Legacy versus ARM-based 2600 Game Development

[+littaum]

 

26 minutes ago, Gemintronic said:

Might have said this before, but.. still mulling it over in my mind.  Especially when thinking about fairness of judgement for awards.

 

1. Game made with retail era hardware assist (original DPC, up to 64k ROM)

2. Games made with modern hardware assist (128k or more ROM, Boulderdash bankswitching, etc..)

3. Games made with modern hardware assist plus co-processing (Melody using ARM features, CDFx)

 

I think the non technical will always get more excited about games made with modern hardware assist + co-processing.  Especially if it's a replica of games they're already familiar with.  The closer you can get to arcade perfect the more nostalgic pull.  But, I think enough people understand the apparent difference in challenge going from divisions 1, 2 and 3 to warrant separate awards on technical achievement.

 

As far as I know, the only game which had 32K of rom or more in the retail era was Fatal Run, which was released at the very tail end of the 2600's retail lifespan.  Most games had a max of 16K, and again that was on the downward slope of the retail window.

 

If the Atari 2600 games categories were even further stratified by the hardware scheme they used by hour 10 of the awards Darcy would probably start screaming "I JUST WANTED TO PLAY SOME VIDEO GAMES, I'M HUNGRY AND WANT TO GO HOME!".  And many of these advanced categories would have only 2-3 games eligible in their "weight class" at best, some winning by default.   

 

I'm all for a more detailed labeling of the type of hardware games use, and for those with publicly available ROMs (demo versions or otherwise) one can easily see what kind of scheme they used by going into the developer settings in Stella.  But even with more detailed labeling it would not have affected any of my own votes.

[orange808]

When I said we didn't need more categories, I wasn't throwing shade at deserving winners that got awards in the current framework. I'll see myself out.

 

[mika15]

also, I don’t think it would further encourage voters, if we were to choose 20 different 2600 games of the year, purely because of number of extra categories. It’s perfect as it is, and even now only a smallest fraction of atari age members is voting

[+Gemintronic]

14 minutes ago, orange808 said:

When I said we didn't need more categories, I wasn't throwing shade at deserving winners that got awards in the current framework. I'll see myself out.

 

 

I honestly didn't see your post so don't take it as a personal jab.  Since I don't host awards and can barely develop my own games in BASIC my word shouldn't have such weight

 

@littaum

I think some clone consoles like the Rambo had a 64k multi game "cart" built in.  But, I agree I'm reaching.

[+Pat Brady]

3 hours ago, johnnywc said:

Well, I usually steer clear of this conversation for personal reasons but since I and RobotWar were specially mentioned I figured I'd add my 2 cents (keep the change  )  ...

 

Oh. Apologies for dragging you into this. And thank you for the insight you provided about your games and your process.

 

Quote

I may be misreading your point here, but it seems to suggest that Fred and his team do not get the credit they deserve, and I may have tacked on my thanks to Fred because of his Lifetime Achievement Award (although I obviously altered my speech to mention him first after his wonderful acceptance speech since it was fresh on my mind).

 

Oops! I did not intend any criticism of your speech at all. I just meant that at that point in the show, I hadn't heard any mention of that aspect. I mentioned your speech only to acknowledge that you did mention it, and your mention was appropriate, it just was not in my thoughts at the time because it hadn't happened yet. It was completely clear that your thanks to Fred were sincere and not tacked on. You said at the time that you re-ordered your acknowledgements, which was appropriate in the situation. Sorry for my wording.

 

As for "not get the credit they deserve." Hmm. Those are not the exact words I'd choose. I know you've been consistent, and your voice ought to be the loudest on this subject, but my perception is that in the community, the point gets blurred and glossed over.

 

3 hours ago, johnnywc said:

(Champ Games is always looking for good sound guys if you're interested  )

 

Thank you for the kind words! I'm definitely interested, whether the audio is TIA, DPC, or CDFJ. And… it would be great if something constructive came out of this thread  . Need to make some progress on a few existing projects first. Will PM you.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I am also definitely against even more categories. IMO we should inform the voters in an easy to understand way about the technical differences. That's where my idea of a technical rating comes from. We would have a category for low(er) and one for high(er) technical rating (instead of simply using the size as an indicator). The rating should be made transparent for those who are interested. 

