displaying the parcels, which means you can have up to 6 parcels of the same color next to each other on the belt, plus one parcel of a different color.
If the player sprite can be restricted not to be seen on the same line as the parcels, then you can also use Player 1 and its missiles for the parcels, which give you up to 6 parcels of one color, up to 6 of another and one additional parcel in a third color.
From then on, there are some things left out in your description, for instance, you don't exactly say how the play mechanics should work. Do the parcels automatically fall to the floor after a time as soon as the player touches them, unless he grabs them? Or do they fall to the floor even when left untouched? And how is the player supposed to send a parcel to its proper pallette? Does he run to the pallette and drops the parcel there? Or does he throw the parcel through the air? If he throws it, which directions can it fly, and how is determined where the parcel lands?
The fact that two pallettes with different colors share the same scanline somehow also screams "undoable" to me, though it might be doable with some trickery. If the rest is doable really depends on how the parcels get transported and stacked on the pallettes. More screenshots and a better description would be helpful here.
Oh, and the screen ratio is wrong anyway since a normal TV screen is more wide than high.
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That's sad to see since the TI-99 really was an importance piece of computer history. It once was the bestselling home computer in the USA (before the VIC-20 came about), and it gave us such nice things as the sound chip that was later used in many arcade games and home systems, and the TMS9918 video chip which also found use in the Colecovision, Sega SG-1000 and MSX systems, from which the video chips of the SMS and Genesis / Mega Drive were derived and which also inspired the designers of the C-64's video chip (as they reveal somewhere on the net in an interview).
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OK, I think I've tried most of the versions out there...
TI-99 (the first I had)... good port, but totally different screens than in the arcade... all in all, less complex ones
Atari 2600: Really disappointing. Looks like they didn't hear of the possibility to re-use sprites... the chef fights against one sausage, and the remaining three enemies are all only lines and blocks.
Intellivision: Pretty good, but different screens than on the Arcade.
Colecovision (Prototype): Pretty good, has the same screens as in the arcade, but still bug-ridden.
Colecovision (released version): Clearly based on the prototype, but they redrew all graphics, and, in my opinion, didn't improve them by doing so. Since the screens take up only 24x24 chars compared to the arcade's 32x32, the sprites, who are the same size, look too big now while they were shrunk accordingly in the prototype. But the remaining bugs are gone now, save for the inconsistent falling speed of the burger parts (which depends on how much processor time is left after doing other jobs, so if some characters line up on one line and flicker, the burger parts fall much slower!).
MSX: Similar to the TI-99 version, the screens are different here too.
Atari 5200 (Beef Drop): Pretty good conversion here, mostly the same screens as in the arcade.
Atari 7800 (Beef Drop): Even better, because the 7800 has got more colors available.
PC (MAME): This IS the original... of course.
PC (Flash game): Pretty good rendering, though some minor differences in gameplay, lower framerate and slowdowns in more crowded screens. And it's got no sound...
PC (DOS by Mattel): Pretty good conversion... far superior to the INTV version. You get all the screens from the arcade plus some more... all graphics, including falling burger parts, move smoothly, and sound and intro music are true to the arcade - best they could do on the PC speaker.
Amstrad CPC: Is this BASIC or Assembler? The characters move in 1- or 2-character steps, flicker like hell, the falling burgers stop all other animation, and the same single screen repeats over and over again. Thus, one of the worst...
C-64 (Interceptor Software): This is also one of the worst. It's impossible to let enemies fall with the blocks, the screens are different from the arcade, and you have to make a level using one life or it will start from the beginning!
C-64 (Burger Chase): This is better, at least some screens from the arcade are in there, but the animation is pretty sloppy, and the enemies don't chase you... they just wander around randomly on screen.
C-64 (1997 version): Pretty good conversion, but the screens are based on the INTV version rather on the arcade one.
So, my ratings (in order of rating):
PC (MAME): 10/10
Atari 7800 (Beef Drop): 9/10
PC (DOS by Mattel): 9/10
Colecovision (Prototype): 8/10
Colecovision (released version): 8/10
Atari 5200 (Beef Drop): 8/10
C-64 (1997 version): 8/10
PC (Flash game): 8/10
Intellivision: 6/10
TI-99: 6/10
MSX: 6/10
Atari 2600: 5/10
C-64 (Burger Chase): 4/10
Amstrad CPC: 2/10
C-64 (Interceptor Software): 2/10
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There have been quite a few for me too, where by "surprised" I suppose it means I didn't expect the game to be that good...
