Atari v Commodore

[Heaven/TQA]

c64 could display 16color off the shelf

 

Can you PLEASE stop saying this? It's NOT a 16 color bitmap mode no matter what you say or think. It's a tile based system. It's not the same.

 

can you please correct me in what I've really stated, and not correcting me in something I havent stated ?

 

"A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

 

I think he misread your post. There is a difference between the "c64 could display 16color off the shelf" and "c64 CAN display 16color off the shelf" (which is not true, otherwise we could say that the Atari can display 256 color off the shelf too )

 

I guess exactly mayhem is one of the games that does use a special trick for scrolling so I guess that's exactly one of the games that does not use too much CPU for scrolling than other c64 games...

 

 

c64 can display all of its colors without having to help with the cpu. its a very hard fact. a8 is not able to do more than 5 at 160x200, and having to use 80x200 brick resolution to display 16 different color... which are still limited by hue/chrome.

 

c64 charmode without cpu help:

 

 

it just looks better.

 

c64 gfx modes doesnt need cpu help to make up for the a8, its vice versa. that tells a thing or two about the gfx HW.

 

That's a point of view,.... other point of view I can said is:

 

- C64 waste a lot of more CPU when do scrolling on this game

- C64 reduce his colors to 9 when mixing hi-res and med-res in this game

 

Instead Atari have:

 

14 colors

 

16 colors

 

14 color

 

- Have more cpu for triple parallax scrolling effect

- Have more color even to simulate transparency effects

- Real solid colors, not textures to give the appearance of more colors

 

And if there is in Crownland something you don't like, maybe it could fixedx if you had been on the team development. But that wasn't happen.

 

Is not Mayhem one of the games that use a special hardware trick like the Sync Scrolling on ST not to waste a lot of CPU time????

Edited April 24, 2009 by Heaven/TQA

[Wolfram]

That's a point of view,.... other point of view I can said is:

- C64 waste a lot of more CPU when do scrolling on this game

 

doesnt matter until it can do it 50fps. it can be faster than that. and if we add sprites, c64 will still do 50fps, but a8 will not.

 

 

- C64 reduce his colors to 9 when mixing hi-res and med-res in this game

 

 

Instead Atari have:

 

14 colors

...

16 colors

...

14 color

 

you are comparing c64's built in mode's max 9 colors (without cpu help) with a8's charmode & changing colors with cpu on the screen.

without cpu its 5 vs 9 colors.

 

- Have more cpu for triple parallax scrolling effect

 

a8 has more cpu for anything. btw while many c64 games are doing parallax, why a8 ones dont? only seen crownland so far.

 

- Have more color even to simulate transparency effects

 

yes. more colors and you can do even trasparency with them if you want. c64's 16 color's can do that aswell.

 

- Real solid colors, not textures to give the appearance of more colors

 

c64 has real solid colors aswell. and c64 can more of them onscreen. not using dithering for make up for lack of color is a bad thing imho. dithering enhances pictures.

And if there is in Crownland something you don't like, maybe it could fixedx if you had been on the team development. But that wasn't happen.

 

? same you could have done to c64.

[frogstar_robot]

No. Take for instances a platform game. If the main character gets even just one pixel to collide with another sprite, and you base your hit detection on that, that will make for some really poor gameplay and great frustration.

 

That should only be the case if the collision detection is used in the simplest most naive fashion possible. You don't HAVE to do things like:

 

if $colreg_barely_touches then die_immediately();

 

You can watch what the registers do over a number of frames or combine the register test with a test of XY within the objects to see how far within the object the collision is happening or other tests. The idea here is that a good set of collision registers can tell you whether you need to branch off into collision handling or not. So one still has to burn some CPU on collision handling but it can be less than continually computing bounding boxes.

 

I believe the biggest reason for leaving collision registers out of later generation hardware is that they had more CPU for software methods like bounding boxes.

[frogstar_robot]

Looks like the thread has been reset and we're back to the old arguments again. I still say a direct comparison of hardware features misses the point:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

 

Moore's law can work for you two ways. You can buy the same amount of power in the future for less money or you can get more power for the same money. Well actually it doesn't say that. It says that transistor counts for a given amount of $ double every two years.

