The NOT derail Thread

[emkay]

Well, I started this thread because of some lesson not to start to derail a thread, and to prevent from that.

 

If you read the quote carefully, someone who has not the slightest clue about the Atari asks people who don't have the slightest clue about the Atari for an answer he just wants to read. Nothing serious but again attacking .... people... who may give the answer he don't like. 

 

"Just my 2 cents... Okay... first: I don't want Emkay to step in, unasked, and tell me, he knows everything about the A8 hardware and only a GR mode 7 would make it possible ......... bla bla.... But ... isn't it possible to have games like Mayham in Monsterland or even Sam's Journey, when using this awesome and making coloful background graphics + lots of softsprites using - game engine? Okay, we havn't hires-sprites but we don't really need them, if we have such colourful and lovely painted low res and colorful soft sprites like in this game. I think it's all about itelligent leveldesign and soft-sprite-design.... Like I said.. just my 2 cent.... please NO another THREAD DESTROYING debate this time. "

 

 

It's the posting of such content that is a derail already.  Why did the poster not open a new thread for that ?

 

Edited February 27, 2021 by emkay

[Mazzspeed]

Each system has it's strengths and weaknesses. Both the sprites and the background on the C64 can be scrolled in one pixel resolution always at 320x200, making it vastly more suitable for platformers. The A8 has a faster processor making it more suitable for processor intensive titles like Rescue On Fractalus, it also has a larger color palette. However, while the CPU on the A8 is fast considering tech of the day, it's not that fast that it can compensate for the lack of multi color hardware sprites.

 

I say code to the strengths of each platform, you can own both.

Edited February 27, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[Mclaneinc]

I look at a machine for what it can do and not what it can't do...

[emkay]

49 minutes ago, Mazzspeed said:

Each system has it's strengths and weaknesses. Both the sprites and the background on the C64 can be scrolled in one pixel resolution always at 320x200, making it vastly more suitable for platformers. The A8 has a faster processor making it more suitable for processor intensive titles like Rescue On Fractalus, it also has a larger color palette. However, while the CPU on the A8 is fast considering tech of the day, it's not that fast that it can compensate for the lack of multi color hardware sprites.

 

I say code to the strengths of each platform, you can own both.

 

See. One of my biggest requests is not to try to do C64 stuff on the Atari. 

The "creator of the quoted text in the 1st post asks for an answer which is based on nothingness. 

The game is done using several different scrolling speeds, and is doing the calculations/DLIs for the colors. 

So this is about 110% of what the Atari can do, because 10% of it were smoke and mirrors already. 

And then the question comes in : Why not doing Mayhem in Monsterland, using this . 

Actually , a "Mayhem in Monsterland" type game, he has in front of him when playing Albert. What is missing, is such a type of "grey" level with different looking enemies... we wrote about it .

And then the question about Sam's Journey.  The complexity of moving objects is the problem. 

 

Starting with the missing development tools, the level design is more important than the visuals. 

As "Albert" already is build on 8 ways scrolling, there are possibilities to enhance the level designs.

 

To play a lot with the available colors is needed to give more "smoke and mirrors" to it all.

Imagine the problem of the scrolling range edges. Either you jump to another memory position, or fake the scrolling, till the memory is changed in the srolling area. 

Walking through a small black cave on a single "PMg" platform... whatever. 

Also, a lot of objects look new , by just setting a different color to it.

 

But, as it seems, we are decades away from that.

Have a look a POKEY and the progression of making better (or even the best available) music. 

In the 41st year now, a musician is understanding, what I'm writing, and some bug in a POKEY tracker has been located ...

 

The Atari also has a lot of features that can build "low system resource based graphics and sound" to fill gaps to where the hardware gets drilled to the edges.   

 

It's just that it's never been used to create such games with huge levels. 

[Mazzspeed]

4 minutes ago, emkay said:

 

See. One of my biggest requests is not to try to do C64 stuff on the Atari. 

The "creator of the quoted text in the 1st post asks for an answer which is based on nothingness. 

The game is done using several different scrolling speeds, and is doing the calculations/DLIs for the colors. 

So this is about 110% of what the Atari can do, because 10% of it were smoke and mirrors already. 

And then the question comes in : Why not doing Mayhem in Monsterland, using this . 

Actually , a "Mayhem in Monsterland" type game, he has in front of him when playing Albert. What is missing, is such a type of "grey" level with different looking enemies... we wrote about it .

And then the question about Sam's Journey.  The complexity of moving objects is the problem. 

 

Starting with the missing development tools, the level design is more important than the visuals. 

As "Albert" already is build on 8 ways scrolling, there are possibilities to enhance the level designs.