TI-99: TI Invaders (where every other level reveals a new type of invaders, and you get one base repaired every 10000 points), Shamus (much better than the C-64 version which suffers from severe collision detection problems), Frogger (the smooth scrolling all over the screen is excellent given the TI's limitations), Popeye (having in part better background graphics than the arcade original)
Atari 2600: Sea Monster (cheapo game that plays like Astrosmash, but horizontal), Smurf: Rescue... (really good graphics on that one and even one more distinct screen than on the Colecovision), Zaxxon (not bad an effort of 3D view), Gyruss (didn't expect it to be able to be that good, even had to call a doctor because I got so excited about the music), Millipede (good conversion here, considering the 2600's limitations)
Philips G7000: Turtles (pretty good arcade conversion compared to all the other stuff Philips put out), K.C.Munchkin's Revenge
Arcade: Millipede (really pushing the fun to the next level)
C-64: Avenger (pretty dead-on conversion of Space Invaders), Q*bert (near arcade perfect aside from the animations), Rainbow Islands (pretty accurate conversion here), Street Surfer (which, although being a budget game, still has correctly looking and probably the fastest pseudo-3D graphics I've seen on the '64, and athmospheric music too), Kennedy Approach (the only game where the 64 is talking while the game goes on), Revs (which, some years before Out Run and Hard Drivin', already sported simple, but real 3D graphics, including small hills, with still a pretty good framerate for the 64), BurgerTime 1997 (finally a good conversion, although it's based on the Intellivision levels)
NES: Marble Madness (having correct physics and even smoother animation than the original)
Amstrad CPC: Commando (rather smooth animation considering the CPC's limits)
Colecovision: Matt Patrol (Prototype) (good scrolling!), Wild Western ("Prototype") (good flicker logic), Galaxian (prototype?) (good conversion)
Intellivision: Donkey Kong Jr. (good conversion in comparison to the versions Coleco usually put out)
PC: Arkanoid II (good VGA graphics and smooth animation), BurgerTime (smooth animation and even more levels than the original), Rampart (played that one until the end), Cosmic Do! (good adaptation of Cosmic Guerilla into the Mr. Do! universe), Dig Dug (very small and manages to run at the correct speed even on fast machines)
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About Pitfall II: Out of curiousity, I tried the SG-1000 version of that (in fact, I fully mapped it out), and while it resembles the arcade version, it also has got some notable differences:
1. There's no time limit like in the arcade (and, I think, all the others)
2. You can (relatively) freely move around in the map. In contrast to that, in the arcade version the maze, while being a consistent "whole", is divided up in "levels", that is, reaching a certain point marks the end of one "level", which lets you start at a slightly different point. In the SG-1000, there's no such divisions... you just play through it and basically are able to return to any point in the maze
3. It wraps around... unlike both the arcade and CV versions. Which means, if you go right from the rightmost screen, you arrive at the leftmost one (which, however, is only possible on certain platforms).
4. The maze itself is different. The size seems to be about the same (8x32), but in the arcade, the top row gets repeated 4 times with different enemies, which isn't done in the SG-1000 version. Many of those enemies (for instance, the tree throwing apples if I recall it correctly) don't exist at all on the SG-1000, but there are still many elements from the arcade present on the SG-1000 which don't exist in the CV and Atari 2600 versions, such as the ice coming down from the ceiling, the face breathing fire, and the lorries going down ramps. Overall, the SG-1000 version is nearer to the arcade than to the "original" Activision version, but it still has a different maze layout than all of those.
So I think Pitfall II on the SG-1000, while having the same name, is quite a different game than the CV version. The question is if it's different enough...
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Just dug out this thread out of the "Enormous Homebrew Thread Repository" and wondered what kind of quality the frames would have on a 2600. Hmmm... if you have 30 frames per second, you could try to do it with playfield graphics, changing both foreground and background colors in every scanline. I don't know if it would be possible to change both color registers and rewrite the full width of the background in each scanline... but if it was possible, you'd need 7-8 bytes per scanline, with 200 lines on screen that's 1400-1600 bytes per frame, or 42-48k per second.
How good could such a frame look like at all? Maybe something like this...
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I tried your "protoype" too on an Emulator. Looks very promising... considering the fact that the Colecovision (like any TMS9918 based system) is only able to do 4 sprites per scanline. But "Wild Western" already has got a "flicker logic" built in to work around this problem. You'll see what I mean if you line up your cowboy with one of the enemy cowboys and the smoke of the locomotive.
