Was the C64 good or bad for the games industry?

[roondar]

Sorry about all the tape loading stuff. I'll try to slow down on that conversation.

It's just that loading from tape has something nostalgic for me, as I did not have a disk drive for my C64 until after 2010. So, I still like to load in games from tape on my real C64 connected to an old CRT even to this day. Just watching the loading screen, listening to the loading music, playing the game, etc. It's a bit crazy to wait a couple of minutes for a game to load, but then again - this is a forum about a 40 year old computer so err, maybe not that crazy all things considered

I've suppose I have given evidence that people can check for themselves and offered my side of the equation. I'm not sure what will be gained by continuing to discuss endlessly about it, as I am quite sure that no amount of extra data will change anyone's mind any more than it already has.

[pandy71]

Extrapolating from ZX Microdrive (120kbps @76cm/s) compact cassette should be able to deliver approx 7.5kbps so even 4000 bits per second is still far from magnetic tape maximum...

My mistake - seem stereo (2 track) approach was used - so 4000bps it close to max.

[roondar]

I loved the microdrive. I never had a ZX-Spectrum, but did use my dad's QL for a few years before getting my C64 and that had microdrives built in. Always enjoyed those little carts, even though they apparently were quite finicky

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by roondar

And yet, you can't even show me a single example of that. It's all claims but no evidence from you. Show me the videos of all these super-fast tape loading CPC games that run rings around their C64 counterparts and I'll glady admit you're right.

I have no time to make videos : i'm doing preservation on 8 different platforms, adding this to my family life.

Sorry but something has to go !

I provided public sources that people can check and judge for themselves. You've provided "trust me" and "buy a CPC", which are not convincing arguments.

Most of the time, those videos are made with emulators. The only "source" is doing it on real hardware.

This is called an argument from authority, a common fallacy. Just because you sampled more tapes doesn't mean you know more. In particular, you very clearly know little about C64 tape loading as you are 100% incorrect about C64 loaders and their speeds.

It is not a fallacy. There is a clear difference between having knowledge after preserving more than 2200 titles vs only 100 titles, which represent nothing.

I have processed 98% of the Amstrad CPC commercial tapes on my own, you simply did 1% of the whole C64 commercial tape catalogue.

Regarding the speed of the C64 tapes, considering the light weight of the programs, it remains slow. the CPC loads faster bigger sized programs.

As for my CPC knowledge, I simply look at publicly available information. I have exactly zero reasons to not trust what is found online on places like YouTube and the CPC Wiki.

Most tape informations you read at CPC wiki were most of the time written by me !

The sources I've shown are not biased against the CPC and they're not doing any weird stuff, they just show it as it is (indeed, the video playlist I linked doesn't even skip the "FOUND <x>" prompt on the C64 by pressing the Commodore key, making it wait a few seconds longer than it has to).

The videos i saw were loading faster than what i get from real C64 hardware.
Sorry, but i beg to differ.

Which, interestingly, is consistently rather different from how you claim it to be. Yes, because capturing real cassettes on a real C64 to .tap file and testing both the original cassette and the .tap on a real C64 will show a mismatch in speed compared to using a real C64 with real cassettes

I have processed all the original tapes i own on C64, and yes considering the small size of the programs, it's slower that what a CPC achieve in speed (speed of the tape/size of the program to load).

Also: C64 emulators actually play back tapes at the same speed as the original tapes. Everyone who has actually, you know, used those emulators to play back .tap files knows this.

Sorry, but i also use myself Winvice to test the tapes after processing. And it's as slow as on real hardware.

It's also super easy to test that I'm correct about this, so I have no clue why you even try to bring it up as an argument.

You don't have a CPC on your desk to compare. Just videos made in uncertain conditions with emulators on youtube. That's why it can't work.

Then you've not looked very well or don't have many C64 games on tape. There are tons of Freeload titles, which according to it's own author on it's own website runs at ~3000 baud:

"All Freeload titles load in 14 parts (excluding the initial boot load that pulls in the loader) at roughly ~3000 baud (which is x10 faster than the original Commodore routines)" - http://www.pauliehughes.com/freeload.htm

I have Robocop and total Recall in my C64 collection of originals.

