GameEngine
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Posts posted by GameEngine
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I always considered VCS marvel at engineering but, at the same time, it was always to constraining for me so I settled for less perfect but much more capable Atari 800.
Some recently released VCS games seemed to achieve impossible. Quickly I found that some of the games have even more help from the cartridge than what was available back in the day in the form of Display Processor Chip (as used in Pitfall II). In those games it is ARM processor, hidden in Harmony / Melody cartridge, which does the heavy lifting and original CPU (6507) tries hard but can not really keep up. This led me to the following question:
Would it make sense to plug in Harmony-like expansion in place of the VCS original CPU?
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Was any NES emulator ported to PIC24?
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As more of these "Speccy palette" pics are popping up as more I love my A8 palette... to be honest...Same here.
Can one choose pallette in any of c64 emulators (for the original hardware only b/w monitor would help I suppose)?
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i just wonder, would be there any intrest in 1mb sram cart (8k banked throuhgt register on d4xx page) with battery backup and flash backup capability?estimated cost - $45, maybe less
flash would be capable of storing up to 4 complete images of cart (4mbyte of data)
No, unless it is superset of cartridge by Raster and Bob!k:
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There wasn't an inexpensive A8 until the 600XL/800XL. Prior to this time, you're looking at >$600 in late seventies/early eighties dollars just to get started with an A8. So the 2600 had over 5 years to entrench itself by the time the A8 was affordable to most people. Also home computer customers and console customers weren't very interchangeable even if so-called home computers were employed as gaming rigs 99% of the time.I do not want to compare them directly. Obviously Amiga1000 is more capable then A800 which is much better then A2600 but I still think we can decide which is best. I think more and more that A2600 is the best of the three - especially now when it as accessible as the other two computers.
Granted the ST was much cheaper at first but that crisp BW mode+monitor was only a small point at best over the Amiga.Is there anyone else who preffers ST mono monitor over cartoon quality graphics of Amiga?
Other than the fact that the 2600 -> A8 -> Amiga represents a successive technical lineage, there isn't much in the way of comparison between the three. They differed in price, era, and intended customers.I bet designers of A800 and Amiga1000 wouldn't mind if they won again all customers who bougth A2600.
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VCS:
Atari 2600 is so simple but nothing was able to compete with it.
Would it fare even better if not constrained by 128B RAM and 4KB ROM Cartridges?
Lack of framebuffer ment graphics is blocky but games are action packed as on screen movement is basically at no cost. 128 colors.
Two chanell sound.
Is it perfect? I think yes (but unfortunatelly not for me as there is no keyboard - game system was never enough for me).
A 8 bit:
Was Atari 800 overengineered? It was obviously more capable that Apple ][ but far less expandable. Was there anyone who replaced personality board? With what? Is it possible to install 16KB XL OS? 80 column boards required more then RAM expansion slot.
Was there no better use for ANTIC's silicon then to implement Display List? 6502 could update graphics mode register and line address but it cannot send extra 40 bytes for 16KB graphics modes or color map to GTIA.
Disks drives are neither nor as simple as Apple had nor programable as C64's though they have its own processor. With smarter drives DOS would take less RAM.
800 XL has PBI yet there is almost nothing to connect. Clearly some important signals are missing. Thanks God 1090 was canceled - I do not think it would be possible to reliably connect this whale to light keyboard via PBI.
XEGS - good that cart slot is back on top and easly accessible. Separate keyboard would be even better idea if 1200 XL had it (plus some internal expandability, PC was 1981 design, right?).
Overall seems to me chips were beeter then the systems.
Still, 800XL was was my first computer. For home computer graphics was very good. Build quality much better then the competition. Perfect fit for my child / teenager need.
Amigas:
Amiga 1000 had perfect chipset if not for the lack of ergonomic high resolution mode - not good for office.
256KB RAM (the other 256 taken by the system) was twice as much as Mac but still hardly enough.
Nice case but I still think everyone would be happy if we were given Amiga 2000 instead in 1985.
Amiga 500 - do not know what killed it but it was not the lacking hardware. For home computer expandability was very good.
ST seduced me with its quality mono monitor and it could play games as well. I never seriously considered buying Amiga.
Which of the three you consider the most perfect and why?
What you consider differentiators making them stand out from the competition?
Why both Atari 2600 and Amigas sold more / did better in the market then Atari 8 bit? Was it due to more competitive chips? Better system architecture?
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overscan..
Nice picture but unfortunate example.
The nice thing about overscan is when you have it in a game so you can see much more and borders do not bother you (or at least when you scroll text so it does not pop up in the middle of the screen).
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Just Another High Strung Prima Donna.
Ray Kassar.
I am extatic (also jeleous) about Tempest Xtreem comming to our 8-bitter.
GameEngine.
