TMR Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 How many (ex) C64 coders do you see in this forum ? Well, if you mean "active C64 coders" then two 'cos there's me and Sack knocking about... But "ex" implies that i've stopped coding on the C64 and i've not, i'm just trying to be everywhere else as well! =-) Actually, i hope i'm not stepping on any toes by playing pundit here; i certainly don't consider myself an expert on the Atari by any count, but i have an interest since i own a machine (sadly defunct) and i try to have an interest in as many 8bits as possible... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 When i cycle out of demo and back to game mode i'm thinking about converting my C64 puzzle game Reaxion; i've already got a Plus/4 version on the go so doing it on a machine with sprites should be reasonably easy. i'm not sure how i'm going to do most of it yet, but it'll be interesting to see how much i can shove into the Atari version. i'm probably going to have to redesign some of the graphics to make it work, though... =-) Before you are doing some gameconversions..... have a look at the XL/XE Game MENTAL AGE (Diskette 184). The game has some nice workarounds.... http://www.atari8bit-software.de/index.htm BTW. The concept of your REAXION is similar to my game Main Quarters Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 How many (ex) C64 coders do you see in this forum ? Well, if you mean "active C64 coders" then two 'cos there's me and Sack knocking about... But "ex" implies that i've stopped coding on the C64 and i've not, i'm just trying to be everywhere else as well! =-) I am writing it (ex) because you are calling yourself "lost C64 coder". If I ment "a C64 coder that stopped" I would have written EX-C64 coder Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Allan Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 As far as the crappy games that came out for the 8-bits in the later eighties, don't forget that programmers wanted to get paid as quickly as possible. So there was that time factor that had to effect how much time a programmer spent on a game. When you are programming for fun and admiration, you tend to take more time to do it right as opposed to when your trying to put food on your table. Also another factor was how much you were going to get paid at the end. You all know how genorous the Tramiels were. Allan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheddy Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 sheddy, the point is that we are not talking necessarly about homebrewers... i coded demos only... (ok... several basic/MC simple games on VIC-20 and 8bit atari) and demo is something completly different than game coding but... i was supprised how many from my point of view crap games were out there (i have even tons of them at home... on last weekend i found my original rampage disc...)... and how many of them i have bought... look at www.c64.com and compare the games (no i don't count spectrum as a comparable machine... no i don't want to start this discussion again... but where is the attidue to push the machine to the limit or try different things like emkay said? look... take a look at trailblazer.... a nice game with fast raster gfx... but WHY did they use gr.7 for the background and not like dimension X highres or gr.15??? it's "just simple display list changing"... they might be reasons but... i do not understand... where are the rescue on fractalus, koronis rift, rainbow walker, summer games ii, ultimas, whizball, comet, pirates, seven cities of gold, pitfall 2, pole positions, dig dugs, etc.... i miss the innovation... and i have to admit that TMR might right...did atari coders ever thought "we are pushing the machine to the limit?" why have Epyx experimented with overlay highres sprites to get better looking sprites in summer games and the atari version is absolutly bad compared to the c64 one? but why on the other hand did archer mclean invented a fast softsprite routine for dropzone + international karate? .... oops... back to work... I think you pretty much answer your own question Heaven, with the examples you're giving here, if you're not talking about what people are doing today. LucasFilm, Archer McLean etc. were the ones showing innovations when it mattered. And after that?....heard of the expression "flogging a dead horse"? That there are only a relatively small handful of exceptional titles is not surprising, given the quantity of software. As others here have eloquently quoted - "90% of everything is crap!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheddy Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Sheddy >We are still stuck in the eighties here, after all, this machine is dead! If this machine is dead.... why is so much happening about it? I think: The problem is in the "better" technique of newer systems, which is not really better. Having a look at LPs... this year are more sold than the last ten years. Why? CD and DVD are "so much better" (but not in all cases). >It's asking a lot to expect homebrewers to be able to surpass some quite awesome efforts from back in the day. Only recently is there any renewed interest in these old systems, and you can't expect amateurs to produce triple A products straight out the door, even if they're "standing on the shoulders of giants" and have a lot more help these days/ Looking back to 1989 I (a true homebrewer) didn't truely stand on shoulders of giants. PCs were better typewriters... I assumed all possibilities I knew and made a GAME that was looking better than most of the Demos in that time. In the same case I did the MCS pictures... Well, not a lot is really happening. Just speculation! Let's go and do some of the good stuff, like TMR suggests I know you did some fantastic stuff. It's a shame you were the exception to the rule, and more people didn't push the Atari further. Still it all boils down to simple economics - supply and demand - No money to be made on 8-bit Atari, just as games were getting more interesting and complex - and coders were taking up and meeting the challenge on other platforms Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 I think the C64-snobs are forgetting two very important things in their quest to bash A8 coders: 1. The C64 has a video chip that allows more, higher-res sprites, and more colorful high-res backgrounds. 