| Posted By
SVS
on 2009-11-19
14:49:26
 |  Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Sprites and SID are excluded, write here your personal thinking!
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Posted By
Chronos
on 2009-11-19
14:56:53
 | Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
LAN CARD ! 
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Posted By
Patrick
on 2009-11-19
15:12:16
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
1541 Ultimate
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Posted By
TLC
on 2009-11-19
15:25:22
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
You mean hardware or something in general?...
Hardware-wise, you covered the two major issues  (I wouldn't have called for a SID neccessarily but yeah, some more sound capabilities wouldn't have hurted much). And I would have been more happy if the lack of sprites could have been compensated by at least more freely selectable colors (so that you could have some chances to write a decent sprite routine with plenty of colors, without color clash artifacts).
...Other than that (and in a more philosophic sense), I've basically never felt that it'd have lacked anything. Heck, that's not true, because I've indeed moved on to use PC's (as most of us did) but we probably don't want to start discussing clever things like "why does the PC beat the hell out of the Plus/4" or similar topics. Let me just say that today I don't feel that it'd lack anything -- better said, it has its specialities (and today if someone's after some different specialities, he can choose a computer that match those specialities...)... but it's not really about lacking particular capabilities anymore (as I guess) because of the given possibility to choose. Also, if someone'd still be going to "add" some particular hw capabilities to some constructions, just because he likes fiddling with hardware extensions, I'd doubt that there could be any unsolvable obstacles.
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Posted By
YERZMYEY
on 2009-11-19
18:20:37
 | Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
No lacks at all.
From where I come the CPU makes everything and for good coders it's enough.
I can name lacks in software. Not enough of really good editors. Mostly music ones.
I think in this way: if it's possible to make 8 channels from one hardware channel (take this song, for instance http://8bitcollective.com/music/MISTER+BEEP/Clock+Mechanism/ there should be even no drums at all, but they're still are) then on 264 some software-mixing music editor (native!) with 3 channels for TED would be nice.
I can also handle 2 channels only (for games/trackmos) but it would have to be a really _good_ editor.
Software can kill any hardware problems.
264 has no lacks in hardware then.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2009-11-20
03:51:56
 | Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
About TED sound: I'm using again TLCplay right in these days, so several ancient questions and examinations popped out for the nth time.
In past months, both me and Degauss pointed out this: on TED is quite useless have 3x or more tunes, because the sound becomes metallic and awful for your ears'health. The same occurs if you wanna play double tracks on both channels. Hence the best would be having a 2x player with the feature of a smart channel splitting: the smart splitting should allow the composer to select which voice has to be splitted. Yeah, this would be great!
In a deeper analysis: take what a FRQ converter does; it splits one fixed channel indipendently from what's on playing. But with an appropriate editor, you can save the channel which does not have to play "dirty" right when you have to, having great control of your tune's quality.
In a 2x player, you have to proceed frame per frame (dur=1) to have splitting. For example a fixed A1 note and a lead voice:
sound(voice1)
dur(1)
A1
sound(voice2)
C3
sound(voice1)
A1
sound(voice2)
E3
sound(voice1)
A1
sound(voice2)
F#3
sound(voice1)
A1
sound(voice2)
D#3
fin
In the editor I wish, it can be decently done like:
---track1---
sound(voice1)
dur(4)
A1
fin
---track2---
(whatever)
fin
---track3---
split (1)
sound(voice2)
dur(1)
C3
E3
F#3
D#3
fin
where "split(1)" forces the 1st channel to be splitted, arguments of course can be (1) or (2).
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Posted By
YERZMYEY
on 2009-11-20
08:54:42
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Luca: hehe, tha't s black magic for me. Therefore I regret there's no decent editor. Because I KNOW it must be possible to do.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2009-11-20
13:36:32
 | Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Well, as a graphician I miss: 8 shades of Black (extra to the 8 shades of white)
there could be 8 darker, and 8 lighter grey. All together it would be 16 shades of grey, would be a killer. Even Amiga500 has only this capability.