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What are you trying to say? I said: No version uses overscan. In fact, all versions use less than the normal 40 characters area. Amiga for example uses just 304 pixels horizontally (38 characters).EDIT: just looked at the ST version: 288 pixels horizontally (36 characters).
I needed to check as well:
Amiga 38x24
c64 38x20
ST 36x18
So even 32x24 (Atari narrow screen) would give screen area c64 has but again I think this game would benefit plenty if done full screen.
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No version of Turrican uses overscan.
Then it must be that ST Turrican's developers were looking at c64 (which is limited to 38 characters if scrolling horizontally iirc).
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why is turrican literally impossible for the a8? even if I let it go with 5 colors only, its impossible, why oh why ?Atari does have nine colour registers overall so I think it will have at least this much when done.
For me to make it better then c64 version it would be enough to avoid crampiness by using overscan (I like Amiga version much more then ST)
Even if we have fewer enemies it shold not be a problem - it is 2d game so basicaly 4 enemies surround the protagonist.
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Let's see what was proved recently:
c64 - we can display most c64 pictures (thanks to g2f) and play SID tunes
ZX Spectrum (speccy) - isometric games like Knight Lore possible
NES - Mario like game (even better see Crownland) done
Apple II - we have working emulator of the machine
On top of this we have selection of games and demos which are unmatched by any other 8 bitter (Yoomp!, Numen).
It becomes more and more obvious that we need to start to compare Atari with micros more powerfull then C64 and other popular 8 bitters to challenge our developers.
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I hated Karateka regardless of platform.I can remember slogging through it just to see what happens. Finally get to a girl, run over to her only to have her beat the shit out the hero.
Never played it again after that farce.
I had similar experience. I spent the wole evening playing and finally got beaten by the girl. Then I wanted to take revenge on her and got kicked out again. Only then I started to think and I run to her. It was already like 4 in morning but I was very glad I managed to finish the game before school. First class animation.
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Would it be possible that you take a picture of the innards?
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XEGS is the most accessible. It has cinch connectors for video and audio and cartridge slot is on top. As soon as your interest grow you can connect keyboard and other peripherals.
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...it does have numerous timing issues (i.e. things speed up and slow down)...It is hard not to love the amount of action you put on the screen. Please don't fight the speed ups to much. Hectic is good. Thanks for the great demo.
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Anyway, it would be good to hear from others running an Atari emu on a phone or PDA.I do not think Nokia N800 Internet Tablet Atari800 emulator is ready for real gamers (It runs at the speed of around 70% which means sound is terrible. N800 d-pad is also clearly not designed for gaming. Device virtual keyboard is not supported.), but since I browse Internet with it at times I also use it to check out A800 programs published on this forum.
http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/s...ad.php?p=165816
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Tramiel for selling more 8bit computers then Warner and for selling them cheaply.
One need to remember also that Jack was the one who BOUHGT Atari and Nolan the one who SOLD it.
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I dunno.. I had a 1040ST, MegaSTE & Falcon030 in my quest to radically support Atari. Today I think they're all crap compared to the Amiga and I've never personally owned one.-Bry
Agreed. I went from A8 to ST and was later exposed to some friends Amiga's in the early 90s. I thought the OS, games, and the whole package in general was *incredible*. For the sake of fairness, I've never seen a Falcon but from what I've read they played catchup to A500s at best.
Sure, I saw a few "guru meditations" but that business of sliding screens around was slick and there was something bad wrong with who ever came up with "Orc Attack". That was good sick fun.
Atari ST bough me instantly with its perfect 12" (640x400, 70Hz) monochrome monitor. All I needed.
I perceived Amiga as only good for gaming. I was not interested . I am not able to tell if multitasking was any good (especially if paired with little RAM and no HDD). Hardware was powerful but complete system seems chaotic.
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here you are, c64 _charmode_ used at its best _no_tricks_ whatsoever, this is the built in charmode:
Mayhem looks a bit colour flat. Crownland looks much better to me:
I find Mayhem graphics too similar across levels. It gets boring after a while which gives you no incentive to play that game. Crownland Graphics (possibly mainly due to changing color schemes) was suprising and much more rewarding to me.
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384 Replies 30,579 Views
147 Replies 17,467 Views
Crownland wins !
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Hopefully all of these will be S-video (preferably modified) output recordings.
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CPU upgrade?
in Atari 2600
Posted
Replacing the 6507 with ARM SOC would reduce this further to 1 cycle. Would it allow full 160x200 at 127 colors? If so, would it be to relieving?
6507 is bottlenecking Harmony cartridge, so I was thinking about plugging ARM General Purpose I/O pins to the 6507 socket and emulating 6507 electrically (the same way it emulates intelligent memory in Harmony cartridge). AFAIK there are 31R/W + 1WO GPIO pins available in SoC used by Harmony and 6507 is 28 pins chip.