Technically speaking, which games really pushed the A8, hardware wise

[carmel_andrews]

like it says on the tin....technically speaking which games really pushed the A8 hardware wise

 

just to put a cap on things you can only consider games that were published/produced or released during the A8's shelf life (i.e 1978/9 to 1st january 1992)...seeming as though later games included software based hardware tricks that weren't available to games prior to 1st january 1992

 

 

From the early period i guess you could say Star Raiders (as most commentators then and now called it and still call it 'videogames 1st killer app') and also Eastern Front (again most commentators from that period referred to that game as the most technically advanced simulation game)

 

From the 'golden age' i guess you can't look any further then epyx's/activisions licenced lucasfilm games, rescue on fractulas/koronis rift/The Eidolon and ballblazer

 

Were there any more out there

Edited October 27, 2011 by carmel_andrews

[Rybags]

Star Raiders didn't push the Atari. It could have just as easily been done on the Apple 2 and ran (proportionally given slower CPU speed) almost as fast given it would need to render PMGs as softsprites. It was a revolutionary game in that it was an FPS pioneer and fit all that into 8K ROM + 8K working set RAM.

 

Eastern Front didn't either - the most revolutionary thing about that game IMO was the fact he crammed a whole bunch of enemy AI into a game that worked in 16K RAM. Program optimisation in that sense isn't really "pushing the hardware".

 

The sad thing about most 20th Century Atari games is that very few pushed the machine. 3 from Lucasfilm (Ballblazer isn't exactly stretching the hardware despite having some great programming), throw in a select few more such as Elektraglide and Alternate Reality. Of course there's more but pushing the hardware close to known limits doesn't mean you're guaranteed a memorable or good game.

 

If you look at the AtariMania top 25, sure there's some great games but not many push the envelope. Of the current list, excluding post-1995 games, I'd select (aside from already mentioned)

 

- 7 Cities of Gold (concurrent scrolling gameplay, sounds, disk I/O)

- International Karate (at the time, rare usage of PMGs to enhance background graphics)

- Dropzone (overall speed and smoothness despite large number of moving objects)

- Alley Cat (good use of colour, digitized sound without interrupting gameplay)

- Encounter (large moving objects with little/no slowdown, extra colour)

[Sub(Function(:))]

just to put a cap on things you can only consider games that were published/produced or released during the A8's shelf life (i.e 1978/9 to 1st january 1992)...seeming as though later games included software based hardware tricks that weren't available to games prior to 1st january 1992

 

 

Why were the "hardware tricks" NOT available? There were there in the same hardware, just hadn't been used by game developers, at least to any great extent.

 

BTW of the day I always liked "Henry's House" as it was SO colourful for an Atari game.

[Rybags]

Certain techiques and hardware exploits were either not known or seldom used in the early days.

 

PAL colour mixing, virtually untouched until mid 1980s.

VScrol trick for making bigger/smaller mode lines, probably not used until at least the mid 1990s.

More advanced software generated modes like TIP, only in the last 15 years or so.

480i real interlace, only in the last couple of years.

 

Plenty of sound techniques either not known or not used until this century:

Saw and triangle wave.

Two-tone and syncing tricks for pulse wave.

Use of Pokey Timers rather than software delays for digitized playback, probably seldom used pre-2000, becoming common recently.

PWM rather than PCM - pretty rare until recently, probably not yet used in any game.

[[email protected]]

like it says on the tin....technically speaking which games really pushed the A8 hardware wise

 

just to put a cap on things you can only consider games that were published/produced or released during the A8's shelf life (i.e 1978/9 to 1st january 1992)...seeming as though later games included software based hardware tricks that weren't available to games prior to 1st january 1992

 

 

From the early period i guess you could say Star Raiders (as most commentators then and now called it and still call it 'videogames 1st killer app') and also Eastern Front (again most commentators from that period referred to that game as the most technically advanced simulation game)

 

From the 'golden age' i guess you can't look any further then epyx's/activisions licenced lucasfilm games, rescue on fractulas/koronis rift/The Eidolon and ballblazer

 

Were there any more out there

 

I feel Alternate Reality looks really good, but always felt there was something special about Rescue On Fractalus and Ballblazer ...

[Mclaneinc]

I can't really think of any old games actually pushing the old Atari, I think the more memorable things is just how much they got out of so little storage & memory. I know they didn't have the overheads that programmers now do but in those days every single K was maximised in the grade A titles (in most cases).

[solidcorp]

Topping my list would have to be Rescue at Fractalus with its realtime 3d fractal landscape and almost entirely bitmapped graphics. It had awesome sound too.

