Atari v Commodore

[atarian63]

There are many Atari fans who recognize that the 64 has strengths that the A8 does not

Tobad none of them participate here.

I will say though I have slammed C64 on many occasions that there is some great software on the platform. For me the platform just doesnt hold my interest. The C64 story is to me dull and boring. Never cared for the hardware.

I know.. subjective but Atari is where my interest is.

I could go on and on from a user standpoint about what I don't like about commodore but that is why I am on an atari site reading,learning and buying Atari items.

It is interesting that there is some carry over between the 2 platforms that people here share and new ideas as well for continued fun on each machine. When it goes like that it is fun. Would be nice to see some great c64 programmers looking for a new challege to write some Atari stuff. Don't care who writes it, just want to play it!

Edited April 27, 2009 by atarian63

[Allas]

There are many Atari fans who recognize that the 64 has strengths that the A8 does not

Tobad none of them participate here.

 

Hey, I am here, and I do recognize those things.

 

320 COLOR resolution without significant artifacting. C64 strength. Probably the biggest one, because it allows for a better aspect ratio and a more modern look. This is brought to us with the nice effort on producing an interlaced-color NTSC signal. Good move then.

 

SID = makes great chip tunes easy, compared to POKEY. I think it falls short in the area of general effects however. Still, C64 strength.

 

Color Memory Scheme = Total strength. A lot can be done with 2 colors per character cell. Speccy guys have this too. Strength.

 

Sprites. When the discussion got goofy, I the Atari fan, posted up the clarification of capabilities after taking some time to look them up, just so it was clear to me and others what the machine does. I have a hard time sorting out if this is the biggest strength, or the color resolution. Probably the sprites tho.

 

There's your C64 power trifecta, right there. And, if you go back through my posts here, you will see those things recognized as they should be.

 

Also noted on this thread are the great C64 games produced in the later years. Lots of great gaming there. And the beauty of it is that much of it is to be enjoyed on a great 8 bit machine; namely, the C64. Kick ass man! There is nothing wrong with that.

 

 

For me, C64 weaknesses are:

 

16 colors only. This is a major bummer. If it were not for the 320 resolution, where some dithering can happen, it would be pretty damn stale.

 

Slower CPU. I like the compute heavy games.

 

Overall system engineering. The OS, I/O and such are capable of all that needs to be done, but it's a PITA compared to Atari 8 bit stuff, which I think is elegant and I always have. Go up-thread to see why.

 

Lousy disk system.

 

Chipset largely exploited. I should explain this one. VIC II and friends have been hammered on with good results. The story is told. ANITC + GTIA haven't been hammered as completely, and that's a numbers game, IMHO. So then, the story is NOT yet told.

 

 

 

IMHO, what is at issue is the overall value those strengths have in the minds of those retro gamers today.

 

Personally, I like the kind of non-modern style games that really shine on Atari 8 bit. I also like compute heavy games, like Rescue on Fractalus too. Color variety is a big deal to me, as is intensity variety. My own tastes gravitate toward lower resolutions, more colors and a more abstract game experience overall. Atari goes down this road quite a bit farther than the C64 does, and that is exactly why I like Atari. I suspect this is directly related to me playing on a VCS as a kid, and my first computer being an A400.

 

I love the systems engineering that went into the Atari machines. Lots of good stuff there. Now, if you are just gaming, and you don't care, then this really isn't all that important. However, if you appreciate computing in general, there is a lot to like about how Ataris did things.

 

Where "POWER" is concerned, the machine with the widest overall set of possible experiences gets the nod from me. That's Atari. Where a C64 really shines, it's the best. Where a C64 is weaker, or just weak, it's NOT POSSIBLE. On the Atari, it generally is possible overall, with degrees of excellence, depending on what the experience is. Also, the systems engineering elements contribute to "POWER" as well.

 

 

Atari is the "BEST" then because:

 

-greater diversity of experiences

 

-retro capability story untold

 

-favors very strong color / intensity / abstract presentations

 

-is faster on raw compute

 

-has good ports of games I really like

 

-is associated with AA. (hey, that's a plus as far as I am concerned.)

 

 

You forgot something.

 

One of the good internal design of a C64 that can be appreciated a lot is his Banking memory (4 pages of 4K). And can use all the memory (64K) without losing the ROM registers. This feature helps a lot with more games, is very useful. A 800XL can't beat this internal management, have others features on his design but this is very valuable.