I think the best thing about the arcade original was the music... this was the first version of "(Ghost) Riders in the sky" I heard, and it sounds pretty good, although it's rather short. The way it's played reminds me a bit of the group Hot Butter. Their biggest hit was "Popcorn", but on their LP they also have some country tunes played in a similar fashion, like "Apache" for instance. They don't cover "Riders in the sky", however...
I think the music should be doable in a similar fashion on two of the sound generators. If you use the noise generator for the trippling horses (which tripple in sync with the music), the 3rd sound generator should be free for the sound effects.
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Toy Bizarre certainly borrows some elements from Mario Bros. Actually, I'm surprised to hear it was only released on the C-64. The graphics looked rather mediocre for the 64, I always thought they drew the enemies that way so that they could be reproduced easily as color-striped players on the Atari 8-bits or even the 2600.
Dino Eggs, in comparison, looks like it has been ported from the Apple II, but the C-64 version seems to be far more popular.
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I suppose the 520ST just came out in 86, right? In this case the MSX2 came out first, in 85, with 16 color registers (out of 512), and the SMS also in 85 with 16 colors out of 64. Interestingly both are derived from the TMS9918...
Eduardo
I'm not entirely sure now... as far as I remember, the 520ST was already out in late 1985 here in Austria. But I could be wrong... anyway, I totally forgot about the Amstrad / Schneider CPC which definitely already came out in 1985 (or even 1984) and also had 16 color registers... but only out of a palette of 27!
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Actually, come to think of it, didn't the TI 99/4A have than 16 foreground color registers and 16 background color registers in its default display mode? Unfortunately, the mapping of on-screen characters to those color registers was done using the 4 MSB's of the character data, which made things rather nuisancesome to say the least.
Technically, no. It has 8 control registers and 1 data register. Maybe what you're referring to is the color table in Mode 0 (Graphics Mode), which is located in video RAM and may start at any byte location which is dividable by 16 (256 different possible locations). But this one has 32 entries of one foreground and one background color each, setting the color for 8 consecutive character definitions. That's the 5 MSB's, not the 4 one, as far as I can see.
If that's nuisancesome depends on the type of display you want to achieve. If the objects with the same shape should all appear in the same color, you're fine off... you set the color once and don't have to manipulate it anymore if you place the same object elsewhere on screen. However, if you have objects with the same shape which should appear in different colors, you have a problem.
I think that's one way the technical engineers tried to achieve "color" on screen with the least RAM used possible, to the best result. In this case the colors are tied to the character definitions, so each set of 8 defined characters get one foreground and one background color, which gets used anywhere that character appears on screen. In contrast to that, on the C-64 (and on the Pac Man machine, for that matter), you always have to write two bytes to define one character... one for the actual character, and another for its color (or, at least one of its colors... depending on the mode you use). This, of course, gives you the flexibility to put the same characters on screen in different colors.
But the C-64's color RAM is 1000 bytes... same size as its character RAM, where as the TI chip's color table is only 32 bytes. So, at least for mode 0, they made it to implement color using only 32 additional bytes. I still like that method better than the one on the NES, which only lets you select 1 out of 4 4-color palettes (with the same background color for each) for each block of 2x2 characters (16 pixels), so that you really don't get too colorful pictures out of this.
To better understand that greed, maybe you should know that the unexpanded TI-99/4, which the chip initially was designed for, stores BASIC programs in the video RAM, since there are only 256 bytes of CPU RAM in the system. Thus, 32 bytes used for color saves you 736 bytes for your BASIC programs over the 768 bytes a full color RAM would have taken.
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OK, so the graphical results weren't that good, but many home computers of that era were far worse off... having no sprites at all. So you could say that the TI chip catered more for gaming applications than other chips of that era.I think it is significant that both the MSX and the SMS/Genesis were derived from the TMS9918. But I still think TI should have put in some palette registers.
Should have.. should have... but they didn't. In fact, back then no computer or video game did have 16 color registers to choose out of a palette (at least no affordable one!). There basically were two approaches to the color problem: 1. a bigger, fixed palette or 2. an even bigger palette with color registers selecting from it.
