Atari v Commodore

[potatohead]

Well, doing the same thing in return doesn't help much, right?

 

Declaring 40x20x16 is the same thing really. That's just as big of a mess as anything else. If I were a C64 person, I would just get pissed at that. And so it goes...

 

This is part of why I don't generally enjoy straight up number / spec comparisons. They don't fit the discussion because they lack the precision necessary to do so. And that's why I posted the sprite details earlier. Discussion was all over the place. Frankly, I couldn't tell what was what! That's true with colors and resolutions so often too.

 

Atari really is a 160 pixel, in the safe area, machine. I think that's an artifact of the TV's at the time, and the first pass at it happening in the VCS. C64 had the time advantage and put it to use with better color signals. Too bad the available colors wasn't more. Would have been a powerhouse!

 

160 pixels is a great retro resolution though. That, combined with the scrolling and large number of colors, makes for a lot of great displays! That is where the Atari is strong.

[Allas]

Right, but it's correctly a 320 mode with 4-bit cell coloring. If you took Atari's 320 mode and added a processor that could change a color register 40 times per line, you'd have something like what the 64 does. It's really a step beyond Atari's mode. Heck, I wish the Atari could put any two colors side-by-side in 320 mode.

 

This shows the power of the 64's text mode:

 

??

 

[potatohead]

Odd, I find myself on the C64 side for the moment!

 

It's not that we can't get great text screens on the Atari. We can. In fact, text sizes, colors, etc... can be setup in all kinds of ways. What takes some CPU and some thought is coloring them beyond just one color, and an additional intensity.

 

Full scan line changes are not that big of a deal. I think that's arguably almost non CPU assisted, once somebody lays out their code. Doesn't cost much.

 

Individual cells, with color freedom between adjacent cells is where the C64 really shines. Having a color map in RAM is one of my favorite features on the machine. It's sweet and quite handy. For text displays, score, etc... it's just right there, easy to use and available at nearly no cost.

 

What gets me about the C64 is the limited color selection! Lots of color freedom, but only a few colors! That's a major bummer, and an area where I clearly prefer the Atari. Even with the limits, those screens posted are nice. And they have that classic Atari look. Love it. Has texture in that the Atari machine can generate a lot of really different looking graphics options, and can do it on the fly, if need be. The Contiki screen is essentially how a C64 looks. Getting past that with different resolutions, or sets of colors is either CPU intensive (not as many resolution / mapping options), or impossible (color choices do not exist).

 

 

 

But, they don't have the color detail the C64 does. That's the C64 look, and it's different.

Edited April 13, 2009 by potatohead

[frogstar_robot]

 

I'll also note this recent addition to the A8's text resources.

 

http://www.atari8.co.uk/lastword/lastword.htm

 

I won't be surprised to see these methods show up A8 editors, terminals, and so-forth.

Edited April 13, 2009 by frogstar_robot

[Bryan]

With High-res on the Atari you can't just put multi-colored characters anywhere you want, and you can't have a blue on yellow or green on purple character. Also note that those Atari screens require CPU intervention (DLI's) for each color change. A full-color Contiki desktop like the one shown on the 64 is impossible.

 

Side note...

 

What's cool about Candy and Colleen (the 400 & 800) is how it expands on the concepts of Stella (the 2600). The 2600 was designed with only enough resources to display a single line so Antic basically adds the vertical dimension to the screen by fetching new line data for GTIA. Adding the Display List was much cooler than just generating identical lines until a counter expired. The Pokey/GTIA/Antic combo was Stella on steroids.

 

Candy was meant to be for gamers who would do minimal typing and for children who might make the keyboard messy. I wonder if Atari saw the 400 as the 2600's eventual successor.

 

Colleen was meant to be a full personal computer for hobby, home business, and gaming use. The hardware combined the strengths of a game console with a color 40-column display and flexible IO. I think a few bad business decisions greatly hampered its adoption, though.

Edited April 13, 2009 by Bryan

[atariksi]

Well, doing the same thing in return doesn't help much, right?

 

Declaring 40x20x16 is the same thing really. That's just as big of a mess as anything else. If I were a C64 person, I would just get pissed at that. And so it goes...

 

This is part of why I don't generally enjoy straight up number / spec comparisons. They don't fit the discussion because they lack the precision necessary to do so. And that's why I posted the sprite details earlier. Discussion was all over the place. Frankly, I couldn't tell what was what! That's true with colors and resolutions so often too.