 

For the most part, I believe the C-64 went more in the direction of equivalent power for less money than stupendous power for the same amount of money. The 400/800 were very expensive in 1979 dollars when they came out. What Tramiel was trying to accomplish was to put a reasonable amount of performance within reach of even lower middle class families and by 1982 that was possible.

 

Look at netbooks right now. They are more or less equivalent to machines from 4 or 5 years ago but are priced to sell.

[Irgendwer]

...

doesnt matter until it can do it 50fps.

...

you are comparing c64's built in mode's max 9 colors (without cpu help) with a8's charmode & changing colors with cpu on the screen.

without cpu its 5 vs 9 colors.

...

 

doesnt matter until it can do it 50fps.

 

CU

Irgendwer

[Fröhn]

- C64 waste a lot of more CPU when do scrolling on this game

Better than wasting far more for software sprites.

 

- C64 reduce his colors to 9 when mixing hi-res and med-res in this game

9? If you are refering to character mode you get 11 colors. Ofcourse easily extended by sprites and raster colors.

 

- Have more cpu for triple parallax scrolling effect

Flimbo's Quest

[Fröhn]

Also, on scrolling shooters where C64 use a multiplexing sprites engine, there is not enough CPU to get the map color with scrolling. Those games reduce his background graphics to 4 colors. Less than 5 colors on Atari.

There are enough shooters which prove the opposite. In fact, shooters are the most easy genre when it comes to color RAM scrolling + sprite multiplexers.

 

Examples:

 

Katakis

Enforcer

SWIV

Slap Fight

Ikari Warrios

etc etc etc

[potatohead]

Yeah you did!

 

However, they could afford to be cheap because the initial effort was so damn solid! That's got to be one of the biggest annoyances on the Atari side for sure!

 

 

 

Wolfram: Yes. Countless over the years.

 

I don't see new stuff right now. My point being VIC II, being more specialized has less to exploit, and is largely exploited compared to ANTIC / GTIA. And that is absolutely because the code complexity needs to be higher to really squeeze ANTIC / GTIA and POKEY. But, here we are today, and that code is happening because people build on the work of other people.

 

No matter what you end up doing on VIC, it's 16 colors. Pack them on a scan line, and it's 16. Atari presents 16 times the color space. The more packing your do, the more colors you get, the more density is possible, etc... In the end, really great code will deliver more on the screen on the Atari.

 

If VIC II had say, more colors, then having the sprite overlays and such would really make an impact. The potential exists on the chip to exploit more than 16 colors. It fetches more data per line, etc... but, it's just 16! That always seemed goofy to me. Say 32 colors were available! 16 for the color mapped screen, and some others for the sprites! That would really shine with all those sprites right? Damn right it would. Major bummer there just isn't the color space to show the damn chip off!

 

Frankly, I think that's why there are so many more great C= pixel artists. They like the smaller pixels, and placing those 16 colors very well is the only way to really trancend the 16 color limit. On Atari, it's about using more of the system colors, and a bit less resolution. Sometimes a lot less resolution.

[emkay]

Flimbo's Quest vs Crownland

 

Flimbo' Quest

 

Gamescreen 152*144 * 9 colour = Index 196992

 

Crownland

 

 

Gamescreen 128*175 * 17 colours = Index 380800

 

 

Quota 380800/19692 = 1.933

 

Atari acts on 1.933 times more graphics game content

 

[Bryan]

Looks like the thread has been reset and we're back to the old arguments again. I still say a direct comparison of hardware features misses the point:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

 

Moore's law can work for you two ways. You can buy the same amount of power in the future for less money or you can get more power for the same money. Well actually it doesn't say that. It says that transistor counts for a given amount of $ double every two years.

 

For the most part, I believe the C-64 went more in the direction of equivalent power for less money than stupendous power for the same amount of money. The 400/800 were very expensive in 1979 dollars when they came out. What Tramiel was trying to accomplish was to put a reasonable amount of performance within reach of even lower middle class families and by 1982 that was possible.

 

I think it went both ways a little. Three years had passed and MOS/CSG was able to build a chipset optimized for sprite-based gaming at less cost. Combine that with the reuse of a low-cost form factor and the 64 was both advanced and cheap (despite what others here will argue).