The C-64, the Intellivision, the Odyssey^2, the TMS9918 (whichever machine it was used in), the VIC-20 and the ZX-Spectrum all followed approach 1, and mostly had 16 colors available, which lets you store foreground and background colors of a character in one byte - and they typically have character modes where you can choose foreground and background colors for each tile (character) (except for the Odyssey^2 which doesn't have fixed tiles, only a grid for background graphics).
The Atari 2600, the Atari 400/800 and the Bally Professional Arcade followed approach 2. The 2600 has 4 color registers and a pallette of 128 colors, the Atari 400 has 9 out of 256, and the Bally (I think) 4 out of 128 (or was it 256?). No machine of that era hat 16 color registers! The first machine that had 16 or more color REGISTERS was the NES with 25 colors (13 for background tiles, 12 for sprites) out of 64 (+ Tricks), and the first home computer I know of having 16 color registers was the Atari ST. This was topped by the Amiga having 32 out of 4096 (+ HalfBrite + HAM modes for more), interestingly improving on the Atari 8-bit's graphical architecture (which was in turn improving on the Atari 2600's architecture). Before that came the Atari 7800, but as far as I know, it also has only 13 color registers (to choose out of 4 4-color palettes sharing the same background color).
Arcade machines are a different story, of course. The Pac Man machine, for instance, uses a far more complicated scheme than all of the computers or consoles of its era (the single color value of a character or sprite selects one of many 4-color sets, with each of the 4 colors of the set pointing to a 32-entry lookup table defining colors out of the "actual" 256-color palette - OK, maybe the NES comes close, but not quite), with subsequent arcade machines following similar schemes, only improving on the number of colors in a palette, the number of colors actually possible for each pointing layer and the number and size of layers and sprites displayed.
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Wonder what TI had in mind? Wonder why the part no. starts with TMS-99? Well... I suppose what TI had in mind was what the chip was first used for... the TI-99 home computer, which happened to be the first computer I had. And that one already was developed in the late 70's. And it was supposed to be a home computer, not a game machine, yet TI put out some pretty good games for it. Atarisoft did, as well - they only weren't good at doing music. It also had the same sound chip as the Coleco (and many arcade games of that era, for that matter), only running at a slightly slower clock rate.
OK, so the graphical results weren't that good, but many home computers of that era were far worse off... having no sprites at all. So you could say that the TI chip catered more for gaming applications than other chips of that era.
I think the only other home computer out in that era who had something resembling sprites were the Atari 400/800, which had player/missile graphics. But those were also monochrome and basically only 8 pixels wide. And you also only had 4 of them per scanline. But what's worse, the Atari couldn't manage more than 4 sprites by itself... you had to rewrite the sprite locations on specific raster lines to get more independent sprites... the TMS9918 does that for you, for up to 32 sprites. Not even the C-64 has that many sprites. OK, you get 8, and those are bigger and multicolored if you want. And you can display all of them in one scanline. But to get more than 8, you have to do the same like on the Atari's...
Background graphics wise, it's hard to judge who leads. OK, you do have a 4 color mode on the Atari 400/800. And you get to chose those 4 colors out of a huge pallette of available colors. But if you do hi-res graphics, those 4 colors are the same for the whole screen! (OK, you can change those too per scanline by clever programming, of course)
If you compare it to other video game consoles of that era... there's none with multicolored sprites, except for the NES, but here in Austria, the NES wasn't released until 1987, that's 4 years after the Colecovision. So the Coleco's competitors at that time were the Atari 2600, the Intellivision and the Magnavox G7000 and (in Europe) G7400 / Odyssey^2 (in the USA). And those consoles all don't allow for multicolored sprites. The Atari 2600 does have a huge pallette, but only 4 color registers shared by the various objects. The G7000 can display many freely moveable characters on screen, but all of them are only 8x8 pixels, and only 4 of them are freely definable. The Intellivision is best off, even having scroll registers, but its background graphics only have half the resolution of the Coleco's, and it also works with a fixed 16-color pallette (as far as I know).
Below I've created an example of what you can do on a TMS9918 in bitmap mode, with clever color mixing.
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What games are better on AppleII/MSDOS over Atari800/C64?
in Classic Console Discussion
Posted
I'd agree with Burger Time. I didn't try the Apple II version, but from a FAQ I read, it has the same 12 (!) levels that the PC version has. In comparison, there wasn't a version of Burger time for the Atari800, and the one for the C-64 by Interceptor Software sucked badly. This, however, may have changed a bit with Burger Time 1997 for the C-64 and Beef Drop for the Atari 800.
But how do you emulate Burger Time on an Amiga 500?