Quarter Express - 256 bytes intro for Atari XL/XE by Ilmenit / Agenda

www.pouet.net/...
For Lovebyte party 2021, "Low-End 256 byte intro compo"
Requires Atari XL/XE OS Rev2
Code: Ilmenit, Train: Piesiu / Agenda '2021

[@GordonFreemanC13]

They used to say for Atari: The power without the price...Really nice intro! Atari was very underrated besides C64 and ZX Spectrum at the time...

[@WhiteFalconus]

This is totally cool and sweet at the same time: many colors, parallax scrolling, clever use of sprites. And with sound. Even without the size limit this would be some feat. Awesome!

[@KKAltair]

One of the best 256's I've seen for this platform! :)

[@skipbreakfast]

I honestly said "holy crap" out loud

[@SammYLightfooD]

One of the most fun 256 bytes demos I've seen.

[@ilmenit]

thank you! :-)

[@paulkocyla1343]

Wow, voodoo magic! Hard to imagine how to squeeze this one into 256b.

[@TheRealMrPeach]

Impressive in 256 bytes.

[@CheeseBallz420]

Omg! How it's possible? Man you rock!

[@ilmenit]

Thank you! A lot, lot of optimizations.

[@st4849]

This is so beautiful!

[@MorreskiBear]

Video ended too soon - never found out where train was going

[@arnetrautmann9783]

Funk me, that is awesome!

[@kNeczpal]

This makes me happy 😃

[@solsticeprojekt1937]

Man, that creative thought nd skill to pull it off!

[@Christian-Drackert]

Klasse 😃

[@10p6]

Awesome

[@PeranMe]

Wow, that’s just plain awesome! Much respect!

[@MrMarianoamigo]

it has better graphic than 90% of on atari games:)

[@virtuafighter3]

I feel you may be right. I think colours vs high res maybe underrated

[@Rewolwerpl]

Look on Prince of Persia Atari version

[@GadZombie]

Incredible!

[@KC9UDX]

That must've taken a lot of eFFort.

[@Prelmable]

Choo choo

[@philsan69]

Awesome!

[@pweddy1]

Display List Interrupts in 256 bytes? That’s impressive.

[@ilmenit]

It's actually not DLI but the color changes are synchronized with the screen drawing (technique from A2600). Setting up DLI would be too big.

[@letMeSayThatInIrish]

Next let's try 128 bytes 😄

[@spimfurt]

no way! congratulation! smart use of $ in the smoke and i think +##D▲ .: in the body of engine? Never seen before using 1bit chars in 2bit mode and get benefit of it :)

[@sa3270]

I think the Atari 2600 could come close to generating this, except for the track detail.

[@Noone-of-your-Business]

I didn't know the XL/XEs had _this many colors. Why were they not much bigger in the gaming scene?

[@ilmenit]

Some games had (e.g. Alternate Reality, Rainbow Walker, Henry's House). Many programmers didn't know how to implement such effects (documentation was not often easily available), there were no good graphic tools for artist to prepare a multi-color graphics. If you'd like to see more about Atari XL/XE gfx capabilities then look at the results of my tool RastaConverter atariage.com/forums/topic/200118-images-generated-by-rastaconverter/

[@closefm]

But how

[@theannoyedmrfloyd3998]

Think you could pull this off using the Atari 2600?

[@ilmenit]

Probably not, but I have limited knowledge of A2600. The background (sky and ground colors) could be quite similar. The clouds and the plant are sprites (players) and they could be done, but with bit more code. The track is in graphics mode and is using hardware scrolling and I think this is missing on A2600. Also the train is done in 5 color text mode which is missing on A2600 - would have to be done differently there.