Robocop C64 is small and lighter than the CPC version (and buggy, but that's another problem).

If the C64 had to load as much data as the CPC does for its version, it would take 5 minutes more.

[quote]Note: Freeload is but one example, there are plenty more commercial tape loaders on the C64 that exceed 2000 baud.

Not really, it was mostly used by System 3 and affiliates.

Cyberload was used by many other coders, like Raf Cecco on Stormlord II deliverance, and other i have in original at home.

Other systems, such as Freeload were used in way more games and were considerably faster. Again, it's quite clear you just know very little about C64 tape loading. I see no reason to take your word over what the CPC Wiki says. They have no reason to lie about this.

The games even with freeload load faster because the C64 games are smaller. the CPC games are bigger. Turrican II is bigger than its C64 counter part (715kb crunched on 2 tape sides loaded by a speedlock v6 running at 1650 bauds).

You can take my word as the CPC wiki informations were written by me !

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Extrapolating from ZX Microdrive (120kbps @76cm/s) compact cassette should be able to deliver approx 7.5kbps so even 4000 bits per second is still far from magnetic tape maximum...

My mistake - seem stereo (2 track) approach was used - so 4000bps it close to max.

Microdrives were kind of cool and a bit more like having a disk drive. It's a shame that they feel like a bit of an afterthought on the software side (because the ROM wasn't ready when the Spectrum launched), which makes them clunky to use and not easy to support.

But once you've deviated away from a generic "cassette" tape format, you can obviously reach much higher speeds. Tape would go on to be used for high capacity server backups for quite some time.

[dlfrsilver]

@those who read this thread regarding the loading speed:

"Basil Private Detective" on Amstrad CPC use the "Gremlin Loader 1".
Its title screen take 65 seconds to load; it's 16 kilobytes long, so we get 2020 bits per second. A baud is an average bit/second; Those 65 seconds are pretty much what the timings (623:1183 T) were implying (3500000/(623+1183)=1937,98).

This just one example from many....

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

2020 bits per second. A baud is an average bit/second

Things are more complicated from at least 40 years...
Sorry for being nite picker but baud is NOT bit per second - it can be more bits per second - depends on modulation you are using - usually nowadays baud is replaced by other term: symbol rate - if you are using QPSK modulation then you can store in one baud 2 bits of information - using M-FSK/FDM modulation you can store more bits, same for PAM (pulse amplitude modulation) PAM4 used for example in modern RAM interfaces allow to store in one baud 2 bits of information.
At some cases you can have something like 4096 QAM - single baud carry 12 bits of information, you can use even 32768 QAM so 15 bits in single baud.

[Photon]

I don't see how "Amstrad vs C64 baud rates" have anything to do with the thread title. At all.

[roondar]

This will be my last post about loading speeds.
Not because I think I'm wrong, but because this discussion is clearly not going to progress from here.

Well, that and I do agree this is getting too far off topic.

I mean, you could argue that slow loading times were a bad thing for the industry I supose, but it's tangential at best.

Note: this post used to be much longer, but I don't see the point of arguing on and on, so I cut most of it out. I only left the video I made showing that loading on the emulator is the same speed as a real C64.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The videos i saw were loading faster than what i get from real C64 hardware.
Sorry, but i beg to differ.

Here's a simple video I made in about 10 minutes earlier this afternoon that shows the loading speed for Elite on a real C64. Loads at the same speed as that video I linked earlier, so the playlist seems trustworthy enough to me. Sorry for the bad audio and flickering video, this is completly unedited and made using an iPad rather than my normal camera, which stops the flickering.

[ Show youtube player ]

[dlfrsilver]

Thanks for this video. This is more akin to what i have here than the videos i usually see here and there.