 

Atari really is a 160 pixel, in the safe area, machine. I think that's an artifact of the TV's at the time, and the first pass at it happening in the VCS. C64 had the time advantage and put it to use with better color signals. Too bad the available colors wasn't more. Would have been a powerhouse!

 

160 pixels is a great retro resolution though. That, combined with the scrolling and large number of colors, makes for a lot of great displays! That is where the Atari is strong.

 

Colors aren't the only thing lacking though on c64 graphics end. More CPU speed also works great for graphics. REAL graphics modes also helps as cell-based plotting is not that good especially since ANTIC can make each scan line power of two. Then of course, as we already discussed the DL options for horiz/vert. scrolling, blank lines, mode switches, etc.

 

Don't know what you mean by 40*20*16. I was just stating the fact that 320*200*16 on C64 is not a true 16 color mode; great for text-based coloring like CGA low-res text mode, but not as a 16-color graphics mode. By the way, CGA also had a 16-color palette only and it also offered similar features as C64 like reducing char height to generate graphics modes like 160*200*16. You can show C64 graphics on CGA, but you can't show Atari graphics even on EGA w/o screwing up colors.

[atariksi]

And I only declare people bias based on what they stated not whimsically. You can read some of his comments he made earlier in this page like:

 

>>Atari can display gray-scale imagery better than C64.

 

>it cant. c64 will use more data to display a picture. in 5 colors and double the resolution.

 

Ah, In the case of 160 resolution b&w images Atari has the advantage.

 

C64:

 

1. Has 5 gray-shades from black to white.

2. Color restriction: Can display all 5 and can display 4 per cell.

 

Atari:

 

1. Has 8 shades from black to white in 160 mode.

2. Color restriction: Can display 5 out of 8 and can display 4 per cell in Antic mode 4.

3. The Atari can display full overscan.

 

So I agree.

 

Another thing to add is that imagery at 80*200*16 look better than many 160*200*4/5 shaded images. It's something I researched many many years ago. High color content (or shades) makes up for lack of resolution as far as human perception goes. You also see it when SVGA was introduced with 800*600*16, 1024*768*16 and 640*480*256. I bought the ATI card that allowed me to do 640*480*65536 rather than go for the higher resolutions. And the imagery looks much better on the lower resolution w/high color content. High color content is outdoes lack of resolution especially for pictures. Graphics are better with more shading and less resolution than with higher resolution and less shading. And given the same resolution, text digitized with 16-shades is more readable than text digitized with 4-shades. It increases perceived resolution to have more shades. I would say that TVs also get the aid of high color content to show imagery and text better.

 

So I don't accept his argument that just increasing resolution and dropping shades is going to help the imagery although even at 160*200, Atari has more shading.

[potatohead]

That was a typo. 40x24

 

Essentially, you were reducing it to the character cell resolution. That's not really fair either. Better to just say that it does 16 colors, it has that resolution, and you get any two you want in the 8x8 character cell. That is what the machine does, and the Atari does not.

 

Atari does other stuff, as is being shown on the thread.

[atariksi]

Odd, I find myself on the C64 side for the moment!

 

It's not that we can't get great text screens on the Atari. We can. In fact, text sizes, colors, etc... can be setup in all kinds of ways. What takes some CPU and some thought is coloring them beyond just one color, and an additional intensity.

 

Full scan line changes are not that big of a deal. I think that's arguably almost non CPU assisted, once somebody lays out their code. Doesn't cost much.

 

Individual cells, with color freedom between adjacent cells is where the C64 really shines. Having a color map in RAM is one of my favorite features on the machine. It's sweet and quite handy. For text displays, score, etc... it's just right there, easy to use and available at nearly no cost.

...

Just like their color RAM comes with their hardware, the vertically replicated sprites come free for Atari. Now here's where my discussion of multicolor sprite mode helps-- you can overlap 4X zoomed sprites and get three colors for two sprites and overlap the other pair as well. Enable the fifth player or use missile pairs in multicolor mode and there you also get a selection of 3 colors. Thus, you can get quite a few char cells colored with background/foreground colors w/simple DLI every 8 scanlines to set HPOSes and without using up a PMBase.

[atariksi]

That was a typo. 40x24

 

Essentially, you were reducing it to the character cell resolution. That's not really fair either. Better to just say that it does 16 colors, it has that resolution, and you get any two you want in the 8x8 character cell. That is what the machine does, and the Atari does not.

 

Atari does other stuff, as is being shown on the thread.