 

To play a lot with the available colors is needed to give more "smoke and mirrors" to it all.

Imagine the problem of the scrolling range edges. Either you jump to another memory position, or fake the scrolling, till the memory is changed in the srolling area. 

Walking through a small black cave on a single "PMg" platform... whatever. 

Also, a lot of objects look new , by just setting a different color to it.

 

But, as it seems, we are decades away from that.

Have a look a POKEY and the progression of making better (or even the best available) music. 

In the 41st year now, a musician is understanding, what I'm writing, and some bug in a POKEY tracker has been located ...

 

The Atari also has a lot of features that can build "low system resource based graphics and sound" to fill gaps to where the hardware gets drilled to the edges.   

 

It's just that it's never been used to create such games with huge levels. 

I think that's all pretty valid reasoning.

 

Use each machine to it's strengths and code accordingly. If you want to play Sam's Journey, buy a C64 or make a new one by buying an Ultimate 64 motherboard (the price is quite reasonable considering the features), or install and fire up Vice. All bias aside I've been playing Sam's Journey and it's honestly worth configuring an emulated machine just to see what the developers managed to (somehow) achieve.

 

Likewise, if you prefer games with more of a 3D effect, buy an A8 or fire up Altirra - Altirra is downright fantastic.

 

The notion that you can teach a Cat to round up sheep is just going to end in disappointment - However, if you want to catch a Mouse, a Cat may very well be the better option.

[+Firedawg]

Ok, not to derail this thread or maybe to re-rail it.  Maybe it just me or was the focus of this thread to bring the attention to those who hi-jack a topic as opposed to starting their own topic?

[emkay]

41 minutes ago, Firedawg said:

Ok, not to derail this thread or maybe to re-rail it.  Maybe it just me or was the focus of this thread to bring the attention to those who hi-jack a topic as opposed to starting their own topic?

 

Hehe...

 

If you follow the topic, you might find how related things were

 

[Wrathchild]

1 hour ago, emkay said:

One of my biggest requests is not to try to do C64 stuff on the Atari. 

Actually, we'll occasionally see requests to do it but I'm not aware of any devs actively working on satisfying that.

 

One of the wonderful things about free will though is people could if they wanted to regardless of how that makes you feel.

Edited February 27, 2021 by Wrathchild
Spelling

[emkay]

@Firedawg

 

59 minutes ago, Wrathchild said:

Actually, we'll occasionally see requests to do it but I'm not aware of any devs actively working on satisfying that.

 

One of the wonderful things about free will though is people could if they wanted to regardless of how that makes you feel.

 

"makes me feel" ... great statement.

 

It was always the problem that people put too much time in mocking the C64. At the end there are halfway playable games, not reaching the wanted, but the megacart is filled up .

On the other hand games that put the Atari to it's own limits were pushed too far behind. 

 

"Albert" is now at a very balanced state .

While technically not much more is possible, the resources offer gameplay to "endless" possibilities.  

Some drawback in the presentation offers even a lot more possibilities for new games that push the Atari.

So at the end a Megacart might be filled up with a lot gameplay, not with pre shifted data.

 

[emkay]

Again...

 

 

"That's why I don't want reading MKs opinions anymore. In his opinion, the A8 is the best 8bit-machine to have 1st person shooter in GR7 mode... bla bla bla... But I think it's still CRAP!!!"

 

 

It's all crap...?

 

Starraiders

Wayout

Capture the Flag

Encounter

Dimension X

Rescue on Fractalus

Last Starfighter

Eidolon

Ballblazer

Yoomp

Space Harrier

Project-M

 

 

 

So it makes me wonder why someone bought an Atari , if the mindblowing releases (back then), weren't the cause for buying the dedicated machine?

 

 

 

 

[adam1977]

I've been on here for a few years now and all you seem to do emkay is moan, moan and moan. Why don't you, Mr. Perfect, make the game you keep telling everyone else to do, that makes 100% use of the Atari's qualities and blows every game made in the last 42 years out of the water? Surely that's not too much to ask of you is it? ?

[emkay]

29 minutes ago, adam1977 said:

I've been on here for a few years now and all you seem to do emkay is moan, moan and moan. Why don't you, Mr. Perfect, make the game you keep telling everyone else to do, that makes 100% use of the Atari's qualities and blows every game made in the last 42 years out of the water? Surely that's not too much to ask of you is it? ?

Learn to read, then post. Thanks.

