Commodore 64 vs Atari 800 Xl

[Barnacle boy]

Haines Chromaview vs Nikyo FunCenter [super Plus 16]

Which one does better rainbows?

 

 

The Haines Chromaview could do cool rainbows, chosen from a palette of 512 colours, however the rainbows could only be drawn at an angle of 14º (approx). Furthermore, the red component of each step in any line had to be half the value of the blue component in the corresponding step on the line immediately its the left, and twice the value of the green component in the step to the right. Fortunately, perhaps, the palette featured 254 shades of red, though many Haines fans claimed that this was more a hindrance than a help and argued that blue shades should have had the lion's share. Protracted and passionate Red vs Blue debates ran for many years via surface mail. Sadly, several delivery errors led to unnecessary misunderstandings in the Haines scene, as well as triggering a violent gang war that raged across most of LA throughout the late '70s.

 

The Nikyo FunCenter could also do cool rainbows provided you used the optional Nikyo MegaGoggles with HyperRefractive Lenses (plus vibration feature).

Edited May 4, 2010 by Barnacle boy

[Bryan]

Hmm... I think I read about the Haines in an old copy of Byte I found in a truck-stop restroom.

 

Reminds me of the -1 voice sound chip. Upon enabling the output, another source of sound in the room would go silent.

[popmilo]

...Has anyone got a lossless, artefact-free version of this bit?

...

I still remember reading seeing a shot of that fish in the Zzap review many years ago and thinking "That is one well-drawn fish!"

...

I read an announcement in a magazine about a game called turrican, I thought what a silly name...

And then I saw that BIG PIRAHNA and pre-ordered damn thing on tape

Best thing I ever did

 

Image that Barnacle boy posted is not in full c64 resolution, this one is best I could find online:

 

If you need better shots, just say so

I still remember we needed 1hour 45min for whole game, so I could play it after work and make many screenshots

 

p.s. Why do you want it ?

Edited May 4, 2010 by popmilo

[Barnacle boy]

Hmm... I think I read about the Haines in an old copy of Byte I found in a truck-stop restroom.

 

Reminds me of the -1 voice sound chip. Upon enabling the output, another source of sound in the room would go silent.

 

Pfft. Typical Nikyo fanboy. Always quick to bring up the Haines' sound cancellation issue while conveniently ignoring the effect the Nikyo audio output had on late-term expectant mothers.

 

 

 

 

Image that Barnacle boy posted is not in full c64 resolution, this one is best I could find online:

 

Mine's the same size as yours, Pop! (fnarr, fnarr!)

 

you have to click the image to see it unscaled

Edited May 4, 2010 by Barnacle boy

[ANTIQ]

p.s. Why do you want it ?

 

First I thought,

 

"In order to retain the resolution, couldn't you scroll the fish and redraw the other bits?"

 

then I thought,

 

"Would it be possible to retain the background by preshifting it and switching character sets to cancel out the scroll?"

 

then I thought,

 

"Is the background showing through the fish?"

 

then I thought,

 

"Yes, damn."

[popmilo]

Image that Barnacle boy posted is not in full c64 resolution, this one is best I could find online:

...Mine's the same size as yours, Pop! (fnarr, fnarr!)

you have to click the image to see it unscaled

My bad! Sorry...

Had no coffee in bloodstream ... forgot to click on it

[popmilo]

p.s. Why do you want it ?

 

First I thought,

 

"In order to retain the resolution, couldn't you scroll the fish and redraw the other bits?"

 

then I thought,

 

"Would it be possible to retain the background by preshifting it and switching character sets to cancel out the scroll?"

 

then I thought,

 

"Is the background showing through the fish?"

 

then I thought,

 

"Yes, damn."

Fish or other end level bosses are IMHO paradoxically not a problem ....

 

That blue hires background is not that big of a deal...

Seeing through fish is not improving gameplay at all...

So Bosses could be made with chars and background also...

 

Bigger problem on A8 is typical scene from Turrican: Lots of different enemies on screen at once and lots of bullets flying around...

Something can be done with char based sprites... and pm-s can help to...

[ceti331]

So, what classic computer battle do we start up next?

 

have we got a consensus here yet, by ALL parties ?

[Bryan]

So, what classic computer battle do we start up next?

 

have we got a consensus here yet, by ALL parties ?

The goal isn't consensus, it carnage!

[popmilo]

So, what classic computer battle do we start up next?

 

have we got a consensus here yet, by ALL parties ?

The goal isn't consensus, it carnage!

Just move it to new topic

[+wood_jl]

In typical flamewar fashion, thread goes crazy then dies suddenly.

