Tan 9 8 7

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 10:26 pm

All finished.

Okay, the rest are up to you guys.

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 10:50 pm

squidflakes wrote:Murahahahaha.. I love the paddle shoes.

Since I can't draw for crap, might I have the honor of coloring my own version of your tan?

Glad the shoes were recognized. Sure, colour away.

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 11:26 pm

wow.. she's cute.. but it's the specs that are really turning me on

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 9:02 am

I used to program for the Atari 2600. Had two cartridges for sale too. Rescue Bira Bira and Video Time Machine.

I have a third game that was about a week away from completion. Never got around to finishing it. It was a virtual pet.

Video Time Machine was a digital clock that had 2600 game sprites scroll across the top and bottom and they changed when the minutes and hours changed.

Much fun to program for because the machine was so restrictive (only 128 bytes of RAM and 4K ROM address) you really had to be extra tight with it's code.

Since the machine had no internet ROM OS it was very flexible which is why it remained a viable platform for so long. Programmers discovered all sorts of tricks to make it do things the designers never thought possible.

I'm just waiting for CJ to finishe Colecovision-tan then I'm hoping someone will do Intellivision-tan because I've got my first idea for a strip with those tans.

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 10:39 am

The carts for the Atari 2600 had some of the finest programming in the history of computers. The code was tight, efficent, and increased the performance of the hardware, rather than the other way round.

If games today were made with the skill and innovative design of the Atari 2600, the most popular titles would still be on a few floppys rather than multipul CDs.
Partly, I blame the developers of Windows for doing excessivly sloppy work. I also blame the hardware developers who descided to base their development on the requirements of poorly written code.

Bleh.

Toawa · Post by **Toawa** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 10:50 am

Nah... 90% of that space is media (movies/sounds/graphics.) Sure, the programs would be smaller and faster, but the overall game wouldn't likely be significantly smaller.

(This is not including techniques such as procedural textures, which can reduce disk size significantly but does mean large memory requirements and/or delays in game loading.)

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 10:54 am

Part of the problem is hardware has become so cheap and powerful that developers throw hardware at a problem instead of using software to fix it. This is why you need to get a new PC ever two years in order to play the newest games.

At the end of the 2600's life you had people doing absolutely increadable things with the 2600. The game Solaris, for example, almost looks like it could have been an NES game, the programmer really pushed the graphics capabilities of the machine. They could do that because the machine was so unrestricted the programmer could develope all sorts of ways to get around the hardware limitations with clever programming. That's why at the end they were able to create Atari 2600 games that looked absolutely nothing like the Atari 2600 games that were created in the begining of the machine's life.

The Intellivision, on the other hand, while containing superior hardware was much more restrictive in how you could program it. This is why all Intellivision games from the dawn of the machine until its death looked like Intellivision games.

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 11:05 am

*nods along with Ghastly*

The Playstation has had a development curve like that of the Atari 2600. The hardware was set at manufacture, and it was up to the game designers to take advantage of it.

Granted, there is some absolute shit out for both PS consoles, but if you look at the difference between things like the original Twisted Metal and Sewer Shark vs. something along the lines of FF7. It's just amazing what can be done when you have to be creative.

I'm hoping the PS2 has a similar development curve, but I've got the feeling that Sony is going to try to race the PS3, again, because of Microsoft and their utter piece of crap the X-box

TheInfamousMrD · Post by **TheInfamousMrD** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 11:23 am

Gah! I smell a fanboy console war looming! Noooooo!

But you're absolutely right, modern consoles aren't given the proper stretching they used to back in the days when 128 bytes of ram was some serious home gaming memory.... It's in the door to fulfil the fanboy hype and PR bull, then straight back out to make way for the successor...

Honor · Post by **Honor** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 1:01 pm

*tennis face between Ghastly, Squiddy, Toawa, & D*

Do I win anything if I even pretend to be able to follow any of this...?

*edit... I decided I needed to do ascii for "tennis face"

(o )(o )

( o)( o)

(o )(o )

( o)( o)

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 1:06 pm

Did a little doodle today. I'll ink and colour it later.

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 1:12 pm

AHAHAHAHA! Somebody get this freaking duck away from me!

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 3:50 pm

Inked.

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 4:12 pm

Ghastly... is someone about to have her DB9 plugged in to?

TheInfamousMrD · Post by **TheInfamousMrD** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 4:14 pm

Here's my effort. I chose the cheap-as-chips home computer of the 80's, the Sinclair ZX. And here she is. In tan form.

It was my first games machine. Even tho it was total rubbish, used tapes to store stuff on, and took an eternity to load anything, it still holds a very fond place in my heart.

RantinAn · Post by **RantinAn** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 5:13 pm

*laughter*

yeah that's about perfect,

Down to the vacent stare as you waited for that little bastard to load anything.

but... no microdrive..... The tinsy little tapes to small for your liking?

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 7:25 pm

And now it's coloured.

CJBurgandy · Post by **CJBurgandy** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 7:35 pm

I'm going to sound ungeeky... I don't know what to put for the stats....

I'm almost done coloring her though.

Ghastly · Post by **Ghastly** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 7:45 pm

Google "Colecovision" "Z80" and "Specs" or "Specifications" and you should get all the Colecovision tech specs you need.

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Sun Jul 25, 2004 7:54 pm

or

Processor: Z80 (3.58Mhz Zilog 80a)
Video: TI TMS9928A
Resolution: 256x192
Sprites: 32
Colors: 16
Cartridge Memory: 8k, 16k, 24k, or 32k
Sound: TI SN76489AN (3 tone channels)
RAM: Internal: 8k, Video: 16k