Commodore 64 vs Atari 800 Xl

[DimensionX]

Well popmilo, it's the typical C64 colours that we all have seen so many times before. You can't really miss them, can you? Especially not light green and dark brown because they are way to dominant compared to the other colours in the palette. That's a shame because that makes them stands out in just about every game. Look at 100 different C64 games and you'll know what i'm talking about. Light green is the most dominant of them all. I watched a YT clip of the 100 best C64 games. My reaction was. Aaah, green, more green, that's green, there's green again. They could have been choosen the palette to be more neutral and equal. Green is always way to dominant, dark brown too.

 

Try it yourself

Ok. Try this:

 

Is that colorfull enough and has parallax scrolling ?

That kind of look and feel is IMPOSSIBLE on A8.

 

p.s.And just to point out, that green that you see sometimes that is "grass" or "leaves" and its ment to be green. And yeah if level is named forest, of course there's gonna be lots of it.

 

C64's biggest drawback is it's limited palette. Perhaps it makes C64 good at certain things, but not in the colour area for sure.

I agree. But I would still choose those 16 colors almost anywhere on the screen than 128 color rainbows....

 

The difference is that a forest has many many nuances of green and is always change unlike C64's static green.

 

It's not about rainbows, it's about bigger palette, more colours and more variation in the games.

 

And, Flimbo's Quest looks messy, even on Atari ST. I prefer clean coloursettings.

Edited May 3, 2010 by DimensionX

[popmilo]

The difference is that a forest has many many nuances of green and is always change unlike C64's static green.

Many years drawing graphics on C64 I hated lack of "good green"... There are two greens and both are too bright. And one in between of those two would be nice...

But there were only few combinations that Vic engineers could work with, and they chose these so I learned to live with them.

 

So, yes you could make finer shades of green on A8 in a game.... - If you would use only green in a game...

 

Try making a game on A8 that has grass, rock, earth, wood, metal, sky, lasers - and all of those on same screen.

And you get to choose 5 colors from 128.

 

Tell me: How many shades of green can you fit in those 5 colors, and still manage to present that other stuff reasonably ?

 

It's not about rainbows, it's about bigger palette, more colours and more variation in the games.

I see much much much more variations in C64 games than in A8 games. If your reasoning about palette is correct why is that so?

 

And, Flimbo's Quest looks messy, even on Atari ST. I prefer clean coloursettings.

I guess you are refering to use of too many colors on screen at once? And shades and gradients and stuff like that ?

You like clean graphics like this more ?

Guess what? Not possible on A8...

 

That is why coding for A8 is such delight...

Trying to squeeze that one more color from that big palette onto the screen to make something that hasn't been made before.

[PeteD]

You'll never win Pop' Clean this, clean that, Paradroid, one of the "cleanest" looking C64 games, nahhh, ST version is better. Mayhem in Monsterland, something that looks closer to an ST/Amiga game, nahhh, it's too close to an ST/Amiga game and messy and can't be done on the C64. Doesn't matter what you say I don't think I've seen one concession to the C64 being better at something from him in this thread yet.

 

 

Pete

[DimensionX]

The difference is that a forest has many many nuances of green and is always change unlike C64's static green.

Many years drawing graphics on C64 I hated lack of "good green"... There are two greens and both are too bright. And one in between of those two would be nice...

But there were only few combinations that Vic engineers could work with, and they chose these so I learned to live with them.

 

So, yes you could make finer shades of green on A8 in a game.... - If you would use only green in a game...

 

Try making a game on A8 that has grass, rock, earth, wood, metal, sky, lasers - and all of those on same screen.

And you get to choose 5 colors from 128.

 

Tell me: How many shades of green can you fit in those 5 colors, and still manage to present that other stuff reasonably ?

 

It's not about rainbows, it's about bigger palette, more colours and more variation in the games.

I see much much much more variations in C64 games than in A8 games. If your reasoning about palette is correct why is that so?

 

And, Flimbo's Quest looks messy, even on Atari ST. I prefer clean coloursettings.

