Atari v Commodore

[Oswald]

>the c64 is either 11x faster or uses ~ 10x less ram in this scenario.(moving sprites x/y) goto 10

>You cut out the parts you don't like.

 

these are the facts, when we compare how much it does take to move around sprites with these machine. goto 10

 

>80x200x16 is only possible in monochrome mode.

>Wrong.

 

you'r reight, well, monochrome, or monoluma.

 

>320x200x128 doesn not exist, its 320x200x4 colors / line just like the c64.

>If you're going to use color ram and the additional I/O space, etc., I'll overlay GTIA on other modes or use DLIs/IRQs.

 

I can not not use the color ram. its usage is hardwired into the chip. it does not need additional cpu help unlike what you're talking of.

 

>atari has nothing like the ham mode so you have to find something else to explain why would it have better pictures using less data than the c64.

>I did, I guess you missed it again.

 

more data = better pictures (except ham). a8 has no ham mode. the end.

[atariksi]

>The first player is blue, the second is red but the third can't be grey because the OR'd value of red and blue isn't grey. It can't be certain shades of yellow either, can't be darker than the two source colours, can't be lighter if they're both the same shade... that third colour may be unique but it's severely restricted as to what it can actually display.

 

It's not severely restricted. All I have to show is that two of the C64 colors can be formed by four other colors and keep them fixed in a palette to show it's better than C64 palette. Yeah, if you look at it from Atari palette's point of view, you have more combinations that can be formed without using OR. It depends how you plan out the palette. I have never run into the restriction in all my various graphics (maybe because I usually need some shades).

 

>i read it through and from what i understand it relies on zones and vertically pre-shifted images; my method, although CPU heavy, can animate objects independently of each other and i remember you saying this was a 10x faster version of what that could do, but unless you've missed a detail out somewhere yours can't match everything. If it were just me i'd assume i was at fault because i've never said i was perfect or anything and even after a few years i don't claim to know all the tricks of the Atari hardware, but when an Atari coder starts asking similar questions i'm pondering...

 

All I stated as restriction was that when you have *MULTIPLE* multicolor sprites, you can get a scenario where two sprites in the same zone which would be slower than other zones since the combinations of the multiple sprites in the same zone would not be a PMBase value. If you wanted to animate sprites, you can still have a better method than the one you suggested. My method was to defeat the idea that setting Y-position is 11X slower.

[atariksi]

>these are the facts, when we compare how much it does take to move around sprites with these machine. goto 10

 

But that's not the potential for the machine and nor am I restricted to 16K for PMBases. I can adjust it to more or less.

 

>you'r reight, well, monochrome, or monoluma.

 

Wrong again.

 

>I can not not use the color ram. its usage is hardwired into the chip. it does not need additional cpu help unlike what you're talking of.

 

Sure it does. You have to set up the color RAM a 1000 times in any sort of motion and initially. Or that doesn't count right?

 

>more data = better pictures (except ham). a8 has no ham mode. the end.

 

Wrong again. Any sort of compressed imagery does this. You don't see the compression on the Atari w/it's graphical elements/DLIs/DLists/etc. because you are too caught up in finding fault. When you send an MPEG4 stream to the graphics card, you are doing something similar. Also your palette is too restricted to make the claim more data = better pictures. Since you already declared the end, you can live with your ignorance.

[Oswald]

>these are the facts, when we compare how much it does take to move around sprites with these machine. goto 10

>But that's not the potential for the machine and nor am I restricted to 16K for PMBases. I can adjust it to more or less.

 

thats the potential. 11x slower or wasting ram. goto 10.

 

 

>I can not not use the color ram. its usage is hardwired into the chip. it does not need additional cpu help unlike what you're talking of.

>Sure it does. You have to set up the color RAM a 1000 times in any sort of motion and initially. Or that doesn't count right?

 

I said "unlike what you're talking of" and that was about changing registers on the fly to get more colors. the c64 doesnt has to do that.

