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Sat, 09/20/2008 - 1:13am — Calibrator

Atari techniques

Rowdy Rob wrote:
It's not so much the hardware "possibilities" as the human "possibilities" I'm talking about. Even now, 20+ years later, these systems are being taken to new, expanding heights by homebrew programmers! Imagine if these "homebrew" programmers were around during the heyday of these machines, and had corporate budgets behind them? That's kind of what I saw with MSX back then in comparison to the Colecovision. The Japanese programmers took the Coleco/MSX platform to new heights (at least in my eyes), which would have spurred the Western programmers, which would have further spurred the Eastern programmers, etc.

The screenshots from the "Opcode" website (which I never heard of until your reference, BTW), look extremely cool! Too bad these programmers will never be justly rewarded financially for their efforts!

Agreed!

Quote:
Believe it or not, Mark, your technique is very close to the technique I had in mind 20+ years ago that I wanted to introduce to the world on the Atari! Yes, I used "sprites" (or "player/missile graphics" as they were referred to on the Atari) to enhance the colors. #&$*%!!!! I need to do some more research to see if my technique hasn't been already reproduced on the Atari, since the C-64 guys (like you!) have something very similar! Great minds think alike, eh? :-)

OMG!!! That website is awesome, and again, it looks like the technique is very similar to mine! (I think mine has a few more tricks up its sleeve, though.) Considering the Atari had many more colors available (256 vs. 16), I think a fair picture of what I had in mind can be seen. I lost my old code, however, and was already fired up to reproduce it until I read your message.

Thanks to you, I really have to do more research to make sure my technique hasn't been discovered yet before I proceed with my "demo". :-(

Using Player-Missile-Graphics as colored backgrounds is a known and well used Atari technique.
Example: the dashboard in "The Great American Cross-Country Road Race" by Activision (there are more but this is what I remember offhand).
I'm very curious how you'll step up from this!

Sidenote:
Interlaced/page flipped graphics modes are also used on the Atari to increase available colors for each pixel to 256 (with GTIA-equipped machines). It's used in the demo & homebrew scene, at least, and flickers horribly unless you have a 100 (PAL) or 120 Hz (NTSC) CRT (which I didn't have back then). I don't know how they look with an LCD TV-set, though.
You basically have two frame buffers (each 40x192 bytes - one is for the 16 colors, one for the 16 hues) and then you switch the GTIA register for the graphics mode (which decides how the 4-bit data in the frame buffer is interpreted - colors or hues) and the start of the frame buffer (ANTIC display list) in the vertical blanking interrupt.
Very good for static pictures but not for action games (though you can trick a lot here). The downside: The resolution is only 80x192. But this also works in 160x192 mode -- with less colors, though.

take care,
Calibrator

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