Atari v Commodore

[emkay]

Let's see some more pencils!

 

yeah 32 colours. Sadly, this cannot be done in G2F.

But, could you make the rubbers more rubber-red

The pencil peaks could be darken with a small addtitional DLI

[jvas]

Let's see some more pencils!

 

Very nice! Would you share us the details how you could achieve this?

[Allas]

Good work Mapa, looks very colorful.

 

Well, Archon on C64 is not like the Atari version, but it a reasonable porting. Really, I don't think there is a game that can be do absolutely only on a machine. Every piece of software, can be enhanced on certain areas according to the specs of the machine.

 

Enforcer II is a production created for a C64, and is well brained for his features. It's a good game, but I don't see why it couldn't be ported on Atari. Most of the details are tricks well known. Despite some technical difficulties on emulate sprite, rest of game was easy to emulate and can be enhanced with more colors than the C64 version. Personally I think C64 did a bad choice to work this game on hi-res because loose quality, maybe is good to see a game shooter at hi-res on a c64, but looks like a spectrum shooter. It could be valid because there are not many shooters at high res on C64, but I think it could be done with better aspect on mid-res.

 

Maybe someone could say what is the spectacular thing on enforcer that did the difference with others C64 shooters. The multiple parallax? the giant rock moving? the overall hi-res graphics?

[Bryan]

We could have a really intelligent conversation in here if a few people could stop getting their feathers so ruffled every time someone praises the other machine. How about we make our points from a technical and not emotional standpoint.

 

MaPa's pencil picture is exactly to the point. Someone asks if it can be done, and someone provides the answer and no one has to scream wrong! or bias! or i like to make sweet, sweet love to my compy by the fire!.

[MaPa]

Let's see some more pencils!

 

yeah 32 colours. Sadly, this cannot be done in G2F.

But, could you make the rubbers more rubber-red

The pencil peaks could be darken with a small addtitional DLI

 

Sure, maybe I'll make some better version just for fun. The peaks was made by me and I'm no graphician, su just quick "hack" to draw them. I also made the body (pretty easy) but the rest (rubber end) was made by PG. If he gives me somed gfx data, the peaks will be better. See attached screenshot, better rubber now?

 

Let's see some more pencils!

 

Very nice! Would you share us the details how you could achieve this?

 

GPRIOR 0, mixing PMG and playefield colors and PMG multiplexing.

pencils.zip

Edited April 29, 2009 by MaPa

[Bryan]

I'd like to see a rounded brownish tip rather than the high-res gray one.

[Barnacle boy]

@MaPa: Very nice indeed...

 

...but someone has stolen one of your pencils! Well, you can borrow some of mine if you like.

 

It's OK... I have plenty!

 

 

Still standard multi-colour. If I was doing this seriously, I'd consider switching to FLI mode to let me handle some of those shadows with greater flexibility.

[Rybags]

No worries, you do FLI... we'll do TIP for 256 colours - Game Over in that case.

 

The problem you have in any case is that you don't have available 3 shades of enough distinctly different colours.

 

 

Back to the Atari one. I reckon more colours could be crammed in.

 

Use some VScrol tricks so that the pencil body is repeated for most of the screen. So, DMA is only done once, and repeats.

That frees up cycles and also makes the timing constant.

 

I reckon you might squeeze in a few more colour bars with the extra time.

[Barnacle boy]

No worries, you do FLI... we'll do TIP for 256 colours - Game Over in that case.

 

But isn't TIP an interlaced mode? If we were going down that route, I could always go for iFLI and so drastically increase the perceived number of colours. Even just interlaced MC mode probably would be enough.

[Rybags]

Actually, APAC would do a better job.

 

And, these modes shouldn't be called "interlaced" - they aren't. "Interleaved" would be a more correct description.

 

Atari can do interlace, but it's no way related to TIP, APAC or iFLI.

[oky2000]

Good work Mapa, looks very colorful.

 

Well, Archon on C64 is not like the Atari version, but it a reasonable porting. Really, I don't think there is a game that can be do absolutely only on a machine. Every piece of software, can be enhanced on certain areas according to the specs of the machine.

 

Enforcer II is a production created for a C64, and is well brained for his features. It's a good game, but I don't see why it couldn't be ported on Atari. Most of the details are tricks well known. Despite some technical difficulties on emulate sprite, rest of game was easy to emulate and can be enhanced with more colors than the C64 version. Personally I think C64 did a bad choice to work this game on hi-res because loose quality, maybe is good to see a game shooter at hi-res on a c64, but looks like a spectrum shooter. It could be valid because there are not many shooters at high res on C64, but I think it could be done with better aspect on mid-res.