 

>more data = better pictures (except ham). a8 has no ham mode. the end.

 

>Wrong again. Any sort of compressed imagery does this. You don't see the compression on the Atari w/it's graphical elements/DLIs/DLists/etc. because you are too caught up in finding fault. When you send an MPEG4 stream to the graphics card, you are doing something similar. Also your palette is too restricted to make the claim more data = better pictures. Since you already declared the end, you can live with your ignorance.

 

show me an a8 HW decompressed - while displayed imagery (you can use even the cpu) which uses more data than the c64's best case. the palette has nothing to do with how much data is used to display the picture.

[Bryan]

Can you guys please start quoting correctly?

[Crazyace]

I think it's more than 3 sprites on the C64..

Bruce and the green guy go to 16 pixels wide in 2 colours - seems to be 1 double width player, and 1 single width player.. That's too wide for a standard multicolour sprite, so I expect the game uses 2 sprites each in the C64 version

It looks like the ninja is using the fifth player - when he stabs on the A8 version the sprite goes 'double res' only. The C64 would have 3 more sprites spare to improve his graphics

 

Haven't we already decided that the C64 sprites are better? ( come on - it shows a certain blind devotion to argue otherwise... )

 

c64 sprites are 24 hires pixel wide (12 in multicolor) and 21 pixels high. in multicolor mode each sprite can have 1 own color, and they share 2 colors. so it can be made of 3 sprites. furthermore the ninja could have been hires... I always wondered why the ninja sprite is so ugly, well its because <emkay mode one> the atari turned the VICII's sprites into restricted a8 pmgs <emkay mode off>

 

I dont think it works that way - 16 pixels at 160 needs 32 pixels at 320 res... so I'm still pretty certain that the characters are made up of 2 double width monochrome sprites.. although they could also be 2 double width multicolour sprites. It's easier with 2 mono sprites though as the X/Y coords stay the same.

Bruce Lee isn't using the C64 sprites to their full potential though - it is just a conversion... they could have used 3 sprites for bruce and the green guy, and 2 for the ninja - and had hires animations (320pixel) rather than lores.

 

I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed playing this game when I was younger

[Oswald]

Crazyace, you're right. I thought you ment 16 hires pixels.

[emkay]

<emkay mode one> the atari turned the VICII's sprites into restricted a8 pmgs <emkay mode off>

 

 

When running out of argues, you start turning facts like women do.

 

Interesting.

[emkay]

sure, gtia has built in 3d support. leave me alone with this ridiciulous bullshit.

 

 

No one said this.

But ANTIC has this basically blitting function. Giving the tripple "cycles per pixel" speed, compared to the C64. This results in the fact that, when you do 3-4 frames per second 3D "fullscreen" on the C64, the Atari can do it 3 times faster (8-12 frames per second) including the usage of the real full screen, without any technical trickery to avoid borders...

Using Sprites on the C64 cost DMA reads. Every re-use cost an additional DMA read. Reading the Sprites in the range of the border, also costs DMA reads.

Well... While using the Atari full screen, the Player usage for colour enhancement "fullscreen" costs exactly 0 DMA cycles.

So you have a much higher speed available for 3D calculations ... including depth...

And, you know what? The Atari has the colours to show several depth values by the given colour palette.

Edited November 29, 2008 by emkay

[Oswald]

<emkay mode one> the atari turned the VICII's sprites into restricted a8 pmgs <emkay mode off>

 

 

When running out of argues, you start turning facts like women do.

 

Interesting.

 

I haven't ran out of arguments, just parodised yours. also I dont turn facts. its a fact that bruce lee on the c64 was limited more than what the machine could do because of atari hardware. its your own argument turned back against the a8. like it or not.

[emkay]

I haven't ran out of arguments, just parodised yours. also I dont turn facts. its a fact that bruce lee on the c64 was limited more than what the machine could do because of atari hardware. its your own argument turned back against the a8. like it or not.