-Chunky mode: 160x200 each pixel 4 bit (16 predefined color per pixel, and you may do then raster tricks).
Would need 16KB (io. current 9KB with colormap)
It could make sprite emulation from SW a dream, no color distorsion during movement.
Much more games would have been developped.
-4 (2x2 stereo) sound HW channels, and some selectable waveform (no ADSR and filter or other magics). Would be cheap and easy from HW to implement.
Just eg 10 waveform could make the sound very good (eg. sinus, square, sawtooth, triangle, noise, and some drum emulation).
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Posted By
MIK
on 2009-11-20
14:28:25
 | Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
As Plus/4 a gamer...
From the start the C16's 16k memory got in the way.
The C16 was designed to step on the toes of the ZX Spectrum in every sense of the word yet was treated as if it was a mini C64 in many respects. Your be hard pushed to find a game from the early days that resembles what the machine was made for. I think the greatest example of what should of been coded on C16/Plus4 was Video Meanies.
Imagine a world back in 1986 where all games were coded in the GFX style of Video Meanies and we might of had many more Grade A titles.
I have no regrets what was done back in the golden days as I loved every moment, but I always wondered what if the C16/Plus4 world was a Video Meanies world as it was intended to be.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2009-11-22
15:39:41
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Well, to continue the list:
- Plus/4 should have the numeric keyboard, as the planned for it's big brother. It could better sell the "business computer" image, than any text on the box.
-Original 9-pin Joy port as in C64. Not only because of paddle and analog mouse (although I know, there was some kind of copyright issue with Motorola (or Atari?)), but lot of newspapers did not get the joy converter for their Plus/4 test, so they reported at once, that usual joysticks are not compatible. --> GREAT reduction in number of potential buyers. I think it was one of the biggest mistakes (next to sprites and sound). Even C64 Wiki does not have a reference to that joy converter.
-GEOS1.0 came out in 1985, but Commodore did nothing to support it's new "business computer". As GEOS was more an OS, than a tool/utility, it shows the attention of CBM management and brain capabilities. It had to be done unofficially by a cracker group on a version 1.2 without official support of CBM. (BTW, I never understood, why the main programs of GEOS did not run from a cartride? Settings could ba saved on disc (or FLASHROM?). Surely would make it more expensive, and not possible to attach it for each C64 (like the discs; most of them landed in the trashbin). BUT it could make work more efficient (number of discswaps; extra free memory), not to mention that the discs went wrong over few hundred hours of usage.
-Mouse capable joy port. in 1986 Commodore released the 1351 mouse (1350 even before), but missed this feature out of Plus/4 released in 1984. What a shame! You know, such project, like that mouse surely started at least 1 year before.
I will tell you what else.
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Posted By
Degauss
on 2009-11-23
05:43:55
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Every now and then something comes to my mind i would have loved to have:
- A writeable readcursor-register for the videomatrix (demo or die )
- Some lesser saturated colors (or the ability to control saturation)
- Independant volumes for sound
- A higher frequency range for the oscillators
- Sprites!
- 64K right away for all machines of the series (i think that is one of the main reasons a lot of games arent as good as they should have been)
But i also have to admit that a lot of fun coding on +4 comes from the fact that all these limitations exist. I remember i didn't see most of this as a limitation back in the old days.
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Posted By
SVS
on 2009-11-23
05:57:53
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
OK people, and regarding the Software? (BASIC, O.S., Monitor)
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Posted By
MMS
on 2009-11-23
15:15:20
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
OK, you had the question, I give you my answer
BASIC: speed. due to continuous RAM/ROM memory banking seems Plus/4 does not profit too much from the faster CPU under BASIC. I mean despite REALLY faster CPU, you do not feel that extra speed compared to C64.