[Dunny]

Just for fun, the 128k Spectrum version of Elite loads just shy of 5 minutes. The problem is that each version has massive variations between platforms. Some have missions, some not. Some have more enemy ships, some less.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Just for fun, the 128k Spectrum version of Elite loads just shy of 5 minutes. The problem is that each version has massive variations between platforms. Some have missions, some not. Some have more enemy ships, some less.

In other words, some versions are bigger than others.

[Karlos]

Was the C64 good or bad for the games industry?

Probably.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

Neat. I think that's around the same kinds of speed reached with OTLA on the CPC, but that's cutting out the incredibly unreliable actual magnetic tape bit and sending data from a cleaner digital source.

Yep. Not so much 'unreliable' as way beyond the achievable bandwidth. For 13,000 b/s you need an audio bandwidth of at least 26 kHz. Even the best Hi-Fi cassette tape decks couldn't do that.

Both the CPC and C64 tape units have wide bandwidth read amps so they should both be able to get high bit rates with non-standard 'turbo' loaders. Some other machines are not so lucky.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Karlos

Probably.

Good OR bad, or good AND bad? Or perhaps neither good NOR bad!

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

If the C64 had to load as much data as the CPC does for its version, it would take 5 minutes more.

And CPC Ikari/Buggy Boy take twice as long.

Unfortunately for you and your comparisons you have failed to mention 2 things.

There is no such thing as a defined speed of loading on C64 as even early 1984 that far exceed the loading speed of the fastest CPC tape OR disk loaders, the myths have been busted and put up on youtube years ago lol

The mechanism and components of the C2N are of a higher quality/better design than the CPC tape deck as far as consistent motor speed and wow/flutter of audio signal read by the heads.

Also worth noting there are only a few examples of loading music on the CPC (Booty and Druid) and they are very simplistic audio coding routines on a par with the Rolf Harris Stylophone and nothing like title screen/in game CPC music so nowhere near as modifiable as the C64 can accommodate for software tape/disk loaders.

So all these "C64 games take longer to load" are the babblings of people who don't have the experience of all systems to make any comparisons worth reading. I doubt loading the disk release of Elite is much faster on CPC than C64 so this is also true for disk load times possible being inferior.

I write for actual wikipedia, have done so since the first year that site was started (Robin Matthews) so we can all play that game, CPC wiki is just a group of lines of text from people who don't know much about any rival system so it's only useful for info about the CPC in isolation anyway.

But as I said people hold onto myths because it helps keep their own opinions in a comforting happy happy joy joy alt reality

At least if one person had mentioned the 1984 cost reducing of C2N without warning press/consumers by Gould's Commodore and how it made loading of Revenge of the Mutant Camels turbo loader 'iffy' I might bother to come back to this thread but it appears it's the same old factually incorrect 'problems' dredged up by people who don't know enough about all systems to be worth reading is going to go on forever as they ignore myth busting vids already out there lol. In the mouth of madness indeed.

[Megalomaniac]

Obviously, loading speed is a relatively small factor in which machine was better. But, since we've got into it, I'll add a tiny bit more.

Having music or little games to enjoy while a game is loading was something almost exclusive to the C64, but it was still pretty rare even there (the little Space Invaders game on a lot of Mastertronic reissues, for instance).

Are there any videos comparing C64 cassette loading times with Amstrad disk loading times? I'm highly doubtful of the notion that any game loaded faster from C64 tape than Amstrad disk, though if anyone can prove me wrong I'm only too keen to learn. I suspect that Amstrad disks are usually faster than C64 disks, in fact.

I've seen enough to suggest that, when comparing games that were available for both systems, the C64 version loads faster, more often than not - often by about a third. However, I wonder if it'd be the same if you compared 100 random games from each system, say the top voted 100 (that are available on cassette) from Lemon64 verses the highest rated 100 (that are available on cassette) on CPC Games Reviews.