 

Are you really this handycapped, having problems with the chronological order?

Bruce Lee was written in 1983... not 85....not 87.... not 89

[Oswald]

But ANTIC has this basically blitting function. Giving the tripple "cycles per pixel" speed, compared to the C64. This results in the fact that, when you do 3-4 frames per second 3D "fullscreen" on the C64, the Atari can do it 3 times faster (8-12 frames per second) including the usage of the real full screen, without any technical trickery to avoid borders...

Using Sprites on the C64 cost DMA reads. Every re-use cost an additional DMA read. Reading the Sprites in the range of the border, also costs DMA reads.

Well... While using the Atari full screen, the Player usage for colour enhancement "fullscreen" costs exactly 0 DMA cycles.

So you have a much higher speed available for 3D calculations ... including depth...

And, you know what? The Atari has the colours to show several depth values by the given colour palette.

 

1. "In a computer system, a blitter is a co-processor or a logic block on a microprocessor that is dedicated to rapid data transfer within that computer's memory." -> antic has no blitting function. neither z axis zooming.

 

2. c64 is 1 mhz atari is 1.7 (best case) -> no cpu related task can be done 3 times faster. including filled vectors.

 

3. time to learn how c64 sprites are working, instead of just talking about them: each sprite needs 3-4 dma cycles / rasterline, "reusing" or not. displaying the sprites in the border does not change this.

 

4. c64 doesnt needs sprites for color enhancement. it can display better gfx with 0 sprite and cpu usage.

 

5. yes exactly 1.7 times faster in ideal case. tho that never happens.

 

6. yes it has but it can hardly use them, except in 80x wide mode. or rainbows. not useful for other than demos.

[Allas]

8 - Flip and flop

 

Atari screenshots

 

This is one of my favorites games. I played on both platform a lot of time. Practically is equal on both, but there are some little issues with the color on Atari version that make the difference, more color combination along the different levels.

 

C64 screenshots

[Oswald]

I haven't ran out of arguments, just parodised yours. also I dont turn facts. its a fact that bruce lee on the c64 was limited more than what the machine could do because of atari hardware. its your own argument turned back against the a8. like it or not.

 

Are you really this handycapped, having problems with the chronological order?

Bruce Lee was written in 1983... not 85....not 87.... not 89

 

apart from I havent said anything about when bruce lee was made, what are you trying to hint ? even blue max, boulder dash, archon was limited on the c64 because of the atari hardware, regardless of any chronology... also while the sid chip was much better then the pokey, these games turned it into a pokey emulator using primitive game sounds/music instead of using the real capabilities of the sid.

[Fröhn]

I dunno commodore plus 4 comes to mind. This one country does make the world

The C16 was aimed at the ZX Spectrum market and supposed to be sold much cheaper than a C64. But when Tramiel left the new management had weirdo ideas of selling it on a imaginary "professional market of 8 bit computers" and priced it in the same range as the C64.

Here in the US I am not sure it had an aim, never saw very many, though I did see a few VICs in late 81 early 82 I think. I recall that being some peoples first pc as it was affordable,PC's were so new at the time and people bought one and it just sat there, sadly games were not readily available many places(distribution) so it died.

I'm pretty sure:

 

Start at 6:50

[Alison DeMeyer]

<emkay mode one> the atari turned the VICII's sprites into restricted a8 pmgs <emkay mode off>

 

 

When running out of argues, you start turning facts like women do.

 

Interesting.

 

Oi I resent that, Women are ALWAYS factual, men on the other hand are not! Got that?

[Fröhn]

The ability to include ML routines in strings as opposed to DATA statements that slow the system down while pokeing into memory (or can this be done on a 64... not sure... just never seen it).

You can place ML code into strings. But it doesn't make sense since you can simply link the ML code behind the BASIC program.