 

So all the information would be there, and then the voters can decide if they use the rating to adjust their voting or not. 

 

Personally I do not think this will have any major impact. But at least it should help ending the discussion.

[kisrael]

Well, since the conversation is going on again, but isn't getting TOO heated... I'll chime in with a new (to me) perspective.

So, "legacy" coding and tech-assisted coding are asking two answerable questions; but they're unanswerable in different ways.

 

Legacy coding (like, unassisted hardware, 4K or MAYBE 8K ROMS) get the question "What is the most impressive, innovative, and fun way this old hardware could be pushed". It's not an answerable question because it's a matter of opinion, but it's "bounded" in some ways. And great feats with these limitations are doubly impressive because they COULD'VE been done back in the day, but it took more recent (personal and support group) innovation to do it. (It's like how programming is so impressive because you can make anything by "just typing")

Tech-assisted coding the question is... I dunno. Like "what's the most impressive, innovative, and fun thing we can make, but still funneling it through the A/V channels". But because the other side of funnel is unbounded, the answer to it is also unbounded. You only reach a limit when you start asking "look, why are we bothering to limit it through the 2600 funnel, if it's basically a full fledged modern system squirting A/V through that limited pipe."  Maybe you love the details of that pipe, maybe you just love the idea of still technically "runnong on Atari". And while modern debuggers and emulators mean even coders in the "legacy" limits are more empowered than pros of days gone by, there are more barriers to entry or at least production - you're bringing in hardware. 

Question: what's the best list for hardware schemes (bankswitching and/or RAM and/or coprocessor)?  
Like when (regional pride here, these are MIT guys) GCC started doing Atari 2600 carts, IMO Atari went from lagging Activision to surpassing it, on an A/V standpoint. And now I'm curious, what kind of schemes Battlezone or Pole Position were, because they really blew me away back in the day
 

[+johnnywc]

36 minutes ago, Pat Brady said:

 

Oh. Apologies for dragging you into this. And thank you for the insight you provided about your games and your process.

 

 

Oops! I did not intend any criticism of your speech at all. I just meant that at that point in the show, I hadn't heard any mention of that aspect. I mentioned your speech only to acknowledge that you did mention it, and your mention was appropriate, it just was not in my thoughts at the time because it hadn't happened yet. It was completely clear that your thanks to Fred were sincere and not tacked on. You said at the time that you re-ordered your acknowledgements, which was appropriate in the situation. Sorry for my wording.

No worries and thanks for the clarification.  I'm notoriously famous for taking words out of context and probably shouldn't have said anything at all regarding that.  My apologies. 

36 minutes ago, Pat Brady said:

As for "not get the credit they deserve." Hmm. Those are not the exact words I'd choose. I know you've been consistent, and your voice ought to be the loudest on this subject, but my perception is that in the community, the point gets blurred and glossed over.

Yes, you're right and again my apologies.  From my perspective (a technical one) I feel CDF do get the credit they deserve and I work closely with all 3 on projects, enhancements for the CDF driver, suggestions etc. so I may incorrectly assume that credit spans the community as well.  Luckily we have these discussions to set the record straight and give credit where credit is due.    

36 minutes ago, Pat Brady said:

 

Thank you for the kind words! I'm definitely interested, whether the audio is TIA, DPC, or CDFJ. And… it would be great if something constructive came out of this thread  . Need to make some progress on a few existing projects first. Will PM you.

That would be great!  Right now I have a super secret double probation project that will need DPC music, and another that will be TIA.  I'm not sure if there is something specific as CDFJ music (I think that's just DPC?) but I may be wrong; sound and music are not my strengths obviously.   I look forward to your PM!   

[+SpiceWare]

45 minutes ago, johnnywc said:

I'm not sure if there is something specific as CDFJ music (I think that's just DPC?)

 

Functionally the same, with one difference for music:

• in DPC+ the waveforms for each voice are 32 bytes long
• in CDFJ the waveforms default to 32 bytes, but can be set to size 2^n where n goes from 1 (2 bytes) to 12 (4096 bytes)

In theory CDFJ could sound better with more detailed waveforms, but I don't think anybody's taken advantage of that yet.  I think getPitch() would need to be updated for sizes other than 32.

 

Additionally CDFJ can switch the AMPLITUDE data stream from music mode to a digital sample mode, which DPC+ does not support.