 

If you figure that the 64 sits right in the middle of the timeline between the A8 and the Amiga, you would expect something either very cheap and about as capable as an 800 or something as expensive as an 800 and much more capable. I think the 64 mostly emphasized price point, but also picked up some nice features.

[Fröhn]

I don't see new stuff right now. My point being VIC II, being more specialized has less to exploit, and is largely exploited compared to ANTIC / GTIA. And that is absolutely because the code complexity needs to be higher to really squeeze ANTIC / GTIA and POKEY. But, here we are today, and that code is happening because people build on the work of other people.

The opposite is true. ANTIC/GTIA are pretty much straight forward with only few possibilities to exploit features while the VIC2 is the most exploited gfx chip that I know.

 

The potential exists on the chip to exploit more than 16 colors. It fetches more data per line, etc... but, it's just 16! That always seemed goofy to me. Say 32 colors were available! 16 for the color mapped screen, and some others for the sprites! That would really shine with all those sprites right? Damn right it would. Major bummer there just isn't the color space to show the damn chip off!

Looking through the games library I see a huge number of games with 4 color background. 4 colors looks always like 4 colors, no matter if they are picked from a 128 color palette or 16 color palette.

 

Frankly, I think that's why there are so many more great C= pixel artists. They like the smaller pixels, and placing those 16 colors very well is the only way to really trancend the 16 color limit. On Atari, it's about using more of the system colors, and a bit less resolution. Sometimes a lot less resolution.

The reason is that gfx people normally avoid technical stuff. They just want to set pixels, and if you just want to set pixels without knowing much of the technical background, the A8 is pretty much limited to 4 colors @ 160x200 resolution.

[Allas]

That's a point of view,.... other point of view I can said is:

- C64 waste a lot of more CPU when do scrolling on this game

 

doesnt matter until it can do it 50fps. it can be faster than that. and if we add sprites, c64 will still do 50fps, but a8 will not.

 

Off course, the Atari sprites is there?

Could be do it the MIM scrolling on C64 at 60fps too?

 

 

- C64 reduce his colors to 9 when mixing hi-res and med-res in this game

 

 

Instead Atari have:

 

14 colors

...

16 colors

...

14 color

 

you are comparing c64's built in mode's max 9 colors (without cpu help) with a8's charmode & changing colors with cpu on the screen.

without cpu its 5 vs 9 colors.

 

What the point of "built-mode",... eh?... oh? ok, I understand, because c64 can't gain more colors on screen with CPU, then you want to avoid Atari programmers use little CPU cycle to get more colors on screen.

 

 

- Have more cpu for triple parallax scrolling effect

 

a8 has more cpu for anything. btw while many c64 games are doing parallax, why a8 ones dont? only seen crownland so far.

 

 

That means you look only few games on Atari. Surely, there are dozen of Parallax scrolling games on Atari (including triple parallax). But that's not the point, the C64 users always want to win for quantity when the quality level fails. Only one example is enough (Crownland), as I take only MIM as the best example on a C64.

 

- Have more color even to simulate transparency effects

 

yes. more colors and you can do even trasparency with them if you want. c64's 16 color's can do that aswell.

 

Yes, but not as impressive and real.

 

- Real solid colors, not textures to give the appearance of more colors

 

c64 has real solid colors aswell. and c64 can more of them onscreen. not using dithering for make up for lack of color is a bad thing imho. dithering enhances pictures.

 

For sure, MIM with solid colors can't look as good as now.

 

And if there is in Crownland something you don't like, maybe it could fixedx if you had been on the team development. But that wasn't happen.

? same you could have done to c64.

 

I like MIM, i wan't to change anything there. But I think the Atari potential is better when you do a detailed job (as on MIM).

Edited April 24, 2009 by Allas

[frogstar_robot]

If you figure that the 64 sits right in the middle of the timeline between the A8 and the Amiga, you would expect something either very cheap and about as capable as an 800 or something as expensive as an 800 and much more capable. I think the 64 mostly emphasized price point, but also picked up some nice features.

 

And here is the explanation for why the C64 does some things better but doesn't utterly monkeystomp the A8 in all respects. A machine cheaper than an A8 that is better in just every way would have been possible by 82 but it would have missed that pricing sweet spot. In that time frame, capability wasn't the primary Atari weakness it was price. The 600/800XL rectified that by consolidating a lot of parts into a single board that wasn't overpopulated but that came later than it should have.

