Crappy C64 screen resolution

[saimo]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

Sonic on the Master System

[ Show youtube player ]

Sonic on the GX4000 (Homebrew preview)

[ Show youtube player ]

YMMV, but I don't think "chunky pixels" make the GX version look worse to be honest with you.

Eventually the C64 got its Sonic port, and it uses both lores and hires pixels:

[ Show youtube player ]

Download and information: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=212523

[Megalomaniac]

Master System Sonic is a simplified game designed around the 8-bit system, there's a lot more going on at any one time in the Mega Drive / Genesis original being recreated on C64 and GX4000 / Amstrad Plus. You'd expect the GX4000 / Amstrad Plus to outperform the C64, and it does, but I'm sure the standard CPC couldn't get anywhere near that speed of scrolling with all this detail. The C64 version is hugely impressive, it looks very playable, and while the C64 palette is far from perfect for this type of game, the visual result is good enough.

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Master System Sonic is a simplified game designed around the 8-bit system, there's a lot more going on at any one time in the Mega Drive / Genesis original being recreated on C64 and GX4000 / Amstrad Plus. You'd expect the GX4000 / Amstrad Plus to outperform the C64, and it does, but I'm sure the standard CPC couldn't get anywhere near that speed of scrolling with all this detail. The C64 version is hugely impressive, it looks very playable, and while the C64 palette is far from perfect for this type of game, the visual result is good enough.

I don't think the scrolling would be the biggest problem on the base CPC, the challenge tbh would be the rotating rings and lack of sprites which would consume too much CPU time to update.

The C64 version does look very impressive.

[Mad-Matt]

Bare in mins that Sonic needs a little extra magic from the reu dma to work as well as it does on the C64.

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by Mad-Matt

Bare in mins that Sonic needs a little extra magic from the reu dma to work as well as it does on the C64.

Ahh ok, so kinda cheating I guess.

Don't get me wrong, I love hardware that expands original machines but should be stated e.g. there's a huge difference between Grind and similar running on a 68060.

The GX4000 version is on base hardware but just a large cart size as was the norm on consoles to increase capacity.

[roondar]

AFAIK the REU magic is only needed for the NTSC version? PAL version runs without it I think.

Edit: never mind, I looked it up - it needs the REU regardless of configuration. I swear there was a game released fairly recently that needed a REU for NTSC systems. But I can't find it now.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Master System Sonic is a simplified game designed around the 8-bit system, there's a lot more going on at any one time in the Mega Drive / Genesis original being recreated on C64 and GX4000 / Amstrad Plus. You'd expect the GX4000 / Amstrad Plus to outperform the C64, and it does, but I'm sure the standard CPC couldn't get anywhere near that speed of scrolling with all this detail. The C64 version is hugely impressive, it looks very playable, and while the C64 palette is far from perfect for this type of game, the visual result is good enough.

The C64 does look great, even if it requires an REU, and it's certainly impressive. I'd have included it but didn't even know it existed. I think both versions show that "chunky pixels" can still compare admirably with the Master System (although having more, and bolder, colours on the GX definitely helps a lot).

And no, I think you'd struggle to pull off Sonic on a standard CPC. Although I'd love to see someone try, you never know what crazy things the homebrew scene can concoct.

[Mad-Matt]

Originally Posted by roondar

AFAIK the REU magic is only needed for the NTSC version? PAL version runs without it I think.

Edit: never mind, I looked it up - it needs the REU regardless of configuration. I swear there was a game released fairly recently that needed a REU for NTSC systems. But I can't find it now.

I believe Sam's Journey need the REU to play in NTSC.

[Megalomaniac]

I think I had read that C64 Sonic needed extra hardware, but it slipped my mind when I praised it. Still really impressive, but it's not on a 1982 system - making it work so well on a 1990 GX4000 (which seems pretty underexploited then and now) is a bigger achievement. PAL Sam's Journey on disk and without REU is for me a greater achievement than this or Pig's Quest (which is only available on a cartridge bigger than existed back then).

