Posted By
MMS
on 2010-10-16
16:30:18
 |  Re: Plus/4 2.0
TLC: I agree and disagree with you at the same time.
I like the plus/4 with all it's limitations. It is not a C64, and never meant to be. It has it's benefits and drawbacks compared to other machines, and this is the part you explained. Eg. SID was a long term dream of plus/4 forum, but definitely it is an essential part of C64, so by this plus/4 became a partially a C64... Sprites were too expensive for TED, so I take this limitation as a parts of HW design.
On the other hand there are issues which were potential possibilities of the platform, but just not happened or the designers were not creative enough (with all respect to the design team).
Fundamentally it would be the same machine. (no major hardware change, just some adjustments).
Like:
- the 8 same shades of black color, why is it? plus/4 could have been the potential to have most greys in 8 bit area, perfect for digitalization. (16 grey shades, black could be 8 different dark greys, and white could have 8 lighter greys)
- Designers provided more colors, but added an extra limitation (second fixed color in multicolor gfx mode). so it is partially more, and at the same time little less, than a C64. Not a clear step forward. The function "supermulti" could be just a little more programming at concept phase, but would be a perfect match for the bigger palette, and could make sprite emulation a dream.
- Or the TED sound: no ADSR needed (it would be almost a SID), but some more raw waveforms to make the sound little more diversified. (if you checked Hexaeder, you will know what I mean). It would just needed few more bytes in memory and few more bits in TED register.
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