 

When 130XE came, was equipped with 128K of RAM, present a banking management of 4 pages of 16K. You can tell to the controller 6502 look for the main page, and the ANTIC other page. So, virtually you can stay with 80K simultaneously. In the other way, banking 16K system is better that banking 4K. The extra memory is a powerful feature that the last 8bit model of Atari have, and did a great difference on the productivity. There wasn't worked so much on Gaming software, but have a lot of potential to make the difference.

 

That's why I think:

 

130XE > C64 > 800XL

 

Anyone Happy?

[Irgendwer]

For those who really like fixed palette dithered images, I changed my converter to output 160 columns.

 

This is a very primitive version without adaptive palette, PMGs or 'our small colour ram / 5th colour per line' -

resulting in 12 fixed colours.

I already have some ideas for a much better version with stronger colours.

 

Stay tuned

Irgendwer

 

Edit: Please inspect the images in enlarged mode, as the colour impression is better than here in reduced preview size!

Edited April 27, 2009 by Irgendwer

[emkay]

 

The pic is quite good. You should play a bit more with the brightness, and add the missing light reflections of the original

[Artlover]

Have you read the last "1000" posts?

Sure there are!!!

Hey, I am here, and I do recognize those things.

 

Ok, let me rephrase, tobad there aren't more people like that here. Better yet, tobad everyone isn't like that here.

 

Beyond that, the biased fanboy BS of "some" people in this thread has gotten old really old and annoying.

[+wood_jl]

I've downloaded 3 torrents (half-gig to over 5 gigs) of C= software. I'm ready to "game on," and I certainly shall do so, shortly!

 

I'm assuming you're getting a NTSC C64? You should be aware that much of those 5 gigs may not run on it. Just like the Atari has NTSC and PAL differences for a computer so does the C64.

 

Also, just like when some PAL specific Atari programs may not run on an NTSC Atari (or vice versa) that same situation exists with the C64.

 

Why am I telling you this? The majority of C64 programs on the internet are PAL specific. Unless you, of course, hunted down all the NTSC specific, NTSC/PAL (recognizing the system running on and makes adjustment), or NTSC fixed cracks of those programs. Then again some may work and if they do they will run faster or show screen problems.

 

Garak

 

Thanks, man - for the tip! I hadn't considered that. I think one of the smaller torrents (uncompressed to 1.94GB) is likely a yankee collection, but I don't know for sure.

 

I had been playing on the emulator (yuck). Does the emulator indicate, or does it just ignore PAL/NTSC considerations?

 

One of the biggest turnoffs to emulators is the changed PC screen aspect. I hate playing in windowed mode, with the junky PC desktop peeking around the edges. When you go "full screen" it stretches it to a distorted widescreen, and it looks lame and really bugs me. When I tried to set my HP notebook to 1024x768, it still stretches the screen. When I went into display control panel (or whatever) and tried to get it to stop "streching" - the blasted screen goes black, although the computer isn't crashed. Fortunately, it came back after a reboot but I don't have any external monitor so I'm afraid to jerk around with it.

 

I wish they'd write the emulators to put up black bars on the sides of the screen. I think I need to buy a used notebook - the fastest/most modern they had BEFORE they all went to this blasted widescreen. I don't understand all the rage over widescreen on PCs because I have no interest in watching movies on one. I don't think spreading web pages wide - with smaller type - is a benefit either. Of course, my opinion must be in the minority or you'd be able to buy 4:3 notebooks. Hell, you can't even get 4:3 desktop screens anymore. I guess you could get a CRT.

[Garak]

I had been playing on the emulator (yuck). Does the emulator indicate, or does it just ignore PAL/NTSC considerations?

 

Emulators certainly don't ignore the PAL/NTSC timings. However, all the C64 emulators are, by default, set to PAL unless you set them manually to NTSC timing. This is due to the fact that the C64 emulator authors are from PAL areas.

 

In VICE you can change the timing in Options->Video Standard there it will have "PAL-G" and "NTSC-M" options. If you're using VICE that is. If you're using another emulator those settings could be elsewhere.

 

Garak

Edited April 27, 2009 by Garak

[dwhyte]

Seeing as we're on the emulator subject now: Atari emulators are better than Commodore emulators...

 

LOL

Edited April 28, 2009 by dwhyte

[Rybags]

That 21st Century pic could be done better...

 

. Mode F with PMG underlays.

 

. or Mode E with PMGs in OR mode.

 

Given a bit of time, it could come close to the Amiga version, and look 10 times better than the C64 version.

[Bryan]

That 21st Century pic could be done better...

 

. Mode F with PMG underlays.

 

. or Mode E with PMGs in OR mode.

