Crappy C64 screen resolution

[TCD]

I would like to point out this post:

Originally Posted by Zak

That's only a thing for people that did know about better resolutions. Obvioulsy, you did not know about computers games with better resolution or hardly ever experienced them in mid eighties. It's when you are a C64 owner and that is what you know on a daily basis, you will not see any downsides in it, because your eyes are a used to it. We had a Spectrum and a PC at home, both with better resolution. I don't say that those are better computers, but the screen resolution was better and I was so much used to it, that I didn't like the C64 much in the eighties, colors or no colors.

This post still boggles my mind. Why even ask if people were okay with the resolution of the C64 in the first post if you can't accept that people did?

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by Zak

That's only a thing for people that did know about better resolutions. Obvioulsy, you did not know about computers games with better resolution or hardly ever experienced them in mid eighties. It's when you are a C64 owner and that is what you know on a daily basis, you will not see any downsides in it, because your eyes are a used to it. We had a Spectrum and a PC at home, both with better resolution. I don't say that those are better computers, but the screen resolution was better and I was so much used to it, that I didn't like the C64 much in the eighties, colors or no colors.

You know that C64 starts in high resolution mode, don't you? So ALL c64 users knew that high resolution mode exists since they saw it when they turned the thing ON.

[Zak]

Originally Posted by saimo

Did you try at all? Also, just head over to Lemon64 and have a look. You'll find quite a few, especially in non-action categories (eg. RPG) and ZX Spectrum ports. And, yes, it will take time - but since you're so eager...
That said, here are other examples (beyond those I already mentioned) off the top of my mind: Joust, Saboteur, Wizard of Wor, Star Crash, Time of Silence, Falklands 82, L'Abbaye des Morts, Lala Prologue, Manic Miner, Arac, Platman Worlds, Sidney Hunter, Tenebra Macabre, Tony: Montezuma's Gold, VVVVVV, You Have to Win the Game.

Now that's more what I would call "plenty" examples and not the very few examples I got to read before. You are extremely nitpicking about me saying there were no high resolution games on C64, where what I wanted to say was "almost" no hires games. Jeez, you have to watch every single word in this forum and you're not willing to get the point of a question, it's more like inquisition tribunal than a discussion. Also people take a few little words very personally, I seem to have stabbed into a bee's hive.

Wouldn't one agree that the vast majority of C64 games was produced in low res? Or was it mor like 50:50 and I'm so utterly wrong in my perception? I have the feeling that the use of low reolution on C64 was more like "we always did it that way" tradition thing, not that it actually does look worse from what I've seen from the examples. I see it the way that this hires feature was neglected, that's why I was asking. I don't see the hires games as obvious downgrade. But when you're saying that the distribution between hires and lores games is like 50:50 then my perception was just wrong and it wasn't neglected at all. That's something I can't tell by searching websites and what I simply would need other users experiences for what I thought this forum was for.

I'm sorry about the spice in the thread title and first post, I'm somewhat more used to soccer forums, where it's a bit more normal to tease a little. But you obviously can't tease about C64. It's blasphemy. How dare I?

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Zak

Wouldn't one agree that the vast majority of C64 games was produced in low res? Or was it mor like 50:50 and I'm so utterly wrong in my perception?

I'm not sure I'd say it was. I think the majority of games probably used the multicoloured character mode which allows mixing both high and low resolutions on the screen at once. And many games took advantage of that fact.

But I've not done any real analysis of that and I'm not really "a C64 guy" so might very well be wrong. It's probably also fair to say that games which did mix the two, tended to favour low res tiles for most of the screen.

[saimo]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Yes, we're talking about this thread, not some alleged world wide conspiracy by those dastardly ZX Spectrum users.

And I'd like to know exactly where the OP, who said this in the 1st post:...is trying to prove "the superiority of their machine"?

Nb, I haven't followed this thread page by page so I don't know, maybe he had later (which I doubt) - but if you're unable to provide a specific example then I will assume you simply saw the title, put your tribal hat on, and jumped straight in without actually realising this thread is about a single feature, not overall platform superiority.

If you do yourself the favour of reading all my posts in this thread, you'd notice I didn't put any tribal hat on: I addressed the technical bull*it with technical explanations and examples.
And since you're pretending that the C64-Lego-graphics-suck-the-ZX-Spectrum-owns-it is only a construction of my mind, here's one of the first results of a simple web search: https://mobile.myreviewer.com/Articl...ter-Than-Yours. It is not a forum rant, but a supposedly reasoned article where the author concludes that the ZX Spectrum is the better machine. In the graphics section you can read the usual complaints and something that's very revealing of the bias and of the underlying intentions: after the author admits that the C64 can display graphics like the ZX Spectrum (without specifying that, in that specific mode, the C64 can actually do better), he concludes that... basically it's a draw?!? What? The C64 can do the same thing (better), plus tons of other things (other 4 screen modes, fine scrolling, sprites, dynamic sprites/background priority, sprites/background collision) and... a draw?!? Seriously?
(Side note: the graphics section contains also the usual partial (mis)information and false myths; I did't read the rest and I couldn't care less.)
This is the last thing I write about the metadiscussion, the fights and whatnot. My only aim here was to debunk the bull*it.