The speed of graphical commands also something to criticize. If you just check The Hobbit, THAT is the speed I expect from a drawing routine. C128 has the same snail-speed... It is not because of the above switching, just badly written routines (MS...). There were some guys, who made on a C64 newspaper a BASIC extension did 40x faster line drawing, and 20x faster circle routine. (I never tested, if really so much faster or not)
Monitor: little limited, but much better than nothing. Not too much to complain, but would be much easier if it would be an assembler running from ROM, able to manage labels (I do remember how time I spent calculating the addresses when I did some smalled raster programming in the past, I had no disc drive and assembler...)
OS: GEOS. I really never heard about GEOS for Plus/4 till not appeared on this site.
More than 20 years later... Well, I was a computer geek at my youngster age and was a big fan of GEOS. I played a lot with that on my C64, made a local newspaper for the school, etc. I do remember the hype it caused, "C64 can also do it". And STILL never heard from anyone in Plus/4 scene that it exist, although I was a penfried of Pigmy, had a common friend with The MAD, and TPPC. So I conclude GEOS Plus/4 it was absolutely unknown by Hungarian scene.
Well, partially because of GEOS, only C64 (and 128) were treated as serious 8-bit computers, "can even work with a laser-printer", or GeoPublish WYSWYG. The rest (even Enterprise, Spectrums) stayed in the hobbist computer. (QL I do not list here, as it was 16bit, but was in 1984 (multitasking opsystem and apllication package...), and SAM Coupe, which was a wonder, but in 1989 was just too late)
With a numeric keyboard + GEOS (in ROM?) CBM could sell Plus/4 as business computer. I do not know, if it would be possible to store prg is compressed format in ROM, and decompress it "on the fly" (maybe processor was too slow for that...), but usually GEOS main PRGs were few 10KB, could be even faster then floppy loading. Instead of 3-plus-1 (32KB) they could put GEOS into ROM, +1 floppy. Without floppy just 3 programs could work (without personal settings, just default), with floppy all the rest...
RAM: because of already available RAM expands for C64, CBM could have better prepare Plus/4 (and especially C16) for memory upgrades. well, they would just need few empty sockets (or even just the empty space for the legs), and little jumpers, and 256KB expansion would be easy like a dream (the CPU is capable to manage bank switching). at least from BASIC as a RAM drive, like Spectrums.
OK, that were the dreams for today. Let's do something more useful for plus/4
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Posted By
Jakec
on 2009-11-24
03:30:08
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
If drawing a picture of Botticelli, you can always vary the colors. The other is good as is.
Oh, and it has no USB port.
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Posted By
Degauss
on 2009-11-24
05:54:53
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Regarding software:
- In general: much more 64KB-titles (Games, Apps, Tools). We had so many cool 16KB titles, i wonder how cool some Udo Gertz/Shaun Southern/etc games would have been if they were written for 64KB...
- SVS-Calc (would have been a total killer back in the days)
- The old topic again: 3+1 might be "bugfree" but its too much functionality in too few bytes in my opinion. It would've been better in my eyes to be able to choose between different software-products: Script+ or SVS-Calc
- Paradroid!
Besides: I don't really see a problem with 3.5 Basic. Yes, it is slow, but it's still a great piece of software.
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2009-11-24
12:29:48
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Yeah, the BASIC. It was slow because it does memory banking on each read operation that involves the "disable IRQ/disable ROM/read byte/enable ROM/enable IRQ" sequence... you did not need this on the C64, so even though the machine itself is slightlys faster, the BASIC is much slower.
And this memory banking was a last-minute change in my opinion when they figured that the machine MUST handle 64kb, too. An ideal compromise would have been to have the C232 only which had ~28kb free RAM available for BASIC and would not have required memory banking on its own. 32 kb would have been sufficient for decent games, too (just think of Treasure Island and Icicle Works, both fit into 32kb).
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Posted By
Suto
on 2009-11-25
02:48:07
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Hello Plus/4 Fans,
...and the BASIC again: integer variables are not correctly implemented.
