Crappy C64 screen resolution

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Law of the West uses a bitmap 8kb hi-res screen mode which allows you to choose unique 2 colours every 8x8 pixel area. No other 8bit machine can produce anything as stunning as 64 Law of the West.

Bold claim. I'd say Law of the West wasn't even a particularly attractive C64 game, not really on par with say Mayhem in Monsterland, Sam's Journey or Caren and the Tangled Tentacles. And none of those come close to Navy Seals or Prehistorik 2 on the Amstrad Plus models

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

none of those come close to Navy Seals or Prehistorik 2 on the Amstrad Plus models

Bit unfair comparing a machine created in 1982 to one in 1990. The Amstrad Plus range had significant improvements over the original 1984 model, but came too late to gain a big following. AFAIK they were never sold in New Zealand. I would like to own one but already have too many retro computers.

I never had a C64 'back in the day', but had a loan of one for a few days. My impression of it may be jaded by the generally poor quality of the games supplied with it. I now have two C64s (NTSC and PAL) and a floppy drive, so I should get into it. Good thing is I can use the Amiga to put C64 games onto floppies using the 1541 drive.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Bit unfair comparing a machine created in 1982 to one in 1990.

Sure, but I wasn't the one making "No other 8bit machine" claims. You could just as easily point to half the output of the NES, which can quite easily outdo what a C64 high res display can pull off. And, like I say, I don't think Law of the West is even a particularly notable title by C64 standards either - yes it's high res bitmap mode, but the graphics really suffer from the lack of colour density in my opinion.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

Bold claim. I'd say Law of the West wasn't even a particularly attractive C64 game, not really on par with say Mayhem in Monsterland, Sam's Journey or Caren and the Tangled Tentacles. And none of those come close to Navy Seals or Prehistorik 2 on the Amstrad Plus models

Erm it's not a "bold claim" it is a technical fact. The CPC chipset has 4 colors per screen, the Spectrum/Acorn palette is shit for artistic renderings, the Atari 400/800 can only do 2 colours per scanline and god knows how crap the Apple II chipset is vs 64.

If you don't know you don't know, technically below EGA/ST/A1000 no other machine can display C64 Law of the West. It is also as ground breaking as Defender of the Crown in the evolution of going beyond pew pew little simple 8 bit games.

Lets keep the clueless n00b inexperienced in ALL retro machines fanboy/taste devoid opinions out of it for once for frakssake PLEASE.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Erm it's not a "bold claim" it is a technical fact. The CPC chipset has 4 colors per screen, the Spectrum/Acorn palette is shit for artistic renderings, the Atari 400/800 can only do 2 colours per scanline and god knows how crap the Apple II chipset is vs 64.

There are plenty more 8bit machines out there though

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by britelite

There are plenty more 8bit machines out there though

That's true of course, unfortunately presenting it like that also validates his BS.

Meanwhile, here's some "shit" from ZX Art...




I'm pretty sure I could easily find similar examples from Atari 8-bit, Apple II, or in fact any other machine. Of course, these do not refute their hardware limitations, but underline the fact that in hands of a skilled artist any tool will do.

Alas, when you think like a cultist, it's impossible to imagine C64 could possibly be bounded by such mundane things as "hardware limitations". It was a godlike machine destined to crush any pretender and that's all there is to it.

[roondar]

Edit: you know, I really don't feel like discussing the specs or merits/demerits of 40 year old computers any more. To each their own, have fun with whatever system(s) you like best, they're all great

With that in mind, I removed my earlier reply.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Erm it's not a "bold claim" it is a technical fact.

You said "No other 8bit machine can produce anything as stunning as 64 Law of the West." - that is a bold claim and there is no "technical fact" that makes it true, because it's not a technical claim, it's an aesthetic one.

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

If you don't know you don't know, technically below EGA/ST/A1000 no other machine can display C64 Law of the West. It is also as ground breaking as Defender of the Crown in the evolution of going beyond pew pew little simple 8 bit games.

The C64 is a long way from EGA, even in it's high res bitmap mode. It still has the 8*8*2 colour restriction and that compromises the artwork in Law of the West quite a.bit, in my opinion. Colour resolution can make a massive difference to graphical quality (hence my mention of Navy Seals which, I'd argue, looks a lot better despite running in a lower resolution).

Can another 8-bit machine exactly replicate those graphics? No, but that's true if you pick a random screenshot from any 8-bit machine. And machines like the NES and Sam Coupe can certainly pull off better graphics in terms of similar modes to the C64 high resolution, since both are capable of a lot more colours with less restrictions in similar resolutions.

I also make no comment on the quality of the game or it's impact on the market, just whether it looks like the most "stunning" thing on an 8-bit.

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Lets keep the clueless n00b inexperienced in ALL retro machines fanboy/taste devoid opinions out of it for once for frakssake PLEASE.

Yes, sorry. 40 odd years of programming a myriad of these systems and I'm clearly still a clueless n00b.

[Megalomaniac]

When mentioning the ST I was talking about even if VIC and SID had been upgraded to support a 320x200x16 free colour mode like the ST had, I'm not sure it could have moved it for smooth 50fps scrolling gameplay. The ST couldn't do that and its 68000 was, conservatively, 3 times as fast as the 6510. Only the Amiga with its Blitter and Copper could do everything that the ST, C64 and CPC could do - and that didn't become truly affordable for many people until 1988 at the earliest.