[saimo]

Originally Posted by Zak

Now that's more what I would call "plenty" examples and not the very few examples I got to read before. You are extremely nitpicking about me saying there were no high resolution games on C64, where what I wanted to say was "almost" no hires games. Jeez, you have to watch every single word in this forum and you're not willing to get the point of a question, it's more like inquisition tribunal than a discussion. Also people take a few little words very personally, I seem to have stabbed into a bee's hive.

Wouldn't one agree that the vast majority of C64 games was produced in low res? Or was it mor like 50:50 and I'm so utterly wrong in my perception? I have the feeling that the use of low reolution on C64 was more like "we always did it that way" tradition thing, not that it actually does look worse from what I've seen from the examples. I see it the way that this hires feature was neglected, that's why I was asking. I don't see the hires games as obvious downgrade. But when you're saying that the distribution between hires and lores games is like 50:50 then my perception was just wrong and it wasn't neglected at all. That's something I can't tell by searching websites and what I simply would need other users experiences for what I thought this forum was for.

You're being dishonest.
In the OP you wrote "so why didn't it [usage of hires in games] happen?" (brackets mine). In a following post you wrote: "But wasn't this the same on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and yet they always used the high resolution screen mode and the C64 never did?". In another post you wrote: "I wonder why this screen mode on C64 was never used for games. Like never ever, not even for puzzle games or text adventures".
It's not me nitpicking, it's you talking bull*it and then trying to make it look like you meant something else after your bull*it got debunked.
Also, I never wrote that the hires games are 50%, but, instead, I explicitly wrote (multiple times, even, starting from my very first reply, directly to you) that hires games are a minority. Please don't try again to put words in my mouth.

Now you know that hires was and is used, a few reasons why multicolor was used more and, as a bonus, some technical details about the native capabilities of the C64: are you satisfied? Do you acknowledge that your premises are wrong and subjective, and the information that has been provided in reply?

[saimo]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

I'm not sure I'd say it was. I think the majority of games probably used the multicoloured character mode which allows mixing both high and low resolutions on the screen at once. And many games took advantage of that fact.

But I've not done any real analysis of that and I'm not really "a C64 guy" so might very well be wrong. It's probably also fair to say that games which did mix the two, tended to favour low res tiles for most of the screen.

I didn't do any analysis either, but I'm pretty sure it's exactly like you wrote.

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

I'm not sure I'd say it was. I think the majority of games probably used the multicoloured character mode which allows mixing both high and low resolutions on the screen at once. And many games took advantage of that fact.

Many games did, but definetly not the majority. The majority of games use the Multicolor Character mode where you have 4 combinations for each "wide" pixel: 00 01 10 11. Three colours are globally defined the fourth (11 combo) will be gathered from the Colour RAM. This fourth colour can only be one of the first 8 colours in the c64 palette.
Now, to scroll this kind of bitmap you need to refresh the whole character ram and then also colour ram. You can use double buffering for character ram, but colour ram is fixed. Because of very limited CPU time you had to resort to tricks when you wanted to update both character and colour ram. If the coder was clever and good enough this can be achieved, but a lot of games just use 4 colours throughout the game field.

[NorthWay]

Karnov was a straight ZX port to the C= 64. That went down ...and down ...and down with the C= 64 crowd...

[roondar]

Originally Posted by NorthWay

Karnov was a straight ZX port to the C= 64. That went down ...and down ...and down with the C= 64 crowd...

I actually tried to play Karnov on the C64. The GFX were interesting and it might well have worked, were it not that it ran at a terrible speed. It was completely unplayable, with huge amounts of lag in the controls.

Not sure if that's due to the conversion from the Spectrum not being optimal, or from the 6510 just not being fast enough. I personally feel this terrible speed is why it scored so poorly with C64 users.

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by roondar

I actually tried to play Karnov on the C64. The GFX were interesting and it might well have worked, were it not that it ran at a terrible speed. It was completely unplayable, with huge amounts of lag in the controls.

Not sure if that's due to the conversion from the Spectrum not being optimal, or from the 6510 just not being fast enough. I personally feel this terrible speed is why it scored so poorly with C64 users.

Karnov was a POS game on all platforms, my mates loved it on the CPC, they finished it. When I loaded it up on the CPC, All i saw was an absolutely crap game.

I got it on the Ocean pack "The In Crowd" which had fantastic games like Gryzor, Target Renegade, Combat School, Barbarian and Platoon.
It also had the POS that was Karnov.

[Megalomaniac]

C64 Karnov doesn't seem to be the best that the C64 can do with conversions of 2D Spectrum games which retain a Spectrum-style appearance. Compare Saboteur or Dizzy on C64 to their respective Spectrum (and Amstrad) versions though, and you get an impression that the C64's hi-res modes could compete fairly well with the Z80 systems (probably still weakest combination of art / speed / window size of the three in each case, but not by much), despite the 6510's relative slowness in comparison (though the difference in clock speeds exaggerates the difference significantly). Saboteur especially I think has a lovely look with those big sprites, camouflage effects and darkened rooms, on all systems. I think it's a shame when such games get derided on C64 forums as merely Spectrum ports.