I guess you are refering to use of too many colors on screen at once? And shades and gradients and stuff like that ?

You like clean graphics like this more ?

Guess what? Not possible on A8...

 

That is why coding for A8 is such delight...

Trying to squeeze that one more color from that big palette onto the screen to make something that hasn't been made before.

 

If you try to mix too many different colours, it will in most cases looks messy. If you put together shades instead it will look much more clean. Like in many games for ST. If you plan to use different colours, don't put them in the same places if you want a clean look of your game. It's always better to use few colours then to mess things up by putting too many colours in the same places.

 

If you look at the screenshot at the bottom. It's at least 4 different greens on screen even if this game has simple graphics. Next level, simply choose a different palette that brings variation to your game.

 

PNG, 336x492px, 9 KB (0.01 MB)

 

The point isn't to put 16 on screen colours in the game all the time. The point is to be able to switch between lots of different colours to bring variation to your game.

 

And thank you for a honest opinion Popmilo.

Edited May 3, 2010 by DimensionX

[TMR]

You'll never win Pop' Clean this, clean that, Paradroid, one of the "cleanest" looking C64 games, nahhh, ST version is better. Mayhem in Monsterland, something that looks closer to an ST/Amiga game, nahhh, it's too close to an ST/Amiga game and messy and can't be done on the C64. Doesn't matter what you say I don't think I've seen one concession to the C64 being better at something from him in this thread yet.

 

Yeah, it's like talking to a brick wall... a bright red one that's used all the playfield colour registers and is turing everything either side of it red as well.

[PeteD]

 

 

If you look at the screenshot at the bottom. It's at least 4 different greens on screen even if this game has simple graphics. Next level, simply choose a different palette that brings variation to your game.

 

 

Variation yes, of what to everyone who isn't used to seeing that over and over in Atari games looks mono. I think a lot of people think the A8 uses GTIA more than it does because of all the games with shades of the same colour.

 

If they only took out one of those greens and replaced it with a brown you'd get a hill (or whatever it's supposed to be) with soil as well and you could draw trees on it with brown trunks etc. BUT as soon as you do that all your plans of a green level, a blue level, a gold level etc go out the window because you'd have to have blue hills with red soil or gold hills with green soil etc.

 

The C64 palette may be limited but it seems to be used a lot more for more realistic scenarios and if only people did that on the A8 instead of having the, "ooooo look at all the rainbows", attitude the bigger palette would be much better utilised.

 

 

Pete

Edited May 3, 2010 by PeteD

[TMR]

If they only took out one of those greens and replaced it with a brown you'd get a hill (or whatever it's supposed to be) with soil as well and you could draw trees on it with brown trunks etc.

 

It might stop the building being green too...

[PeteD]

If they only took out one of those greens and replaced it with a brown you'd get a hill (or whatever it's supposed to be) with soil as well and you could draw trees on it with brown trunks etc.

 

It might stop the building being green too...

 

Indeed

 

*edit*

 

This is my exact point about the anti-Crownland mindset, or rather the mind that can't be bothered to even go 10% of the way he did designing Crownland.

 

Just 2 colours used for a switch on a DLI and you can STILL have most of that green AND a different building colour and soil and.... Nobody seems willing to do it but they're quite happy to use even more CPU time showing an ugly rainbow behind stuff.

Edited May 3, 2010 by PeteD

[TMR]

It might stop the building being green too...

 

Indeed

 

Hmm... that dithered bit in the Fortress Underground screenshot, isn't that "unclean"?!

 

This is my exact point about the anti-Crownland mindset, or rather the mind that can't be bothered to even go 10% of the way he did designing Crownland.

 

Just 2 colours used for a switch on a DLI and you can STILL have most of that green AND a different building colour and soil and.... Nobody seems willing to do it but they're quite happy to use even more CPU time showing an ugly rainbow behind stuff.

 

Well, you know i agree with that already... my current project is based on how Red Max worked on the A8 and that's a remarkably minimal bit of design.