[chb]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I think I had read that C64 Sonic needed extra hardware, but it slipped my mind when I praised it. Still really impressive, but it's not on a 1982 system - making it work so well on a 1990 GX4000 (which seems pretty underexploited then and now) is a bigger achievement.

Not 1982, granted, but it runs with a stock 256k REU from 1985 - which was rather affordable back in the day, afaik ~150$.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Master System Sonic is a simplified game designed around the 8-bit system

[OT]
We amigans COULD have that fairly easily, but a discrete amount of people think is not amiga-y enough so nope
[/OT]

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by chb

Not 1982, granted, but it runs with a stock 256k REU from 1985 - which was rather affordable back in the day, afaik ~150$.

$150 back in 1985 was a fair whack and that's US prices. In the UK, as I remember, REUs were basically a non entity because the cost was staggering (even more so than disk drives which were already extortionate). Flicking through some ZZAP back issues from around then I can't even see an advertisement for one.

[modrobert]

Originally Posted by saimo

Especially when threads are titled like this one ("Crappy C64 screen resolution")

I'm not sure what you mean here: do you mean that the C64 with the same CPU power of the Atari ST couldn't have done better than the Atari ST itself? That's quite a what-if. Anyway, the C64 didn't have 320x200x16 with free colour placement, so pure CPU grunt couldn't have compensated for that (sure it would have made the various software-based modes more practical and possibly allowed also new modes, but it couldn't have achieved such restriction-less mode).
Still, when it comes to screen modes, the C64 is much more capable than what it is commonly thought of, as the OP shows. It looks like I need to post this video again (sorry for that, but it seems to have gone unnoticed and it's appropriate for putting much of the resolution discussion to rest):

[ Show youtube player ]

The video shows a stock C64 handling the following:
* 304x192 hires, colorful and color-clash-free graphics;
* unrestricted scrolling;
* pseudo-transparency effects;
* lighting effects;
* animated backgrounds;
* hires sprites made of up to 5 freely choosable colors.

What was the title of this thread again?!?

This looks and sounds amazing, impressive work as usual.

The positive feel from watching your game outweighed all the bickering in this thread, thanks.

[Megalomaniac]

Fair point that the REU was available in 1985, barely a third of the way through the C64's life and maybe a year after the CPC, but it's still another $150 of extra hardware which was never integrated into the system or established as a standard upgrade. Anything that needs EasyFlash is marginal as to whether it's a fair representation of the C64's actual capabilities either (is it the same as the e.g. First Samurai cartridge, but larger, or does it add extra features?).

Quod Init Exit 1 and 2 are indeed really need, feel quite Spectrum-style but obviously beyond what the Spectrum could do. Had these been released in the day, I'm pretty sure they would have been hits, maybe with conversions attempted elsewhere, and perhaps inspired more use of the Hi-Res modes from other developers too. And I love it that the games feature a pig and the sequel subtitle is in Pig Latin.

[saimo]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Quod Init Exit 1 and 2 are indeed really need, feel quite Spectrum-style

Could you elaborate on that, please? How anyone could think of the ZX Spectrum looking at those games is beyond me: colorful pastel graphics, sprites, scrolling, etc... where's the "Spectrum-style" there?

And I love it that the games feature a pig and the sequel subtitle is in Pig Latin.

Glad to hear. There's a whole story behind that (partially explained here).

[saimo]

Originally Posted by modrobert

This looks and sounds amazing, impressive work as usual.

The positive feel from watching your game outweighed all the bickering in this thread, thanks.

Much appreciated, thanks!

Regarding the bickering, this thread, looking at the whole picture, is just another silly round of C64 bashing. Thankfully, there have been a number of contributions that still brought good information.

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by saimo

Much appreciated, thanks!

Regarding the bickering, this thread, looking at the whole picture, is just another silly round of C64 bashing. Thankfully, there have been a number of contributions that still brought good information.

While i dont agree with the thread title as its unnecessarily negative towards the C64, there has been some great discussion
Congrats on your game BTW, looks excellent.