#cash cow
19 messages in this thread
The C64 will be a cash cow for them. It should be easy to produce,
and (Not-so-bold prediction) it will sell well in China.
You make a BIG assumption….that the C=64 can be modified to
work with Chinese characters.
Sprites baby, sprites!
–Gabe
Gabe,
Think…I don't know if the C=64 has sprites…but let's assume it
does. How many? Enough to do a screen full of characters…I think not.
Don
Yes, the C64 has eight sprites ("movable object blocks") which size out at 24
x 21 pixels; with these dimensions, you might pack more than one character into
a sprite.
The count of 8 sprites is not a hard limitation. By using raster interrupts,
sprites can be reused several times within a screen. This gobbles up processor
time, of course. Re-using sprites is difficult to do in game situations where
the objects may wander anywhere on the screen (the bookkeeping gets tedious),
but it's convenient for text displays where visual material is clearly
separated into horizontal strips. It's also good for games like FROGGER (if
you can remember that far back).
–Jim
Jim,
You bet I remember FROGGER…I did some work with Russ Wetmore, and if
memory serves me right…he wrote FROGGER for the Atari. And speaking of
Atari, it had sprites also…and they could be reused also…but I don't think
(and it's been a LONG time) you could re-use them enought to get a screen full
of Chinese characters.
But I could be wrong too.
Don
As I recall, the Atari sprites were much smaller, but you could get more of
them. Great for bullets and other missiles…
–Jim
Raster interrupts let you re-use sprites in different vertical positions but
AFAIK you are still limited to eight on any horizontal line.
I think the original idea was to use them to extend the character set. I don't
think they are really relevent for that, surely the best idea is to draw the
characters in graphics mode. Then you can have as many characters as you
allocate memory for.
Peter Wade
Autopiloting from London, England
>> AFAIK you are still limited to eight [sprites] on any horizontal [raster]
line …
Yes, that's generally true, although more have been created in "ghost" mode by
flipping on the interlace signal…
>>I think the original idea was to use them to extend the character set …
Doubt it. The concept of a "movable object block", or sprite, allows an
object to pass across a background with no need to refresh the background
picture to make it reappear. It could be argued that such a general concept
has wide application: for example, to create a mouse pointer or a modest-sized
"requester box" over a background screen. But I think that the chip design was
almost totally aimed at game usage: things to shoot at, and missiles to do the
shooting. Commodore targeted the VIC-II chip for sales into the video game
market, not just for the 64.
–Jim
I think we are talking at cross purposes here, I actually meant the original
idea in this thread. I agree that the designers of the C64 probably had games
in mind when they added the sprites but someone was suggesting in this thread
that sprites could be used to implement the chinese character set on the C64.
Atari made it perfectly obvious what THEY intended their sprites for when they
called them "Player/Missile Graphics". I beleive that some PC graphics cards
are getting advanced enough to have a hardware sprite now.
Peter Wade
Autopiloting from London, England
"I beleive that some PC graphics cards are getting advanced enough to have a
hardware sprite now."
I haven't seen any more than one sprite. (For the mouse cursor.)
Bob Comer — Cheyenne, WY USA
Team OS/2
I thnk the 64 had 7 sprites…
Bob Comer — Cheyenne, WY USA
Team OS/2
C64 has sprites; the technology originated with the Atari's if I am not
mistaken (I know, that name is dangerously close to blasphemy, ah well…) and
was extended to the Amiga. Hardware definition is for 16 sprites (I Think…)
although some clever programmers increased it to 256. If you keep it simple,
and use big characters…..
Maybe it will work, maybe not. I guess we have beaten this to death…
–Gabe
You are mistaken. 🙂
Sprites originated in custom game machines at arcade vendors – of which Atari
was certainly one, but not the first, nor were they typically first with any
technology. They mostly modified what was out there. Vector game hardware is a
good example – Asteroids, Omega Race… then Atari. Bally-Midway had sprite
based game hardware before Atari ever woke up.
Pacman and other similar hardware are good examples of true sprite-oriented
computers. Of course they had main bitplane display hardware as well, but
sprites were key to many of the moderately early arcade games.
(I used to be a Bally/Midway games programmer, y'know…)
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
"The C64 will be a cash cow for them. It should be easy to produce,
and (Not-so-bold prediction) it will sell well in China."
I don't think so. I can't see the Chinese adopting an English
interface (the Japanese, perhaps tentatively, but not the Chinese).
Though more expensive to make, a better computer would help keep the
training curve and costs down by using Chinese characters.
Perhaps it was due to an inventory stocking problem, but for
several months Commodore Canada shipped all its 64 units complete
with a Kanakata keyboard (I'm going back quite a while, about 10
years or so).
Don't know much on the subject, but since Kanakata is a Japanese
font, would a comparable facility be possible for Chinese?
There is no "kanakata" … there is katakana and hiragana — one is
used strictly for the spelling of non-Japanese works and the other is
outgrown by about 3rd grade. Kanji, the same ideograms the Chinese
use, altho the meanings are different in many cases, is the main
"alphabet" of the language and consists of thousands of symbols.
Chris,
<< I can't see the Chinese adopting an English interface>>
I think you might be surprised. There are quite a few closet
capitalists in China. They realize that the future of China lies in
establishing strong trade relations with the West. Chinese business
will need computers which are English capable. As employees of these
business's purchase computers for their own personal use,
compatability with work will be a factor in deciding which system to
buy. Whichever computer ESCOM chooses to sell in China, I hope that
they take the time to find out exactly where their market will be and
what the needs of that market are.
Cheers, Marty
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