[ceti331]

 

If you put together shades instead it will look much more clean. Like in many games for ST. If you plan to use different colours, ...

...

The point isn't to put 16 on screen colours in the game all the time. The point is to be able to switch between lots of different colours to bring variation to your game.

 

agree 100% that many shades of fewer colours look best ( and yes I am a fan of the 2 ramp style seen in Paradroid or the bitmap brothers games)

 

the diagram earlier from "way of the pixel" shows why the C64 palette is an effective compromise

Really these 8bit machines can only display 3 shades of something at the same time in object detail.

The C64's palette & sprites/attributes allows for a lot of different ramps this way, allowing player/enemies & different background elements (e.g. walls vs backdrop) to be seperated.

 

Some 'hue rotation' approximating colours is necessary for C64 these ramps, sure.. but thats not a problem.

in real life, its very rare to see pure shades of a single colour... brighter areas would be lit by lightsources (e.g. yellow sun); darker areas would be lit by reflected ambient light (e.g. blue sky, earthtones in landscape)

 

So for cartoony game graphics, its fine to just have slightly different hues for the highlight & mid-tones.. & white is usually used for highlights.

 

 

From what i've seen on the A8 with its 5 color backgrounds, you need to make exactly the same compromise if you want a background with distinctly coloured elements.

 

You can use black, white, and a generic 'dark' color as the main 3 colours.. then have 2 distinct 'mid-tones' .. giving you 2 distinct ramps, only one of which can be shades of a single color.

Most likely you'd make the dark shade a different hue halfway between the hue of the two mid-tones you wanted,or you could have 3 pure shades and one different colour ramp thats futher off.

Edited May 3, 2010 by ceti331

[DimensionX]

 

If you put together shades instead it will look much more clean. Like in many games for ST. If you plan to use different colours, ...

...

The point isn't to put 16 on screen colours in the game all the time. The point is to be able to switch between lots of different colours to bring variation to your game.

 

agree 100% that many shades of fewer colours look best ( and yes I am a fan of the 2 main shading range style seen in Paradroid or the bitmap brothers games)

 

the diagram earlier from "way of the pixel" shows why the C64 palette is an effective compromise

Really these 8bit machines can only display 3 shades of something at the same time in object detail.

The C64's palette & sprites/attributes allows for a lot of different ramps this way, allowing player/enemies & different background elements (e.g. walls vs backdrop) to be seperated.

 

Some 'hue rotation' approximating colours is necessary for C64 these ramps, sure.. but thats not a problem.

in real life, its very rare to see pure shades of a single colour... brighter areas would be lit by lightsources (e.g. yellow sun); darker areas would be lit by reflected ambient light (e.g. blue sky, earthtones in landscape)

 

So for cartoony game graphics, its fine to just have slightly different hues for the highlight & mid-tones.. & white is usually used for highlights.

 

 

From what i've seen on the A8 with its 5 color backgrounds, you need to make exactly the same compromise if you want a background with distinctly coloured elements.

 

You can use black, white, and a generic 'dark' color as the main 3 colours.. then have 2 distinct 'mid-tones' .. giving you 2 distinct ramps, only one of which can be shades of a single color.

Most likely you'd make the dark shade a different hue halfway between the hue of the two mid-tones you wanted,or you could have 3 pure shades and one different colour ramp thats futher off.

 

Thanks for explaining.

 

ST was quite good at displaying cartoon graphics because cartoons often use very few colours but a certain style where some of the colours often is being used as shadows.

 

PNG, 652x836px, 49 KB (0.05 MB)

Edited May 3, 2010 by DimensionX

[DimensionX]

It might stop the building being green too...

 

Indeed

 

Hmm... that dithered bit in the Fortress Underground screenshot, isn't that "unclean"?!

 

This is my exact point about the anti-Crownland mindset, or rather the mind that can't be bothered to even go 10% of the way he did designing Crownland.

