Brand NEW 1MB and stereo demo for A8

[NuY]

I've not looked at the demo, but if more software were to be produced that had high requirements, then maybe it would encourage more people to upgrade. I'd love to play a game that actually requires a 1mb system.

 

At the risk of derailing the thread here... is there really a good idea for a game that'd actually require 1Mb? There are some A8 games that need 128K or even a bit larger and they're very lovely for it (or in one case, will be when it's released =-) but 1Mb... for conventional games that's overkill and, although it might be possible to do an FMV game of some kind (there's an attempt to do Mad Dog McCree on the Spectrum right now, but that's relying on a fast disk interface rather than RAM), 1Mb is relatively small for those purposes...

Being that amount of RAM doesn't really impact on gameplaying mechanisms as such, it would be more for resources rather than gameplay features. An example might be the pointy-clicky adventure creator that was in another thread recently. Being that emulation of Atari is at such a stage now that any such created game could be run in an emulator, and would run on a real expanded Atari as a bonus, there could be potential to have conversions of pointy-clicky stuff from the 16 bits, or any game that uses a large amount of resources (sound, graphics, animation, still images).

 

The Mad Dog McCree update, I can see how RAM would help, but that would be a secondary requirement over, as you say, a large amount of storage.

[atariksi]

How about posting a link to a video for the vast majority of us who do not own a 1mb 8 bit to see? Posting a link to a file that maybe 3 of us can run and then telling us to watch it wasn't exactly a good idea.

Surely you've heard of emulation?

 

It's still suppose to work on more real Ataris than 3 since emulation is supposed to be representative of many Ataris out there. It requires PAL so that rules out a bunch of countries, and it requires 1024K expansion memory so that rules out most of those PAL users, and then it requires a stereo board which further narrows the users. And to top it off, it's not that good compared to some demos I have seen. Maybe those interlaced imagery will look better on a real system but I guess I'll never know.

Not quite in the same league with a 25+ year old platform, but if everyone took this viewpoint, there would have been no "faster, better" mentality which drove the PC market. The software drives the hardware market, and it's the only way to raise the bar; otherwise we'd all still be stuck on 640k 8086s...

There's a big difference there. PCs had plug-in cards and did not requiring soldering/desoldering skills. If you had memory slots like Atari 800 did then you know how people starting supporting 48K software but you can't assume people will know how to solder/desolder and that especially given the nonstandard various memory expansions out there. If PCs required soldering to go past 256K, you would have seen little software make use of 640K.

 

I've not looked at the demo, but if more software were to be produced that had high requirements, then maybe it would encourage more people to upgrade. I'd love to play a game that actually requires a 1mb system.

 

And yes, I know I could write one etc., it was just a viewpoint

 

I am not encouraged to upgrade given the nonstandard memory upgrades and soldering/desoldering required.

[TMR]

Being that amount of RAM doesn't really impact on gameplaying mechanisms as such, it would be more for resources rather than gameplay features. An example might be the pointy-clicky adventure creator that was in another thread recently. Being that emulation of Atari is at such a stage now that any such created game could be run in an emulator, and would run on a real expanded Atari as a bonus, there could be potential to have conversions of pointy-clicky stuff from the 16 bits, or any game that uses a large amount of resources (sound, graphics, animation, still images).

 

Personally, i'd rather see the approach taken by 16-bit developers in those sorts of case, the code'll run on a stock machine but will find and utilise expansion RAM if found to cache locations as they're visited. With a bit of planning, one piece of code could theoretically support just about any memory model too, so it covers everything from stock 48K to 1Mb. Nobody gets left out, the folks with expansions get something that takes advantage of the hardware, everyone's happy!

 

Analmux's SF idea is more using the memory, although it's not one i'd have thought of personally because i don't tend to go for one-on-one fighters personally.

 

The Mad Dog McCree update, I can see how RAM would help, but that would be a secondary requirement over, as you say, a large amount of storage.

 

Something like the actual gameplay in Ground Zero Texas might be possible (come to think of it, something like Myst might work too perhaps?) but the cut scenes and so forth will need the storage.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

There are basically two kinds of (internal) memory upgrades: Axlon and 130XE. On uses $CFFF, the other uses $D301. All you have to do is test which one is used. Each address has a maximum of 8 bits that can be used. Can't be that hard to test how big a memory expansion is and which bits it uses.

 

sincerely

 

Mathy

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

for those that want to do the dancing part of this demo much better on the A8 and with less RAM usage, here are some versions of the "Karateka Dance" I found via Google. One may use e.g. Irfan View to extract the frames of the animated GIF file...

 

@atariksi: Sure 1GB RAM is cheap nowadays and it may be cool (???) to have so much RAM inside an A8 - but have you ever thought about how long it takes to fill so much XRAM, even with a harddisk (not to think about a floppy-drive or a tape-drive)... or was it a typo and you meant 1MB ?!?