 

Well, that's what I stated it has 320*200 w/40*25 color RAM which is not the same as 320*200*16. Actually, I wouldn't mind if they state 320*200*16 as long as they are consistent (and not biased). That would mean if I generate a 320*200 atari screen and replicate sprites horizontally in GPRIOR 0 mode to generate colors and use DLIs to generate colors vertically, I also have a 320*200*128 screen even if cell size is 16*1 instead of 8*8 or 4*8 or whatever.

[potatohead]

I'm not going down this road.

 

At 320 pixels in color, the Atari does not prevail. It is quite possible to generate good screens and do so with lots of colors, but it's not the dead simple C64 method. I like this method. I think it's easy, and it's very useful. It is a C64 strength.

 

If we are going to argue superior, C64 gets this one hands down. Atari can play ball here, but isn't on top by any means. Go to 160, and the story is way different, and that's just a difference between the two.

 

And that's coming from somebody who believes the Atari 8bit machines are superior overall. They are, just not in this regard.

 

Trade this for that, etc... not productive, or useful to me.

[atariksi]

I'm not going down this road.

 

At 320 pixels in color, the Atari does not prevail. It is quite possible to generate good screens and do so with lots of colors, but it's not the dead simple C64 method. I like this method. I think it's easy, and it's very useful. It is a C64 strength.

 

If we are going to argue superior, C64 gets this one hands down. Atari can play ball here, but isn't on top by any means. Go to 160, and the story is way different, and that's just a difference between the two.

 

And that's coming from somebody who believes the Atari 8bit machines are superior overall. They are, just not in this regard.

 

Trade this for that, etc... not productive, or useful to me.

 

It is simpler to get color in 320 mode on C64, but it's not a true 320*200*16 nor is Atari only 320*200*2.

 

It's like with sprites-- yeah it's C64's strength but there are things you can do to expand Atari's capabilities. So although you have 320*200*2, GPRIOR mode 0 (+32) does allow you to do PF1 OR with P0/P1 and PF2 OR with P2/P3 and PF3 (player 5) OR with P2/P3. Without going into DLIs or kernels or horizontally split graphics modes, that's 15 more color choices you have to use horizontally. 12 more controllable color choices if you don't use PF1 at 1/320 positioning of thin lines since then color burst doesn't maintain it's color.

[Wolfram]

Atariski,

 

as you're changing the subjects lets go back to the original claims:

 

>Atari plays back entire 2 GB of multimedia CDROM data originally written for PC. You can't do any of the above on C64--

(>1) C64 won't let you boot from external source without writing some stuff like "LOAD "*",8,1".

right

 

>(2) Joystick port r/w on C64 has to be nibble mode and 1.79X slower even in nibble mode and much much slower if I use BYTE mode on Atari.

 

iirc, joystick is atleast 5 bits up,down,left,right,fire. so its wrong from the very start. secondly this just shows that the atari has no other 8 bit I/O port than the c64 if it has to use the joyport for that. while c64 has both joy and other 8 bit ports. As any sane people will use 8 bit I/O on the c64 and not the joyport its an unfair comparison. doesnt comply with real life situations.

 

(3) OS on C64 too restricted to buffer up keys; in fact keyboard interferes with joystick data i/o.

 

wrong, c64 OS does buffer up keys. second part is right. but again in real life people will not use joyport for I/O as there's a better solution. this comparison makes no sense.

 

(4) Can't play back multifreq audio DAC data on C64

 

wrong, it can.

 

(5) Can't display gray scale images what to speak of enhanced modes like ANTIC K

 

wrong. it can display gray scale images.

 

(6) Even if I want to show colored images and play single channel DAC audio, C64 CPU is too slow to be processing data buffering from PC end at reasonable rate.

 

wrong. there are examples where the c64 does that.

[Wolfram]

Please.. the Vic was an utter failure in the US. The main market at the time.

Yeps a real failure on the main market. With 18 million sold units... And with C128 selling another 4 million. May I mention that the entire A8 line sold just about 4 million too?

Vic 20 a mostly non starter, Not C64, what can I say, the public often is not too bright.

Sorry I don't know commonsore terminology. To me a vic means vic20.

