Commodore 64 vs Atari 800 Xl

[PeteD]

 

 

You will have to make it more monochrome then the ST version, but you can still create a Xenonlike game with some fine nuances.

 

About Xenon

 

Then you have effekts of the shots for exemple in Xenon that uses some more colour.And many time is that colour used somewhere else too. It's about to compromise a bit.

 

Be my guest, I'd actually like to see it because there are things that are possible on the 800 but I think you're waaaaaay out of your depth with that one.

 

 

Pete

[DimensionX]

ST could usually afford about three spreads. 4 nuances per colour = 12 colours. The rest went to the status display.

 

In the screenshot i was prodding at, it has fifteen colours in the play area alone and a colour count of the entire screen is also fifteen colours so no, the rest didn't go to the status.

 

The grey in Xenon is almost certain a spread of 4 greys.

 

Five, so that's already used your entire colour quotient on the A8 and there are no blue tiles, red bullets, yellow markings...

 

You will have to make it more monochrome then the ST version, but you can still create a Xenonlike game with some fine nuances.

 

About Xenon

 

Then you have effects of the shots for exemple in Xenon that uses some more colour.And many time is that colour used somewhere else too. It's about to compromise a bit.

 

Off Topic

 

Thanks for an intresting discussion guys.

 

I have a big problem that you don't have. I must concentrate on the language all the time, else it will be more errors just about everywhere, all the time.

 

How do you say this in english? Something that you don't have to focus at.

 

Och skriver jag på svenska fattar ingen vad jag skriver

 

(and if i type in swedish no one will understand)

 

I'll take a break for now, but i'll be back (like arnold).

Edited April 27, 2010 by DimensionX

[DimensionX]

 

 

You will have to make it more monochrome then the ST version, but you can still create a Xenonlike game with some fine nuances.

 

About Xenon

 

Then you have effekts of the shots for exemple in Xenon that uses some more colour.And many time is that colour used somewhere else too. It's about to compromise a bit.

 

Be my guest, I'd actually like to see it because there are things that are possible on the 800 but I think you're waaaaaay out of your depth with that one.

 

 

Pete

 

Never say never.

 

Miracles has happend before.

 

I must log out for now, have a great evening Pete and TMR.

Edited April 27, 2010 by DimensionX

[TMR]

ST could usually afford about three spreads. 4 nuances per colour = 12 colours. The rest went to the status display.

 

In the screenshot i was prodding at, it has fifteen colours in the play area alone and a colour count of the entire screen is also fifteen colours so no, the rest didn't go to the status.

 

The grey in Xenon is almost certain a spread of 4 greys.

 

Five, so that's already used your entire colour quotient on the A8 and there are no blue tiles, red bullets, yellow markings...

 

You will have to make it more monochrome then the ST version, but you can still create a Xenonlike game with some fine nuances.

 

Then it's no more retaining the "Bitmap style" than the C64 version. Again, you've failed and it's not Xenon. Mock-up or shut up.

[ceti331]

I posted that because one in this thread was a big fan of R-Type and didn't thought that Atari could handle such game. Then he complained at the gradients in A8 games.

 

So it was not aimed for you or TMR.

 

I didn't complain about A8 gradients - I just stated per-character unique colours are more usefull.

 

A8/C64 graphics involve 3 tones+transparent for *detail* dark,mid,highlight. Doesn't matter what the full palette is.. set 'highlight' to white, ability pick mid and or dark per block or sprite yields a lot more visual variety & object detail.. this is why the C64 was a superior games machine.

 

I'm saying *detail* is more usefull than *background gradients*

 

DISCLAIMER: i still think i'd have enjoyed the A8 at the time, as I prefered to tinker with graphics rather than play games. Its a great computer, certainly no waste of silicon.

Edited April 27, 2010 by ceti331

[ceti331]

THIS is what i prefer. Clean graphics that aren't messy. Then i don't really care if that ship has 1, 2 or 15 colours.

 

even 8 colours total, with a few different ramps.. one for background, one for enemies, one for player, = clear visual variety for moving objects, very effective for detailed moving ingame graphics.

 

agree any computer can be mis-used to display messy graphics.

C64 Armaltye screenshots look a lot better than C64 R-Type because the former is designed AROUND its colour restrictions.. just one ramp for the background, then all the sprites are dark-grey+white+unique color. Each moving element stands out with its own ramp, & the background is coherent.

