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Albert - new colorful game for Atari


Sikor

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6 minutes ago, Level42 said:


It's not only the speed increase with NTSC by the way. Many older games only produce the correct colors on NTSC (Pac Man f.i.), but there's also 60Hz which greatly reduces flicker (let's say it eliminates it) and you get the correct aspect ratio as it was intended by the A8 developers. 

 

People always blame that there are no NTSC versions available , if the games were better balanced for PAL. 

So "PAL" coders start to change things for NTSC Systems, dropping PAL optimizations... 

But not even one game has been changed to run better on PAL machines, if they were created for NTSC first. 

We know there has never been a real PAL Atari, but there are benefits  in the PAL mixing, and the faster resulting CPU speed caused by less cycle stealing of ANTIC.

 

Did you ever see a game that used the A8 optimized to PAL this way:

Interleaved Mode D / Mode E plus a double speed music engine ?

This solves the "Aspect Ratio" and the music replay could do more precise instruments. 

Still leaving a lot CPU for fast calculations, and/or screen handling. 

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8 hours ago, emkay said:

 

People always blame that there are no NTSC versions available , if the games were better balanced for PAL. 

So "PAL" coders start to change things for NTSC Systems, dropping PAL optimizations... 

But not even one game has been changed to run better on PAL machines, if they were created for NTSC first. 

We know there has never been a real PAL Atari, but there are benefits  in the PAL mixing, and the faster resulting CPU speed caused by less cycle stealing of ANTIC.

 

Did you ever see a game that used the A8 optimized to PAL this way:

Interleaved Mode D / Mode E plus a double speed music engine ?

This solves the "Aspect Ratio" and the music replay could do more precise instruments. 

Still leaving a lot CPU for fast calculations, and/or screen handling. 

Some of the early NTSC artifacted games were later released for XEGS with the colours correctly rendered but yeah, I've never seen an NTSC games modified to run in PAL at the same speed as NTSC or speed up the music over a dirge etc. 

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10 hours ago, emkay said:

 

People always blame that there are no NTSC versions available , if the games were better balanced for PAL. 

So "PAL" coders start to change things for NTSC Systems, dropping PAL optimizations... 

But not even one game has been changed to run better on PAL machines, if they were created for NTSC first. 

We know there has never been a real PAL Atari, but there are benefits  in the PAL mixing, and the faster resulting CPU speed caused by less cycle stealing of ANTIC.

 

Did you ever see a game that used the A8 optimized to PAL this way:

Interleaved Mode D / Mode E plus a double speed music engine ?

This solves the "Aspect Ratio" and the music replay could do more precise instruments. 

Still leaving a lot CPU for fast calculations, and/or screen handling. 

Understandably, but try not looking at it, that way.

 

A pretty large A/8bit audience resides on the NTSC side of the equation, as well as having (most likely) the LARGEST retro-hardware market (just look at eBay's offerings and variety of A8 HW and notice where it comes from).

 

On the other hand, there is no doubt that PAL offers higher SPATIAL resolution and deterministic color-decode (in general)... whereas NTSC offers higher TEMPORAL resolution (which has a clearly visible effect), as well as more flexibility in handling color reproduction, including artifacting, which several titles (including Flight Simulator) make good use of. 

 

In other words, it is WORTH adapting these titles (or at least, having the courtesy of enabling or disabling music0 for NTSC execution.

Edited by Faicuai
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39 minutes ago, Matej said:

Beautiful. Imagine this in 80s on XEGS. I think today we play Atari Switch...

Exactly.   One of Atari's problems was there were few 8-bit games this pretty or colorful back then.

 

I'm still staring at the video and screenshots trying to figure out how they seemingly got so many colors on a single scanline

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1 hour ago, zzip said:

Exactly.   One of Atari's problems was there were few 8-bit games this pretty or colorful back then.

 

I'm still staring at the video and screenshots trying to figure out how they seemingly got so many colors on a single scanline

It's technically no miracle, but it may have needed a lot time to code. 

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7 minutes ago, emkay said:

It's technically no miracle, but it may have needed a lot time to code.

Obviously there were DLIs used, and the player character looks like it is made up of multiple P/Ms.   But I still see color placement that defies what I know about the hardware.   Maybe not a miracle, but if these tricks were more common knowledge back then, we'd have had better looking games.

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6 minutes ago, zzip said:

Obviously there were DLIs used, and the player character looks like it is made up of multiple P/Ms.   But I still see color placement that defies what I know about the hardware.   Maybe not a miracle, but if these tricks were more common knowledge back then, we'd have had better looking games.

But there are strong limits. 

It's really nice to see at least one game playing with all the colors on the screen. 

For now it's the only game for the Atari that is using most possible colors to enhance the visuals. 