 

Given a bit of time, it could come close to the Amiga version, and look 10 times better than the C64 version.

I was thinking it should switch to F at the pedestal and use underlay coloring.

[frogstar_robot]

I've been fiddling with rjespino's jpeg and pgm viewers:

 

http://rjespino.tripod.com/8bit/a8jdpeg/a8jdpeg.html

 

And it is capable of good results:

 

http://rjespino.tripod.com/8bit/a8jdpeg/gallery.html

 

Though I'll have to download his sample images to find out what makes for good fodder to feed it. I did have fun feeding the 21st Century Eagle to it. I got my best results of the evening by turning it into a greyscale and brightening it up a bit and using HIP mode to display. I don't think this proves much either way as a graphics artist tuning the picture will get better results. This is a screen capture of HIP which is a flicker mode. I'll also note that the screen cap seems to be a bit kind to it in a browser. It looked a bit weedier in the emulator though not bad from TV viewing distance. Just for laughs and giggles I'm going to turn on NTSC emulation next.

Edited April 28, 2009 by frogstar_robot

[potatohead]

That's pretty nice actually.

[invisible kid]

I use GTIA modes mostly and original argument of color depth favors Atari since it offers 16+ colors for more pixels than C64. Here's a sample executeable that will put up different color for every pixel in the scanline for GTIA modes. Theoretically, this does 7 different 16-shade palettes per scanline with player #5 for another 16 shades, 4 players for another 6 colors = 134 colors/scanline from palette of 256. Since there are only maximum of 96 GTIA pixels/scanline, you end up with a different color for every pixel. You can also switch to other GTIA modes or Graphics 8 at any of the 7 points where modes are switched. There's the fifth player scrolling around on top of the 112 GTIA colors and 6 colors of 4 players in the overscan area:

 

Hi, I'd like to take a look at your file... but I'm not really familiar enough with the A8 to know how to run an IMG file. I tried changing the filename extension to XEX or ATR and running that in the emulator, but no luck. What do I do? Thanks...

 

You will need to be able to access the emulator's monitor.

I use atari800 on linux so here's what works with this setup and hopefully yours will be similar

Unzip the file.

Start the emulator from the directory with the .img file

After the emulator is running, I hit F8 to enter the monitor, then enter these commands:

 

read ATARIHC.IMG 0700 2ffa

setpc 707

cont

 

It should start running as soon as you enter cont in the monitor. You will either need to start the emulator

from the directory where the img file is located or make sure it is copied to the emulator's default directory.

Hope this helps.

[frogstar_robot]

I should turn in my Harry Potter Nerd Card. It is a hippogryph....

[Allas]

LMFAO @ C64 fans love Hannah Montana.

 

More Atarian images, including Hannah Montana for C64 users:

 

[atariksi]

You are living in a dream world mate, if this was a multiformat machine forum where any kind of level headed common sense was required you would have been banned for trolling within days of joining it...sadly the moderators here are Atari fanboys looking at the banning of JUST frohn so it's a shame that I shall have to leave you Atarians in this section of the forum to live in your delusional world that your machine is a super fantastic 100 slamdunk winner against any other 8bit machine ever produced in the world

 

The problem is that the ones who are most fanatical are the ones who will post the most. There are many Atari fans who recognize that the 64 has strengths that the A8 does not and it offered a unique level of sprite and color freedom. ...

 

In some cases people who know more about both systems will post the most especially if there are descrepancies in what is being stated. However, in case of fanatics cursing out each other, you are right once you get a couple of people cursing each other out-- the pages quickly fill up. C64 offered better built-in support for X-axis color changes and sprite width.

[atariksi]

There are many Atari fans who recognize that the 64 has strengths that the A8 does not

Tobad none of them participate here.

 

Have you read the last "1000" posts?

 

It's one of those generalizations that's unjustified. I rather stick to objectivity than make blind assertions and I don't let compassion get in the way of the truth. I have seen a few C64 fans try to downplay A8 strengths or dismiss legitimate points with personal attacks. It does not seem to affect reality in any way. What's that poem-- sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. I guess those interested in doing character assassination or "calling a dog a bad name and hanging him", try on someone else.

[atariksi]

Looks nice, but don't atariksi see the dithering

 

I would say the same for any machine. Dithering is not as good as a solid color. Dithering is done at cost of resolution. Temporal dithering is better if image has gradual changes of shades (so as to avoid/minimize flicker).

[atariksi]

...

Color Memory Scheme = Total strength. A lot can be done with 2 colors per character cell. Speccy guys have this too. Strength.

...

