Atari v Commodore

[Bryan]

I don't know about you, but I only see computer power in the 2nd picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Barnacle boy]

Yeah I guess they went with the narrower screen (ie: narrower than most c64 vertical shmups) to try to make the orientation a little more like the arcade original.

If so, why did they reduce even the heidth of the screen ?

It's always the same fact. The screen is reduced by some hw limitations. 114x192 10 colours...

Are you suggesting that going with a narrower play area wasn't an attempt to make the orientation a little more like the arcade version? Then why would they go to all the trouble of making it narrower and having to use sprites for the score display? Why not just make it the normal width?

 

The playscreen height is 192 pixels, or 24 chars high. (Tiger Attack's play-screen height is less by the way - 185px). How much taller do you think the screen could or should be?

 

Well, Atari gets the edge in using less CPU power in scrolling...

And I bet when Joe Gamer is sitting there playing Tiger Attack he's just thrilled to bits about that.

Edited April 26, 2009 by Barnacle boy

[+wood_jl]

I think this should settle things once and for all.

 

 

For any additional doubt:

 

So now we're comparing the cheapened cost reduced Atari, the 65XE, that came out 3 years later to the C64.

 

One of my "favorite" quotes...

 

"Flight Simulator needs computer power. Only the XE has it". Hahahahahahaha

The fact that it came out 3 years later is irrelevant, as it is just a cheapened 800XL that brings nothing to the table, other than cheapness and a different look. Call it the counterpart to the 64C. I think they were comparing the XE to video game systems more directly than they were the C64 in that ad. But yes, these ads are TERRIBLE. Ads were few and far between under the Tramiels, and AWFUL when there was one.

 

C64

 

Atari

 

Hahahahahahaha.

This is why I can't believe how similar these machines are overall. Those look much the same, to me.

[Allas]

I think this should settle things once and for all.

 

 

For any additional doubt:

 

So now we're comparing the cheapened cost reduced Atari, the 65XE, that came out 3 years later to the C64.

 

One of my "favorite" quotes...

 

"Flight Simulator needs computer power. Only the XE has it". Hahahahahahaha

 

C64

 

Atari

 

Hahahahahahaha.

 

You did trick! That's not the real screen of Atari Flight simulator. (in this case you need a real machine).

Other way, the Atari version works very fine with fps.

Edited April 26, 2009 by Allas

[Barnacle boy]

You did trick! That's not the real screen of Atari Flight simulator. (in this case you need a real machine).

Is that because it relies artifacting on the instrument panel, or some other reason? Just curious, cos it sure looks like the instrument panel was designed with artifacting in mind.

[potatohead]

That is exactly the case.

 

On a composite NTSC display, colors would be seen in the panel.

 

They could have used sprites down there too.

[emkay]

Other way, the Atari version works very fine with fps.

 

Don't forget the C64 rules!

 

C64 can do everything, it doesn't matter if it is slower than the A8.

If the A8 is slower than the C64, it cannot do what the C64 can do.

 

How could you ...

[emkay]

Then why would they go to all the trouble of making it narrower and having to use sprites for the score display? Why not just make it the normal width?

 

A near guess. It has to do with the sidescrolling mechanism.

 

The playscreen height is 192 pixels, or 24 chars high. (Tiger Attack's play-screen height is less by the way - 185px). How much taller do you think the screen could or should be?

 

That's one fault of Tiger Attack. It easily could use 240 scanlines for the gamescreen, because more than 50% of the ATARI is sleeping when running this game. And that's no guess.

[Barnacle boy]

Then why would they go to all the trouble of making it narrower and having to use sprites for the score display? Why not just make it the normal width?

A near guess. It has to do with the sidescrolling mechanism.

Can you clarify that please? Are you saying you think they went with the narrower screen because of the sidescrolling?

[emkay]

Can you clarify that please? Are you saying you think they went with the narrower screen because of the sidescrolling?

It's my guesture / an assumption.

Probably to make things easier when scrolling and using the colour RAM. Because the Colour RAM is fixed to 40 bytes per scanline, and it could save CPU time, not always to refill the colour RAM.

Whatever...

[Wolfram]

I think this should settle things once and for all.

 

 

two bold lies there:

 

a8 has no better sound&gfx.

 

then forgetting to mention c64 has more & better games....

 

marketing at its best....

Edited April 26, 2009 by Wolfram

[Barnacle boy]

Can you clarify that please? Are you saying you think they went with the narrower screen because of the sidescrolling?

It's my guesture / an assumption.

Probably to make things easier when scrolling and using the colour RAM. Because the Colour RAM is fixed to 40 bytes per scanline, and it could save CPU time, not always to refill the colour RAM.

Whatever...

Yeah, fair point. Extra 10 chars width, times 25 rows, equals another 250 map chars and colour map cells to shift around over the course of 8 frames (assuming the colour map isn't broken down into larger tiles). Certainly the narrower screen means less work in that respect, though that would have to be weighed against the cost of doing the whole score display/playfield right border mask out of expanded sprites as they've had to do here.