 

Just 2 colours used for a switch on a DLI and you can STILL have most of that green AND a different building colour and soil and.... Nobody seems willing to do it but they're quite happy to use even more CPU time showing an ugly rainbow behind stuff.

 

Well, you know i agree with that already... my current project is based on how Red Max worked on the A8 and that's a remarkably minimal bit of design.

 

That's not "dithered" but "antialized"

[TMR]

That's not "dithered" but "antialized"

 

No, it's quite clearly dithered at the transition between the green landscape and green building. Look:

 

[Bryan]

You'll never win Pop' Clean this, clean that, Paradroid, one of the "cleanest" looking C64 games, nahhh, ST version is better. Mayhem in Monsterland, something that looks closer to an ST/Amiga game, nahhh, it's too close to an ST/Amiga game and messy and can't be done on the C64. Doesn't matter what you say I don't think I've seen one concession to the C64 being better at something from him in this thread yet.

I was just going to say that this thread is becoming deja-vu all over again.

 

There are situations where you can make use of Atari's shades, but in many situations bragging about how much the palette is going to help you is like claiming your 4-cylinder truck is faster because you've got a V8 engine sitting in the bed. But technically it's correct to say you've got a big engine in your truck.

[PeteD]

LMAO antialias hahahaaaaaaa

 

Sometimes these threads are funny to see the way people will continually wheedle out of something or change sides on a subject from day to day or hour to hour just so they don't have to admit they're wrong.

[PeteD]

You'll never win Pop' Clean this, clean that, Paradroid, one of the "cleanest" looking C64 games, nahhh, ST version is better. Mayhem in Monsterland, something that looks closer to an ST/Amiga game, nahhh, it's too close to an ST/Amiga game and messy and can't be done on the C64. Doesn't matter what you say I don't think I've seen one concession to the C64 being better at something from him in this thread yet.

I was just going to say that this thread is becoming deja-vu all over again.

 

There are situations where you can make use of Atari's shades, but in many situations bragging about how much the palette is going to help you is like claiming your 4-cylinder truck is faster because you've got a V8 engine sitting in the bed. But technically it's correct to say you've got a big engine in your truck.

 

Yeah, this thread should've been left to die days ago when it started going round and round with rainbows are better. Any technically knowledgeable people here know the score, some of us can't help trying to educate the others, well other in this case.

 

 

Pete

[Bryan]

However, the Atari has some awesome demos because of that palette (go taquart!)

[PeteD]

However, the Atari has some awesome demos because of that palette (go taquart!)

 

Yup You can do some really impressive non-rainbow things with it.

 

 

Pete

[TMR]

However, the Atari has some awesome demos because of that palette (go taquart!)

 

Yup You can do some really impressive non-rainbow things with it.

 

Absolutely... of course, you have to use "unclean" graphics for some of those things but hey, most Atarians'll be happy with that! =-)

[PeteD]

hehe *DING DING* *DING DING* Bring out your dead! (pixels) UNCLEAAAAN!

[popmilo]

...If you look at the screenshot at the bottom. It's at least 4 different greens on screen even if this game has simple graphics. Next level, simply choose a different palette that brings variation to your game.

...

The point isn't to put 16 on screen colours in the game all the time. The point is to be able to switch between lots of different colours to bring variation to your game.

 

And thank you for a honest opinion Popmilo.

Variations, next level: we need variations inside one level, inside one screen, inside one frame of animation.

Each level in few shades of new color is not enough.

 

Lets look at these:

This is screenshot of C64s turrican:

 

It has yellow, red,black, white, two greys, blue ~ 7 colors. So its not 16. But it is 2 more than 5. And what ever design I tried I always miss that few colors to make it look ok. Otherwise some part of screen always looks odd.

I think that is why I still try. If that difference was 8 colors than I would realize its impossible, but I think that 1 or two colors gap can be overcome somehow (crownland showed one way of doing that, but that one still has to solve displaying more than few sprites on screen at once).

 

I don't know your knowledge about programming but just consider the fact that it took years to develop game like crownland on A8 and compare it to the time needed to produce game in same style on c64 which is around few months.

