78 replies to this topic

[emkay]

Amaurote Spectrum:




Why is it "that" faster than the A8 version?



Speccy CPU 3.5MHz , Atari version ~1.5MHz (DMA GR.8 32 bytes)

Btw: Making the game in Gr. 7 would leave ~1.6MHz



Any chance for some optimisations there?

[Rybags]

So?

It's not like there was an unwritten law that Atari had to have the fastest or smoothest running version of every game.

Chances are the game was developed on Z80 in the first place, and as is well known, Atari received some fairly poor ports in many cases the game appeared elsewhere first.

And I don't know what the exact metric would be for Z80 vs 6502 - 2 * clocking to acheive same performance for a Z-80 is common belief but a common set of benchmarks would give a better figure.

Finally - the game would look like arse if done in Gr. 7.

[José Pereira]

Rybags, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 2:07 AM, said:

Finally - the game would look like arse if done in Gr. 7.

And it would be called Emaurote

[Heaven/TQA]

you could use Gr. 3, too.

[José Pereira]

Heaven/TQA, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 2:11 AM, said:

you could use Gr. 3, too.

Heaven/TQA, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 2:11 AM, said:

you could use Gr. 3, too.

Better would be Gr.9 with the beautifull 16shades of each colour and 16x2=32 Planets possible
I vote for this one

Edited by José Pereira, Tue Nov 29, 2011 2:20 AM.

[Heaven/TQA]

or best... use only PMs or press the ultimate less used turbo speed mode... LDA #$00 STA $D400.

[José Pereira]

LDA #$00 STA $D400

What this do?

[Rybags]

It engages the cloak mode.

[Heaven/TQA]

Jose... Secret not well known document to gain more available CPU cycles... only demo coders knew that secret and it will be given to next generation of coders only to whom who are worthy...

[José Pereira]

Why do I think that you are joking there...

A nice picture in GR.9:

(Of course we would need to do the ship, enemys,the fire and some of the things in the Status Area with PMs...)

Edited by José Pereira, Tue Nov 29, 2011 2:33 AM.

[Heaven/TQA]

Amaroute is an 3d 256x200 game and unfortunatly it seems that the engine was a straight rewrite of the Z80 version. At least we have a 3d version with nice soundtrack compared to the c64 version...

[flashjazzcat]

I'm lucky to be one of the select few privvy to the wonders of cloak mode. Here's a screenshot from a graphics demo I'm working on which outperforms any other 8-bit machine:

[sack-c0s]

have you tried using PM underlays to get even more shades of black?

You really need to up your game on this one - my commodore plus/4 has 8 unique shades of black, which makes the A8 look pretty poor if I'm honest

Edited by sack-c0s, Tue Nov 29, 2011 5:11 AM.

[flashjazzcat]

I'm actually using a horizontal interlace there, so you get an implied X resolution of 640 pixels - all in black. This doubles the screen RAM requirement, so really, something had to give with the shading.

[Heaven/TQA]

you discovered the secret turbo mode++? the resolution is outstanding... it's like the retine display of my iPhone4... I can hardly see any pixels... great! and all in 60 FPS. and best... I managed to play digi, too...

[Rybags]

I'm working on a new software mode called "Quark Pixels".

You'll get a resolution of about 4 times normal.

Sadly it only works on CRT TVs.

How it works is that it plays a high frequency sound that makes the shadow mask vibrate and knock the electron beam around so pixels appear out of their normal places.

By synchronising this effect in the right way, I predict we should have 1024 x 480 in 9 colours.

[Stephen]

emkay, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 1:57 AM, said:

Speccy CPU 3.5MHz , Atari version ~1.5MHz (DMA GR.8 32 bytes)

Btw: Making the game in Gr. 7 would leave ~1.6MHz

Any chance for some optimisations there?

Honestly? An extra 100 kHz of speed in trade for 1/4 of the resolution? Do you sit a kilometer away from your TV so the lego sized pixels in Gr.7 don't bother you?

[Mclaneinc]

Hey flash, that's smooth mate, full parallax scrolling as well by the look of it.

I just can't believe how well you got the black going there..

[emkay]

flashjazzcat, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 5:08 AM, said:

I'm lucky to be one of the select few privvy to the wonders of cloak mode. Here's a screenshot from a graphics demo I'm working on which outperforms any other 8-bit machine:

Cloak Mode Demo.png

Looks like the standard "let's start coding a demo on the Atari" .

[emkay]

Stephen, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 7:31 AM, said:

emkay, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 1:57 AM, said:

Speccy CPU 3.5MHz , Atari version ~1.5MHz (DMA GR.8 32 bytes)

Btw: Making the game in Gr. 7 would leave ~1.6MHz

Any chance for some optimisations there?

Honestly? An extra 100 kHz of speed in trade for 1/4 of the resolution? Do you sit a kilometer away from your TV so the lego sized pixels in Gr.7 don't bother you?

well well... You got a new word? Those "Lego sized" pixels seem very impressive to people, when playing Yoomp! or Space Harrier on a huge screen.

[Heaven/TQA]

but Amaroute is designed as a highres game? so I would not use 160x96 which reduces resolution in x- and y-direction...

[bfollett]

flashjazzcat, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 5:08 AM, said:

I'm lucky to be one of the select few privvy to the wonders of cloak mode. Here's a screenshot from a graphics demo I'm working on which outperforms any other 8-bit machine:

Cloak Mode Demo.png

Am I missing something here? All I see is a completely black .png file???

Bob

[Stephen]

emkay, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 9:41 AM, said:

well well... You got a new word? Those "Lego sized" pixels seem very impressive to people, when playing Yoomp! or Space Harrier on a huge screen.

Yeah, I learn new words all the time, like dumbkopf and hartnäckig Maybe it was a bit harsh, but let's be reasonable about this. Yoomp does not need 320*200 resolution, Amaroute does. You always tell people don't push the machine to do something it can't do (i.e., copy a C64 game rather than doing an ISO game from scratch). You want the A8 to look and sound impressive. What would be impressive about a game which is hi-res on other systems having its resolution cut in quarter? You want speed, drop down to Gr.3 for everything, and you could have time for two digi-tracks.

[emkay]

Heaven/TQA, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 10:20 AM, said:

but Amaroute is designed as a highres game? so I would not use 160x96 which reduces resolution in x- and y-direction...

The gr. 7 mode was only some sidenote

Would be interesting to see, if it could be done somehow faster...

[emkay]

Stephen, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 11:36 AM, said:

emkay, on Tue Nov 29, 2011 9:41 AM, said:

well well... You got a new word? Those "Lego sized" pixels seem very impressive to people, when playing Yoomp! or Space Harrier on a huge screen.

Yeah, I learn new words all the time, like dumbkopf and hartnäckig Maybe it was a bit harsh, but let's be reasonable about this. Yoomp does not need 320*200 resolution, Amaroute does. You always tell people don't push the machine to do something it can't do (i.e., copy a C64 game rather than doing an ISO game from scratch). You want the A8 to look and sound impressive. What would be impressive about a game which is hi-res on other systems having its resolution cut in quarter? You want speed, drop down to Gr.3 for everything, and you could have time for two digi-tracks.

Amaurote could have been done in an A8 optimized way.....


Look at this. This is how Amaurote really shouldn't look like


http://www.lemon64.c...ails.php?ID=103