Re: [stella] Hardware comparisons

Subject: Re: [stella] Hardware comparisons
From: "Matthew W. Miller" <mattm@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 17:33:39 -0400 (EDT)
On Tue, 25 Apr 2000 kurt.woloch@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

>Over the weekend, numerous people wrote:
>>>think the C-64's able to put out better graphics than the Atari 8-bit's.

Not better, not worse, just different.

>>The background on the C=64 could output 16 colors at 320x200 whereas the 
>>only 320x200 color mode on the 8-bits was only two shades of one hue per 
>>scanline, called "1.5 colors".
>Two shades of hue? That's worse than the two colors I thought... but
>anyway... the C-64 can change foreground and background colors for every 8x8
>tile of graphics. In 160x200, two of the four colors per tile are fixed
>(equal on all the screen), and two can vary in each tile (or was it even
>three?)

Singlecolor text: One background, any foreground (many Speccy ports: Manic
	Miner, Monty on the Run, Finders Keepers, etc.)

Multicolor text: One of 16 backgrounds, any of 8 foregrounds OR
	One of 16 backgrounds, one of 16 colors for 01 dits, one of 16
	colors for 10 dits, one of 8 colors for 11 dits.  Both can be
	mixed on a single screen (Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken)

'Extended' text: Four of 16 backgrounds, any of 16 foregrounds, BUT
	limited to 64 characters: high dit selects background (few games,
	but the Compute!'s Gazette disk menu used it)

Singlecolor high-res: Any background or foreground (few games, many still
	pictures)

Multicolor high-res: One background, other three dits can be any color

This of course is assuming you don't use sprites or raster interrupts, in
which case, anything goes.  :)

>It's right that sprites are only 21 lines tall on the C-64, but as soon
>as a sprite has ended you can re-write its registers to start displaying
>a different sprite further down the screen.

Also demonstrated by Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken, which is why they
have those very tall characters -- also why they're so furshlugginer slow.

>>Most of the time Apple II or C=64 games tried to get artistic in the 
>>graphics they resorted to ugly dithering, 

"Ugly" depends on the particular artists' skills -- but it's somewhat sad
about the Apple IIc and IIe, which have a 120x(192?) nybble mode which can
display any of 16 colors in any nybble, but for some reason only six of
them (black, white, light blue, orange, magenta, and green) ever got used!

>On the other hand, I've also seen games (graphic adventures) using ugly
>dithering on the Atari where there were solid colors on the C-64. Also, the
>C-64 pallette was equal for PAL and NTSC

Not equal, but similar.  *snigger*  Got better with the later C64 models,
which unfortunately had a worse-sounding SID chip, and on and on...

-- 
Matthew W. Miller -- mattm@xxxxxxxxxxx


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