But it doesn't mean that some "Turrican" like game could evolve from it...

 

 

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7 hours ago, Sikor said:

I red on atarionline, that ksi, author this game look at his code and his will try make full NTSC version too.

Sikor, I don't see such declaration there. Like Ilmenit wrote just before your post, Kski (the coder) declared improved controls and better NTSC check.

 

And in his latest comment (so far), Kski wrote that he would have to get rid of music, some Albert colours and ladders to make it work in NTSC - or make other changes that would make Albert a different game.

Edited by +Adam+
redundant word
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he wouldn't have to get rid of colors and the music could be lightened not removed, and if he where to drop empty scanlines at the top and bottom areas him might not need to do that... just pick NTSC colors and make vbi either not so big or deferred- all that other stuff should still be fine... it already works on NTSC

before removing colors, maybe people could hack some slight pallette number adjustments in to show him?

maybe someone speaking his language could explain approaches.

Edited by _The Doctor__
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For those that want to put Albert onto a 90k disk, here is a version a) without PAL check, b) packed with Flashpack 2.1 (titlescreen; depacking the titlescreen with Exomizer took much too long!) and c) packed with Exomizer (main program). I also added a Basic-off routine and a small text title that says "Loading" but which can be replaced with any other text (e.g. "Albert") easily...

 

 

Albert_packed.zip

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24 minutes ago, Stephen said:

Cygnus X I think - I only recently heard of it.

"Cygnus XI" or "Cygnus X1" produced by Atari UK (one title printed on the tape cover, the other printed on the title screen). The game has colourfull background gfx, alas, the gameplay is more or less the same as SEGA's "Buck Rogers".

 

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-cygnus-x1_1472.html

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15 minutes ago, Stephen said:

Cygnus X I think - I only recently heard of it.

Thx!!!  Yesss, it is in Fandal's site... originally produced in TAPE format (!)

 

The game-play is a bit blocky, lacks fluidity, but the elements reminds me of Stealth (although the latter is, indeed, very fluid and colorful)...

 

Cygnus' large "planetary" background is best seen on analog Composite, or where color-blending is performed by video-processor or the screen itself (at least in NTSC). Looks a bit dull in a-Video or DVI-d outputs...

 

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I've known of Cygnus X1 since I got my first Atari UK pirated software in the 90's. Though I always thought it was more of a rip-off of Sega's Buck Rogers than Stealth. I enjoy a game of it occasionally, just because it's so unique to have background graphics in APAC mode. But it was always a bit dull looking due to the alternating color and grey-scale "scan lines." That washed-out color has been just a distant memory ever since I did the SV 2.1 video upgrade, 1200XL edition, with the fixed chroma boost circuit. And, of course, interlaced or RGB rapid page-flipping 256 and 4096 color modes and all standard graphics are much more vibrant. I'm still waiting on a replacement Sophia 2 to see it's RGB and DVI color facilities in person on my 800.

Edited by Gunstar
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Most of us have 2 or 3 ataris(or more). Why not set one up as Pal? Then you can enjoy pal software the way the author meant it, instead of some neutred down creation. Or, just play it on Altirra. If someone enjoys the challenge of changing it to ntsc that's one thing, demanding the author build it your way  is absurd.

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no one is demanding or threatening... buck up buttercup... I haven't met anyone upset to make something NTSC, unless they're just wore out from whatever they were doing and don't want to revisit it. Stop gaps may be done until they get around to doing a proper job. An if they don't someone gets around to it eventually..

Edited by _The Doctor__
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3 minutes ago, chevymad said:

Most of us have 2 or 3 ataris(or more). Why not set one up as Pal? Then you can enjoy pal software the way the author meant it, instead of some neutred down creation. Or, just play it on Altirra. If someone enjoys the challenge of changing it to ntsc that's one thing, demanding the author build it your way  is absurd.

Well, that's why I put a PAL Antic in my 130XE.  Maybe that is not the most best way, but it usually works for me.  Do I need to buy a PAL 130XE and have it shipped overseas now with all the problems the carriers are having?  I hope not lol.

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10 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

no one is demanding or threatening... buck up buttercup... I haven't met anyone upset to make something NTSC, unless they're just wore out from whatever they were doing and don't want to revisit it. Stop gaps may be done until they get around to doing a proper job. An if they don't someone gets around to it eventually..

This sounds like you are demanding a total rewrite to me.. do some stop gaps until you have time to do a proper job. Maybe he wants to, maybe not. Instead you could fire up Altirra and play it the way he meant it, and aren't you also saying the author should either use Altirra or have an ntsc machine? It may just be the way your comments come through via text, and if so sorry. But this all sounds a whole lot like the stuff that happens in the hardware threads. Starting to wonder why anyone creates anything for the atari. I'm still very glad they do though.

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