Gaia: switching to 32k we can eliminate the SEI and STA $FF3E instructions in the RAM reading routines but I don't know how much faster will be the BASIC this way.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2009-11-25
15:43:32
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Well, multicolor gfx mode:
-In C64 you could have 3 independent color + background color per character.
In +4 you have only 2 independent color, as they wanted to keep the 2K colormap size (colors+brightenesses), and third color did not fit.
-Instead of limit the plus/4 to 2 variable + 2 fix background colors, they could have a mode with 4 KB colormap, and 4 independent colors per character, even backgound color could be set separately. 12KB. May call supermulti Would not work with non-extended C16, I know.
Then +4 gfx would be even more colorful (and easy to produce), than now.
(and, next to that, all C64 gfx converted to +4 would look perfect, not like now...)
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Posted By
YERZMYEY
on 2009-11-25
18:13:27
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
SVS:
>OK people, and regarding the Software? (BASIC, O.S., Monitor)
-----------
Surely music editors. Several types.
My friends were very surprised hat there is no regular music-editors for TED.
- Normal 2 channels square wave editor for demos/games.
- Some Softsynth (with more channels and envelopes) like on ZX48K. It takes CPU but it could be for some music-collections or intros/title-screens of games.
- 3 channels digital music editor, like SampleTracker for ZX48 (which has only 1 hardware channel).
All the editors could run on 64K but all of them (maybe except the digital one) should have possibilities to run their songs on regular 16K.
Well - let the dreamers dream...
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Posted By
YERZMYEY
on 2009-11-25
18:53:55
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
PS: I've checked out several progs (10?) but they're non-usable (from 80s), in German or Hungarian language, or totally non-standard (early 90s).
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Posted By
Chicken
on 2009-11-25
18:58:51
 | Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Which programs have you checked out? For some there are instruction files around and most editors are hard to understand without.
A very nice digi editor is this one Digital Composing Kit V2.0
And a two channels plus digi editor is here Soundtracker
They all have pros and cons but you should do some experiments on your own. Apos' Kit was even used in some demos though the player limits raster time and has the usual drawbacks. And it's just one voice but nevertheless you should try it!
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Posted By
YERZMYEY
on 2009-11-25
19:16:43
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Many, many, many thanx, I will check the stuff out tomorrow!!
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Posted By
MMS
on 2009-11-26
01:50:36
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Tynesoft is well known for their quality softwares.
I know it is 80s product, but several games (have nice tunes) seems to use a format developped by them.
I could not check it myself is details, but based on the German desription looks rather impressive (lot of features, even ASDR partially implemented, although not need SID card), thought it is only 2-channels, but looks "musician friendly interface"
Unfortunately I saw only TAP version, takes a little long to load, but then you may save the freeze state:
http://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Music_Synthesiser
the description of the SW:
http://plus4world.powweb.com/publications/Music_Composer-Synth
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Posted By
Litwr
on 2009-12-07
04:18:15
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
It began to work again! So I am hurry to add my humble opinion.
I agree with TLC that +4 is almost perfect machine for many ppl (me included). +4 is very plain and logical. It calls to explore itself. Its built-in Basic and especially Monitor language are very good as programming and teaching tools. I had feeling of lack of something only once. I worked with Amstrad PCW8512 and PCW9512 (best cp/m computer ever) at late 80s. I wanted 80 columns screen for +4 too this time.
[MMS] I wrote subroutine for the fast line drawing about 20 years ago. There is also raw demo of its speed capability. I can estimate its speed at 20-100x of standart Basic's subroutine speed. It is easy to extend it for any ovals. Is there such a program for +4? I wanted to improve demo many times... ;-( Should I publish raw demo or scene should wait inpredictable inspiration for its author?
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Posted By
SVS
on 2009-12-07
05:43:22
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Litwr:
>>Should I publish raw demo or scene should wait unpredict...?
Stop the chats and upload immediately the demo!
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Posted By
MMS
on 2009-12-07
07:54:14
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Well, I was always interested, what is the real speed of TED and plus/4.