 

Your original statement was that the VIC was an utter market failure in the US. Sorry, but you got that wrong. VIC20 was the first computer to ever sell 1 million units. It was absolutely not a technical breakthrough, but more people could afford it than Ataris. If I remember right from the C= Book "on the Edge" VIC20 was originally a few weeks own hobby project of Bob Yannes ( SID designer). He just wanted to build a computer around the already existing but unused VIC-I gfx chip for fun. But when he showed it to one of his bosses, the machine got eventually made it to be seen by Jack Tramiel who instantly ordered it to be manufactured

 

Don't follow your logic. Just because it sold 1 million does not mean it was NOT a failure. You should see how much crap people sell out there that breaks down after a few weeks or a few months. Jack Tramiel ordered many things to be manufactured that were inferior to current technology in the market. Quantity of sales does not make a machine superior nor does more software titles for a particular machine make that machine superior.

 

Even if no game was ever written for Atari that used the GTIA modes, GPRIOR effects, etc., I would still say Atari is superior since I know what it is capable of from the hardware perspective. Of course, for people who are not into technical stuff, it's good to have demos/games available that use the hardware optimally.

 

The original statement was that the VIC20 was an utter market failure in the US. That statement is wrong. VIC20 was the first computer to ever sell 1 million units. It's not a Hardware comparison.

 

Yeah but I am arguing you can market anything and the system be a piece of crap regardless of whether you call it a "success" or "failure" by quantity.

 

Wrong. you said "Don't follow your logic. Just because it sold 1 million does not mean it was NOT a failure. " it was not a market failure. it was the first computer to ever sell 1 million units.

[Wolfram]

Please.. the Vic was an utter failure in the US. The main market at the time.

Yeps a real failure on the main market. With 18 million sold units... And with C128 selling another 4 million. May I mention that the entire A8 line sold just about 4 million too?

Vic 20 a mostly non starter, Not C64, what can I say, the public often is not too bright.

Sorry I don't know commonsore terminology. To me a vic means vic20.

 

Your original statement was that the VIC was an utter market failure in the US. Sorry, but you got that wrong. VIC20 was the first computer to ever sell 1 million units. It was absolutely not a technical breakthrough, but more people could afford it than Ataris. If I remember right from the C= Book "on the Edge" VIC20 was originally a few weeks own hobby project of Bob Yannes ( SID designer). He just wanted to build a computer around the already existing but unused VIC-I gfx chip for fun. But when he showed it to one of his bosses, the machine got eventually made it to be seen by Jack Tramiel who instantly ordered it to be manufactured

Sorry, you are wrong, it never got market penetration and most who bought it found they could not do anything much with it and there was little to no software and what little there was was very hard to find as nobody carried it. With Atari you could go lots of places like Sears,Service Merchandise, Burdines,Lazarus and most major retailers. Also I still hate SID sounds, really grates on my nerves.

 

Sorry, you are wrong. The first computer to ever sell 1 million units had market penetration, and is/was a market success.

[Wolfram]

nonstandard ram expansions

 

You're really very funny with this. One question: if 320K is a "nonstandard" RAM expansion, then which one is "standard"? 1064?

 

RAM expansions that needs soldiering are nonstandard. If you had to soldier your PC to get 2gigs ram instead of 1, would you call that a standard expansion?

[Wolfram]

Also in real life game situations G2F techniques are useless. Just like you cant use C64's most advanced cpu driven non interlaced 320x200x16 formats for games, neither can you use G2F format on Atari. Not even with a higher clocked cpu.

 

Not quite useless.

 

Consider a situation on both machines where 20 character lines use 100% of the CPU for G2F, iFLI, whatever.

That's 160 of 312 scanlines on PAL. Consider that we have the remaining 40 just normal text type stuff for score, status, whatever.

 

C-64, leaves you about 9,600 cycles free considering 200 lost for 5x40 character fetches, compared to the normal of ~ 19,280.

 

Atari, leaves you about 15,500 cycles free considering 1,800 lost for 5x40 character fetches and 40x40 charmap fetches, compared to the normal of ~ 26896.

 

And, you're not totally wasting the kernal section of the screen... with some creative programming you can put the spare cycles to good use doing housekeeping stuff that you might normally do during VBlank.

 

G2F modes needs atleast an AI level game kernel to make objects move around and have more than (non rainbow style) 5 colors. 9600 or 15500 cycles, doesnt matter, not possible to use it in real life for a real game. (scrolling background sprites, bullets, etc all moving around, or even make it a 3d game)

[Wolfram]

Best example for worse Iso 3D is the last ninja series.