However, C64 games which also have a CPC version are probably faster on average than those that don't, for two reasons: Firstly, turbo loaders which overcame the default 300 baud on the C64 didn't really take off until around the time the CPC launched, so most C64 games that were too early to have an Amstrad version will often be the slowest loading - I've seen early C64 games take a good 15 minutes to load. Also, games that were originally designed for C64 disks will often be a mess to load from tapes (or heavily cut down) and very few of those will have Amstrad versions (on tape or disk).

All the same, I'd be happy to wait an extra three minutes if the game is better, and that's leading us into 100 different and probably more controversial comparisons. Still, nobody forms an opinion of the Amiga based on (to pick 3 random lame ST ports) Bionic Commando, Army Moves and OutRun (which generally played the same on both Amiga and ST) so we certainly shouldn't judge the Amstrad based on the Spectrum ports, which generally played better on the Spectrum as the screen resolutions were different (Spectrum had 256x192 in 8+7 colours, Amstrad either 320x200 in 4 or 160x200 in 16) (note that very few pure Spectrum ports score more than 6 on CPC Games Reviews, and a high proportion of the 9s and 10s are games which don't even exist on the Spectrum). Speaking as a former Spectrum owner who still loves the system.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

And CPC Ikari/Buggy Boy take twice as long.

CPC Ikari/buggy boy are NOT using fast loaders. They are using standard normal blocks, the equivalent of the slowest C64 rom blocks.

Unfortunately for you and your comparisons you have failed to mention 2 things.

There is no such thing as a defined speed of loading on C64 as even early 1984 that far exceed the loading speed of the fastest CPC tape OR disk loaders, the myths have been busted and put up on youtube years ago lol

1) I've never said Speed of loading was defined on C64.

2) The CPC seems to load slower games equipped with fast loaders because softwares on this machine are bigger in size than those on the C64 (smaller and more simplistic).

3) The CPC disk loaders are faster than anything you have on C64. It's a 3inches 300RPM drive.

The mechanism and components of the C2N are of a higher quality/better design than the CPC tape deck as far as consistent motor speed and wow/flutter of audio signal read by the heads.

For me, the C2N 1530 is very spartiate to say the least (i own one).
I agree regarding the motor speed, it is indeed using a stable motor speed.

Regarding the Audio signal, the CPC has way more interesting copy protections on its tapes than what you got on the C64. The schemes are over simplistic on this machine. On the CPC, i have found much more devilish and complex/complicated schemes that a C64 just could not support or use.

Also worth noting there are only a few examples of loading music on the CPC (Booty and Druid) and they are very simplistic audio coding routines on a par with the Rolf Harris Stylophone and nothing like title screen/in game CPC music so nowhere near as modifiable as the C64 can accommodate for software tape/disk loaders.

You talk about the bleepload musical routines devised by Melvyn Wright for Firebird. The system in itself is complex, i don't see where you got that it was simplistic, it's not the case AT ALL. My emulator coder partner told it to me quite often, such features are complex. The music in itself is what it is : played by the YM chip. Such routine can be easily broken by an emulator that is not synchronized on the loading side.

So all these "C64 games take longer to load" are the babblings of people who don't have the experience of all systems to make any comparisons worth reading.

the C64 looks slow compared to a CPC 464. the CPC has a faster processor.

I have around 20 original games on C64, i dumped them and preserved them. They are at least 50-60kb lighter than their CPC versions, which are much bigger in size to load.

I doubt loading the disk release of Elite is much faster on CPC than C64 so this is also true for disk load times possible being inferior.

It is much faster for the CPC disk version compared to the C64 version.
The 300 RPM drive of the CPC loads Elite in 90 seconds. The C64 disk version takes much longer to load.

I write for actual wikipedia, have done so since the first year that site was started (Robin Matthews) so we can all play that game, CPC wiki is just a group of lines of text from people who don't know much about any rival system so it's only useful for info about the CPC in isolation anyway.

I have preserved on my own almost all the Amstrad CPC commercial tapes, around 2200+ titles. Everything i wrote in CPC wiki is base on the discoveries me and my colleague CNGSOFT found during the preservation of those titles: specificities, baud speed, encryption, and so on.

what i know is that the C64 people very badly know the Amstrad CPC, while the opposite is not true.