 

[ i do generally prefer a home computer Arcade Tribute to home computer Arcade Conversions, but the conversions are a usefull benchmark. ]

[TMR]

C64 Armaltye screenshots look a lot better than C64 R-Type because the former is designed AROUND its colour restrictions.. just one ramp for the background, then all the sprites are dark-grey+white+unique color. Each moving element stands out with its own ramp, & the background is coherent.

 

looking at that link Pete posted to the dissection of the Chaos Engine, it actually uses a larger palette version of the same thing. And my A8 work has been geared towards getting something similar going, but using dark grey and white for all the low and highlight (background and sprite) and

even though the mask positioning is a bit stuffed on that code.

 

Of course, i'm not working on that any more and am instead just drawing three colour bias relief and sticking a rainbow under it - that's good graphics, that is.

 

[ i do generally prefer a home computer Arcade Tribute to home computer Arcade Conversions, but the conversions are a usefull benchmark. ]

 

i can see your point there, but R-Type really isn't a good benchmark because it was knocked out in a severe hurry; for conversions, something like Salamander (which does the three colour ramp and grey/white/unique colours you were talking about) would be a far better example.

 

Generally speaking, picking a bad example and holding it up as some kind of "proof" like Xenon just falls on it's arse most of the time; for example here's one i prepared earlier...

 

 

...which i haven't checked (it's straight out of the editor, so using the Pepto palette because that's what i usually work with) but reckon the attributes aren't broken - the game would have to bitmap scroll but Tomcat and Moons both do that okay...

[ceti331]

 

Absolutely right, BB wrote mostly on ST and ported (take a look at their earlier stuff, where did the initial versions appear) it was the best way to limit yourself on the lowest spec machine and make sure you still designed a good game then you've got an easy job of porting and you don't lose anything in the process.

 

Dan Malone is one of my favourite game artists, had had the imagination and did the kind of thing I see little of on the Atari 800, that's using a limited palette with some seemingly very odd colours that still produces something amazing, rather than just using shades of the same colour. That's why you can still get amazing looking stuff with the C64 Palette, despite being limited it's well chosen and you can mix odd colours together and still get something pleasing.

This is an interesting crit on the BB graphics styles http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=1025.0

 

I'd been looking into this myself lately, out of interest. I didn't know the exact c64 spec back in the day.

seems Dan Malones' palette is pretty much halfway between Mark Colemans' & the C64's (take the C64's, bias the colors mostly toward grey or brown)

 

I love the look of all the bitmap games.

I actually prefer the bitmap-brothers' 16-color games to the Amiga-specific dual-playfield stuff from Psygnosis (8bg+7bg+3color-hardware-sprites+copper) such as Menace, SOTB, etc.

.. due to greater actual Object detail from the shading.

 

[32color amiga stuff wins overall for me]

 

Funny how the best use of the amiga was often 16colors with sprites used as LITERALLY Player/Missile. one 32x32 16color player seperate from background, and a few extra uniquely colours projectiles.

so similar to the intent of the a800.

 

But I always remember thinking how the Amiga was poorer use of 16bits than the C64 was of 8bits.

see 8bit PC-engine vs 16bit amiga...

Edited April 27, 2010 by ceti331

[ceti331]

And my A8 work has been geared towards getting something similar going, but using dark grey and white for all the low and highlight (background and sprite) and

even though the mask positioning is a bit stuffed on that code.

 

wow, how exactly does that work ? what mode is it, what trickery is going on?

[TMR]

And my A8 work has been geared towards getting something similar going, but using dark grey and white for all the low and highlight (background and sprite) and

even though the mask positioning is a bit stuffed on that code.

 

wow, how exactly does that work ? what mode is it, what trickery is going on?

 

Character mode and nothing much in the way of trickery in fact - the hardware can display a still version whilst standing idle. black, dark grey and white are coming from the shared playfield colours, mid range grey and green are both character colours selected by the upper bit of the character and the four moving objects use a horizontally-expanded player each as an underlay, masking off the wider pixels with their own to make it all match in. Here's a static screen...

 

[ceti331]

 

i can see your point there, but R-Type really isn't a good benchmark because it was knocked out in a severe hurry; for conversions, something like Salamander (which does the three colour ramp and grey/white/unique colours you were talking about) would be a far better example.

 

I think salamander was more graphically limited than R-Type, so easier to port. less color & lower res (256wide vs 384 wide) by the looks of it.

Still an amazing game. I own both jamma boards

 

How much could C64 r-type be improved... adapting the graphics better the the C64 palette? any unused hardware tricks?

[TMR]

I think salamander was more graphically limited than R-Type, so easier to port. less color & lower res (256wide vs 384 wide) by the looks of it.