 

 

Trouble is, taking a fanboy stance means that your choice is awesome, and the other totally sucks and is complete sh*t. This is the false dichotomy that always plagues these discussions. Can't concede a thing. I've never seen **ANYTHING** like that, in reality. There's no product that does ABSOLUTELY everything better than the other. Even if there was, it would only do some things marginally better, so the competing product is not sh*t. Maybe the Toyota gets better mileage and more reliability than the Chevy, but it cost a lot more and parts are expensive. Different, but neither is sh*t.

 

 

Undoubtedly, some of the C64 games look better. They have more colors on-screen at once. The sprites have more colors. This is undeniable. Criticism of the C64's 16-color palette does not dismiss the fact that Atari's larger palette that is not displayable does not help a given screen.

 

It is somewhat annoying, however, on the C64 how the usable screen is masked down to a little square. The Atari seems "widescreen" on a 4:3 display by comparison.

 

Amazing as well, the double standards in these arguements: Typically, fanboys are brand-loyal. That is, C64/Amiga and A8/ST loyalty. Then the true B.S. comes out.

 

Jay miner is "the man" for making the Amiga, but his earlier work (A8) sucks...if you bought only Commodore.

 

3 voices is a huge handicap for the C64. It's not such a problem on the ST.....if you only bought Atari.

 

The C64 low price was a feature over Atari. The fact that the ST was cheaper than the Amiga doesn't matter, however....if you bought only Commodore.

 

It's also rarely acknowledged that the 3 years from A8 to C64, the C64 was hardly an improvement. In the next 3 years, technology moved from C64 to Amiga (or ST). The A8 should be given a huge "pass" for holding its own for so many years, and not having been exceeded in every way by the 3-year newer machine that *should* have clobbered the Atari in every way, but did not. It did a lot of things pretty well for CHEAP however.

 

Regardless of all the arguments, through the prism of history, they look mighty similar. A modern gamer will see A8/C64 games as nearly indistinguishable, and rate them both as "sub-NES quality." They'll see Amiga/ST screens and rate them as "sub-Genesis/SNES quality." Would they not?

[Bryan]

Very well summarized.

 

In the end we all tend to prefer what we had as a kid. I started with an 800 in 1981. When the 64 arrived it wiped out what little progress Atari had made in the market. I was kinda pissed, but I should have been pissed at Atari who sat on their hands for all those months.

 

Instead I stayed brand loyal and bought a 1040ST/Mega STE/Falcon030...

 

I do believe the 800 was the best machine my dad could have bought me at the time, though. And, boy did I have fun on it. I remember the first time I met another Atari owner who had *gasp* disks of pirated games!!!

Edited May 4, 2010 by Bryan

[potatohead]

...what we had as a kid.

 

Exactly! Yeah, great summary.

 

IMHO, a lot of this comes down to the time spent on the machines. Today, it still comes down to that in a lot of ways. Look at some of the people branching out, checking out the other hardware. Good stuff is gonna come from that.

 

The best thing that's going on are the drive emulation devices and network connects. It's a lot of fun to run the actual machine.

 

Sorry for clobbering the carnage in progress. It just kind of happened fast

 

(and I like the carnage, so long as it's not personal --some good stuff comes from that too)

[TMR]

Trouble is, taking a fanboy stance means that your choice is awesome, and the other totally sucks and is complete sh*t. This is the false dichotomy that always plagues these discussions.

 

Yes it is, but it does go further than that; fanboys believe that anybody who disagrees with their stance is somehow automatically "dissing" the machine they chose and believes it to be sh*t. i think that's one of the most frustrating parts for anybody one the receiving end. Doesn't matter if the person they're arguing with is currently trying to write Atari 8-bit games or otherwise support the machine, they said it hasn't got as many colours a scanline - burn the heretic!

 

It's also rarely acknowledged that the 3 years from A8 to C64, the C64 was hardly an improvement. In the next 3 years, technology moved from C64 to Amiga (or ST).

 

This stuff moves in generations, the A8 and C64 are both part of the same generation (the ICs for the C64 were already designed and working in late 1981 so it's only really two years older than the A8) whilst the ST and Amiga were the next one along and there's always going to be a "hop" in capabilities during that transition. Part of that hop is the jump from 8- to 16-bit CPUs, more power means you can move more data around at a reasonable speed, more data means a higher bit count per pixel which in turn equates to more colourful displays.

 

Before the 16-bit CPUs became affordable, a couple of firms made what many would consider the mistake of going for an ST-style palettised display on an 8-bit; Amstrad's CPC series for example strapped a 4MHz Z80 to a CTRC which gave them the option of a 160x192 pixel display with sixteen colours from the 27 in the palette placed arbitarily throughout. Looks great on paper and indeed in still screenshots, but because it took a whopping 16K just for the screen RAM and offered nothing to help move data around such as hardware sprites or scrolling (well, there's sort of hardware scrolling but it's not "official" and the majority of software simply didn't use it) so the poor CPU was all but exhausted by the effort it was putting in.

