Games where the Atari ST version was.....

[Orcish75]

Originally Posted by Foebane

Sorry, but in my humble estimation, Yamaha will never, EVER, sound as good as Paula. I really ought to make a separate thread on this one day, put the one-sided debate to rest once and for all.

Yup, I'm not saying that the Yamaha is better than the Paula, the Paula is definitely better. I'm saying that there are a few games out there where the ST chiptune soundtrack is better than the sampled soundtrack of the Amiga. For me, Defender of the Crown is one of them. If John Cuomo used better samples in the Amiga version, then it more than likely would've sounded better than the ST version.


I used Platoon as an example where (in the majority of cases) the Amiga version sounds better than the ST version. Same composer, same tune, but Dave Whittaker used decent samples in the Amiga version so it sounds better than the ST version.


Skilled composers can get some decent sounds out of the Yamaha in the ST, many ST demos will attest to that.

[NorthWay]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Is Defender of the Crown II even on the ST?

Not according to HOL; and as far as I'm aware, a CD32 exclusive.

I meant, how II was compared to I (on the ST)?
The CD case is marked as CDTV compatible and I understood it as being a refresh of the original?

[Antiriad_UK]

Originally Posted by Foebane

As I said, that's how I perceived it, like the playback routine wasn't hitting the precise beat of a metronome.

Had a quick listen, they are both on tempo. The ST version is 3 or 4 BPM faster . If you heard the ST one first and a lot you'll perceive the Amiga as a bit off I guess.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Orcish75

I'm saying that there are a few games out there where the ST chiptune soundtrack is better than the sampled soundtrack of the Amiga. For me, Defender of the Crown is one of them.

I don't agree, the Amiga sounds fine to me, considering the MOD format hadn't been designed yet, and even the C64 sounds better than the ST and almost identical to the Amiga. Maybe you didn't like the harsh sound of the main instrument? Sounds appropriate to me.

When I had my ST, I will tell you one tune that I preferred on ST than Amiga, and that was Deflektor. When I finally heard the Amiga version, I baulked.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Antiriad_UK

Had a quick listen, they are both on tempo. The ST version is 3 or 4 BPM faster . If you heard the ST one first and a lot you'll perceive the Amiga as a bit off I guess.

That's exactly what I did. However, the gameplay sucks balls beyond belief, and who the hell are Eldritch the Cat?

[roondar]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

I think the Amiga version of Frontier use the blitter... I'm looking where I saw that, it was in an interview of David Braben and he was saying IIRC that was an advantage for the A500 but not for the A1200. A "real" AGA version would have been faster.

EDIT : found where Braben was saying that. In the review of november 93 in the One P61. Not an interview but a quote.

It's true that Frontier uses the Blitter, but not to actually draw polygons. I checked out the Blitter use of Frontier a couple of years ago for the A1200 vs Falcon 3D thread and found it only uses the Blitter to clear the screen.

But that's still better than not using it at all so it's still a win. Also note here that the A500 version of Frontier doesn't actually run better than the ST one, but rather worse (lower framerate).

[nobody]

Nitro only has vertical scrolling on the ST and is a bit harder.
Batman the movie also looks better on the ST, due to being an ST port on the Amiga, it uses 320*200 part of a 320*256 screen on the Amiga so as an effect the main sprite looks fat (same in Wonderboy in monsterland iirc). In the end it's a better game on the ST, as the scrolling and sound is only a bit better on the Amiga.

I had an STE with 2 mb RAM some years ago, used to a CRT with original RF cable, it did some random resets and it looked so bad with that cable that i sold it lol. Even though most games (80-90%) were identical to Amiga, RF cable really made them look absolutely awful.

[kremiso]

An extremely old one

Rogue - Epyx (1986)

on ST the image is zoomed, has minimal sfx and a shitty scrolling :
[ Show youtube player ]

on Amiga, use AmigaDOS, it is zoomed out without scrolling, and has no sound at all

i'm loving it

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by nobody

Batman the movie also looks better on the ST, due to being an ST port on the Amiga, it uses 320*200 part of a 320*256 screen on the Amiga so as an effect the main sprite looks fat (same in Wonderboy in monsterland iirc).

How do you mean? The ST also uses 320×200.

[nobody]

Originally Posted by idrougge

How do you mean? The ST also uses 320×200.

Because the ST stretches the screen and corrects the aspect ratio. If you get a 4:3 monitor and run an emulator full screen with out integer scaling you will see.

ST


Amiga

[idrougge]

Emulator? Are you seriously talking about how emulators render their screen?

Connect an Amiga and an Atari ST to the same screen or TV and then report back.

[nobody]

Is it hard to you to understand how an ST screen (400x276 or so) renders to a 4:3 resolution like 1024x768 or 5:4 in the above example? You need extra explanation?

You know what this does or not?

[idrougge]

The first picture is from the Atari ST, the second is from the Amiga. Both connected via RGB to the same Philips 8833 monitor.

Looks like Batman is just as fat on both platforms, but at least the Amiga has much smaller borders.

[nobody]

No they aren't. The panel is the exact same graphics, you can easily tell it looks taller on the ST (all the other graphics are the same)

[kremiso]

Other picky finds :

Satan - little smooth on ST

Savage - different soundtrack

Speedball - little smooth than Amiga, despite (cause) smaller screen size; audio worse

Switchblade - more playable on ST, better (faster) control response, smoother

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by nobody

No they aren't. The panel is the exact same graphics, you can easily tell it looks taller on the ST (all the other graphics are the same)

It certainly looks taller, so just be certain, I made some further measurements.

The previous picture weren’t taken from the exact same perspective, so for completeness sake, here are two pictures without a handheld, shaky camera:



I then measured the panel with a caliper:



Since measuring on-screen while holding a camera, I also traced the height of the panel on a transparency sheet:



I certainly agree that the ST panel looks taller, so much that I even doubted my measurements. But from a technical standpoint, given that both the Amiga and the ST work with a PAL screen, it doesn’t make sense that the line height would differ; line height is a property of the TV system and its refresh rate.

But look at the Amiga and ST screens again. While the ST panel looks taller, the Amiga panel looks wider. Hence Batman's face appears fatter than on the ST, which fools our eye into thinking that the ST screen is taller.

While line height is intrinsic to the TV system, pixels as such don’t exist in analogue TV. So the only way for the ST aspect ratio to be »tall« is for the pixels to be thinner rather than »taller«.

And indeed the ST pixels seem to be thinner, yielding a non-square aspect ratio. The squares in the picture below are exactly 100x100 pixels, yet look taller than wide.

[lmimmfn]

Presumably the first pic is the Amiga? The other has huge black borders both top and bottom which are larger than the just black border at the bottom of the first image.

[idrougge]

Yes; Amiga first and ST second.

[lilwshu]

Note the massive vertical borders on the left and right hand size of the ST image that are largely absent on the Amiga and likely contribute to the issue. If you adjust the screen so both images fill it, they will probably look the same.

[nobody]

Because the ST opens a screen around 400 pixels horizontally that squeeze the image .