3 ms·

I wrote an NES game for my senior project in university. Later, when I researched writing a game for the Atari 2600, I was surprised to learn that you basically

I wrote an NES game for my senior project in university. Later, when I researched writing a game for the Atari 2600, I was surprised to learn that you basically had to write your own display subroutine, whereas the NES did that work for you.

PaulHoule 5y ago
The system used in the Atari 400 and Atari 800 is definitely based on the thinking of the Atari 2600 in that you are really thinking about drawing one line at a time but you are getting help to do it This chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANTIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANTIC is controlled by a "display list" that sets the strategy used to draw lines on a line-by-line basis. If you have 20 blank lines you can just skip past them and not waste any RAM representing them. If you want to put a line of text at the bottom of a video game it is completely easy. This chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTIA_and_GTIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTIA_and_GTIA is controlled by the ANTIC and composites ANTIC's data stream it with sprites, tiles and characters. It's a sweet system and crazy flexible, made it easy to make games like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VDM8nC9sM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VDM8nC9sM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOV5C_wvP4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOV5C_wvP4o but it just didn't have it together like the NES system, or the even better tiles & sprites system in the original Game Boy.
- syntheweave 5y ago
  It's interesting, though, to see the co-evolution of the Atari design strategy in the 7800, Amiga, and Lynx (the former explicitly being a souped-up 2600 and the latter two sharing design team in part). By the time of the Lynx there's a clear bias in the featureset towards "lots of powerful sprites in a fixed memory layout", so the alien nature of the earlier systems is mostly gone and it's become roughly as straightforward as a Neo Geo, plus a few little surprises like the retention of the old Atari "LFSR distortion" sound effects in the form of programmable timers as something you could opt to plug into the audio(which like the Amiga, is 4 channel digital, but the sound driver used in most games biases towards chiptune sounds).
phone8675309 5y ago
I find this video great about describing Racing the Beam: https://youtu.be/sJFnWZH5FXc https://youtu.be/sJFnWZH5FXc
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Love this channel. More about horizontal and vertical blanking: https://youtu.be/Q8ph2OVqZeM https://youtu.be/Q8ph2OVqZeM

PaulHoule 5y ago

The system used in the Atari 400 and Atari 800 is definitely based on the thinking of the Atari 2600 in that you are really thinking about drawing one line at a time but you are getting help to do it This chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANTIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANTIC is controlled by a "display list" that sets the strategy used to draw lines on a line-by-line basis. If you have 20 blank lines you can just skip past them and not waste any RAM representing them. If you want to put a line of text at the bottom of a video game it is completely easy. This chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTIA_and_GTIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTIA_and_GTIA is controlled by the ANTIC and composites ANTIC's data stream it with sprites, tiles and characters. It's a sweet system and crazy flexible, made it easy to make games like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VDM8nC9sM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VDM8nC9sM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOV5C_wvP4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOV5C_wvP4o but it just didn't have it together like the NES system, or the even better tiles & sprites system in the original Game Boy.

syntheweave 5y ago
It's interesting, though, to see the co-evolution of the Atari design strategy in the 7800, Amiga, and Lynx (the former explicitly being a souped-up 2600 and the latter two sharing design team in part). By the time of the Lynx there's a clear bias in the featureset towards "lots of powerful sprites in a fixed memory layout", so the alien nature of the earlier systems is mostly gone and it's become roughly as straightforward as a Neo Geo, plus a few little surprises like the retention of the old Atari "LFSR distortion" sound effects in the form of programmable timers as something you could opt to plug into the audio(which like the Amiga, is 4 channel digital, but the sound driver used in most games biases towards chiptune sounds).

phone8675309 5y ago

I find this video great about describing Racing the Beam: https://youtu.be/sJFnWZH5FXc https://youtu.be/sJFnWZH5FXc

matheusmoreira 5y ago
Love this channel. More about horizontal and vertical blanking: https://youtu.be/Q8ph2OVqZeM https://youtu.be/Q8ph2OVqZeM