 

BallBlazer, excellent use of all of the hardware available, custom display lists, multiscale players, individual line playfield scrolling and colorchanges... all to deliver a really awesome smooth gameplay experience.

 

Star Raiders, while not terribly complicated for its use of the hardware was one of the first games available and did make excellent use of most of the features listed above to, again, deliver a deep, smooth, space combat experience.

 

Eastern Front and other similar strategy games that came later may not have looked all that great but the AI was truly ahead of its time and monopolized the CPU for long periods of time.

 

Just about all Synapse games made great use of the character sets, graphics modes, and players, also an early game company. Canyon Climber, Slime, Shamus, Necromancer, Drelbs, Claim Jumper, Quasimodo...

 

The Jawbreaker PacMan clones and Droll and made the best use of CTIA aliasing to combine high resolution (mode graphics with color, usually black, white, pink and green due to the pixels being half a color clock wide.

 

I liked Preppie and Preppie II Frogger clones much better than Chicken, it seemed to rely less on player graphics and actually animated color playfield graphics in mode 7+ in scrolling bands which led to higher quality more expressive and colorful graphics in a funnier game.

 

Music and sound is often overlooked in these technical discussions, my favorites would have to be Boulderdash, Rescue at Fractalus, Droll, Necromancer, and M.U.L.E.

[Heaven/TQA]

Rainbow walker

[Heaven/TQA]

7 cities of gold is a milestone, too... as others mentioned...

 

world builder, streaming I/O system...

 

when I am going through the list of the games mentioned... I have to admit that is it only my view that in the 80s there were more different type of games than on consoles nowadays? I only see such varity on iOS devices...

[Sub(Function(:))]

Certain techiques and hardware exploits were either not known or seldom used in the early days.

...

 

Yes but my point is these "new" tricks could be used on the hardware of a 1979 Atari. It's just no one had discovered them.

 

Even back in the day New Atari User had an article for changing graphics mode at some point during a line draw. There was not a lot of time to do a lot else. Is this pushing the computer? (ok it's not a game) also the 256 colour drawing/art software (the one that drew on every 2nd scan line, sorry the name escapes me)

 

I just find the original post a bit vague, what is ment by pushing the atari. As others have said, some impressive games didn't push the machine that much

 

I guess you could better define the question as tricks/techniques not found (or hinted at) in De Re Atari, or documentation of the time.

[José Pereira]

[quote name=Sub(Function( )' timestamp='1319720767' post='2396532]

just to put a cap on things you can only consider games that were published/produced or released during the A8's shelf life (i.e 1978/9 to 1st january 1992)...seeming as though later games included software based hardware tricks that weren't available to games prior to 1st january 1992

 

 

Why were the "hardware tricks" NOT available? There were there in the same hardware, just hadn't been used by game developers, at least to any great extent.

 

BTW of the day I always liked "Henry's House" as it was SO colourful for an Atari game.

 

Hi, that was exactly in henry's House that I automatic think when reading the initial post.

But I didn't want to say nothing because it would seem just because of my likes and the use of A8 Pallete and DLIs.

 

It's, probably, not technically coding but it's real Hardware, and thinking better, now it really seems A8:

The two versions screens: http://www.mobygames.com/game/henrys-house/screenshots

seeing the A8 on Left and C64 on right you can see that C64 with more per line colours and sprites or a CPC with more colours each byte would never get it.

 

C64 Multicolour Char-Mode gets one different colour on each char (but only the first eight of the 16coplours Pallete possible to use) and two more Backr. common on that line.

On A8 with maximum 5colours ANTIC4 and DLIs. there are 'infinit' combinations of the 128 ANTIC4 Pallete possible.

 

C64 can have again, one different colour and two common on more (eight) and more wide and Multicolour but A8 would with only two joined as Multicolour get a really nice colouring sprites.

Even C64 have here, in Henry's House, trying to get things better with the use of some Hi-Resolution Sprites like the Ghost in one of the Levels but is always look better, even a single colour 2:1 ratio one on A8.

 

Other thing is the nice 'flutuation' 16shades and changing colours of the bottom scores Area (something really unique on A8 on that time).

 

All this just to say that it was sad that anyone don't use the idea here in future games.

And like it was shown here, even C64 games could be done very colourful on A8 if the coders want to.

 

 

 

 

Other way I think that most of the things like colouring large Areas with underlays (used on International Karte) and soft sprite and PMs on the guys (again on International Karate) were used, but again, probably because of the almost died Market weren't followed by anyone.

