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[Kuramu]

despite it's large ass pixels and crappy sound fx, there is one thing the 2600 did better than even the super NES... smooth color gradients. WTF? why was this possible on the 2600, yet NES and beyond were stuck with limited color pallets?

for example, look at Pitfall II's horizon. many of the later gamer had it

 

[dark10x]

Uhh...

SNES destroys that...

 

[6.8]

Gradients = jaggies of the 8 bit era

 

[dark10x]

The SNES still has its share of gradient patterns...

...but it was much nicer looking.

 

[Kuramu]

ugh... i know snes was better looking. i'm talking about the smooth gradients found in many late 2600 games... gradients without banding.... i've been playing 2600 a lot lately, and the gradients simply could not be done on NES or even SNES. that tiny pic doesn't show off what i'm talking about

 

[Kuramu]

I think if you play Vangard you'll see what i mean

 

[dark10x]

Ohhhh, like this?

In all honesty, I haven't played a 2600 in a VERRRRY long time...so if you could locate some pictures that showed off what you are talking about, I'd appreciate it.

 

[Kuramu]

no, not vangard... what was i playing...

 

[AndreasNystrom]

I did some programming on the atari 2600 just for fun, and basicly, you had to
program your own graphics-chip.. (to say it simple).
You controlled the raster by software, so its nothing in the hardware really..

and ppl think PS2 is hard to program?

 

[Kuramu]

i don't know where you find pix for games... so i can't show it. i think you're missing the point... my fault for bringing up the SNES.... my point is that even the 5200 version of Pitfall II ddidn't have such a nice horizon... just blue sky. gradients pop up in many late 2600 games and i was wondering if there was some reason for it, like a mode 7 for the 2600 or something

 

[Kuramu]

I did some programming on the atari 2600 just for fun, and basicly, you had to
program your own graphics-chip.. (to say it simple).
You controlled the raster by software, so its nothing in the hardware really..

and ppl think PS2 is hard to program?

ok, now were getting somewhere.... some early games like Adventure seemed to only be able to have 4 colors on screen... yet later games looked pretty good. would it be possible on 2600 to set up a gradient from, say, green to red and have it fill in everything in between?

 

[dark10x]

I can't speak from experience or anything, but it would seem to me that it would be limited in the number of colors that could be displayed at one time (like most anything). I can't imagine the system being able to go beyond anything too terribly high, though.

Seeing as I've never had any experience with a 2600 from a programming standpoint, I actually have no idea how people handled such things.

 

[Kuramu]

i just realized that this is a pallet reduced .gif no fair so i popped pitfall II in my atari. and it's such a smooth transition between yellow to redish to blue.... it could just be a tight group of well chosen colors, i don't know... that's why i'm asking

 

[AndreasNystrom]

on todays hardware, you actually have routines for example to write text on the screen. To write "points : 1000" etc.

But the atari 2600 had NOTHING!. You had todo that yourself.. write something that waited until the rasterbeam was at the right place on the screen, and then put out the pixel. etc.

(easy speaking)

I can remember things wrong, cause its a couple of years now. =)

 

[AndreasNystrom]

or if you wrote a line.. and then sent it to be displayed?

btw with the C64 you could do hacks to let the machine do things like it wouldnt be able to due to the specs. Like removing the borders on the screen, which wasnt possible.. but due
to a "hardware-bug", it was..
actually i would call it a feature.. sorry

 

[AndreasNystrom]

hm.. im not sure i remember correctly, so dont read my text.. im a bit confused today.

 

[dark10x]

That sounds about as optimized as writing a COBOL program with actual screen output.

 

[Kuramu]

so does this explain why some games were so insanely blocky, whereas other games had some NES sized pixels? it was up to the programmer?

edit: and how in adventure, the main character square had to be the same color as the walls... and if two items were ever on the same screen, there would be an alternating flicker

 

[dark10x]

Oh, and here is a direct shot from Pitall 2...

What kind of TV were you testing this on? Perhaps that's part of the issue...

BTW, if you can think of ANY games off the top of your head that are doing what you speak of, tell us...and I'll go dig it up real quick.

 

[Crazymoogle]

...

That's like what, six colors.

5 second photoshop job to make the necessary graphic tile.

 

[Kuramu]

well, that certainly doesn't look like what i see on my TV. guess i could just be my set. but why would they have removed this detail from the 5200 version. and how is it that a vulture in Pitfall II has something like 8 colors when even samus over here only can handle 3?

 

[dark10x]

well, that certainly doesn't look like what i see on my TV. guess i could just be my set. but why would they have removed this detail from the 5200 version. and how is it that a vulture in Pitfall II has something like 8 colors when even samus over here only can handle 3?

What kind of TV are you using for this, though?

I have no clue why that detail would have been removed, though.

 

[Kuramu]

i have a 32 inch Philips... normal color tv, nothing special. i would certainly expect to see that banding though. oh well, i like it better this way.

what was the 2600, a 4 bit system or something? i find it odd that it could look so primative in so many ways, yet do surprising things sometimes. there are games where the colors of an enemy change depending on where he moves. it's almost as if the enemy is a mask over a background graphic. Demon Attack does this iirc.

edit: nope, it wasn't demon attack

 

[dark10x]

Based on what was posted above, I'd say the system is simply wide open and allows developers to write code as complex or simple as they wish.

It seems similar to the Saturn situation (though obviously, the 2600 is much more open). I mean, look at something like VF2 on Saturn. It runs at double the resolution of a standard Saturn title AND cruises at 60 fps. It was obvious that the right developers could achieve impressive results on the Saturn...results that few others could match.

 

[Kuramu]

oh yeah, and there are many examples of pallet cycling, like the glowing walls in HERO... something i didn't see on NES but SNES could do

 

[Kuramu]

Based on what was posted above, I'd say the system is simply wide open and allows developers to write code as complex or simple as they wish.

It seems similar to the Saturn situation (though obviously, the 2600 is much more open). I mean, look at something like VF2 on Saturn. It runs at double the resolution of a standard Saturn title AND cruises at 60 fps. It was obvious that the right developers could achieve impressive results on the Saturn...results that few others could match.

yeah, i guess andreas already answered it. i think i just want to talk about the 2600.