Isometric 3D is more difficult for the C64, though Last Ninja 2 looks extremely impressive, not sure how that's done (is it low-res?), but that's a relative exception. Are there any other isometric or similar games which originate on the C64 which can match what the Z80s can do in that field? Compare The Great Escape, Head Over Heels and Fairlight to their Spectrum versions and they all fall short, though the first two are probably fast enough to be acceptable. Karnov aside, I think the games mentioned here are such brilliant designs that they deserved to succeed on any system with a technically-competent version, and not be dismissed just because they look like they're on a system you consider technically inferior.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

Many games did, but definetly not the majority. The majority of games use the Multicolor Character mode where you have 4 combinations for each "wide" pixel: 00 01 10 11. Three colours are globally defined the fourth (11 combo) will be gathered from the Colour RAM. This fourth colour can only be one of the first 8 colours in the c64 palette.
Now, to scroll this kind of bitmap you need to refresh the whole character ram and then also colour ram. You can use double buffering for character ram, but colour ram is fixed. Because of very limited CPU time you had to resort to tricks when you wanted to update both character and colour ram. If the coder was clever and good enough this can be achieved, but a lot of games just use 4 colours throughout the game field.

Am looking to confirm if in static screens the 01 and 11 colors can be changed on the spot via interrupt - that is what the all artistic pictures make me understand

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Isometric 3D is more difficult for the C64, though Last Ninja 2 looks extremely impressive, not sure how that's done (is it low-res?), but that's a relative exception. Are there any other isometric or similar games which originate on the C64 which can match what the Z80s can do in that field? Compare The Great Escape, Head Over Heels and Fairlight to their Spectrum versions and they all fall short, though the first two are probably fast enough to be acceptable.

Last Ninja 2 is low Res and I assume using the bitmap mode as tile mode wouldn't seem to fit well with isometric graphics (although I wonder if you could abuse horizontal scroll on a line by line basis to fake it?). It's a bit slow to draw, but still looks nice.

I'd love to see what a mock up of Head Over Heels might look like in low res mode (on either C64 or Amstrad), because the double width pixels do sort of serve the isometric angle quite well. Would be difficult to beat Bernie Drummond's amazing graphics though.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by roondar

You know, I thought I could. But I can't. Please disregard my earlier post(s) making claims that there where these kind of posts in this thread. I apologise for seeing this the wrong way.

That's fine, it's not really a big deal, and I just wanted to say I always appreciate your ability to reflect on things and eventually admit something like that It's a rare thing.

Originally Posted by roondar

However, I still stand by my post that says that overzealous fans of any system show very similar behaviour and at roughly the same frequency.

And I will still disagree - but, again, it's not a big deal really. We should be able to see things differently without any real hostility. And I understand where your reasoning comes from. Mine's a tad different't but let's leave it at that

These kinda threads are tolerable for a page or three, but once we start going too far and into the circular zone, the aggro rises and things can get too heated. I'm no saint either, and that's why I usually try to bow out early.

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Am looking to confirm if in static screens the 01 and 11 colors can be changed on the spot via interrupt - that is what the all artistic pictures make me understand

FLI mode lets you do that, it is for static screens only and it does come with its own limitations but basically you can change the colours 10 and 01 too.

[saimo]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

and you get an impression that the C64's hi-res modes could compete fairly well with the Z80 systems (probably still weakest combination of art / speed / window size of the three in each case, but not by much), despite the 6510's relative slowness in comparison (though the difference in clock speeds exaggerates the difference significantly).
[...]

Isometric 3D is more difficult for the C64

OMG :O
Still repeating this BS after you were already explained and shown that it's precisely just BS (posts 149 and 152) and after it's been explained to death that the C64 offers a screen mode that matches and surpasses the ZX Spectrum's one?
It's worth noting that post 152 was even a direct answer to you.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by saimo

OMG :O
Still repeating this BS after you were already explained and shown that it's precisely just BS (posts 149 and 152) and after it's been explained to death that the C64 offers a screen mode that matches and surpasses the ZX Spectrum's one?
It's worth noting that post 152 was even a direct answer to you.

It's worth noting that, whilst undoubtedly groundbreaking, the Filmation games aren't exactly nippy on the Spectrum either. The code does a lot of things in a sub-optimal way, so there's a lot of scope for speeding up the Spectrum versions (if anyone saw the need).

There isn't really a C64 isometric title that does quite as well as Head over Heels does on the Spectrum (the C64 version is not bad, but some rooms are simplified for performance reasons). That's not to say there couldn't be one, just that nobody seems to have attempted it.

[tomcat666]

There is one isometric game on C64 that uses multicolor mode and is very fast - it is a full isometric game with objects you can pickup and everything - Inside Outing, the main character and some of the enemies are sprites so they have individual colours. Very nice.

[ Show youtube player ]

[TCD]

There is also an Amiga version of that game: https://amiga.abime.net/games/view/raffles