 

the last ninja series are the best ever selling games of the c64, and in fact are amongst the best c64 games. you really shouldnt go there. With your kind of argumentation I could easily pull out the stunt that rescue on fractalus has worse 3d than c64. C64 has many many 3d games which has features unseen in ROF.

 

So let's just play it fair.

 

Fair is that the Last Ninja series were playable crap. People only liked them, because the C64 shows colours and has nice Sid tunes in it.

 

"Many 3D" ... well, Quality <> Quantity. There is really no 3D game on the C64 worth a word to write, except to mention that they were slow, ugly, and playable crap, if you're not C64 biased.

OK, some rastertrick games like Trailblazer were fast. But that's a different story.

Some games like Head over Heels use programming tricks like interleaved object movement, where on the A8 the objects move at the same time.

and so on...

 

Fair is that the Last Ninja series sold hundredthousands, people wouldnt have bought it if they were thinking it's crap. Your opinion vs 100 000s of people weighs very little.

 

C64 has many flight sim games with filled 3d, 6 degree of freedom movement, different camera views, missions, various weapons to equipp

your plane with, take off/landing, etc etc. People loved playing them. If you dont like them it doesnt matte. Its your lonely biased oppinion (without not even playing those games let alone knowing about them) vs ten thousands of people again.

[Wolfram]

...

Space Harrier indeed proves that in real life game situations a8 needs to interlace the colors to get more than 4 on the screen. How do you think would it display 128 ?

 

That's biggest bullcrap I have ever heard on this thread. You claim you have 320*200*16 mode which is complete bullcrap. Color RAM is only 40*25 so how do you get 320*200*16 even with overlays. Atari has GTIA modes and it has overlays as well. Atari can do a lot more in it's DLI with color changes than you can with your raster interrupts. I have yet to see 160*200*16 on C64.

 

sorry I cant state every time the correct c64 gfx restrictions, it would take like 3 sentences. Fact is: c64 can do a lot more gfxwise without any cpu intervention, than atari. just to get more than 5 colors onscreen in a 160 (not talk about 320) mode, you need the help of the cpu. while the c64 cpu can sit idle and show more colors in most of the cases (in games!) than atari with cpu assistance. thats clearly an inferior gfx chip design.

[Wolfram]

Thanks to some people's confusion and trying to change the subject, I am reposting the original message. It's correct as it stands. To read a BYTE from C64 joystick port, you have to read a nibble, do 4 rotates and AND/OR in next nibble. OS relies on timer to read it's keyboard and if you are doing real-time joystick input, you have to shut-down the keyboard limiting interactivity; timers also need to be shut-down sometimes to do real-time transfers so it's restrictive. C64 can't playback multifreq DAC data (as far as hardware support goes) at 21Khz or even lower rates what to speak of doing it in software. If you ran the demo previously posted, you know gray-scale mode is graphics 9 mode.

 

you could even try to read in a byte from the lightpen on the c64 if you want to make it pale in comparison. fact is c64 has its dedicated 8 bit I/O and dedicated joystick port. while it seems you can only use the joyport to read 8 bits on atari. c64 is simply more feature rich, and you take this fact to turn it down. very creative I have to admit.

[Wolfram]

I was arguing labeling it a 16 color mode where as atari's is still considered a 2-color mode. He specifically mentioned CPU driven so obviously they are using CPU time as well (and perhaps sprites). Technically, 320*200*16 is 32Kbytes of RAM. I did not say I can theoretically simulate their mode. He is the one who argued he can simulate the DACs. And by the way, you can induce some colors horizontally with GPRIOR mode 0 w/o incurring CPU cycles or RAM.

 

those modes are too complicated to write them down in detail each time mentioned. they use 8x2 color attribute cells, and on top of them a 160x sprite layer with additional 3 colors, or it can be a 320x sprite layer, with changing sprite colors for each sprite column. This is what comes out of the fact that the VICII can be made to read more then twice as much data per scanline as A8 gfx chip does. Also this costs the CPU to run at 1.0 mhz only on c64.

[potatohead]

Wolfram, on some Atari models, there are 4 game ports. They work perfectly for I/O as well as for game controllers.

 

If somebody wants to do I/O, and provide game controllers on Atari machines, they can, and they can do it just like the C64 does with it's dedicated I/O port. All of the Atari game / I/O ports (because that is what they are, as Atari itself used them this way) work the same way, leaving the purpose up to the user / developer. This is the classic Atari approach where the hardware was not dedicated in most cases. Flexible hardware design delivers lots of options for the developer / user.

