BILLW@SU-SCORE.ARPA (09/14/85)
From: William "Chops" Westfield <BILLW@SU-SCORE.ARPA> It is generally agreed that The Atari 800 familly of personal computers has the best graphics capabilities of the current (previous?) generation. (According to the people at Lucasfilms Games division (Geez - talk about redefining "high performance graphics" can you say Anti-aliasing, fractal landscapes, 20 fps animation?)). Messages I have seen on this list imply that the new (ST) computer lacks even some of the graphics hardware that the 800 has. Is this true? Really? Why!!?? BillW -------
rb@ccivax.UUCP (rex ballard) (09/20/85)
> Messages I have seen on this list imply that the new (ST) computer > lacks even some of the graphics hardware that the 800 has. Is this > true? Really? Why!!?? > > BillW > ------- *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR APOLOGY *** Actually, both AMIGA and ST have the same foundation around the GTIA (the 800's graphics chip), in fact Tramael wanted to get it for Commodore, but Atari had the patents. Each crosses the best parts of the GTIA, the 7220, and C64 chips. Things like line drawing, circles, arc's and fills are now done buy the video chip instead of the processor. The inventor of the GTIA was actually in charge of AMIGA and added a lot of new features. There were a few tradeoffs though. Amiga's chip uses more sprites and play field (involves very tricky ram timing), the ST does a lot more DMA painting directly on the screen. It is possible for a sprite to leave a "tail" on the Atari buy not erasing the entire sprite as it is being moved. Sprites like "PAC MAN" are sort of "old hat" these days, things like "battle zone" and "flight simulator" require a different approach. Atari has focused more effort in this direction. I wonder if one of them has a "rotate playfield" command?