Jaguar intros on the A8 computers...

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hello folks,

 

for the small A8 computers I created several tip-animations, some Jaguar game intros are among them:

 

- Jaguar Boot-Intro:

 

- Baldies:

 

- Battlemorph:

 

- Blue Lightning:

 

- Highlander:

 

- Iron Soldier 2:

 

- Tempest 2000:

 

- VidGrid:

 

- World Tour Racing:

 

 

Since the old A8 has a very low resolution in 256-colour mode, better stay away one or two meters when watching these movies / animations... greetings, Andreas Koch.

Edited January 5, 2011 by CharlieChaplin

[+doctorclu]

LOL! Big fan of the Atari 8, but I have say that by that time Atari was using development machines with the Atari TT (one of the Atari ST line) which was a 33 mhz processor sixteen or thirty-two bit machine.

 

Other machines other than the Atari TT (circa 1990) were used, but I am pretty sure the Atari 8 bit line were not one of them.

[+save2600]

Hahahaha, those are awesome!

 

I like how in Europe, people do brilliant things with old computers for fun but most of the time here in the States, if there's no monetary attachment - why bother?

[+doctorclu]

Hahahaha, those are awesome!

 

I like how in Europe, people do brilliant things with old computers for fun but most of the time here in the States, if there's no monetary attachment - why bother?

 

Where do you live in the states? I see people doing things for fun in the states all the time.

 

And as attempts to re-do Jaguar intros on the Atari 8... well done.

[+save2600]

Where do you live in the states? I see people doing things for fun in the states all the time.

WI my friend. Quite a mediocre state. Socialistic IL is not much better anymore either.

 

Who in America is doing anything even remotely as cool as this on a vintage computer? Seems to me the best demos and programmers are repeatedly and typically from Germany, Poland, Czech and France. Same goes with modern hardware for these systems too: Amiga, ST, A8 and C64.

[+doctorclu]

Who in America is doing anything even remotely as cool as this on a vintage computer? Seems to me the best demos and programmers are repeatedly and typically from Germany, Poland, Czech and France. Same goes with modern hardware for these systems too: Amiga, ST, A8 and C64.

 

Ah, and now we get into what I would mention would not be nearly as cool as examples you bring up in Europe. But then again what would be really cool to one person might not mean the same to another. And then this would go on for 300 messages. Think I'll pass on that if you don't mind.

 

Bottom line, not everything done in the states is done for money.

Not everything done in Europe is not for money.

 

Let's just say there is fun going on both sides of the pond and loose the stereotypes. Ok?

Edited January 6, 2011 by doctorclu

[+save2600]

Let's just say there is fun going on both sides of the pond and loose the stereotypes. Ok?

Not stereotyping - just observing. Especially on the hardware front. I'd be really interested in what's going on domestically that I'm unaware of (This is not the place though, I'll look into it sometime on my own, don't want to shit on the OP's thread). And yes, lots of fun - both sides of the pond - AFTER we've received our goods from Europe that is. LMAO! Sorry Doc, couldn't resist. No need for a flame war. Would just like to see comparable talent and products domestically is all. Perhaps I am blind to it for some reason.

[+Stephen]

Let's just say there is fun going on both sides of the pond and loose the stereotypes. Ok?

Not stereotyping - just observing. Especially on the hardware front. I'd be really interested in what's going on domestically that I'm unaware of (This is not the place though, I'll look into it sometime on my own, don't want to shit on the OP's thread). And yes, lots of fun - both sides of the pond - AFTER we've received our goods from Europe that is. LMAO! Sorry Doc, couldn't resist. No need for a flame war. Would just like to see comparable talent and products domestically is all. Perhaps I am blind to it for some reason.

I share the same view, and one only has to compare hardware and software releases to see that there is no stereotype involved. Last Word, Sparta DOS X, VBXE2, Covox, NeoTracker, TIP/HIP/RIP graphics modes, ICE-T XE, various SRAM upgrades, ABBUC contests (again, both hardware and software), SillyVenture demo. I could go on for pages - 90%+ of the A8 releases come from overseas. It was precisely this reason that I got a PAL 130XE and have been upgrading it.

[+doctorclu]

..

Edited January 6, 2011 by doctorclu

[+doctorclu]

CharlieChaplin... above and beyond great demos. I'll say that to keep from taking away from the topic of your accomplishments.

Edited January 6, 2011 by doctorclu

[+Stephen]

Let's just say there is fun going on both sides of the pond and loose the stereotypes. Ok?

Not stereotyping - just observing. Especially on the hardware front. I'd be really interested in what's going on domestically that I'm unaware of (This is not the place though, I'll look into it sometime on my own, don't want to shit on the OP's thread). And yes, lots of fun - both sides of the pond - AFTER we've received our goods from Europe that is. LMAO! Sorry Doc, couldn't resist. No need for a flame war. Would just like to see comparable talent and products domestically is all. Perhaps I am blind to it for some reason.

I share the same view, and one only has to compare hardware and software releases to see that there is no stereotype involved. Last Word, Sparta DOS X, VBXE2, Covox, NeoTracker, TIP/HIP/RIP graphics modes, ICE-T XE, various SRAM upgrades, ABBUC contests (again, both hardware and software), SillyVenture demo. I could go on for pages - 90%+ of the A8 releases come from overseas. It was precisely this reason that I got a PAL 130XE and have been upgrading it.

I wanted to clarify that I meant I share the view of overseas releases being of higher quality. I do not share the view of American releases only being done for money.