 

One area that the C64's Basic has that I wish the Atari's had would be variable bitmasking. I remember seeing it in a lot of magazine type-ins for the 64, but alas, no bitmasking in Atari basic. Another plus was the 64 had proper string arrays...

And it had a special feature: it made you switch to ML as soon as possible

[emkay]

<emkay mode one> the atari turned the VICII's sprites into restricted a8 pmgs <emkay mode off>

 

 

When running out of argues, you start turning facts like women do.

 

Interesting.

 

Oi I resent that, Women are ALWAYS factual, men on the other hand are not! Got that?

 

I REALLY got that

[emkay]

1. "In a computer system, a blitter is a co-processor or a logic block on a microprocessor that is dedicated to rapid data transfer within that computer's memory." -> antic has no blitting function. neither z axis zooming.

 

2. c64 is 1 mhz atari is 1.7 (best case) -> no cpu related task can be done 3 times faster. including filled vectors.

 

3. time to learn how c64 sprites are working, instead of just talking about them: each sprite needs 3-4 dma cycles / rasterline, "reusing" or not. displaying the sprites in the border does not change this.

 

4. c64 doesnt needs sprites for color enhancement. it can display better gfx with 0 sprite and cpu usage.

 

5. yes exactly 1.7 times faster in ideal case. tho that never happens.

 

6. yes it has but it can hardly use them, except in 80x wide mode. or rainbows. not useful for other than demos.

 

 

<yawn>

 

In a double scanline mode, Antic is setting every 2nd full scanline which it read before from the machines memory, while the CPU can do full calculations without one DMA read .

The fullscreen double scanline mode leaves at least 1,5MHz to the CPU then. Because you have to substract RAM refresh and Displaylist-Reads.

You don't need any trick like this colourcell doulbing mode on the C64 that is used in Mood, which is taking cpu cycles for the initialization routines and the additional DMA reads for the colourcells that make the 6510 down to approx. 500-600MHz available for the game itself.

 

Together with the overlayed PM Graphics 12 colours are usable for the "3D Scene".

 

The fact that no "Wolfenstein 3D" exists has something to do with the idealism of the Atari sceners (which I cannot understand sometimes myself). It is OK to use this full calculated 3D engine in Numen, but no one (with exactly 1 exception) likes the idea of doing some trickery for having a really fast 3D looking action game.

Same with Graph2font. Many GTIA features are not bounded, single scanlines are still not correct , but this "VBXE" expansion is now built into this tool.

It's like saying "Yes, you Commies got right. The Atari is worse without such enhancements" ...

[Oswald]

You don't need any trick like this colourcell doulbing mode on the C64 that is used in Mood, which is taking cpu cycles for the initialization routines and the additional DMA reads for the colourcells that make the 6510 down to approx. 500-600MHz available for the game itself.

 

incorrect. on the c64 gfx-dma and cpu bus cycles are interleaved. the bus is esentially 2mhz, so displaying gfx and running the cpu doesnt slows down the cpu. the exceptions are badlines (-40 cycles*25 charlines) where color & charpointers are read and sprites (3-4 cycles / sprite / rasterline). displaying Mood's screen takes only 1000 cycles away from the cpu compared to the available 19656. but this happens in every default gfx mode. mood does use on of them.

 

The fact that no "Wolfenstein 3D" exists has something to do with the idealism of the Atari sceners (which I cannot understand sometimes myself). It is OK to use this full calculated 3D engine in Numen, but no one (with exactly 1 exception) likes the idea of doing some trickery for having a really fast 3D looking action game.

 

that spectrum "doom" is convincingly ugly enough not to try something like that on the a8 or c64 imho. (pre defined wall gfx..)

 

Same with Graph2font. Many GTIA features are not bounded, single scanlines are still not correct , but this "VBXE" expansion is now built into this tool.

It's like saying "Yes, you Commies got right. The Atari is worse without such enhancements" ...