 

The A8 should be given a huge "pass" for holding its own for so many years, and not having been exceeded in every way by the 3-year newer machine that *should* have clobbered the Atari in every way, but did not. It did a lot of things pretty well for CHEAP however.

 

Careful, shouting "cheap" like that is an Atarian fanboy argument! =-)

[TMR]

...what we had as a kid.

 

Nah, doesn't always work... i had an 800XL to start with, in fact i've still got it. It's poorly now but i've got another one to keep it company. =-)

 

IMHO, a lot of this comes down to the time spent on the machines. Today, it still comes down to that in a lot of ways. Look at some of the people branching out, checking out the other hardware. Good stuff is gonna come from that.

 

Now, if we can just get some of the non-programmers taking up an assembler, that'd lead to even more good stuff. =-)

[PeteD]

Trouble is, taking a fanboy stance means that your choice is awesome, and the other totally sucks and is complete sh*t. This is the false dichotomy that always plagues these discussions.

 

Yes it is, but it does go further than that; fanboys believe that anybody who disagrees with their stance is somehow automatically "dissing" the machine they chose and believes it to be sh*t. i think that's one of the most frustrating parts for anybody one the receiving end. Doesn't matter if the person they're arguing with is currently trying to write Atari 8-bit games or otherwise support the machine, they said it hasn't got as many colours a scanline - burn the heretic!

 

 

 

That's the entire problem I have with it all. An Atarian is allowed to say we have 256 colours, you dare point out that that's only in certain modes and that in a "normal/game" 2:1 AR you've only really got 128. You're an A8 hater. You mention the fact that unfortunately for music the 8bit channels on the POKEY aren't accurate enough and though there are workarounds, as a stock chip it's not ideal. Hater. They're just facts and it seems a lot of Atarians don't even know this stuff but are happy to bandy around numbers from Wikipedia and then cause huge arguments over them. It also doesn't seem to matter how many times you defend the A8 or agree with the Atarians on facts, then you're just being sensible, or they've "won" somehow because you're agreeing with them.

 

I don't even like the whole Atarian and C64 freak labels, it kind of lumps people together and there are people on this forum I think of as Atarians when I'm really thinking fanboy and people I think of as just fans.

 

Is peoples preference what they had as a kid just because it's the only one you had? I had a Beeb, a speccy then a C64 (wasn't so much of a kid by then though), I'd seen the 800 (via a friend) and wanted one but I think as I'd got more and more into coding by my C64 days I'd have gotten frustrated with the A8 if I had one (or maybe I'd have enjoyed the challenge). Then I had ST AND Amiga and I don't really have a preference for either of those. I've got no loyalty except to whichever I've produced the most stuff on. In the past that's been the C64 then probably the Amiga, these days it's the A8 with C64 creeping up and even Beeb and some others joining the race.

 

Maybe it's doing it as a job since the 80s, you kind of lose an affinity with the machines because the fun is taken out of it. I know I stopped demo coding on C64 not long after starting game coding professionally.

 

 

Pete

[Bryan]

You mention the fact that unfortunately for music the 8bit channels on the POKEY aren't accurate enough and though there are workarounds, as a stock chip it's not ideal.

 

I think the advancements in Pokey programming have been amazing. People have discovered new ways of configuring the chip to get different sounds and waveforms that went virtually undiscovered for decades. The problem is that until someone documents the behavior, it's not easily utilized.

 

Attached is the pac-man theme done on Pokey using some of these tricks (all 60Hz control, no digi). Unfortunately, it seems I lost the source for much of my pac-man project in a hard drive crash. I keep hoping I'll find a copy of it again.

Pokeypac.mp3

[PeteD]

You mention the fact that unfortunately for music the 8bit channels on the POKEY aren't accurate enough and though there are workarounds, as a stock chip it's not ideal.

 

I think the advancements in Pokey programming have been amazing. People have discovered new ways of configuring the chip to get different sounds and waveforms that went virtually undiscovered for decades. The problem is that until someone documents the behavior, it's not easily utilized.

 

Attached is the pac-man theme done on Pokey using some of these tricks (all 60Hz control, no digi). Unfortunately, it seems I lost the source for much of my pac-man project in a hard drive crash. I keep hoping I'll find a copy of it again.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying POKEY isn't capable but when I discuss (ok argue) raw numbers with people who only seem interested in things like 4 is better than 3 I look at things from a viewpoint of if you didn't do more than just "drive" the chip, which one is more capable and I think that's the only fair way to look at it. POKEY has 4 channels, SID 3, 8 bit vs 16 bit, square wave vs multiple waves, built in effects on SID etc nearly all of which don't disturb the other channels to utilise.