Especially "filled" vector would be interesting, I saw only few demo (like Ship demo) and few converted games, but I think it is not the highest speed we could read (slowliness could mainly caused by 3D calc). I am curious, if such a 2D demo like "Another world" intro could be done on plus/4?
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Posted By
Litwr
on 2009-12-08
02:18:27
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
[SVS] Thanks! I looked at my a tad bigger that 1k pure machine code abandoned 20 years ago yesterday. To be honest I had to say it became a bit infamiliar to me. However I plan to prepare demo during next weeks.
[MMS] What is "filled" vector? Is it something solid, with width more than 1 pixel?
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Posted By
MMS
on 2009-12-08
06:33:12
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Hi,
Filled vector you cannot look through and has a color
The Ship Demo is a good example.
http://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Ship_Demo
On C64 the Space Rogue game was like that, nice one...
http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemon64.com/reviews/view.php%3Fid%3D206
Although Driller and others had also filled verctors, the speed is mainly inpacted by the big 3D world and complexity.
Elite was no filled vector, just hiding the nonvisible lines.
http://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Elite_Csory
I wish we would have CPU power for textured vector, but I thin it is above power of Plus/4.
On C64 they keep trying, even on textured :
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/forums/?roomid=10&topicid=53226
My idea: if we DO NOT use 3D calculation, just defining the 2D points to be drawn and filled up (filled vectors), what could be the speed... Like Another World intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j4gO9sR7zs
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Posted By
Litwr
on 2009-12-09
03:31:19
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
[MMS] Thanks for links! However does this Another World demo from famous PC game have any connection to 8 bits Commodore world?
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Posted By
NinjaDRM
on 2009-12-09
04:10:23
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
The state of the art regarding 3D on the C64 is Andropolis:
http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=81157
I recall that JackAsser said something about the source being available somewhen, so a plus4-conversion should be possible.
About the original topic:
I always thought the timers are a bit limited. Just one with a reload feature, and no possibility to count underruns of another timer. Pity, but I also miss that on most embedded processors from today as well
And seconding Degauss for the colors. Never missed the SID, I'm all for TED-music.
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Posted By
indi
on 2009-12-31
10:31:15
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Sprites would be my choice.... Sprites would have changed this machine and possibly Commodores future. It was cheaper than the C64, the BASIC was far superior (fun even), and the built in software was pretty cool for it's time.
If there had been sprites, it would have easily beaten the C64, and as we can see... they could do a 3rd party sound module later if need be.
Standard sprites (ala C64) would have been fine (particually with the faster CPU speed), but 16, 16x16's would have made it awesome.
It would have been nice to have NMI's as well. That stopped a lot of add-on's.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2010-01-03
11:29:18
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
3D Card doing all the nasty clacualtion on textures, and then TED would be free to do the rest
I just thinking, that after SuperCPU, and the extra 320x200x256 color feature made in the "C64 Joystick" project, would it be impossible to attach and address a so-called "obsolete" 3D chip to Plus/4, like Ati Rage or Voodoo1? They had their own memory, not eating up the small 64k Maybe next to SuperCPU?
But just kidding
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Posted By
NinjaDRM
on 2010-01-05
03:56:05
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
indi: By adding sprites to TED, you would have pretty much erased the advantages of being cheaper and faster, no?
MMS: Rainer Buchty had once the idea to plug a huge (like a few MB) EEPROM filled with lots of tables (multiplication, sin,...) to the expansion port. With a few latches, you could just write the arguments to the IO-area, use them for addressing the EEPROM and immediately get the result. While not too practical, that idea was interesting somehow.
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Posted By
Degauss
on 2010-01-05
04:53:59
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
@Ninja: Really had to laugh about the eeprom-idea While i also think its an interesting idea, i wonder if there'd be a "game-editon" and a "demo-edition" (=> more focused on movetables)
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Posted By
indi
on 2010-01-05
05:02:44
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
@Ninja: Nah... wouldn't have increased it "that" much... And the small increase in cost would have been by far negated with the extra sales they would have gotten from a machine that was better than the C64....easily.