In the Books the PRIORs are documented, for example, an expanded PM underlay that would cover a large Area and under/behind other PFs colours could be done.

PRIOR0 also...

Was just a 'coder wants to'.

 

 

Other things like those new POKEY/Music&Fxs. probably not as they are now beeing discouvered because all us now do this in free time and by pleasure. And more, we have Web to talk with eachoter... That time most of people work alone or just with one or two more.

Probably A8 was, and still is, the most difficult Machine to get something, just with lots of work to get something really good.

We have P.Cs. and all those modern programs that in fractions of seconds show and we can change things.

It seems that although available, those PRIORs/underlays/DLIs/... done by hand, saving, then running, error/not good and have to do all again it seems almost impossible back then.

Was something like G2F (even with all the things it doesn't have or need to be changed) or even RMT (again with the same constraints) and probably we would have more outstanding things (even if just software/coding it would shure only be possible because of the A8 hardware in itself).

 

 

 

Other game I still think: Star Raiders II (get an Eye on the other versions...)

 

Of course, we can talk about others, like Elektraglide, but, this case is an example where it lacks in beeing much, much difficult and need something more...

Plastron good looking but always the same.

Mirax Force and Last Guardian are again good examples of A8 Multicoloured sprites vs C64 1colour and two common on all sprites (that most of the times use&abuse of the Dark Gray and White that always tend to look the same) but loose on the only two sprites by line vs C64 eight sprites by line.

These two, for example would rock with Uridium, if the guys, even flickering, go into something like Ripper ships demo.

These flickering and with all different three colours/luminances on each would always be better than other versions, I think...

But again there aren't many examples of Flickering, only remember of Joust and what Pac-Man was? Ms.Pac-man?

 

Started to write and then... Oops, what a long post...

Greets.

José Pereira.

Edited October 27, 2011 by José Pereira

[eegad]

Always liked Alternate Reality for something that looks nice and had fantastic sound (music). Also the 3D environment, at the time, was impressive.

 

And Dropzone for fast-paced arcade gameplay.

[+orpheuswaking]

I guess I need to pull out seven cities of gold and give it a whirl, it's one game I have that I never played... But recently so many people have mentioned it.

[emkay]

Really pushing the Atari?

 

Clearly Drop Zone. No other game reached that quality on the A8.

Of Course Rescue on Fractalus, but even more Koronis Rift.

Wayout, far Ahead , compared to other machines of that time.

[Heaven/TQA]

never played 7 cities? get it... it is cool... it even has parallax scrolling in the habour...

[oky2000]

I think any game that can be loaded from disk (so no 8mb carts) and runs on a stock 65xe or 130xe (so no 320mb expansions) should be allowed.

 

How about Mercenary? Encounter?

 

What's interesting is homebrew 8bit games keep improving technically but beyond mid 90s nothing spectacular has been seen since the 90s on 16bit machines. Why? Amiga was complex but <1% of all released 15,000-20,000 games only approaching the full power of the chipset is a joke (and why Amiga piracy flourished).

Edited October 27, 2011 by oky2000

[kogden]

Certain techiques and hardware exploits were either not known or seldom used in the early days.

 

PAL colour mixing, virtually untouched until mid 1980s.

VScrol trick for making bigger/smaller mode lines, probably not used until at least the mid 1990s.

More advanced software generated modes like TIP, only in the last 15 years or so.

480i real interlace, only in the last couple of years.

 

Plenty of sound techniques either not known or not used until this century:

Saw and triangle wave.

Two-tone and syncing tricks for pulse wave.

Use of Pokey Timers rather than software delays for digitized playback, probably seldom used pre-2000, becoming common recently.

PWM rather than PCM - pretty rare until recently, probably not yet used in any game.

 

Are there sites with good english docs and tutorials on these techniques? Too bad a book on such things would be unlikely to sell more than a handful copies. I'd really like to learn some of them once I get more comfortable with 6502 asm.

 

Personally I'd like to finally see a couple games take advantage of 256K+ expanded Ataris. Most people here have at least 1 expanded machine it seems. Other than a couple of DOS's and demos, very little has ever taken advantage of them even though RAM expansions have been common since the 80's. The 8-bit side of NOVAtari user's group meetings were littered with 256K 800XL's. So common Atari even adopted the community-developed banking scheme for the 130XE. Just because the C64 REU sucked doesn't mean WE didn't have cheap RAM upgrades available that integrated well with the machine. It seems like a lot of people are trying to do everything as 64K single-load games just to be fair when comparing to Commie crap.