 

Maybe someone could say what is the spectacular thing on enforcer that did the difference with others C64 shooters. The multiple parallax? the giant rock moving? the overall hi-res graphics?

 

Well there is three levels of overlaid full screen parallax scrolling with transparent sections, and the lowest level has about 10 levels of single plane horizontal variable scroll. And on top of that there is the fact there is more than a whole screen worth of moving objects all the time via multiplexing to the maximum and it's all in 16 colours full screen with mixed hires and multicolour (320h and 160h) graphics. Those are what makes it a stunning piece of coding for the C64 that's what I say, because it's doing things that really shouldn't be possible. The point is you only stretch any machine by trying to program a level or two above like Salamander arcade conversion or Amiga/Arcade conversion of Buggy Boy etc Mayhem trying to copy Sonic and Crownland trying to copy Super Mario Brothers. Talking about Archon/Donkey Kong/Pacman etc is a complete waste of time unless anybody here believes it is even using 25% of the machines capability be it A8 or C64.

 

Technology <> supreme playability though sure. For example if they could have squeezed Gauntlet into 48k so it could be played with 4 players on an Atari 800 instead of 64k only and 2 player only it would have been more fun to play than any other 8bit version.

 

I agree there is nothing impossible between 8bit machines, just some machines will do a certain game better than others...for example the DLI extremely colourful background effect on Attack of the Mutant Camels makes a big difference on the A8 version and you need the extra palette to do that.

 

To people wishing to have a proper non-fanboy type discussion I am ready any time. I have just chosen to ignore 3 posters who constantly post 100% inaccurate 'facts' now though.

[Barnacle boy]

@Rybags: Fair enough... interleaved. So TIP is an interleaved mode, I take it? Does it have obvious scanlines too? (apologies if that's a silly question. it's hard to keep track of all these atari modes.)

 

Not sure if a responding to a non-interleaved mode like FLI with an interleaved mode like TIP would really be a 'Game Over' situation, to be honest.

 

What res is APAC? 80px across? Would that also be interleaved?

Edited April 29, 2009 by Barnacle boy

[Rybags]

APAC = 80 columns, colour line then luma line.

 

TIP = 160 perceived columns, since the luma line alternates between mode 9 and 10 (mode 10 pixels are shifted to the right by half a pixel).

 

Both modes rely on PAL decoder colour averaging.

[patjomki]

[Enforcer II...]

Well there is three levels of overlaid full screen parallax scrolling with transparent sections, and the lowest level has about 10 levels of single plane horizontal variable scroll. And on top of that there is the fact there is more than a whole screen worth of moving objects all the time via multiplexing to the maximum and it's all in 16 colours full screen with mixed hires and multicolour (320h and 160h) graphics. Those are what makes it a stunning piece of coding for the C64 that's what I say, because it's doing things that really shouldn't be possible.

 

You shouldn't forget to mention that Enforcer II isn't finished yet. Although the demo is really impressive I doubt we will see a release in the near future. It's the same as with Pinball Fantasies. Fantastic approach, impressive coding but not finished. And yes, it's a pity even those "demos" don't exist on A800 but I prefer finished games like Yoomp! Bomb Jack, Tempest Extreme or Crownland instead.

 

Talking about Archon/Donkey Kong/Pacman etc is a complete waste of time unless anybody here believes it is even using 25% of the machines capability be it A8 or C64.

 

No, it's not a waste of time, because that what the beginning of the thread: Are there any games that are better on A800 than on C64? Archon is an example. It is not using the A800 to its full potential but it is more fun on it than on C64 (played both versions). And it has a fantastic gameplay that is lacking on the C64. I even enjoy it on A800 after so many years just because of the gameplay (and the 2-player-mode).

 

Regards,

 

patjomki

Edited April 29, 2009 by patjomki

[ZylonBane]

...Pinball Phantasies...

...Phantastic approach...

...phantastic gameplay...

For the love of god, WHY?

[spookt]

...Pinball Phantasies...

...Phantastic approach...

...phantastic gameplay...

For the love of god, WHY?

 

Phabulous

[patjomki]

...Pinball Phantasies...

...Phantastic approach...

...phantastic gameplay...

For the love of god, WHY?

 

Phabulous

 

Phat.

[Allas]

@MaPa: Very nice indeed...

 

...but someone has stolen one of your pencils! Well, you can borrow some of mine if you like.

 

It's OK... I have plenty!

 

 

Still standard multi-colour. If I was doing this seriously, I'd consider switching to FLI mode to let me handle some of those shadows with greater flexibility.

 

This picture is out of the possibilities.