[FifthPlayer]

I know emkay's consistent advocacy for GR.7 (or its character-map counterpart, ANTIC 5) bothers some, but I think the square pixels do make it somewhat special.  I could see a game developer choosing to use it for style reasons.  Though the visuals are a bit chunky, it does give the graphics an "Intellivision" feel, especially if colors similar to the INTV palette are used.  Personally I'd like to see some sort of Zaxxon clone done in this mode; the angle of the three-quarters perspective scrolling would be closer to 45 degress and better resemble the arcade game.

[emkay]

13 minutes ago, FifthPlayer said:

I know emkay's consistent advocacy for GR.7 (or its character-map counterpart, ANTIC 5) bothers some, but I think the square pixels do make it somewhat special.  I could see a game developer choosing to use it for style reasons.  Though the visuals are a bit chunky, it does give the graphics an "Intellivision" feel, especially if colors similar to the INTV palette are used.  Personally I'd like to see some sort of Zaxxon clone done in this mode; the angle of the three-quarters perspective scrolling would be closer to 45 degress and better resemble the arcade game.

 Graphics 7 (Mode D) has been used a lot in past "top" games. It's just the fact that in this mode Antic and the CPU do real Multiprocessing.  It's like the CPU is clocked at 3. 5MHz . So for a real 3D processing, this is the top most available speed (well, there is Mode C, but there the CPU doesn't get faster) .

Antic mode 7 , the character mode, doesn't offer more CPU speed than the real 1.79MHz, but the "character cheating of other platforms" could be handled fairly enough". And, yes, there is Antic mode 6...

The flaw is that every character mode needs DLIs to fill the screen with separate content. 

Antic 7 needs about  15 DLIs and 15 different charsets to fill the whole screen. 15 charsets means 15K of RAM. 

Most computers use the range of about 160 to 180 pixel vertically. Which may need up to 12 different charsets and 12K of RAM . 

This might be a fair solution at all. Particulary , because it adds the feature of having 4 colors for moving objects available.

[Mazzspeed]

Is it like the CPU is clocked at 3.5Mhz or is it more like the CPU is clocked at 1.3Mhz when ANTIC steals clock cycles? Personally I think it's the latter.

 

 

[emkay]

1 minute ago, Mazzspeed said:

Is it like the CPU is clocked at 3.5Mhz or is it more like the CPU is clocked at 1.3Mhz when ANTIC steals clock cycles? Personally I think it's the latter.

 

 

Every second scanline Antic doesn't read in mode D. So every second scanline is saved for doing CPU stuff. 

And, yes the 3.5MHz is a direct aim to the system limits. 

At the end it's about 2.6MHz . if the cpu was clocked without cycle stealing. 

But for any computer this would mean to have a scanline , and every other scanline is black.

But Antic copies the second scanline from it's own memory.  And it does that in the same time, when the CPU is processing.  

 

Similar to vertical scrolling. Not only it's free of CPU handling, it reduces cycle stealing by Antic. 

That's why vertical scrolling games can be "par" to the C64, while horizontal games suffer by all hardware limits.

 

[_The Doctor__]

5 hours ago, FifthPlayer said:

I know emkay's consistent advocacy for GR.7 (or its character-map counterpart, ANTIC 5) bothers some, but I think the square pixels do make it somewhat special.  I could see a game developer choosing to use it for style reasons.  Though the visuals are a bit chunky, it does give the graphics an "Intellivision" feel, especially if colors similar to the INTV palette are used.  Personally I'd like to see some sort of Zaxxon clone done in this mode; the angle of the three-quarters perspective scrolling would be closer to 45 degress and better resemble the arcade game.

I really do agree with this as a handful of games could benefit from the style afforded by square pixels and color. Zaxxon looks pretty good as it is but it would be interesting to see what it would look like in this mode.

5 hours ago, emkay said:

 Graphics 7 (Mode D) has been used a lot in past "top" games. It's just the fact that in this mode Antic and the CPU do real Multiprocessing.  It's like the CPU is clocked at 3. 5MHz . So for a real 3D processing, this is the top most available speed (well, there is Mode C, but there the CPU doesn't get faster) .

Antic mode 7 , the character mode, doesn't offer more CPU speed than the real 1.79MHz, but the "character cheating of other platforms" could be handled fairly enough". And, yes, there is Antic mode 6...

The flaw is that every character mode needs DLIs to fill the screen with separate content. 

Antic 7 needs about  15 DLIs and 15 different charsets to fill the whole screen. 15 charsets means 15K of RAM. 

Most computers use the range of about 160 to 180 pixel vertically. Which may need up to 12 different charsets and 12K of RAM . 

This might be a fair solution at all. Particulary , because it adds the feature of having 4 colors for moving objects available.