 

-Andreas Koch.

Karateka_dance_1.zip

karateka_dance_2.zip

karateka_dance_3.zip

karateka_dance_4.zip

karateka_dance_5.zip

karateka_dance_6.zip

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hello guys

 

There are basically two kinds of (internal) memory upgrades: Axlon and 130XE. On uses $CFFF, the other uses $D301. All you have to do is test which one is used. Each address has a maximum of 8 bits that can be used. Can't be that hard to test how big a memory expansion is and which bits it uses.

 

sincerely

 

Mathy

 

 

Well,

for the Atari 400/800 there is also the Mosaic 64k ram-select-board (uses 4k rambanks from $C000-CFFF) and one can have three of them inside an Atari 800. Think there was also a 128k Mosaic ram-select-board, but I am not sure. Next there is the KP megaram 3 which also uses $D600 besides $D301. And last not least all those upgrades that exchange the 64k base RAM in XL/XE computers with x kbytes of new RAM (Buchholz 256k, Newell 256k, etc.) are not easy to test, since most/all XRAM testing software now sees part of the base RAM as extended RAM (with the mentioned 256k types it sees 240k XRAM, it does not see the 16k RAM under the OS or at least does not see it as XRAM). Afaik this is a hardware issue and cannot be solved in software, so the testing programs will always show wrong XRAM size on these types...

 

About Axlon, afaik Axlon was a 100% daughter of Atari, the chairman was Nolan Bushnell (think I read this somewhere, hopefully it is not totally untrue). The Axlon ram enhancements use 16k rambanks (from $4000-7FFF)...

 

-Andreas Koch.

[Mathy]

Hello Andreas

 

The Buchholz 256kB and Newell 256kB don't switch out 64kB of main memory. They switch out 16kB just like the XE's do. What's really different is that these memory expansions don't use 4 banks of memory because that's used as main memory. This just means the 4 possible bit combinations aren't used. Which isn't that hard to test either.

 

The MegaRAM III by Klaus Peters uses $600. $600 should not be used as it is reserved for PBI devices. But if you do, even that isn't that hard to test. Remember, this test isn't a stability test, it just has to test whether certain bits and bytes are used.

 

sincerely

 

Mathy

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

 

if you like the dancing Karateka, here are some other dance animations, e.g. a dancing cat, dancing mario, dancing yoda and my favourite dancing by laurel+hardy... they require 64k or 128k memory... -Andreas Koch.

lets_dance.zip

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

I wrote "$600". But that's page six. I meant to write "$D600".

 

sincerely

 

Mathy

[ANTIQ]

I prefer big software to use fancy mappers or multiple disk loads (which an emulator can whip through anyway) rather than non-standard RAM expansions.

 

So there!

[emkay]

Wll, 1MB demos without presentation.....

here a suggestion of a perfect presentation....

 

 

 

[Marius]

It is a nice-to-show demo. But I have to be honest: Personally I don't like non-realtime demo's. It is just an animation using lot's of pics.

 

I would be more excited when the moves where calculated on the fly.

 

So in that point: I have to agree with emkay... it is not the demo I would expand my atari for.

 

I knew i HAD (!) to expand my atari to 320KB when I saw numen on Emulators. I really WANTED to run that one on real equipment. I don't feel the same now.

 

But don't get me wrong: I like the demo, and I ALWAYS like it when people invest time in the atari 8bit. So +1 for Poison. I also was very excited by reading the name of "WFMH" again in a demo... and "Top III" ...

 

So THANKS to poison bringing this to atari 8bit.

[Divya16]

Wll, 1MB demos without presentation.....

here a suggestion of a perfect presentation....

 

 

Not perfect. The scrolling titles is wiggling-- purposely or not-- doesn't look so good. The imagery is repetitively dull/ugly looking using chromas for luminances. But it's a lot of content if it fits in 64K (but I presume they are using some quick way of loading from some PC interface or skip the loading part in the video).

[TMR]

Not perfect. The scrolling titles is wiggling-- purposely or not-- doesn't look so good. The imagery is repetitively dull/ugly looking using chromas for luminances.

 

Well, i'll never try to second guess emkay but i believe he's referring to the presentation, things like transitions between effects, picture dissolves and fades...

 

But it's a lot of content if it fits in 64K (but I presume they are using some quick way of loading from some PC interface or skip the loading part in the video).

 

This demo runs on a stock C64 and 1541 [1] and the loads haven't been edited out, they take place behind some of the less CPU-intensive parts of the code; watch the demo in an emulator and you can see where the disk activity happens (the first one is during the Arsenic logo at the start and lasts until the "brings you" text appears).

