[stella] Some Background Questions That Occur To Me

Subject: [stella] Some Background Questions That Occur To Me
From: Pete Holland <petehollandjr@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 19:40:40 -0700 (PDT)
Hey, everybody!

After much meditating, how the Atari 2600 "thinks" is
becoming clearer.  But I would like to ask a couple
more questions first.

1)  How did they come up with the color clocks/machine
cycles?  I don't mean how did they measure them, but
rather, what reasoning did they use to come up with
having the TIA count color clocks and that three of
them equaled one machine cycle?  Was that simply the
limits of what was available at the time?

2)  I'm paraphrasing:  to start drawing the player,
you activate the graphics at the color clock position
it's supposed to appear at.  One of the big hang ups
is the screen.  Does the math about the color clocks
and screen display only apply to the area covered by
the playfield et al, or is it possible to draw a
little outside the playfield?  I wonder because games
like Space Invaders, the invaders are limited to how
far they move, but the bottom of the screen, the
"land" goes off the screen.  Is that simply a
background color, and it gets drawn no matter what, or
is that part of the playfield?

There's one more question, but it's coming and going. 
I'll write it up later should it come to me.  Right
now, those are nagging at my brain.

Dobre utka,
Pete Holland Jr.

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