 

edit: crossed out error. would have to be shifted in less than 8 frames in certain circumstances.

Edited April 26, 2009 by Barnacle boy

[Wolfram]

i played flying shark very often but do not like Tiger Attack due to the mono sprites...

 

These screenies highlight something I've always liked about Atari.

 

The sprites! When used in their most potent form, they are simple, single colored things. If a lot of texture exists in the background, and that means detail and color, having a TOTALLY DIFFERENT set of colors and LUMAS to work with, really makes the active game elements stand out.

 

[emkay]

two bold lies there:

 

a8 has no better sound&gfx.

 

 

Yes. Two bold lies in one sentence.

[frenchman]

I think this should settle things once and for all.

 

 

two bold lies there:

to mention c64 has more & better games....

 

Truly spoken.

[atariksi]

oh, really??? freaking cool... it was a dream except it was not ATR compatibel...

 

To be honest, I'm still not very content with the ATR format and plan to specify a better one for

my upcoming 'SIO2WinCE' (working title). I've got a neat Jornada 680 - the series is equiped with a

serial port, a standard SIO2PC cable works without problems - which already performs quite well

with my test app. These devices are very cheap to get 'on' the 'biggest recycling centre in the world'

and thanks to WinCE start without booting time (this was also an argument in this thread I remember).

Additionally the display capabilities are much better than many other 'small' (SD-Card-) SIO solutions .

 

All the years I thought that it would be nice to have a disk file-format with more informations about the

content - like ID3 for MP3 files. Tags like 'creator' or 'screen shot' came to my mind but also such

necessary things like 'should be booted with option/basic off' or 'is high speed SIO compatible' : All

this annoying settings which prevent to load e.g. a game in an emulator straight away...

 

Anyhow, thank you for your feedback. Nice, that the DJ made sense...

 

CU

Irgendwer

 

Does it let you run ST software through RS232 port? At least those that are file based programs? File transfers is fine from Atari 8-bit, but my Atari 520ST disk drive is basically dead (only reads track 0).

 

If it wasn't the weird floppy port, I probabaly would have hacked the floppy interface to boot from PC...

[atariksi]

Other way, the Atari version works very fine with fps.

 

Don't forget the C64 rules!

 

C64 can do everything, it doesn't matter if it is slower than the A8.

If the A8 is slower than the C64, it cannot do what the C64 can do.

 

How could you ...

 

Yeah, Apple would win since it has a faster drive and uses more CPU for scrolling.

[atariksi]

...

This is why I can't believe how similar these machines are overall. Those look much the same, to me.

 

Well, it was Commodore's intent to try to outdo Atari although they didn't even come close to even tieing it. Perhaps they never saw the GTIA modes which got phase shifted from the release of the machines, didn't think timers based on integer divisor of color clock mattered, didn't think 4 multifreq DACs at full throttle made much difference with 16K RAM, were color blind regarding palette size making any difference, or thought that CPU speed difference can be made up by having wider sprites.

[thorfdbg]

One of my "favorite" quotes...

 

"Flight Simulator needs computer power. Only the XE has it". Hahahahahahaha

 

C64

 

Atari

 

Hahahahahahaha.

At least, turn on artifacting when comparing games that make use of it:

 

 

 

Then, a "proper version" of it would also be helpful. Apparently, the guys from sublogic had no real clue about the machine, but yes, you can get more colors as seen in the picture.

 

Anyhow. This discussion is more and more anoying, and for me it looks like we have a bunch of big kids here...

 

For one thing, I think it cannot be denied that the playfield graphics subsystem of the Ataris was probably a couple of years ahead of the single-screen single-mode system of the C64. And it can neither be denied that the C64 sprite system is considerably more useful and more advanced than the simple GTIA player-missle graphics on the C64.

For the color system, the Ataris had much more to offer, no doubt about it, but for games the 16 colors of the C64 were good enough for the time. Quite the reverse for audio: While the SID of the C64 was undoubtfully ahead of the POKEY in the A8 (and arguing about this is again simply stupid), despite its lack of one voice, the Atari POKEY was simply good enough for most games and creating game sound.

 

The main problem of the Atari graphics is the legacy GTIA sprite system (more or less the TIA) and the lack of a second "color RAM". The main problem of the C64 is the lack of flexibility in its graphics system resp. its pretty unorthogonal design.

 

If you wanted to learn programming, the Atari Basic wasn't great due to its strange string support, though you could do graphics right away. The C64 basic had a complete BASIC support, but nothing beyond that. Doing anything more interesting than INPUT and PRINT required you to POKE around. Graphics in BASIC is awful on the C64, and using the utterly unorthogonal memory layout doesn't make it easier.

 

There is no clear winner - how could? Neither machine did it "all right". There are too many people here taking a position that is simply too emotional.