2. When the Atari 400/800 first came out, the 400 only had 8K of RAM. Therefore, huge numbers of A8 games were written to run in only 8K. And most disk software limits itself to 48K. I dunno what games you guys have been looking at, but when I think back to the old Synapse, EA, Datasoft, LucasArts, and Atari games, the last thing I think is how much the coders were slacking off. And remember that for several years Atari refused to release the technical details for this system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 2. When the Atari 400/800 first came out, the 400 only had 8K of RAM. Therefore, huge numbers of A8 games were written to run in only 8K. And that should be a handycap up to the 130XE? Are GTIA-modes forbidden, because the 400 had non? Shall we blame Sheddy because he's doing a 128K game, that will never run on a 400? I think you need better argues... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Sigh. Emkay, you criticized much of the old Atari software. I pointed out that the old Atari software was written for a much more constrained environment than even the earliest C64 software. And that coders couldn't have been pulling techniques "out of the book" because back then no book existed. Therefore, it's not a fair comparison. Do. You. Understand. Now? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Sigh. Emkay, you criticized much of the old Atari software. I pointed out that the old Atari software was written for a much more constrained environment than even the earliest C64 software. And that coders couldn't have been pulling techniques "out of the book" because back then no book existed. Therefore, it's not a fair comparison. Do. You. Understand. Now? Ofcourse a 400 cannot be any better than a 400. But with the 800XL/800XE/65XE etc. there were machines available with 64K. While C64 software was developed and the software was build cumulative to get allways more out of the machine, the 800XLs development stucks. After two decades of years the 800XL exists, you can see two small steps of advanced techniques to program that machine. To compare the C64 there were two steps in a year of advancing.... Do you understand now? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy California Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 What I feel is that many people still regard 1982-3 games as the technical standard. Proof has been given that the Atari 8-bit can do better than that so why be so regressive? ++ RC ++ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Ofcourse a 400 cannot be any better than a 400. And 400 software running on a 130XE will not be any better than on a 400. After two decades of years the 800XL exists, you can see two small steps of advanced techniques to program that machine. To compare the C64 there were two steps in a year of advancing.... So what are these steps? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 ZylonBane >And 400 software running on a 130XE will not be any better than on a 400. .... har ... har ...har >So what are these steps? I mean the steps of knowledge of how to use CPU-time to optimize programs in graphics and sound by left enough of CPU-time for the game itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Yes. What are these steps? You've apparently quantized them, so please describe them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 An interesting thread... Have ANY of you actually worked directly on or coded a commercially released game on any platform? I can assure you that at 4am in the morning 2 days before you HAVE to get that code to duplication, with 100 open A class bugs and QA screaming at you, you think little of whether the game is better than the C64 version Of course at the start of the project you have noble ambitions, but as you develop the product you are always bound by a tricky balance between time, cost and quality. Sure if you spend 2 years unfunded working in your own time you may well turn oput something awesome, but that's not how the commercially released games we play on our Atari's were made. Most had between 3 and 6 months of development time alloted to them, a very small team, one coder and maybe an artist. The commercial realities that the market place puts upon the team/developer are alwya the LIMITING factor. Sure with almost unlimited time demo-coders can turn out some wicked looking non interactive stuff. But when you have a deadline, a fixed cost and the need to actually bring the product to maket (like the realities of 80's game coding), then you begin to realize that its NOT as easy as just talking about it! The quailty your taskmaster asks for is often your guiding light as to the direction your efforts go. They may not want you to spend 3 months getting 128 colors on screen! And anyway just 'cos a game looks awesome doesn't mean it plays well. You may need to spend LOTS of CPU time on your AI or other stuff, so slaving 90% of your processor time to eek extra colors outta the system may not actually benefit the game. For all the poor 4 color crap out there there are LOTS of awesome games, don't tell me that the miracle that is 16 Donkey Kong or Eastern Front don't stand up now. And just look at Last Guardian or Henry's house to see that the XL series did have some Euro look titles released for them in their twilight years sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMR Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Of course at the start of the project you have noble ambitions, but as you develop the product you are always bound by a tricky balance between time, cost and quality. Sure if you spend 2 years unfunded working in your own time you may well turn oput something awesome, but that's not how the commercially released games we play on our Atari's were made. So why is the Atari afflicted like this and the C64 or Spectrum aren't...? Where do games like Armalyte or Turrican spring from if they're limited to the production costs and values you list? You asked if any of us have commercial experience? i've a little in that i've done work on larger C64 projects, but i've also managed to turn out a complete horizontal scrolling shoot-em-up (code and graphics) for the C64 whilst holding down a full-time job and without much more than a stock IRQ for the "code library". That was written to a deadline, so i can at least partially empathise with time pressures... The quailty your taskmaster asks for is often your guiding light as to the direction your efforts go. They may not want you to spend 3 months getting 128 colors on screen! That's why you write the colour engine into the spec before he/she realises what you've done... =-) For all the poor 4 color crap out there there are LOTS of awesome games, don't tell me that the miracle that is 16 Donkey Kong or Eastern Front don't stand up now. And just look at Last Guardian or Henry's house to see that the XL series did have some Euro look titles released for them in their twilight years Why did it stop there...? Off the top of my head, games like It's Magic 2 and Enhanced Newcomer have come out recently for the C64, the excellent looking Armageddon and Super-CPU enabled Metal Dust are well into production as well as other titles over at Protovision (Enforcer 2, Reel Fishing and so forth) and Lasse Oorni is working on the fourth and so far largest installment of his Metal Warrior series. That's just from memory... i know Sheddy's working on a game, i believe Heaven is too but after that is anyone else knocking anything together...