[+batari]

I also do not want many new categories for 2600 games with various limitations. What I would like to see is ONE additional category.

 

From 1929-1936, the academy awards simply had a "best actress" award, and the "best supporting actress" came along in 1937 so that people who weren't in lead roles could still get recognition. I don't think it would have made sense to handicap actresses so that supporting actresses would get more recognition and have a better shot at a single award, and I don't think that makes a lot of sense here.

 

Also, they don't have 20 categories of actresses to try to include all kinds such as those in bit parts, cameos, extras. It's expected that not everyone involved in creating movies will have a shot at an award, as much as I would like to see a "best best boy" category, you have to stop somewhere.

 

Also, is it necessary to insure all voters are informed of the limitations the programmer chose for their work? Voters can pretty easily inform themselves about that and vote accordingly. It doesn't take much effort to figure that out, and if they have an opinion about the tech used in a game, individual voters can apply their own personal opinions to the votes.

 

I simply propose a category called "Best traditional 2600 game" or similar with a solid, simple definition that most can agree on.

[mika15]

23 minutes ago, batari said:

I simply propose a category called "Best traditional 2600 game" or similar with a solid, simple definition that most can agree on.

i think the problem here is that we will never agree on anything, because not everyone will share the same definition of “traditional”. Was Pitfall II traditional? 

[kisrael]

1 minute ago, mika15 said:

i think the problem here is that we will never agree on anything, because not everyone will share the same definition of “traditional”. Was Pitfall II traditional? 

For purposes of this discussion, I'd vote no it was not. It's well known as an enhanced cart. 
Nor would supercharger stuff, even though that came out during the same era.
For me the only question is 4K vs 8K.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

See, we will never agree on something.  

[+Pat Brady]

1 hour ago, johnnywc said:

I'm notoriously famous for taking words out of context

 

Oh yeah? Well, I am famous for writing things that don't read as I intended.

[mika15]

2 minutes ago, kisrael said:

For purposes of this discussion, I'd vote no it was not. It's well known as an enhanced cart. 
Nor would supercharger stuff, even though that came out during the same era.
For me the only question is 4K vs 8K.

and for me, and probably any other 80’s kids it was - if I could imagine hypothetical Atari game awards in 1980’s i’m pretty sure that Pitfall or supercharger games would not have a separate category. We were in a way voting (with our parents hard earned money) in just one category - games for our Ataris.

 

I know this topic is not only about the awards, but simply looking from that perspective we can either treat them as tech guys awards, or consumer/end user awards. It’s a very specific subset of forum, and I do understand lots of you guys are techy types, but somehow - and I don’t even know how to explain this - it makes more sense to me as a casual player to just appreciate game mechanics, game design and playability. I know about ARM, and I still voted for RobotWar and would still vote for it even if Champ Games squeezed a supercomputer inside that cart. (I would probably draw the line if he hid a projector in that shell though!)

 

[+batari]

5 hours ago, johnnywc said:

To add to that: as Fred mentioned in his acceptance speech, due to a chip shortage he has developed CDFn drivers that use 60mhz chips instead of 70mhz and has asked develops to try to get their games to run with the 60mhz chips first.  There is also something called MAM level which does caching which increases the # of ARM instructions that can be executed, but again there are old chips with a "MAM bug" that require it to be partially disabled.  As has been mentioned before, the ARM code is typically executed during VBlank and OverScan (which for me is about 15% per frame).  Hope that helps!

Yes, I did mention the chip shortage and it is true that it's been harder to get 70 Mhz chips in the past year, and though I do still have many, I also have many 60 Mhz chips, which do work fine for most games - only a few cases were found where the 60 Mhz speed was too slow and the 70 Mhz chips are used instead for these.

I did use the opportunity to announce a new Melody board, however, that has greatly improved specs. All said, it's probably an order of magnitude more powerful than anything else out there: A dual-core CPU supporting 16 MB of flash, all of which is available for ARM code. You don't have to use all of that power, but it's available nonetheless should anyone want to. This wasn't something I intended to create before the chip shortage, but I needed to switch to something that was more easily obtainable and I thought I might as well embrace the latest technology available at a homebrew-friendly price point while I was at it.

[+batari]

22 minutes ago, mika15 said:

i think the problem here is that we will never agree on anything, because not everyone will share the same definition of “traditional”. Was Pitfall II traditional? 