Still an amazing game. I own both jamma boards

 

Converting anything from coin-op to C64 is going to require concessions, Salamander works in a similar way to Io or Armalyte and R-Type is more akin to Katakis (since it's probably strapped together from bits of the code).

 

How much could C64 r-type be improved... adapting the graphics better the the C64 palette? any unused hardware tricks?

 

The main gripes about the C64 version (and they're totally founded) is that it's not very accurate to actually play; movement patterns are only rough approximations of the original and stand out features like the wheel of guns are quite frankly crap. The best way to improve it graphically would probably have been to throw more character sets at the job to allow more detail, the preview screens from R-Type v1 seem to be doing that because they've got larger and more detailed versions of some of the background set pieces.

[DimensionX]

Thanks to this thread i have understand what C64 is good at. But i have also understand what C64 isn't good at. Thanks for many both interesting and readable postings.

 

A8 can't simply compet with C64 in certain areas because of it's limitations. But outshines C64 in other areas that C64 isn't good at. Like clear colours for exemple.

 

@Pete

 

There is several advantages of having a big palette to choose colurs from.

 

1.You can choose nuances of colours

 

2.You can switch palettes lots of times in a game to make it more different, perfect for both shoot'em ups, driving games and platform games. On ST they often changed the palette for every new level to create more variation. Like in Xenon for exemple. So 16 colours can become hundreds of colours in the same game, but not simultaneously off course.

 

3.The game library will be more diffrent when you use different colours for different games

 

So even if "on screen" colours is limited it's a great thing to have a big palette to choose colours from.

 

Now over to something completly different...

 

I have been talking about the quality of the A8 colours. Now i'm about to show you what i mean. To make this more easy i will post all pictures as attachements AND from my picturehost.

 

Well, we are about to take a look at the game "Alternate Reality The City". The first time i saw this game was in the british computer magazine Your Computer. US Gold was about to release some new titles for Atari and C64, one of the titles was "The Goonies" but it was title nr 3 that was most interesting, Alternate Reality. I thought that the graphics was no less then stunning. Wow, i must buy this game when it's released.

 

We will take a Look at the C64 version to begin with.

 

Hmmmm, pretty basic and not much use of colours to create a moody game.

 

PNG, 652x1048px, 83 KB (0.08 MB)

 

Next we will take a look at the DOS version. Pretty basic too.

 

PNG, 652x624px, 256 KB (0.25 MB)

 

Next up is the Atari ST version of the game. I recall myself being very disapointed with this version. It looks okey, but no more and the gradients is far off from the A8 version of the game.

 

PNG, 984x624px, 77 KB (0.08 MB)

 

Next up is the Amiga version, now we expect a bit more. Amiga is using more colours and this version is more moody then the ST version and looks a bit like "The Bards Tale". But it's still very little use of colours in some places.

 

PNG, 984x1472px, 236 KB (0.23 MB)

 

Last, the A8 version. I have added a couple of screenshots that i didn't post earlier. This version is pure magic. The colours are sooo clear and moody. For me personally this version beats the crap out of all previous mentioned versions of the game. Digital art.

 

PNG, 780x1500px, 371 KB (0.36 MB)

 

To show you how much more clarity A8 has, i will post two more screenshots.

 

To the left we have the ST version, including gradients. But if you compare with the A8 version to the right the pale in clarity and richness. Not even comparable. The A8 colours are sooo much clearer.

 

PNG, 668x240px, 15 KB (0.01 MB)

Edited April 28, 2010 by DimensionX

[TMR]

A8 can't simply compet with C64 in certain areas because of it's limitations. But outshines C64 in other areas that C64 isn't good at. Like clear colours for exemple.

 

As i've said repeatedly, you're not defining "clear" colours so the term makes absolutely no sense and sounds like a fanboy-created "win" for the Atari. As i said previously, if i declare all the C64 colours to be "sparkly" and that sparkly colours are better than clear ones it proves just as much as what you're saying - nothing in other words.

 

1.You can choose nuances of colours

 

Except you can't because most of the time colours are being selected for utility rather than artistic merit. You've erroneously said that the A8 could handle Xenon better than the C64, try producing a mock-up and you'll see that really isn't the case around the time you start selecting playfield colours to allow for software sprite rendering and well before you've realised how restrictive sprite colour selection is.

 

i'm taking the lack of a mock-up as admitting that you were wrong, by the way.

 

So even if "on screen" colours is limited it's a great thing to have a big palette to choose colours from.