[atariksi]

"c64 CAN display 16color off the shelf" suggests that there is a certain resolution, where the colors of every pixel an be any of the 16.

 

 

"c64 CAN display 16color off the shelf" means what it means: c64 can display 16 color as is. its a fact.

 

None of the two computers can display their full palette in any resolution without restrictions. Who prefers what is subjective. Also depends on what to display.

"Wizzard of Wor" (my favorite when I was a child) benefits from the higher resolution. Using 256 color palette wouldn't add to the game.

"Alternate reality" gains a lot from the bigger palette, and the lower (less than 320x200) resolution doesn't really matter.

 

If you want to display a picture of something from the real life (a picture from the nature f. example), the 256 color palette gives more "realistic" result, sacrificing at the altar of the resolution.

On c64 the picture would be more detailed, but the colors wouldn't fit that much.

 

There's also a pixel motion problem with C64 modes. I mean graphics modes cannot be compared just for static displays, you should be able to move the graphical objects and the cell-based graphics poses a problem for C64. If some artist paints some flower and then wants to move it a a pixel here or there on his painting, he has to change his colors on C64. And if one is only interested in static displays then mine as well allow for CPU intervention...

[emkay]

Also, on scrolling shooters where C64 use a multiplexing sprites engine, there is not enough CPU to get the map color with scrolling. Those games reduce his background graphics to 4 colors. Less than 5 colors on Atari.

There are enough shooters which prove the opposite. In fact, shooters are the most easy genre when it comes to color RAM scrolling + sprite multiplexers.

 

Examples:

 

Katakis

Enforcer

SWIV

Slap Fight

Ikari Warrios

etc etc etc

 

 

Interesting.

 

Could you please explain, why h-scrollers look mostly superior, but v- scrollers look mostly like crap on the C64 ?

[Fröhn]

Could you please explain, why h-scrollers look mostly superior, but v- scrollers look mostly like crap on the C64 ?

Because there was the Shoot'Em Up Construction Kit for v-scrollers so there are many many v-scrollers done by amateurs. Also don't take that screen shots too serious. A lot of them are very old and done with very very wrong emulator palettes. And concerning SEUCK: All SEUCK games scroll color RAM too, so there's atleast 720 more shoot'em up games scrolling the colors too.

 

A few other V-scrollers with color RAM:

 

Terra Cresta

Marauder

[Allas]

Also, on scrolling shooters where C64 use a multiplexing sprites engine, there is not enough CPU to get the map color with scrolling. Those games reduce his background graphics to 4 colors. Less than 5 colors on Atari.

There are enough shooters which prove the opposite. In fact, shooters are the most easy genre when it comes to color RAM scrolling + sprite multiplexers.

 

Examples:

 

Katakis

Enforcer

SWIV

Slap Fight

Ikari Warrios

etc etc etc

 

 

Interesting.

 

Could you please explain, why h-scrollers look mostly superior, but v- scrollers look mostly like crap on the C64 ?

 

Because there are less cycles to waste on horizontal scroll games.

 

Finally, I prefer more the vertical scroll shooters.

[atariksi]

I don't see new stuff right now. My point being VIC II, being more specialized has less to exploit, and is largely exploited compared to ANTIC / GTIA. And that is absolutely because the code complexity needs to be higher to really squeeze ANTIC / GTIA and POKEY. But, here we are today, and that code is happening because people build on the work of other people.

The opposite is true. ANTIC/GTIA are pretty much straight forward with only few possibilities to exploit features while the VIC2 is the most exploited gfx chip that I know.

...

The real thing that matter is the color/graphics output not how much it's exploited. Atari's GTIA modes are impossible on C64 especially with all the OR effects, shading, overscan, scrolling, etc.

 

>Looking through the games library I see a huge number of games with 4 color background. 4 colors looks always like 4 colors, no matter if they are picked from a 128 color palette or 16 color palette.

 

If you're color blind or used to miscolored objects, 4 colors from 16 or 4 colors from 128 is the same. It's 4 colors/8scanlines even in default 160*200 mode w/o any sprite overlays or GPRIOR effects. Remember, your color RAM hogs up 40 DMA cycles (best case) every 8 scanlines so those 40 cycles is enough for a DLI to change colors.