 

So long,

 

Thomas

[Wolfram]

I did say the same earlier in the thread that Atari is overall superior hardware after doing many hardware comparisons (pages 1..114). I don't mind repeating, but you have not shown me that we are having a two-way conversation.

 

yeah, lets have a look at 'some' c64 games the superior a8 hw wouldnt be able to pull off at better quality

 

[Wolfram]

The main problem of the Atari graphics is the legacy GTIA sprite system (more or less the TIA) and the lack of a second "color RAM". The main problem of the C64 is the lack of flexibility in its graphics system resp. its pretty unorthogonal design.

 

c64's fixed modes offered just what games needed. A8 gfx system has many things games dont need, but lack a lot of things games would need.

[atariksi]

One of my "favorite" quotes...

 

"Flight Simulator needs computer power. Only the XE has it". Hahahahahahaha

 

C64

 

Atari

 

Hahahahahahaha.

At least, turn on artifacting when comparing games that make use of it:

 

 

 

Then, a "proper version" of it would also be helpful. Apparently, the guys from sublogic had no real clue about the machine, but yes, you can get more colors as seen in the picture.

 

Anyhow. This discussion is more and more anoying, and for me it looks like we have a bunch of big kids here...

 

For one thing, I think it cannot be denied that the playfield graphics subsystem of the Ataris was probably a couple of years ahead of the single-screen single-mode system of the C64. And it can neither be denied that the C64 sprite system is considerably more useful and more advanced than the simple GTIA player-missle graphics on the C64.

For the color system, the Ataris had much more to offer, no doubt about it, but for games the 16 colors of the C64 were good enough for the time. Quite the reverse for audio: While the SID of the C64 was undoubtfully ahead of the POKEY in the A8 (and arguing about this is again simply stupid), despite its lack of one voice, the Atari POKEY was simply good enough for most games and creating game sound.

 

The main problem of the Atari graphics is the legacy GTIA sprite system (more or less the TIA) and the lack of a second "color RAM". The main problem of the C64 is the lack of flexibility in its graphics system resp. its pretty unorthogonal design.

 

If you wanted to learn programming, the Atari Basic wasn't great due to its strange string support, though you could do graphics right away. The C64 basic had a complete BASIC support, but nothing beyond that. Doing anything more interesting than INPUT and PRINT required you to POKE around. Graphics in BASIC is awful on the C64, and using the utterly unorthogonal memory layout doesn't make it easier.

 

There is no clear winner - how could? Neither machine did it "all right". There are too many people here taking a position that is simply too emotional.

 

So long,

 

Thomas

 

There is a clear winner if you continue analyzing hardware aspects and not mix in some specific software (Atari BASIC) as other software can be written. You forgot about CPU speed, bootable system, timers, i/o speed, display list-based graphics modes/scrolling/mixing text/replication, overscan/narrow, etc. Based on an analysis of a few features, it would be hard to see a clear winner. Now the ability to combine all these features together in various combinations gives a greater flexible/more powerful system for Atari.

[Marius]

@wolfram

 

The screens you show, do look really fabulous, but I could show you as much as fabulous screenshots as you did.

 

I wished a few of these popular titles would have been released for atari; but for other reasons (not the power of the system!) these titles were not released for atari 8bit.

 

You are not right the atari would not be able to do these titles.

[Wolfram]

...

This is why I can't believe how similar these machines are overall. Those look much the same, to me.

 

Well, it was Commodore's intent to try to outdo Atari although they didn't even come close to even tieing it.

 

indeed, it wasnt close. atari went almost bankrupt, while C= with the c64 became a multi billion dollar company.

 

Perhaps they never saw the GTIA modes which got phase shifted from the release of the machines, didn't think timers based on integer divisor of color clock mattered, didn't think 4 multifreq DACs at full throttle made much difference with 16K RAM, were color blind regarding palette size making any difference, or thought that CPU speed difference can be made up by having wider sprites.

 

- gtia modes except the 4 pixel useless ones (for real things, games, applications, other than showing off some gfx) , are roughly a subset of c64 modes.

- timers are tied to the "color clock" on c64 aswell

- 4 multifreq DAC's are less useful than a better synth chip, its not useful for a game or some other app to waste most of the cpu on doing sounds.

- smaller palette helps bring more colors on the screen on 8bit you can store 2x 4bit color.

- CPU speed difference IS made u by having bigger sprites. thats the biggest advantage of the c64 gfx system. thats why a8 turrican runs on a small screen at 50fps even with only a few sprites.

[Wolfram]

@wolfram

 

The screens you show, do look really fabulous, but I could show you as much as fabulous screenshots as you did.

 

I wished a few of these popular titles would have been released for atari; but for other reasons (not the power of the system!) these titles were not released for atari 8bit.

 

You are not right the atari would not be able to do these titles.

 

straw man argument.

 

I said a8 couldnt make them at same/better quality.