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Steve, One thing that always interested me was how decisions were made on cutting stuff out - ie, 2600 Missile Command not having the Satellites, missing levels in Gorf, etc.... It seemed home ports always left something out and I didnt know if that was an upfront or time descision near the end? Alternate Reality the CIty is an exmaple of someone working out of their basement spending all the time required to put out a nice game. Colors were all over the place - Only thing Mr Price failed to do was enhance the monster sprites, otherwise I enjoyed it. The Dungeon was even better and that was built under a deadline from scratch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 TMR -- what do you mean -- the C64 and Spectrum were infested with utter shite software in piles for every Armalyte or Turrican. All these platforms have a equal share of crappy and good games, just remember the 800 was around 3 years before the C64 and Spectrum, so many games were produced before those machines were even released, a simpler market, less sophisticted perhaps... I'm know that both the games you cite are great, and pushed the C64 at the time of their release, much the same as like games such as Koronis Rift and The Eidolon did for the Atari at the time of their release. Its no new story here... This does not HAPPEN by the way-- That's why you write the colour engine into the spec before he/she realises what you've done... =-) if your project manager is al least half smart, so no points there As to why it stoped there with HH and LG, the machine's commercial life ended, end of story for commercial development... I'd love to revise my old projects, maybe Pacland even But time and tide waits for no man, and now working with millions of colors and millions of polygons, with world class artists & coders and awesome hardware has spoilt me sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 As far as the crappy games that came out for the 8-bits in the later eighties, don't forget that programmers wanted to get paid as quickly as possible. So there was that time factor that had to effect how much time a programmer spent on a game. When you are programming for fun and admiration, you tend to take more time to do it right as opposed to when your trying to put food on your table. Also another factor was how much you were going to get paid at the end. You all know how genorous the Tramiels were. Allan This is an excellent point. No more crappy games!! I'm hoping to show everyone my project soon, and hopefully only a couple people will call it crappy! (can't please everyone...) -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Are GTIA-modes forbidden, because the 400 had non?Shall we blame Sheddy because he's doing a 128K game, that will never run on a 400? Just to clear this up... The 1st 800's and 400's shipped had CTIA. Within a very short time, all machines had GTIA. I've only seen 1 machine (an 800) with a CTIA. The vast majority of 400's have GTIA. -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Do. You. Understand. Now? Do you understand now? I think America had a large number of early Ataris in service (400/800) while overseas things picked up around the time of the XL/XE. Limitations were put on software developed in America that weren't necessary on European software. How about that? -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy California Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 Don't you think the Atari 8-bit deserved better magazine support in the UK? Most of the Atari publications had a passive attitude and I was never really excited when reading the magazines. Monitor was good but too confidential, the rest was quite low-level most of the time... ++ RC ++ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted July 30, 2003 Author Share Posted July 30, 2003 Steve, i am working in a dev studio+publisher...so i know both side of the story... and if you have good people than they are motivated by themselves... (oops....) and the producer gets out of them the "cream on the cake"... did EA had back in 80s producer or where they all backyard companies? hve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy California Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 I think America had a large number of early Ataris in service (400/800) while overseas things picked up around the time of the XL/XE. Limitations were put on software developed in America that weren't necessary on European software. How about that? You have a point there... No "serious" Atari 8-bit game development took place in the US after 1986 and nothing was done to feed the thousands of North American users. I wish Antic or ANALOG had done something to import European software or attract small developers but most of what the US and Canada got was stuff written in BASIC or type-ins, hence no creativity or technical breakthroughs to be found... ++ RC ++ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted July 30, 2003 Share Posted July 30, 2003 The thing ya gotta face is that by today's standards no great looking game is going to come from the 800 without a LOT of work. You pretty much have to program the thing as carefully as you would the 2600. The Atari chipset wasn't designed to do the sort of games it's been asked to do, and the results vary. Although I don't like the 64 as much as a computer, as a game machine it has some advantages. You can't move 6 multi-color objects around on the Atari without some work and CPU time. Of course, once you run out of movable objects, you're back to banging on hardware on both systems. Part of the key to a good conversion is picking the right game. Super-side-scroller-madness-with-8-levels-of-parallax-and-50-onscreen-enemies may not be a good choice since it'll just come out looking blocky or almost monochrome. I would avoid games that can't take advantage of the Atari's capabilities and ends up just being a low-color render of another game. Then again, Space Harrier XE is looking mighty fine... Okay, last rule: Always be clever, and rip out your game engine and re-write it at least a dozen times. -Bry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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