 

>The reason is that gfx people normally avoid technical stuff. They just want to set pixels, and if you just want to set pixels without knowing much of the technical background, the A8 is pretty much limited to 4 colors @ 160x200 resolution.

 

You are only looking at one default mode.

[emkay]

Finally, I prefer more the vertical scroll shooters.

 

I like both.

 

But, as Shakespeare wrote " A Kingdom for a full A8 supporting scroller game"

Edited April 24, 2009 by emkay

[atariksi]

- C64 waste a lot of more CPU when do scrolling on this game

Better than wasting far more for software sprites.

 

- C64 reduce his colors to 9 when mixing hi-res and med-res in this game

9? If you are refering to character mode you get 11 colors. Ofcourse easily extended by sprites and raster colors.

 

- Have more cpu for triple parallax scrolling effect

Flimbo's Quest

 

You can only do one-- either you reduce char height to 1 and get more colors/scanline from color RAM or you do sprite/color replication and not reduce char height for those scanlines (no extra color RAM colors). On Atari you can also increase colors/scanline and use DLI to reuse colors:

 

10 PRINT "Atari BASIC program to show 23 colors/scanline in Graphics 10"

20 PRINT " By Krishna Software Inc."

30 GRAPHICS 10

40 POKE 704,16:POKE 705,32:POKE 706,64:POKE 707,128:POKE 623,16+32+128

50 POKE 708,4:POKE 709,8:POKE 710,2:POKE 711,13:POKE 712,255

60 POKE 53248,64:POKE 53249,80:POKE 53250,160:POKE 53251,176

70 POKE 53252,120:POKE 53253,124:POKE 53254,128:POKE 53255,132

80 FOR T=53256 TO 53265:POKE T,255:NEXT T

90 FOR T=0 TO 95:COLOR T/12:PLOT 0,T:DR. 79,T:NEXT T

100 FOR T=0 TO 79:COLOR T:PLOT T,96:DR. T,191:NEXT T

110 GOTO 100

 

As I stated GTIA modes are impossible for C64 even with the wrong colors.

[Allas]

Some curiosity... i can't remember nothing now, but... is there a double scrolling shooter (as PANTHER, BLUE MAX) with map color on C64?

[Artlover]

"c64 CAN display 16color off the shelf" suggests that there is a certain resolution, where the colors of every pixel can be any of the 16.

It would really be nice if once, just ONCE, an Atari'er could make an argument without resorting to making up their inturpertations of how they think something should be done just for the sake of claiming it doesn't do what it does because it's not how they think it should be.

 

Really, out of over 200 pages, I've yet to see one argument that wasn't based on some level of self serving double standard. Programming, sprites, sound, ergonomics. This is why comparing several monochome planes against a single multicolor sprite is actually a fair comparison to some people.

 

Are you guys really that dense, or do you guys really think we're that stupid?

[emkay]

Some curiosity... i can't remember nothing now, but... is there a double scrolling shooter (as PANTHER, BLUE MAX) with map color on C64?

 

You mean "isometric" scrollers like Zaxxon or Blue Max? Good question.

[Artlover]

Just re-read it, and yeah it sounds ugly. I'm a guy too, so it's NOT gonna work!

Well, lets not rule anything out now. Maybe if we both got drunk enough.

[atariksi]

"c64 CAN display 16color off the shelf" suggests that there is a certain resolution, where the colors of every pixel can be any of the 16.

It would really be nice if once, just ONCE, an Atari'er could make an argument without resorting to making up their inturpertations of how they think something should be done just for the sake of claiming it doesn't do what it does because it's not how they think it should be.

 

Really, out of over 200 pages, I've yet to see one argument that wasn't based on some level of self serving double standard. Programming, sprites, sound, ergonomics. This is why comparing several monochome planes against a single multicolor sprite is actually a fair comparison to some people.

 

Are you guys really that dense, or do you guys really think we're that stupid?

 

Why don't you first find the argument you want to debate? Generalizing blindly over 200 pages is stupid of you. There are many things stated in those pages including 256 colors is better than 16. You want to argue the same point again regarding planes without refuting the previously stated arguments? Ever play with bitplanes on Amiga?