 

So then, if somebody wants to, they get 16 I/O's, latched or not, mind you, or they get a lot of game controllers, up to including 8 paddles, with hardware assist for reading them. The device used for the interface clearly provides for bi-directional, latched communication with the machine, so that's what it delivers.

 

This "we have an I/O port for that" business really doesn't count for much.

 

On the matter of grey scales, this comes down to a matter of taste. Given all the display options on Atari, being able to display greys isn't the same as having 16 of them. Each grey scale matters. Machines where there are 4, 5, or 3 intensities look a lot more coarse than those with 8, 16, 32. The strength of the C64 lies in it's 320 pixel color resolution. It shows detail well. That is a good strength.

 

Those intensities being available across all the hues on Atari really makes a difference in the texture and overall variety of screen displays possible. This isn't a strength of the C64.

 

As for RAM, bring it on! The more we have on the 8bitters, and the easier it is for people to do it, the better the machines are. I absolutely refuse to consider anything less. Many active Atari users and developers are pushing RAM onto the machines. It can be done on a cart, soldered into a machine, added to the PBI, or any combination. All good. We can get the most out of the machines that way. Why not? It's not all that hard, and getting easier with each pass.

 

If I were you, I would add some RAM to the C64

 

I'm going to get a 130XE, and add RAM and the stereo POKEY, just to play YOOMP! I didn't have such a goal earlier, but with productions like that, why not? (and I don't think the extra RAM is needed for that title, but why not, since the stereo POKEY upgrade is getting done, might as well add the RAM.)

 

This is happening with retro machines in general. This evening, I just finished up modding my VCS for newer video display options. People are building carts that will do 64K and above. The old 400 is next, so I can enjoy titles on that one on newer displays. Companies started this back in the day, and the trend has continued. The easier it is, the more people do it, and we all game on.

 

...or be a purist, and that's cool too.

[Rybags]

the VICII can be made to read more then twice as much data per scanline as A8 gfx chip does.

 

How?

 

80 accesses for screeen/charmap, 20 bytes of colour nybbles, 8 bytes sprite pointers, 24 bytes sprite data = 132 btyes

 

Atari maximum = 96 accesses for screen/charmap, 5 bytes PMG data, 3 bytes Display List = 104 bytes

 

And, in that worst case scenario, the Atari still has 9 cycles free for the CPU.

Edited April 13, 2009 by Rybags

[Wolfram]

Colors aren't the only thing lacking though on c64 graphics end. More CPU speed also works great for graphics. REAL graphics modes also helps as cell-based plotting is not that good especially since ANTIC can make each scan line power of two. Then of course, as we already discussed the DL options for horiz/vert. scrolling, blank lines, mode switches, etc.

 

Don't know what you mean by 40*20*16. I was just stating the fact that 320*200*16 on C64 is not a true 16 color mode; great for text-based coloring like CGA low-res text mode, but not as a 16-color graphics mode. By the way, CGA also had a 16-color palette only and it also offered similar features as C64 like reducing char height to generate graphics modes like 160*200*16. You can show C64 graphics on CGA, but you can't show Atari graphics even on EGA w/o screwing up colors.

 

in fact lack of colors are present on a8. 128 colors makes not much sense when you need to be in 2009 and use a pc (g2f) to display more then 4-5 of them in a sensefull way on a picture. Its a bad design compromise. c64 compromises cpu speed and color palette for graphics that can display 16 colors with almost no effort. A8:you have cpu speed and many colors, which you can hardly display. urgh. give me the machine which can display its palette without having to sweat and swear and code the whole display, and which can display more colors than the other which has a bigger palette. no thank you. I dont need many colors when I cant use them.

 

also cell based bitmap modes are real graphics modes. why wouldnt they be ? you can use them. they are there. they display more colors than a8's "real" modes.

 

and by the way the VICII when it came out was the best GFX chip on the market. Sitting in a computer which was amongst the cheapest models of the time. The SID was the best sound chip aswell. There's no wonder the c64 was a huge success.

[potatohead]

...inferior chip design.

 

Hardly. That's been covered here often.

 

With little to no CPU, C64 has some nice options. These days though, it IS about the CPU and what can be done with it, and the display system. Atari has edge in many areas here. Sorry. Go read up-thread.

 

And building a display for the game is actually a plus. Sure it's harder. But the results are often very good. I prefer games where this is done because the visuals and game play are often tightly locked together. It's an Atari thing, starting with the VCS.

Edited April 13, 2009 by potatohead