Don't see your point here with "total strength". Color memory is at the expense of 40+ DMA cycles per every 8 scanlines. Images don't always need colors every 8*8; it's a waste of color RAM in all the areas where colors are just repeated in the color RAM. A better hardware approach is like the Amiga with its Copper where you make color changes at exact (x,y) video beam locations where you need them. Atari has similar approach but it has a bandwidth limitation to do it as many times as Amiga (or C64 horizontally) but with GPRIOR enabling OR color effects, it can get a bunch of colors in regions where they are needed the most.

[atariksi]

I use GTIA modes mostly and original argument of color depth favors Atari since it offers 16+ colors for more pixels than C64. Here's a sample executeable that will put up different color for every pixel in the scanline for GTIA modes. Theoretically, this does 7 different 16-shade palettes per scanline with player #5 for another 16 shades, 4 players for another 6 colors = 134 colors/scanline from palette of 256. Since there are only maximum of 96 GTIA pixels/scanline, you end up with a different color for every pixel. You can also switch to other GTIA modes or Graphics 8 at any of the 7 points where modes are switched. There's the fifth player scrolling around on top of the 112 GTIA colors and 6 colors of 4 players in the overscan area:

 

Hi, I'd like to take a look at your file... but I'm not really familiar enough with the A8 to know how to run an IMG file. I tried changing the filename extension to XEX or ATR and running that in the emulator, but no luck. What do I do? Thanks...

 

It's just a boot disk with sectors saved as an IMG file. It should boot right up if you can write it to a floppy disk or run from a disk simulator. It does not have any header so don't rename it to ATR. I don't use emulators so don't know what it's problems are but CrazyAce was able to run some previous image disk I posted with an emulator.

 

By the way, the above shows the 9 of the 16 chromas with up to 16 shades without dithering or interlacing. Those are solid colors in that program.

[+wood_jl]

Here's one for you to convert to Commodore 64 colors:

 

 

How would this one look on C64? Someone proceed!

[Allas]

I use GTIA modes mostly and original argument of color depth favors Atari since it offers 16+ colors for more pixels than C64. Here's a sample executeable that will put up different color for every pixel in the scanline for GTIA modes. Theoretically, this does 7 different 16-shade palettes per scanline with player #5 for another 16 shades, 4 players for another 6 colors = 134 colors/scanline from palette of 256. Since there are only maximum of 96 GTIA pixels/scanline, you end up with a different color for every pixel. You can also switch to other GTIA modes or Graphics 8 at any of the 7 points where modes are switched. There's the fifth player scrolling around on top of the 112 GTIA colors and 6 colors of 4 players in the overscan area:

 

Hi, I'd like to take a look at your file... but I'm not really familiar enough with the A8 to know how to run an IMG file. I tried changing the filename extension to XEX or ATR and running that in the emulator, but no luck. What do I do? Thanks...

 

It's just a boot disk with sectors saved as an IMG file. It should boot right up if you can write it to a floppy disk or run from a disk simulator. It does not have any header so don't rename it to ATR. I don't use emulators so don't know what it's problems are but CrazyAce was able to run some previous image disk I posted with an emulator.

 

By the way, the above shows the 9 of the 16 chromas with up to 16 shades without dithering or interlacing. Those are solid colors in that program.

 

[Allas]

Here's one for you to convert to Commodore 64 colors:

 

 

How would this one look on C64? Someone proceed!

 

 

Oh... I remember years ago this demo, thank you for posting!

If you have the xex file, it would be welcomed to my collection.

[emkay]

LMFAO @ C64 fans love Hannah Montana.

 

More Atarian images, including Hannah Montana for C64 users:

 

 

If someone would create a DMA HD Interface, we could play MMOs on the Atari ...

[frenchman]

There are many Atari fans who recognize that the 64 has strengths that the A8 does not

Tobad none of them participate here.

I will say though I have slammed C64 on many occasions that there is some great software on the platform. For me the platform just doesnt hold my interest. The C64 story is to me dull and boring. Never cared for the hardware.

I know.. subjective but Atari is where my interest is.

I could go on and on from a user standpoint about what I don't like about commodore but that is why I am on an atari site reading,learning and buying Atari items.

It is interesting that there is some carry over between the 2 platforms that people here share and new ideas as well for continued fun on each machine. When it goes like that it is fun. Would be nice to see some great c64 programmers looking for a new challege to write some Atari stuff. Don't care who writes it, just want to play it!

 

 

I'm a C64 user actually, I just love how you can wind the the C64 users; they're getting in a hot bother so easy about their beloved 'gaming machine', especially the Germans.