 

A lot of these expansions support XE Antic banking too. I have one that does (576K 600XL - thanks Mega-Hz!). That's another feature I'd like to see used. I'm not saying ALL new games/apps should support expanded memory or XE Antic banking and trying to squeeze things in 64K can be fun. These features exist for a reason but people seem downright hostile toward ever developing for them even though they went through the effort to solder the expansion board in their machine. I'd eventually like to develop something that uses it. Not saying everything should, I still like seeing new progs that support stock machines but we need a few good games and apps that do I think.

 

--Kevin

Edited October 27, 2011 by kogden

[Goochman]

Alternate Reality the City and Dungeon being 3d perspective I think are some that pushed the limits

 

Same for 7 Cities, Wayout, and Fractulus as others have mentioned.

[Heaven/TQA]

best on Wayout/Capture the flag is the background... I think since Activison introduced the great colorful backgrounds done by DLIs or Kernel on 2600 I missed that on any other platform except then Amiga/ST/Mega Drive/SNES...

[solidcorp]

Always liked Alternate Reality for something that looks nice and had fantastic sound (music). Also the 3D environment, at the time, was impressive.

 

And Dropzone for fast-paced arcade gameplay.

 

Oh yea, definitely add AR!!!!

[fox]

VScrol trick for making bigger/smaller mode lines, probably not used until at least the mid 1990s.

More advanced software generated modes like TIP, only in the last 15 years or so.

Both the VScrol trick (9++) and TIP were first presented in Numen in 2002. Modes such as HIP and CIN are indeed mid 1990s.

 

Are there sites with good english docs and tutorials on these techniques? Too bad a book on such things would be unlikely to sell more than a handful copies. I'd really like to learn some of them once I get more comfortable with 6502 asm.

Years ago I've sent translations of my original articles on 9++ and TIP to Heaven. He put them on his website.

I agree that there's huge shortage of Atari programming tutorials.

[José Pereira]

Always liked Alternate Reality for something that looks nice and had fantastic sound (music). Also the 3D environment, at the time, was impressive.

 

And Dropzone for fast-paced arcade gameplay.

 

Oh yea, definitely add AR!!!!

 

In the gameplaying gfxs. I think the second: The Dubgeon because The City use and abuse of DLI Rainbow and I think it was not real nor good to see on T.V.

My personal opinion... DLIs. abuse wasn't always the best to look at...

 

But technical yes.

[emkay]

best on Wayout/Capture the flag is the background... I think since Activison introduced the great colorful backgrounds done by DLIs or Kernel on 2600 I missed that on any other platform except then Amiga/ST/Mega Drive/SNES...

 

 

The best of Wayout was the fps. Have a look at other computers of that time.

 

[emkay]

Always liked Alternate Reality for something that looks nice and had fantastic sound (music). Also the 3D environment, at the time, was impressive.

 

And Dropzone for fast-paced arcade gameplay.

 

Oh yea, definitely add AR!!!!

 

In the gameplaying gfxs. I think the second: The Dubgeon because The City use and abuse of DLI Rainbow and I think it was not real nor good to see on T.V.

My personal opinion... DLIs. abuse wasn't always the best to look at...

 

But technical yes.

 

Alternate Reality only pushed the Disk turn thumb syndrome

The game was good(very good). But, in no way it pushed limits of the A8.

Slow 3D optics, worse objects, bad DLI usage and unhappy usage of the disk space.

 

In short: one of the most needy games to push the limits

 

-Bigger and faster 3D window

-Bigger enemies

-Better GFX effects (rain)

-Double Density Disk usage (or better Cartridge)

-Rework on the DLI usage

And particular the start screen has to be updated

[Heaven/TQA]

VScrol trick for making bigger/smaller mode lines, probably not used until at least the mid 1990s.

More advanced software generated modes like TIP, only in the last 15 years or so.

Both the VScrol trick (9++) and TIP were first presented in Numen in 2002. Modes such as HIP and CIN are indeed mid 1990s.

 

Are there sites with good english docs and tutorials on these techniques? Too bad a book on such things would be unlikely to sell more than a handful copies. I'd really like to learn some of them once I get more comfortable with 6502 asm.

Years ago I've sent translations of my original articles on 9++ and TIP to Heaven. He put them on his website.

I agree that there's huge shortage of Atari programming tutorials.

 

 

Hi Fox,

 

Yeah tutorials were on my site but they are offline. Here at AA I have posted both ad they are available at the Atari programming wiki.

 

I guess someone has the links.