I think we understand what you are trying to say... but it's not like 3.5 MHz, the available CPU time does increase and since ANTIC is doubling the pixels you use less data for what's on screen...and it's replicating that per line data without stealing a bunch of cycles

4 hours ago, emkay said:

Every second scanline Antic doesn't read in mode D. So every second scanline is saved for doing CPU stuff. 

And, yes the 3.5MHz is a direct aim to the system limits. 

At the end it's about 2.6MHz . if the cpu was clocked without cycle stealing. 

But for any computer this would mean to have a scanline , and every other scanline is black.

But Antic copies the second scanline from it's own memory.  And it does that in the same time, when the CPU is processing.  

 

Similar to vertical scrolling. Not only it's free of CPU handling, it reduces cycle stealing by Antic.

 

This line skipping still counts for some interaction, but yes it's letting the ANTIC operate at the same time as the CPU. This is akin to having both having there own clock and operating at the same time... but it's only for half the scan lines... so it not double duty for the entire time... I understand you did not calculate these effects out and are just throwing 'what is seems like' numbers out there....

If you combine screen data savings and ANTIC skipping lines with the added CPU time it does give you savings and CPU boost with less data for both to handle while still filling a colorful display. There are some interesting things to be pulled off with this and it's associated modes.. not completely certain what kind of separate ANTIC access could be done in combination with it though... It is hyperbole with the numbers you quoted but I get your drift so to speak.

 

This day is surprising me....

I agree with most of this 'to a degree'... as emkay does have some understanding after all. I think I will end this day on a good note. Nice.

Edited February 28, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[+Stephen]

How does ANTIC not stealing cycles for every other scanline make a 1.79MHz processor run at 3.5MHz?  You can turn off 100% of ANTIC DMA and the CPU runs at 1.79MHz.  I get this advantage when using VBXE for video.  Mode 7 is not so magical that it doubles the CPU speed.  All it does is give you more of the available 1.79MHz to use.  It doesn't grant you more.  Stunning level of misunderstanding from the self proclaimed expert of all things Atari.

[jaybird3rd]

2 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

This day is surprising me....

I agree with most of this to a degree... emkay does have some understanding after all. I think I will end this day on a good note. Nice

(You can now edit this post, as requested.)

[_The Doctor__]

thank you. It sure makes more sense when the quotations actually have some responses posted with them.

While it's not the exact responses I originally had... it's good enough.  I must have clicked next unread topic instead of save. D'oh!

Edited February 28, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[snicklin]

I am not one to stick up for Emkay, but I think that I can see what he is saying...

 

When he says, "It's like the CPU is clocked at 3. 5MHz", he means that whatever work can be done in 1.79MHz (with full DMA), almost double that.... not that it actually runs at 3.5MHz.

 

... I think.

[emkay]

3 hours ago, snicklin said:

I am not one to stick up for Emkay, but I think that I can see what he is saying...

 

When he says, "It's like the CPU is clocked at 3. 5MHz", he means that whatever work can be done in 1.79MHz (with full DMA), almost double that.... not that it actually runs at 3.5MHz.

 

... I think.

Correct. 

Particular the 2nd scanline could be filled with a 6502 with at least 5 cycles per byte. But things were more complex. Let's use the "fastest" way.

This means 200 cycles per scanline.

100 scanlines mean 20000 cycles per frame.

On a 50Hz system, it means 1 000 000  cycles  to fill the lines. 

 

1 000 000 cycles for game progress, not for filling up lines. 

[emkay]

And, every 2nd scanline doesn't need DMA reads.

That means saving of:

 

40 cycles per scanline.

100 lines mean 4000 cycles

50Hz means 200 000 cycles saved.

 

So in comparision to a single linear graphics mode, you get 1 200 000 cycles free for graphics programming.

1 200 000 cycles is what you have free when Antic 5 (gr.12) is used.

 

But things are more complex. That's why on the C64 "3D" objects move interleaved. There are only about 980 000 cycles available.

[Heaven/TQA]

From coder point of view…. Half data in ANTIC D to move than in ANTIC E means 2x speed up… I guess that’s what he wants to say… a real simple assumption but you have a real world example…

 

have a look at Mercenary 48k and 64k version.

[Mazzspeed]

13 minutes ago, emkay said:

But things are more complex. That's why on the C64 "3D" objects move interleaved. There are only about 980 000 cycles available.

When it comes t the C64 things are more complex, in some ways better. Rather than have ANTIC steal precious cycles as it hogs the bus, the C64's bus is interleaved between the VIC-II and CPU - However the VIC-II can request more bus time if required using the AEC signal.

 

It's all compromises.

Edited February 28, 2021 by Mazzspeed