No, we will not agree, that is something that could be left to a vote! Perhaps we can nominate definitions.

 

I would nominate 4k only as one, bankswitching actually used in the day as another, and "no coprocessing" as a third.

 

Do you think we can at least agree on what definitions to nominate?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

6 minutes ago, batari said:

Do you think we can at least agree on what definitions to nominate?

Nope.  

[mika15]

My stance is we should celebrate the fact that after 40+ years we are actually able to enjoy/participate in Atari awards ceremony, and inevitable development of technology means that the games are evolving - and from what I have seen when playing through nominated games it is actually for better, co-processing power or not.

 

 

[+batari]

And I will add a fourth, obvious nomination that makes sense because this is about "Homebrew."

 

I don't have a good name for the category, but if it works on a standard homebrew bankswitch board then the game is allowed. This means 4k, 8k (F8), 16k (F6), or 32k (F4.) Technically 64k (EF) also works on some boards but I would vote to exclude that because it was not used in the day.

[+thegoldenband]

24 minutes ago, batari said:

No, we will not agree, that is something that could be left to a vote! Perhaps we can nominate definitions.

 

I would nominate 4k only as one, bankswitching actually used in the day as another, and "no coprocessing" as a third.

For what it's worth (which ain't much), this is close to my thinking as I've been reading this thread: (1) 4K only, (2) any on-cart technology that was used during the retail era including DPC, and (3) anything goes. From the sidelines, this seems fair enough, and avoids off-in-the-weeds questions about on-cart CPU vs. no on-cart CPU, etc.

 

BTW I'm all in favor of all available technologies being used, as long as there's appropriate transparency about them and they're not being used as a crutch to avoid the hard work of learning how to achieve things that could easily be achieved without the help of those technologies.

 

To paraphrase something I said ages ago, there's a difference between writing a piece of music for two pianos, and writing a piece of music that could easily be played on one piano if it were rewritten carefully, but you don't want to be bothered slowing down and learning your craft.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

13 minutes ago, batari said:

And I will add a fourth, obvious nomination that makes sense because this is about "Homebrew."

IMO we should try to stay within two categories. Four will be way too many. We should accept that, no matter what we do, there will be no fair 100% voting. But we should try to make it as fair as possible within the given restrictions. 

 

I am for splitting the field at a variable line. Depending on the number of entries using one tech or another and their quality. The nomination committee together with James could draw that line while nominating. Their would be no category split initially, but each nomination should be categorized into small/large size, traditional/modern or low/high tech (whatever). By majority rule, each nominated game would be put into a category.

 

And tech/size etc. info should be added in some way to each nominated game.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

1 minute ago, thegoldenband said:

BTW I'm all in favor of all available technologies being used, as long as there's appropriate transparency about them and they're not being used as a crutch to avoid the hard work of learning how to achieve things that could easily be achieved without the help of those technologies.

To paraphrase something I said ages ago, there's a difference between writing a piece of music for two pianos, and writing a piece of music that could easily be played on one piano if it were rewritten carefully, but you don't want to be bothered slowing down and learning your craft.

Hm..., wouldn't that eliminate most bBasic games using DPC+?  

[+Random Terrain]

2 minutes ago, thegoldenband said:

BTW I'm all in favor of all available technologies being used, as long as there's appropriate transparency about them and they're not being used as a crutch to avoid the hard work of learning how to achieve things that could easily be achieved without the help of those technologies.

 

I'll take all the crutches I can get. When your brain is broken, every crutch you can get your hands on is a necessity.

[+batari]

4 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

IMO we should try to stay within two categories. Four will be way too many. We should accept that, no matter what we do, there will be no fair 100% voting. But we should try to make it as fair as possible within the given restrictions. 

 

I am for splitting the field at a variable line. Depending on the number of entries using one tech or another and their quality. The nomination committee together with James could draw that line while nominating. Their would be no category split initially, but each nomination should be categorized into small/large size, traditional/modern or low/high tech (whatever). By majority rule, each nominated game would be put into a category.

 

And tech/size etc. info should be added in some way to each nominated game.

This was just a nomination for a second category, actually. I don't want more than two categories in sum total.

 

What you said does sound like a good idea, though, wait for the nominations to come in then split them into two categories of similar size, and find some dividing line between them. That could work.