 

That is why Im focused on pure 4 shade screen mode like this, because its easy enough to develop for, everything important for game can be presented in 'clean' way and no restrictions beyond obvious 4 colors

This is taken from Gameboys version - 4 shades of grey and 160x144 resolution - roughly what you can get on A8 for a fast action game like turrican is on C64:

 

Or maybe one of the better atari games like this:

 

Maybe after few years of development I will be able to add more colors to a game like that but who knows if all the time in the world is enough for that?

[barnieg]

 

That is why Im focused on pure 4 shade screen mode like this, because its easy enough to develop for, everything important for game can be presented in 'clean' way and no restrictions beyond obvious 4 colors

This is taken from Gameboys version - 4 shades of grey and 160x144 resolution - roughly what you can get on A8 for a fast action game like turrican is on C64:

 

 

You would end up with something like the attached image (converted from an Amiga screenshot), of course any game converted using ripped gameboy graphics would look stretched due to the different aspect ratios

 

Barnie

[popmilo]

You would end up with something like the attached image (converted from an Amiga screenshot), of course any game converted using ripped gameboy graphics would look stretched due to the different aspect ratios

 

Barnie

Yeah! thats the idea. Doesn't look that bad, does it?

Reason I posted gameboy picture is that I have Gameboy tiles and sprites ripped out from cartridge and its in nice 2bit per pixel format that is ideal for trying software sprite routines on A8.

 

I will go for 2x2 pixel ratio just because of speed. Ataris lack of sprites is forcing me to use software sprites and first calculations show me that I will struggle even with 160x100 resolution.

Turrican fish 2x2 pixel size:

 

If it turns out to be fast enough, of course I'll go for finer resolution. Maybe then I could use prettier C64 or converted Amiga graphics... Thanks Barnie!

[DimensionX]

...If you look at the screenshot at the bottom. It's at least 4 different greens on screen even if this game has simple graphics. Next level, simply choose a different palette that brings variation to your game.

...

The point isn't to put 16 on screen colours in the game all the time. The point is to be able to switch between lots of different colours to bring variation to your game.

 

And thank you for a honest opinion Popmilo.

Variations, next level: we need variations inside one level, inside one screen, inside one frame of animation.

Each level in few shades of new color is not enough.

 

Lets look at these:

This is screenshot of C64s turrican:

 

It has yellow, red,black, white, two greys, blue ~ 7 colors. So its not 16. But it is 2 more than 5. And what ever design I tried I always miss that few colors to make it look ok. Otherwise some part of screen always looks odd.

I think that is why I still try. If that difference was 8 colors than I would realize its impossible, but I think that 1 or two colors gap can be overcome somehow (crownland showed one way of doing that, but that one still has to solve displaying more than few sprites on screen at once).

 

I don't know your knowledge about programming but just consider the fact that it took years to develop game like crownland on A8 and compare it to the time needed to produce game in same style on c64 which is around few months.

 

That is why Im focused on pure 4 shade screen mode like this, because its easy enough to develop for, everything important for game can be presented in 'clean' way and no restrictions beyond obvious 4 colors

This is taken from Gameboys version - 4 shades of grey and 160x144 resolution - roughly what you can get on A8 for a fast action game like turrican is on C64:

 

Or maybe one of the better atari games like this:

 

Maybe after few years of development I will be able to add more colors to a game like that but who knows if all the time in the world is enough for that?

 

If you want a real good version of Turrican. Try this one.

 

PNG, 652x492px, 168 KB (0.16 MB)

 

Games such Turrican is so much better on more powerful hardware that really makes games like Turrican shine.

 

I plays as good at it looks too.

Edited May 3, 2010 by DimensionX

[DimensionX]

That's not "dithered" but "antialized"

 

No, it's quite clearly dithered at the transition between the green landscape and green building. Look:

 

 

That was not hat i meant. I meant the grey antializing at the bottom. But i would hardly call the green for dithering. Perhaps minimal dithering in that case.