The idea of a card that did H/W multiplies/divides (or whatever) would be pretty cool...The SNES had something like this; a couple of registers that when you plug in values, it took a couple of cycles and then you could read back the result. It was well cool....
It's an interesting idea that any game "cart" could add extra hardware (wouldn't have to be much these days) and that would also have effectively stopped piracy on it - course back then, no one copied carts anyway....)
I'd love to try and do an internal addon that allowed "sprites" on the Plus4.... Remove the TED and plug it into a small daughterboard, then take the signal from it and "overlay" (or "mix" in) sprites - that would be awesome!
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Posted By
NinjaDRM
on 2010-01-05
06:44:20
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
degauss: Yup, and after one wonders if the EEPROM content shouldn't be configurable, one gets the idea that RAM would be even cooler. And there goes the simplicity
indi: I think sprites add quite some complexity (for each sprite: check the raster beam, load the shift register from memory, handle the priorities and such. And all the registers which need to be implemented). I am sure this would have killed the "one-chip-for-all"-idea of the TED. And without that, the price would surely have risen, both from build- and development costs.
BTW Game cartridges with additional hardware are in the making. I think Enforcer2 wants to do this, and at least another title I know of.
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Posted By
indi
on 2010-01-05
07:29:03
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Well, I guess we'll never really know... I suspect it would increase the price only a little. (£20 or so) But who knows for sure.
Well, extra RAM is common. I was gonna do an XeO3 one for the Plus4 with MMC card slot, and put everything on a SD card - making loading a "blip". It'd also be cheaper than ROM chips
But I like the idea of putting a PIC or ATMEGA on there to do parallel computing / calculations :P
It could actually do sprite rotations in parallel as well I guess - course on a Plus4, you can't take over the BUS, but if the RAM is on card, you can "program" around it... Actually... you could put a BLITTER on card, and have the screen in the extra RAM, and then you could do whatever you want! A full bitmap screen with ATMEGA blitter...Ooo... cool
(oh.. and SID chip)
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Posted By
MMS
on 2010-01-05
08:20:07
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
If the bitmap is in the memory, so can implement any mode, right?
Imagine a game in FLI?
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Posted By
NinjaDRM
on 2010-01-05
12:12:39
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
indi: plus4-cart with MMC-slot sounds awesome! Will it be able to start other prgs, too?
But: If the SID is playing the music and the Atmel is doing the GFX, what is the +4 doing then? Delivering the palette?
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Posted By
indi
on 2010-01-06
04:31:30
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
The long term plan was yes... It would either "auto-boot" a game, or fall into basic as normal and have some new commands.... But due to work commitments, this is a long way off - but I really want to do it sometime. I'd also love to add a clockport, more RAM and the SID chip. None of this is particularly hard... just takes time!
The plus would run the game logic, organize things, and use it's own sound for effects (a-la XeO3). It's still the main thing in charge... the Atmel would effectively be a blitter.
(You could even get it to draw polys )
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Posted By
NinjaDRM
on 2010-01-06
16:07:18
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
indi: Okay, seems we're different types of people then I am primarily interested to exploit the machine as such. I think there are quite some possibilities left...
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Posted By
MMS
on 2010-01-25
02:48:49
| Re: Just to chat: what is, in your opinion, the greater lack of Plus4? (if any...)
Hi,
Just back to the 3D topic for a minute: I found an interesting project (3D library) for C64.
It is from 1997/98
The solid (filled) objects seems very fast. I duuno if already checked previously by anyone.
The demonstration seems not multicolor, but Lib 2.0 add multicolor features.
Mixing this code with the hyperfast draw routines of Litwr could be killer...
http://www.ffd2.com/fridge/lib3d/index.html
http://www.ffd2.com/fridge/lib3d/pics/index.html
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