 

P.S.

I love the TIP animations - these would make awesome title screens / game openers.

[ZylonBane]

LOL! Big fan of the Atari 8, but I have say that by that time Atari was using development machines with the Atari TT (one of the Atari ST line) which was a 33 mhz processor sixteen or thirty-two bit machine.

What in the nine hells does this have to do with someone making TIP videos of Jaguar intros?

[+doctorclu]

What in the nine hells does this have to do with someone making TIP videos of Jaguar intros?

 

You know that is a GOOD QUESTION!!

 

 

I wanted to clarify that I meant I share the view of overseas releases being of higher quality. I do not share the view of American releases only being done for money.

 

Fair enough

 

I love the TIP animations - these would make awesome title screens / game openers.

 

They do look good. Charlie Chaplin, what kind of process does it take to make one of these demos? I know it would be a lot more than converting the videos down to a viewable scale on the Atari 8 (like Mr. Atari's movie viewer). If it is similar, props to making good color rendering.

Edited January 6, 2011 by doctorclu

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hmm,

 

what needs to be done to make these tip-animations?!? Well, thats what I do:

 

00) download the video or animation (youtube, google, etc.)

01) a) if its a GIF/FLI/FLC animation, use Irfan View to extract all frames

b) if it is a video and not in AVI format, use a converter (Super! or something else)

to convert into AVI, then use Irfan View to extract all frames...

 

02) convert all frames into .PNG format (with Irfan View or XnView)

03) downsize all frames to a max. of 160x100 pixels (max. tip-animator-resolution) if I only need 30-50 frames, otherwise downsize to 100x70 pixels or even 80x50 pixels for up to 200 frames (with Irfan View or XnView)

04) if the frame resolution is smaller than 160x100 pixels, generate a black border around it, so that it

has 160x100 pixels size again (with Irfan View or XnView)...

 

05) choose the most nescessary frames - this is the hardest job !! If I have a GIF animation with just

30 frames, its easy, choose all frames - but if I have a video with 3000 or more frames it is hard

to choose a max. of 200 frames from it (usually I skip frames, e.g. use only every 2nd, every 4th,

every 8th,... frame, with some exceptions here and there)...

 

06) copy/move the frames (.PNG) into the folder of Tip-Converter 1.01

07) run tipconv.exe (a Java program) and choose 3-5 random frames to set the

palette, the saturation and brightness and test if they look good

08) generate a batch file that a) has the appropriate settings for palette, saturation,

brightness and b) also executes tipconv which then converts all .PNG frames into .TIP frames

 

09) run the batchfile and generate the tip-frames (they have the same name as the PNG frames,

however tip-animator only accepts numbers 0001, 0002, 0003,...)

10) run "Ant Renamer" and rename the filenames of all tip frames into contigous numbers

 

11) under WIN XP I go to the command prompt, go to the tip-converter folder (which also contains the

tip-animator on my computer) and execute one of the two the tip-animator versions:

a) tip-animator 2.9 (min. 64k RAM, allows lots of frames, shows no garbage when animation starts, but therefore

has high flicker or slow frame-drawing whenever the frames are too different);

b) tip-animator 2xb (min. 128k RAM, allows less frames, shows garbage when the animation starts -

which disappears when the animation re-starts, thanks to 2x buffer there is no flicker)

 

usually I start a command like this at the command prompt:

tipanm29 1 135 max delay5

which will start tip-animator 2.9 and pack frames 1 to 135 into an animation with some (time-) delay between frames;

if the animation is too flickery I try tip-animator 2xb instead:

tipanmxb 1 135 max delay5

and if an error occurs (usually some animation data-block is too long) I try out some tricks...

(if they don`t work I have to lower the resolution or use less frames).

 

12) if the tip-animation (tipanm.xex) has been created, run+test it under Atari 800 Win plus (if it does not look good, try another time-delay, try another palette/saturation/brightness, try the other tip-animator, ...)

 

13) if I like the tip-animation I keep it (and most of the time upload it at atari-age), otherwise I delete it

14) rename the tip-animation "tipanm.xex" into a more descriptive name...

 

As said before, with fullscreen frames (160x100 pixels) one can normally only use 30-50 frames, lowering the frame size (resolution of frames) therefore gives the chance to use more frames, e.g. up to 200 frames. But the animation size (and the possibility to create a working animation) depends on the frame size (resolution in pixels), the number of frames (10, 20, 50, 100, ...) and most of all how much the frames differ from each other (if there are low differences between frames, the chance to create a working animation is higher and the size of the animation is usually small[er]). Just some examples, with the Spongebob intro I could use 162 frames but only in 80x50 pixels resolution, whereas with the Buzzed intro (taken from Amiga) I could use up to 450 frames with full 160x100 pixels resolution; I have tip-animations with 30 frames, low memory usage (they work on 64k computers) and they are flicker free, but I also have animations with 2-5 frames which would have flickered very much, so I had to use tip animator 2xb and therefore a minimum of 128k RAM computers...

 

In the end, its a trial and error situation, not everything works, sometimes simple and short animations will not work as tip-animations (or they flicker heavily) and sometimes "difficult" or long videos work quite good as tip-animations. It is just a "converter-job" I do when creating tip-animations for the A8 (converting animations or videos into tip-animations), but it requires some time and lots of trial and error to do so...

 

-Andreas Koch.

Edited February 16, 2011 by CharlieChaplin

[Atari_Falcon]

Looks very nice! Good work!