 

On paper. In practise the reverse is true and most of the games you've talked about and the colours used for them are shaped by the hardware restrictions rather than what the designers actually wanted to do. Most of the nuances you've gone on about simply aren't there.

[DimensionX]

This is not much to choose from, is it?

 

Let's see...

 

2 Greens

1 Yellow

2 blue

1 purple

3 greys

1 white

1 turquoise

2 brown

1 black

2 red

Edited April 28, 2010 by DimensionX

[DimensionX]

Compare with the Atari 2600 palette for exemple.

 

Or Atari XL

Edited April 28, 2010 by DimensionX

[TMR]

This is not much to choose from, is it?

 

And that's got naff all to do with what i just said. Again, mock-up or shut up because until you've actually tried doing something with the A8's graphics you are not qualified to talk about what they can do in this programming forum.

[DimensionX]

This is not much to choose from, is it?

 

And that's got naff all to do with what i just said. Again, mock-up or shut up because until you've actually tried doing something with the A8's graphics you are not qualified to talk about what they can do in this programming forum.

 

You couldn't even recreate one screen from the Atari version of Alternate Reality with that few colours. Alternate Reality uses a minimum of 64 on screen colours.

 

It becomes a bit silly TMR. You can't say that a big palette is a bad thing to have.

Edited April 28, 2010 by DimensionX

[TMR]

You couldn't even recreate one screen from the Atari version of Alternate Reality with that few colours. Alternate Reality uses a minimum of 64 on screen colours.

 

Doesn't matter, you've found one game the C64 couldn't replicate exactly but i could name a hundred in return that the A8 can't do without major concessions. And we already have a challenge on the table because you reckoned the A8 could handle Xenon better than the C64, so mock-up or shut up.

Edited April 28, 2010 by TMR

[TMR]

It becomes a bit silly TMR. You can't say that a big palette is a bad thing to have.

 

i never said a big palette is a bad thing, just that not being able to use it well is a problem. You don't understand the Atari 8-bit's display hardware well enough to realise that and it's not even about comparisons with the C64, it's a pain in the arse to work with.

[DimensionX]

You couldn't even recreate one screen from the Atari version of Alternate Reality with that few colours. Alternate Reality uses a minimum of 64 on screen colours.

 

Doesn't matter, you've found one game the C64 couldn't replicate exactly but i could name a hundred in return that the A8 can't do without major concessions. And we already have a challenge on the table because you reckoned the A8 could handle Xenon better than the C64, so mock-up or shut up.

 

At last you admitted that. Well, i agree. C64 is the better machine for some things, but for other things Atari is the better machine. None of them is best, just different.

 

Are we finished with this discussion now?

[DimensionX]

It becomes a bit silly TMR. You can't say that a big palette is a bad thing to have.

 

i never said a big palette is a bad thing, just that not being able to use it well is a problem. You don't understand the Atari 8-bit's display hardware well enough to realise that and it's not even about comparisons with the C64, it's a pain in the arse to work with.

 

But that want stop you to get some pretty good results if you know the hardware. I have seen more then one real good looking game on A8 i can tell you. After so many years, it stills produces awesome colours. The best one was the orginal Atari 800 even if it had fewer colours.

Edited April 28, 2010 by DimensionX

[TMR]

At last you admitted that.

 

i've said all the time that the C64 couldn't replicate that ONE GAME EXACTLY you idiot, the point is that the concession of dropping all the "pretty" rainbow colours (there are Atari coders who will tell you it doesn't look particularly good, by the way) isn't a deal breaker and the game is just as playable. The things that the C64 does that the A8 can't replicate are more important for actually making games.

 

Are we finished with this discussion now?

 

No, because you made bogus claims about Xenon being possible on the A8 and still haven't proved it - presumably because you haven't got a clue how the A8 hardware actually works and should therefore not be posting to this PROGRAMMING DISCUSSION AT ALL.

Edited April 28, 2010 by TMR

[TMR]

i never said a big palette is a bad thing, just that not being able to use it well is a problem. You don't understand the Atari 8-bit's display hardware well enough to realise that and it's not even about comparisons with the C64, it's a pain in the arse to work with.

 

But that want stop you to get some pretty good results if you know the hardware.

 

Yes it will. Because it limits which colours you can use. Again, you have no idea what the hardware is like to work with and should not be commenting.

[+GroovyBee]

Are we finished with this discussion now?

 

No! Please show us a mock up of how Xenon would look on the A8. You are in the programming forum arguing with a bunch of programmers so it should be easy for you to back up your claims.