 

[1] C64 demo competition rules tend to be pretty strict, usually specifying the machine on the party's website as a C64 with a 1541 and perhaps a fastload cartridge (which won't be helping out after the initial load). There's only a handful of expanded C64 demos (i wrote one of them as something of a joke) and only a fraction of those have competed at parties, usually as a wild competition entry rather than in the C64 competition.

Edited October 6, 2010 by TMR

[emkay]

Not perfect. The scrolling titles is wiggling-- purposely or not-- doesn't look so good. The imagery is repetitively dull/ugly looking using chromas for luminances.

 

Well, i'll never try to second guess emkay but i believe he's referring to the presentation, things like transitions between effects, picture dissolves and fades...

 

This...., the ambient music, and the continous theme of the demo. There is no real break that destroys the motivation to watch it.

[Divya16]

Not perfect. The scrolling titles is wiggling-- purposely or not-- doesn't look so good. The imagery is repetitively dull/ugly looking using chromas for luminances.

 

Well, i'll never try to second guess emkay but i believe he's referring to the presentation, things like transitions between effects, picture dissolves and fades...

 

This...., the ambient music, and the continous theme of the demo. There is no real break that destroys the motivation to watch it.

 

He just said they edited out the breaks for disk loads. How about a long 64K demo that's unedited?

[emkay]

 

He just said they edited out the breaks for disk loads. How about a long 64K demo that's unedited?

 

Never mind....

 

But, for sure, a one MB Atari 8-Bit Demo can look and sound " a little bit" better than the Demo of this topic.

 

Well, the Atari can even play a real digitrack while loading from disk. But not even one bit of digisound is used in the huge memory area. The Atari has two "independend" screens "background" and "PMg". In everytime it is possible to switch the main display during some PMg actions happen on the screen.

Same with the music. Cause no DISK IO is used, the tracks could be "tuned together" and should be no problem for a professional musician.

Pictures could also use different fading fx.

 

And so on....

[TMR]

He just said they edited out the breaks for disk loads.

 

Umm... might want to read back, i said pretty much the exact opposite of that. =-)

[+Stephen]

He just said they edited out the breaks for disk loads. How about a long 64K demo that's unedited?

No - it was said that disk loads occur in the background while the demo is running which is a nice way of doing things.

 

*** Edit ***

And it seems TMR beat me to it by a few seconds. Not trying to gang up, I swear!

[emkay]

He just said they edited out the breaks for disk loads. How about a long 64K demo that's unedited?

No - it was said that disk loads occur in the background while the demo is running which is a nice way of doing things.

 

 

The A8 has problems with the sound, when loading from disk. You cannot use all 4 channels then. But you can use 2 channels at 8 bit , or one channel at 16 bit resolution, then... and digi sounds do well there. Actually , you could replay a mod file during disk io.

[+Stephen]

The A8 has problems with the sound, when loading from disk. You cannot use all 4 channels then. But you can use 2 channels at 8 bit , or one channel at 16 bit resolution, then... and digi sounds do well there. Actually , you could replay a mod file during disk io.

You sure about that MOD playback during disk I/O? I know both Inertia and NeoTracker completely turn off screen DMA to get decent quality playback. Course, that's probably because it's driving 4 8-bit DACs (Covox). Truth be told, if I had a choice between 4-bit MOD playback ala PoKey or the standard disk beeps, I'll take the disk beeps

[Rybags]

You can play digitized sound on Ch 3 and 4 which also control the SIO bitrate because the serial I/O part of Pokey ignores what's in AUDCn.

 

I've played around with it a little and I think Heaven did a fully-fledged digital player that worked whilst loading.

 

Doing more than 2 channels of digitized playback at decent quality would likely need a custom SIO routine, probably operating in polling mode.

 

The other problem is that even in silent mode, you still get some SIO noise which does interfere to a degree with whatever sound playback you want to do.

[atariksi]

Well,

for those that want to do the dancing part of this demo much better on the A8 and with less RAM usage, here are some versions of the "Karateka Dance" I found via Google. One may use e.g. Irfan View to extract the frames of the animated GIF file...

 

@atariksi: Sure 1GB RAM is cheap nowadays and it may be cool (???) to have so much RAM inside an A8 - but have you ever thought about how long it takes to fill so much XRAM, even with a harddisk (not to think about a floppy-drive or a tape-drive)... or was it a typo and you meant 1MB ?!?

 

-Andreas Koch.

 

Those GIFs still look blocky-- is this the original resolution of the original or what the A8 ones look like?

 

Yeah, no type-- I meant 1GB RAM; that's why I said to use A0..A7 and D0..D7 as 16-bit banking address for $D5xx. I suppose you can use one of the bits to set configuration and use 15-bit banking bits. That way you can even get more than 1GB. Not all applications require filling the RAM or initializing all of it. For example, you could make a cache or ramdrive that just initializes the directory and points to used/unused blocks. So they get filled as they are used. And applications use as much RAM as needed.