In truth, you probably never experienced all the great games on your own system - the C64 is rare in that there was only one spec, all 1982 and all 1992 games worked on identical systems, but otherwise you had games that were 128k only, or failed on the +2A, or only worked on 68000, or needed an STe. Then there's games that weren't released in your country, or weren't available by the time you got it, or were released after you'd moved on, or you were put off by one bad review.... For systems your mates owned, who may not have liked the same types of games as you, and probably went straight to the 2-player games when you visited, you had even more risk of 'missing out' on great games that your system couldn't've matched.

The C64 certainly had the best colour palette of any system available in 1982. Later 8-bit machines such as the Enterprise (1985), SAM Coupé (1989), or Amstrad Plus (1990, so far too late to have any real success), and probably the NES and Master System (both out in Europe by 1987 and the US by 1986), could match or beat the colour capabilities of the C64.

Amstrad CPC (1984) versus C64 on colours is horses for courses, in my mind. For the kind of dark, brooding visuals in Law of the West, I'm not sure the CPC could match it, even though Law isn't that grey-dependent which is where the CPC really falls down. For bright cartoony graphics the CPC palette probably wins - I remember someone posted some Amstrad remakes of C64 loading screens, and most of them did look better than the C64 equivalent. This, of course, ignores the Amstrad's big weakness, scrolling.

As for the Spectrum, when you're converting C64 or Amstrad graphics to it, it will usually come third. If you're designing graphics around it from scratch, with clever colour choices and emphasis on resolution, the results could be pretty impressive though.

[Zak]

So from what I understand: the C64 high resolution mode is only favorable if you have few objects and sprites around the screen?

What kind of games would it be still good for then? I especially think about games where there is an Amiga version in 320x200 for comparison. Test Drive, Winter Games, maybe? Would those be better on C64 in high res than they actually were?

(@roondar: Like I already said, calling the lo res 'crappy' was click bait, because no one seems to even look at reasonably titled threads, not to mention answering them. I think the first post was rather on the reasonable side and at least not offensive.)

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Zak

So from what I understand: the C64 high resolution mode is only favorable if you have few objects and sprites around the screen?

Not for games, but for plottig graphics, diagrams etc. Games rarely use the graphics modes, but rather the tile aka "text" modes with a custom character set that is used to draw the game graphics. Today, one would call them "tiles". Thus, game graphics typically consisted of 8x8 (or 4x8) primitives arranged on the screen.



What was particularly awkward on the C64 was the rather "unorthogonal" way how the pixels were addressed in the graphics mode. While the competitors like Atari, Apple II (or later Amiga) had a linear frame buffer, the C64 graphics mode is more or less a "convoluted character mode" where the character code is implicitly taken from the screen position. Thus, with increasing address, you first move downwards in an 8x8 cell, and then jump to the next cell to the right - utterly complicated for direct rendering on the screen.

[saimo]

Originally Posted by Zak

So from what I understand: the C64 high resolution mode is only favorable if you have few objects and sprites around the screen?

No: sprites and screen modes are unrelated.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

The C64 certainly had the best colour palette of any system available in 1982.

I'd say the Atari 400 had a nicer colour palette.

[khph_re]

Originally Posted by TCD

I'd say the Atari 400 had a nicer colour palette.

Yes, 128/256 colours wasn't it? Jay Miner strikes again!

[TCD]

16 colours in 8 shades, so 128.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

When mentioning the ST I was talking about even if VIC and SID had been upgraded to support a 320x200x16 free colour mode like the ST had, I'm not sure it could have moved it for smooth 50fps scrolling gameplay. The ST couldn't do that and its 68000 was, conservatively, 3 times as fast as the 6510. Only the Amiga with its Blitter and Copper could do everything that the ST, C64 and CPC could do - and that didn't become truly affordable for many people until 1988 at the earliest.

The problem with a question like that is it depends entirely on how it is done. With a raw 320*200*16 bitmap, you really wouldn't want an 8-bit CPU trying to push it around (the nearest thing is probably the Sam Coupe, with 256*192*16 in its highest mode and that really struggles even with a 6MHz Z80).

But that's not the only way to do it. If you increased the available bandwidth and retained the tile modes, sprites, hardware scrolling etc, then there is no reason an 8-bit CPU can't be sufficient. The PC Engine could do loads with its humble 8-bit CPU after all.

Thinking of 8-bit video modes as if they were all PC style framebuffers is just entirely wrong. They don't work like that and analysis of the various strengths and weaknesses (or what could be done to improve them) doesn't really make sense unless you consider how they actually work.

[OlafSch]

There are interesting videos on youtube that compare the different systems at that time. Even compared to CPC, who in theory had 256 colours, C64 games looked much more colourful. Even more compared to spectrum. So I think C64 certainly was not perfect but a good system at its time. Tremendous ram of 64kb, good vic chip including sprites and scrolling and with sid a sound chip that was much better than competition. Atari 8bit systems also had 256 colours. But having that in reality being useable in real games are different.

[Zak]

It's not really the point of this thread whether the C64 was or was not a good computer. It clearly is a good computer. The point is: would several games be better in hires than they actually were in lores? On the same good computer?

[clebin]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

That's true of course, unfortunately presenting it like that also validates his BS.

Meanwhile, here's some "shit" from ZX Art...

Yeah, it's not Law of the West though is it? I feel like this should be a meme.

Edit:

[TCD]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

But having that in reality being useable in real games are different.

Yep. There are examples where they put the palette to good use though. For example in Alternate Reality: The City [ Show youtube player ]