What is the Atari 2600 screen resolution?

[+SpiceWare]

 

Surely these 150 sprites are scattered throughout the Universe of Draconia! How many can be onscreen?

 

That they are, but on every single frame the Display Sprite routines still need to check each of them to determine whether or not they're visible. It's possible that if too many are onscreen that the processing time for the flicker logic would exceed available time and cause jitter. I could create a "stress test" build to see, though I don't foresee having the time to do that for a while.

[Aloan]

Multimedia Fusion 2 games won't work on a real Atari 2600, so that page is basically useless for anyone who wants to make real Atari 2600 games.

you are right, sorry for the confusion, I have changed the webpage to say that as well! Thanks, but the page explains in good detail about the Atari 2600 visible resolution which is best as 160x192 and i understand it is color clocks and scanlines! and that the playfield is really only 20 pixels wide!, bits, or color clocks. It must be mirrored for example to get the 40 pixels, and it even gets double stretched to fill the 160 pixels screen, so you must make your playfield I guess quadruple narrow. But the good part is you can rework (trim the blocks) on a per scanline basis.

Same with player sprites as can be seen in the game (can't remember now but it is a game where a mother feeds food to her child and he feeds the dogs and cats that come under the table? lol) both sprites a huge (horizontally stretched) and reworked a bit per scanline.

Edited July 20, 2014 by Aloan

[easyrhyme]

Based on info 12:7 NTSC pixel aspect ratio

 

Eric Ball: https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/7800-compared-to-the-nes

Eric Ball: https://atariage.com/forums/blog/148/entry-9039-engage/

tepples: https://pineight.com/mw/index.php?title=Dot_clock_rates

 

So they multiply their art by 7/12 to keep post-correct scale.

 

 

Stella NTSC ~ 86. Which is pretty close to 83 mentioned earlier.

[Andromeda Stardust]

People think of pixels as squares, largely thanks to the NES and later 8/16-bit systems. Atari knows not of these squares, because everything is built of bricks! Bricks of varying width which are generally wider than they are tall.

 

But generally the resolution is 192 bricks wide by 160 bricks tall, although these can vary all over the place. With emulators, a 2x1 brick aspect will scale nicely without artifacts.

 

Not much I can contribute that hasn't been posted already.

Edited September 6, 2015 by stardust4ever

[the 8 bit guy]

On 9/10/2010 at 10:10 PM, Gil-Galad said:

it is 92 high 160 wide

 

 

[Kabuto]

Hello everyone, I develop games for C64 with Garry Kitchen's Game Maker engine, now I want to make games on the Atari 2600 with Batari Basic and just learning I see that the coordinates of the sprites and missiles only reach 88 on the "Y axis ". So I don't understand much about the 160 * 192 resolution that the console supposedly has.

[+SpiceWare]

26 minutes ago, Kabuto said:

Hello everyone, I develop games for C64 with Garry Kitchen's Game Maker engine, now I want to make games on the Atari 2600 with Batari Basic and just learning I see that the coordinates of the sprites and missiles only reach 88 on the "Y axis ". So I don't understand much about the 160 * 192 resolution that the console supposedly has.

 

From the Object section of @Random Terrain's batari Basic Commands page:

 

Quote

Did You Know?

You will not be able to precisely duplicate sprites from classic games because bB uses double-height pixels. The double-height pixels were used because it gives more time in the kernel for features such as the asymmetric playfield.

 

The double-height is the result of using what's known as a 2 line kernel in which the TIA registers for each object are only updated every-other-scanline.  I have a tutorial for writing an assembly game from scratch that you may find interesting, step 4 is about the 2 line kernel.

192 - (88 * 2) leaves 16 scanlines for the score display.
 

That 192 is also not a fixed size, games can be taller or shorter as needed as seen in reply 24.

[Kabuto]

Thank you very much for the explanation, it is like a brick pixel in the low resolution of the C64 or the Amstrad CPC in its mode 1. I will continue reading and see what I achieve in Batari Basic.

 

On my iTchio page you can see my games for the C64 and other platforms:

 

https://mediatechgames.itch.io/

 

Greetings,

[+SpiceWare]

42 minutes ago, Kabuto said:

On my iTchio page you can see my games for the C64 and other platforms

 

Cool! The graphics in It's Magic II look awesome.

 

While I was known for a game for the C128, I was more known for my C= BBS software and matching MusicTerm program for the caller that featured music at 300 baud, BBS control of fonts and sprites, joystick support for online games, etc.

[Kabuto]

No, that's my favorite collection but it's not mine, the ones from C64 are these:

 

https://mediatechgames.itch.io/umi64

https://mediatechgames.itch.io/umiparatrooper

https://mediatechgames.itch.io/umiliberator

 

Excellent that Alien Invaders in 80 columns for the C128, congratulations!