 

The documentation for POKEY is as complete as the documentation for SID, there are registers, they do things they were made to, the fun starts (and this is the bit it's harder to pin down and discuss) comes when you start dicking around with them using software techniques but then that's not the sole domain of POKEY and some amazing things have been done over just the past year on SID also. You're right that this stuff needs properly documenting and there are people who supposedly have a lot of this info. I've even offered to write a new player/editor but it seems none of the people complaining about RMT etc want to share the info they have in order to incorporate the new tricks into a dedicated routine.

 

In the end, I don't think POKEY is bad, I don't think it's great, SID isn't amazing I just prefer the more inherently musical nature of it.

 

*Edit*

btw, you should do online backups I've started doing them now, there's plenty of free space around and with free hosting sites with php/other scripting stuff you can even get some version control hosting for free. Run a script to do daily backups, keep X number of rollbacks if you're running out of space..

 

*edit 2*

btw-2 Very pac-man'y pac man ditty

 

 

 

Pete

Edited May 4, 2010 by PeteD

[TMR]

btw, you should do online backups I've started doing them now, there's plenty of free space around and with free hosting sites with php/other scripting stuff you can even get some version control hosting for free. Run a script to do daily backups, keep X number of rollbacks if you're running out of space..

 

i just back up over our LAN with an unregistered copy of Synchredible shuffling updated files around at 4am every day, but i've got a spare box "lying about" that i want to set up with FreeNAS at some point...

[PeteD]

I'm too worried about my shite power in this house taking everything down I do fairly regular backups of code to about 3 different places on my LAN (I've got a Buffalo NAS hacked to run Debian to act as a server), then go hmm what if..? and do another online backup

[TMR]

I'm too worried about my shite power in this house taking everything down

 

There are these great things called surge protectors now... =-)

[PeteD]

I'm too worried about my shite power in this house taking everything down

 

There are these great things called surge protectors now... =-)

 

Got 2 (battery backed), one blew up My power doesn't just go off then later decide to come back on, or just "brown out", it'll flick on and off repeatedly about 20 times and that's enough to confuse anything I swear there's just a guy at the local leccy sub station going off on off on off on weeeeeeee!

 

*edit*

Have you seen where I live on the map? I think I'm sheep on a treadmill powered So far it's blown up one battery backup, blown a PC up (with a jolly loud bang and flames) and made my fridge catch on fire. lol

Edited May 4, 2010 by PeteD

[TMR]

My power doesn't just go off then later decide to come back on, or just "brown out", it'll flick on and off repeatedly about 20 times and that's enough to confuse anything I swear there's just a guy at the local leccy sub station going off on off on off on weeeeeeee!

 

Anyone know what atariksi does for a day job...?

 

Have you seen where I live on the map? I think I'm sheep on a treadmill powered So far it's blown up one battery backup, blown a PC up (with a jolly loud bang and flames) and made my fridge catch on fire. lol

 

Rassilon on a bike... ever considered a diesel generator and telling the mains supplier where to stick it?

[Bryan]

The documentation for POKEY is as complete as the documentation for SID, there are registers, they do things they were made to, the fun starts (and this is the bit it's harder to pin down and discuss) comes when you start dicking around with them using software techniques but then that's not the sole domain of POKEY and some amazing things have been done over just the past year on SID also.

 

Well, it's not that simple. Pokey isn't like SID where you pick your settings and you get that sound. Pokey is a strange combination of timers and polynomial counters with some bizarre combinational logic added. Just knowing what the bits do doesn't help you predict what it will sound like unless you just want square waves or white noise. It turns out you can get many other noises and waveforms out of it with the right settings and I don't consider it a software trick but rather a real Pokey voice if you can set the registers once and have it maintain the sound indefinitely (although many effects consume more than one voice). Pitch correction is a software trick, however.

 

In other words, Pokey programming is a difficult and non-intuitive, but makes a wider variety of sounds than its specification would imply. See, everything on the Atari is hard work!

 

In the end, I don't think POKEY is bad, I don't think it's great, SID isn't amazing I just prefer the more inherently musical nature of it.

 

Sure. SID was made with music in mind. Pokey is 2600 sound on steroids.

 

*Edit*

btw, you should do online backups I've started doing them now, there's plenty of free space around and with free hosting sites with php/other scripting stuff you can even get some version control hosting for free. Run a script to do daily backups, keep X number of rollbacks if you're running out of space..

 

I bought a dual drive RAID NAS-box to put on my little network. I plan on keeping essential stuff off the local HD in the future.

 

*edit 2*

btw-2 Very pac-man'y pac man ditty

Thanks. It uses the triangle trick differently than I've seen anyone else do. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out. I hope I can find the source.

[PeteD]

lol I can just imagine it.. on off on off mwuhahahahaaaaaa!

 

It's been better recently. Used to be that if it had a good old rain the leccy would start to fuck up. The wiring in this place isn't the greatest but I found out from neighbours they get the same shit so it is/was the street cabling or something. I think they redid a lot of it last year so I'm hoping it'll stay well behaved.