
Game Graphics During the 8-bit Computer Era - iamelgringo
http://www.siggraph.org/publications/newsletter/v32n2/contributions/collins.html
======
anescient
> I would now consider Quake II to be the best of the current crop.

God, doesn't anybody have _taste_? Not that I'm not guilty of popping wood at
the arrival of OpenGL in PC gaming, but come on people. Quake II's actual
content is uninspired at best.

------
brlewis
Glaring omission:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Color_Computer>

~~~
anescient
I learned to program in BASIC on a Tandy 1000SX and an m100. That thing was
great for long trips to grandma's.

I still remember my very first attempt. I tried typing lines from a BASIC book
into a DOS prompt, which obviously frustrated my tiny being to no end. My dad
showed me how to start gwbasic, and I've been on this ride ever since.

------
xirium
From the article: Jupiter Ace, RAM: 3K, Resolution: 512x368

That'll be tight. 23552 pixels in 24576 kilobits of RAM.

From the article: VIC-20, RAM: 5K, Resolution: no hires mode

That's wrong. You can get VIC20 to do 128 _128 in two colours or 64_ 128 in
four colours. There was a type-it-in listing from Commodore to draw a circle
in VIC20 hi-res.

~~~
icky
> Jupiter Ace, RAM: 3K, Resolution: 512x368

> That'll be tight. 23552 pixels in 24576 kilobits of RAM.

From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_ACE> :

 _"While it had only one video mode, text only, which displayed 24 rows of 32
columns of characters in black and white, it was possible to display graphics,
by redefining the 8×8 pixel bitmap of any of the 128 characters."_

Edit: Hmm... that's still only half the resolution mentioned in the article...

~~~
xirium
That would give a maximum arbitrary resolution of 8192 pixels in two colours.
Not so good.

Anyhow, why didn't these fellows get sued for producing hardware so similar to
Sinclair?:

The Jupiter ACE was a British home computer of the 1980s, marketed by a
company named Jupiter Cantab and named after the early British computer, the
ACE. The company was formed by Richard Altwasser and Steven Vickers, who had
been on the design team for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. ... The Jupiter ACE
somewhat resembled a ZX81 in a white case, with black rubber keys like the
Spectrum. ... The font of the character set was identical to that of the
Spectrum ... the editor was like the Sinclair editor rather than the original
Forth editor. ... Several words were borrowed from Sinclair BASIC. --
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_ACE>

~~~
icky
> That would give a maximum arbitrary resolution of 8192 pixels in two
> colours. Not so good.

Not if you could change the character-images between horizontal "scanlines".
(Technically, 1 character-line isn't a scanline as far as the display is
concerned, but it's a pretty close analogy).