But as I said people hold onto myths because it helps keep their own opinions in a comforting happy happy joy joy alt reality

What the Commodorists are doing basically. They oversell the c64 for better than it is really, and force others to think the same

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Obviously, loading speed is a relatively small factor in which machine was better. But, since we've got into it, I'll add a tiny bit more.

It's better to have indeed faster loading

Having music or little games to enjoy while a game is loading was something almost exclusive to the C64, but it was still pretty rare even there (the little Space Invaders game on a lot of Mastertronic reissues, for instance).

It's rare on the Amstrad CPC. I know some games that offers this : Astro marine corps, Rescue to Atlantis, well games using the dinamic Poliload scheme.

Are there any videos comparing C64 cassette loading times with Amstrad disk loading times? I'm highly doubtful of the notion that any game loaded faster from C64 tape than Amstrad disk, though if anyone can prove me wrong I'm only too keen to learn. I suspect that Amstrad disks are usually faster than C64 disks, in fact.

Yes there are. The hiccup here is that for a game running at the same speed on the C64 and the CPC (ex: 3000 bauds), the game is always smaller on the C64 than it is on the CPC. So it seems to load slower on the CPC than it is on the C64, while the CPC has more data to load from tape than the C64.

I've seen enough to suggest that, when comparing games that were available for both systems, the C64 version loads faster, more often than not - often by about a third. However, I wonder if it'd be the same if you compared 100 random games from each system, say the top voted 100 (that are available on cassette) from Lemon64 verses the highest rated 100 (that are available on cassette) on CPC Games Reviews.

Unfortunately, this would lead nowhere, because you can have a title X on the C64 using a faster loader, and the same title X on CPC using a bog standard loader (the opposite is also true).

A same title using fast loader on both computer would do the trick.

However, C64 games which also have a CPC version are probably faster on average than those that don't, for two reasons: Firstly, turbo loaders which overcame the default 300 baud on the C64 didn't really take off until around the time the CPC launched, so most C64 games that were too early to have an Amstrad version will often be the slowest loading - I've seen early C64 games take a good 15 minutes to load.

Exactly that. I have met also commercial games on C64 that loads in 15 minutes using the standard block loading scheme.

Also, games that were originally designed for C64 disks will often be a mess to load from tapes (or heavily cut down) and very few of those will have Amstrad versions (on tape or disk).

Yes like turrican C64. the tape version miss the music the Disk version has.

For example, Robocop will load faster on the C64, due to its smaller size, the fact that the game is splitted in 3 program blocks, one for each part, while the CPC version is much bigger in size, and if the player has 128kb, you have all the blocks to load + the block that contains the ditigized voices, that the C64 miss completely.

All the same, I'd be happy to wait an extra three minutes if the game is better, and that's leading us into 100 different and probably more controversial comparisons.

Exactly that. I prefer 100% loading 8 minutes more for Robocop with 128kb of ram on CPC 464, than loading 5 minutes the absolutely shit version ocean made on the C64 (and buggy!).

Still, nobody forms an opinion of the Amiga based on (to pick 3 random lame ST ports) Bionic Commando, Army Moves and OutRun, so we shouldn't judge the Amstrad based on the Spectrum ports (note that very few pure Spectrum ports score more than 6 on CPC Games Reviews, and a high proportion of the 9s and 10s are games which don't even exist on the Spectrum)....

Exactly, this was only done in UK. In France or Spain, the CPC had straight its own version.

[kremiso]

i reached to pass the glorious C64 years with just the datassette here
i added an Action Replay MKV when it was released back then, and the combo was perfectly fine for me

still great to use to do loading comparisons, having a wide data-rate savings

on tape, turbo and superturbo mode

on floppy drive, standard, turbo and warp mode

sometime using the superturbo on tape leaded to a faster loading than the standard loading on floppy

still using all this on Vice now