> About the color scheme: Yes, the 2600 even has got more colors than the
> C-64, and also than the NES and Sega Master System. So... some games that
> were ported to the C-64 actually look better on the 2600. Now what's the
> advantage of an 8-bit Atari computer over a C-64... I don't really know. I
> own a C-64 and have learned to progam it, in Assembler too. Personally I
> think the C-64's able to put out better graphics than the Atari 8-bit's.
This is all very close to home.
I have authored (assembler) games on the Atari 800, Commodore 64, NES and
SNES.
And I've dabbled in the 2600. So, I have a pretty good handle on which was
the 'best'
And I'm not telling :)
> every scanline. Now the Atari 8-bits have got custom chips that are able
to
> do that job for you, but if you want to move an object up and down, you
> still have to re-write all of its data. But I'm not sure about this. Does
> anyone else know more?
Yes, each player/missile was a single byte wide, a single colour, and 256
bytes of memory. One byte reserved for one scanline, so you are right, in
that to shift objects up or down on the screen you had to shift the bytes in
that 256 byte block. But you didn't have to constantly write the block
every frame - what was there, was displayed. You could shift them
horizontally by a write to the horizontal position register for each. You
had 4 players (each 8 pixels/bits wide), and 4 missiles (each 2 bits wide).
My game 'Qb' for the Atari 400/800 computers (and pretty damn good it is!)
can be seen at http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~aaronat/qb.html - there are some
screenshots there, but you can also download an emulator-compatible binary -
make sure to run it in PAL mode. This particular game is what I hope
(someday) to bring to the '2600.
Cheers
A
--
Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/
Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/