 

g2f pix wont get any better then the c64. VICII can use more data to build gfx lines, especially in software modes. This means much higher color density in 160x or 320x modes. pictures take up to 16k and in interlaced modes 32k. dont think the a8 can come close to displaying so much data on the same screen. the only area is TIP and the 80x monochrome modes where I see the a8 having an edge over the vic.

[emkay]

apart from I havent said anything about when bruce lee was made, what are you trying to hint ?

 

If you don't understand the analogy, there is no cause left for further talking.

 

even blue max, boulder dash, archon was limited on the c64 because of the atari hardware, regardless of any chronology... also while the sid chip was much better then the pokey, these games turned it into a pokey emulator using primitive game sounds/music instead of using the real capabilities of the sid.

 

Particular Archon was limited only by the C64 itself. What are the capabilites of a soundchip worth, if the computer isn't "good" enough for handling it during gameplay....<sneaking at the fabulous C64 game: Turrican>

Or looking at Turrican 3 , a "high level" program on the C64. During the title, the SID sounds "revolutionary" somehow. But ingame you recognize simple sounds for the music which could easily be topped by pokey including ingame FX

[Crazyace]

I'm pretty sure:

 

That's a really cool video - it's always interesting to hear engineers talking about their stuff - and interesting to see how Tramiel had 'the right idea' which was then 'lost'..

[emkay]

incorrect. on the c64 gfx-dma and cpu bus cycles are interleaved. the bus is esentially 2mhz, so displaying gfx and running the cpu doesnt slows down the cpu.

 

Good Lord.... Ofcourse the graphics does not slow down the cpu of the C64. But every change takes full CPU speed. This doesn't happen on the A8, because Antic handles the changes without the help of the cpu. It does not only save the CPU from DMA stealing, it does additional work on every 2nd scanline, leaving more cpu time for doing calculations. Is this so hard to understand?

 

the exceptions are badlines (-40 cycles*25 charlines) where color & charpointers are read and sprites (3-4 cycles / sprite / rasterline). displaying Mood's screen takes only 1000 cycles away from the cpu compared to the available 19656. but this happens in every default gfx mode. mood does use on of them.

 

The DMA read is doubled with this "mood-charmode-trick" compared to the standard 40x25 mode, and you need software routines to handle this, which cost additional cpu time.

That Mood still looks ugly and plays rather low is another point of thread

[Oswald]

apart from I havent said anything about when bruce lee was made, what are you trying to hint ?

 

If you don't understand the analogy, there is no cause left for further talking.

 

it was a primitive personal attack (just like this one) not an analogy. it does not make sense attacking me for mistakes I havent made. use logics and facts instead. thats more challenging.

 

 

Particular Archon was limited only by the C64 itself. What are the capabilites of a soundchip worth, if the computer isn't "good" enough for handling it during gameplay....<sneaking at the fabulous C64 game: Turrican>

Or looking at Turrican 3 , a "high level" program on the C64. During the title, the SID sounds "revolutionary" somehow. But ingame you recognize simple sounds for the music which could easily be topped by pokey including ingame FX

 

archon is obviously designed around the atari limits, only a few moving objects at a time, primitive sound, etc. on the c64 it has already better gfx just to take one example.

 

there's zilion c64 games playing music&sfx during gameplay, picking one which doesnt proove anything. I can just as pick the lamest a8 game ever and point out how lame a8 is...

 

T3 ingame has filtered 3 channel 16 bit freq sounds with 4 waveforms and >>>>50hz adsr, which pokey is not able to do. not even with 100% cpu usage.

[emkay]

apart from I havent said anything about when bruce lee was made, what are you trying to hint ?

 

If you don't understand the analogy, there is no cause left for further talking.

 

it was a primitive personal attack (just like this one) not an analogy. it does not make sense attacking me for mistakes I havent made. use logics and facts instead. thats more challenging.

 

 

Rotfl

 

It's not me mixing up logics and facts. So you better talk to yourself, if you want someone who can understand your meaning