 

If a background of pencils would be necessary on a game, for sure C64 choose this picture and Atari his first horizontal background. Both look nice, and every one have his own advantages against the other. Every computer has his own advantages according his internal design, this test not show how good is Atari or C64, also show how insufficient are both systems.

[emkay]

This picture is out of the possibilities.

 

 

Not really

[atariksi]

They will have to build an externally clocked SIO disk drive to get faster than the 127kbits/second.

 

Does the device accept flexible block lengths (Burst mode)?

 

If you want to load 16K it just loads a 16K block.

Ifs you want to load 32 bytes, just load a 32 byte block

 

and so on?

 

Yeah, you can send whatever block length you want. It's just POKEY bufferring one byte at a time as they are sent, so if you have to do processing on the byte after reading the SERIN, it will slow down the transfer rate. Better to use fixed buffer size and read in as fast as possible and then do whatever processing after buffer is read. It's better than C64 since you don't have to deal with each bit but only byte at a time (so less CPU overhead).

[Heaven/TQA]

@MaPa: Very nice indeed...

 

...but someone has stolen one of your pencils! Well, you can borrow some of mine if you like.

 

It's OK... I have plenty!

 

 

Still standard multi-colour. If I was doing this seriously, I'd consider switching to FLI mode to let me handle some of those shadows with greater flexibility.

 

well done MaPa, well done here... is there a new "compo" arriving like the twistor, 256, 1k, 4k intro compos???

[Heaven/TQA]

@MaPa: Very nice indeed...

 

...but someone has stolen one of your pencils! Well, you can borrow some of mine if you like.

 

It's OK... I have plenty!

 

 

Still standard multi-colour. If I was doing this seriously, I'd consider switching to FLI mode to let me handle some of those shadows with greater flexibility.

 

well done MaPa, well done here... is there a new "compo" arriving like the twistor, 256, 1k, 4k intro compos???

[emkay]

well done MaPa, well done here... is there a new "compo" arriving like the twistor, 256, 1k, 4k intro compos???

 

The C64 version looks quite impressive... on the metallic ring. But there is a paradox in the light-source at the colours of the pencils ...

 

Let's pray that Tebe will soon find the time to make a full working G2F. Really, with GPRIOR and GTIA mode switching, we may blow somebody's mind

[popmilo]

First of all... when I said "can be made" - I didn't mean "can be replicated 100%"...

I just meant "can be made so it can look alike and feel and play alike"

 

@frenchman: Dimension X has a nice idea.... first part looks like trailblazer... (c64 did that)... Tunnel part is nice but also doable on commodore...

@atariksi: Sorry for beeing new to this Like I said - "look alike" not 100% exact.... I will admit thou...

atari has bigger palette - show me a game that made use of that to improve gaming experience enough to make the game better than it could be on c64.

Cpu speed - obvious. Rescue of fractalus is excellent example and I love it on atari...

Higher res. timers - ? Don't know how those affect gaming experience...

@FastRobPlus: you can have my shades for a day

@emkay: I played Archon on C64 and on Atari 800.... I admit c64 version is not so prety but it could be done much nicer...

I don't see Atari version has better graphics.... And gameplay effect (dark and light) could be achieved without precise fading effects...

About Atari armalyte.... I would love to see game on Atari that would have so many enemy ships with scrolling and weapons like in c64 version.

They make the difference...

It doesn't have to have so many colors, and 3 channel sound, but the game should "feel" like that... I would gladly play both versions...

Take Mike Dailly's XEO3 on commodore plus4 as example.... I love it!

And plus4 has no sprites, but has faster cpu like atari.... and Atari has better graphic chip than plus4...

Until we don't see game like Enforcer or Armalyte on atari we are in the dark...

@Bryan: I agree... Love to see technical stuff discussed... Keep the bad wibe out...

@patjomki: You are right about finished games... I love Crownland, and Yoomp has eaten a lot of my freetime...

But..

This is my Commodore side speaking: Crownland is nice and something pleasant I didn't expect from atari... But creatures and mayhem are better...

And yoomp is my favorite for porting to commodore... I think it can be done.

 

One more question: Is it possible to make parallax scrolling like in c64s Flimbo's Qust on Atari ?

[emkay]

atari has bigger palette - show me a game that made use of that to improve gaming experience enough to make the game better than it could be on c64.

 

@emkay: I played Archon on C64 and on Atari 800.... I admit c64 version is not so prety but it could be done much nicer...

I don't see Atari version has better graphics.... And gameplay effect (dark and light) could be achieved without precise fading effects...

 

 

LOL?

Edited April 29, 2009 by emkay