almightytodd
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Posts posted by almightytodd
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I just finished playing a couple rounds of Galaxians and a Pac Man prototype on a ColecoVision emulator - both ports done by Atari. These games are excellent! Have you played them? The Galaxians port shuffles the individual enemy ships (bugs?) around in a manner that is so much like the arcade version. Then, when they attack you, the little wings flap - another detail missing in ports to other home systems of that era. The scrolling star background and the font used for the score - both are dead-on ports from the coin-op.
The Pac Man port, while it makes no attempt to replicate the portrait format layout of the maze, still has a "feel" that seems much closer to the arcade version than anything other than maybe the NES version, which solves the portrait format problem by putting the score information over on the side (...there is a C-64 version of Pac Man that does the same thing).
Okay, they're ColecoVision games, but the programming was done by Atari. What was it about the hardware used by ColecoVision that made this possible? I know the CPU is a Z80 instead of the MOS 6502/6507 used everywhere else in the 8-bit world of the 70's and early 80's, but would that make so much of a difference? I would think the ColecoVision advantage would lie somewhere in the video processing. Didn't ColecoVision use the same Texas Instruments video chip that was used in the MSX series computers? I could understand the superiority of the Atari ports if they were porting from Atari coin-op games, but Pac Man was Namco and I forget who did Galaxians - but I don't think it was Atari, was it?
It's such a shame that Coleco botched their entry into the home computer market so badly with the Adam. If it hadn't been plagued with so many problems, and had not entered the market at the time of the big videogame market crash, it might have developed into an awesome game development platform. There never was a floppy drive for the Adam, was there? And did they ever release an assembler for it? As I recall, the Adam was unique in that it was one of the few home systems that didn't come with a BASIC interpreter - the "pack-ins" were a word processor and the Buck Rogers game, right? And the power supply was in the printer?
I enjoy playing ColecoVision games using an emulator, but I'm skeptical of attempting to get into original hardware. I've heard of so many bad experiences with the controllers failing, and with the game cartridges being so rare compared with 2600 games, it doesn't seem like it would be worth the investment.
Do my observations seem correct? Or am I talking nonsense?
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Hey, I LOVE this game! Great job! The aspect of the enemy ships getting behind you is really interesting. As to the newly added graphics for my ship, I find that I'm so focused on the targets ahead of and behind me, that I don't really have time to look at my ship and see what it is doing when I stop and reverse or go forward. I suppose for someone watching while I play it is an enhancement. But anything more you add to the game is just extra icing on the cake of and already great game.
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It might be pretty good once the Sims stuff is added:Wow, a thread from August of 2007... ...I guess I should probably search the existing topics before reopening one that's already been done. Along with the addition of the Sims objects, it looks like they're planning on integrating the Java language (...or at least provide some kind of translation/mapping of Alice constructs) to Alice, to make it more useful beyond the teaching environment. I have experience in C++, Delphi, and Java, which are all object oriented languages; so it's basically different syntaxes trying to solve the same problems. Of course, none of this is of much use in programming for Atari computers or consoles. I salute all you 6502 assembler programmers out there. That is a truly awesome skill.
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A recent "Prime Time" television program on ABC featured Randy Pausch, a professor of computer science who is dying from cancer. While the TV program focused on his outlook on life, and his delivery of his philosophical "Last Lecture", his story also brings to light a method of teaching programming concepts that is a part of his legacy.
There is a promotional video and demonstration here: http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=what_i...e/what_is_alice
<rant>
The promotional video quotes statistics such as "Incoming computer science majors declined more than 60 percent between 2000 and 2004". They are trying to make the case for the way computer science is taught. However, I think the fact thatunemploymentamong college-educated professionals (...the majority in technical or technical management fields) increased by300%during that same period might have had something to do with that. Also, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates for the most in-demand professions shifted from having three computer-related careers in the top-10 in 1999 toNOcomputer-related careers by 2002. The computer-related careers were replaced by increased demand for such exciting careers as waiter, cashier, nurse, and elementary school teacher.This is all rather personal for me as I, as well as my two college-educated younger brothers, were all unemployed for a good portion of 2002.</rant>
Anyway, the Alice programming environment teaches object-oriented programming concepts by being coupled to 3D rendered visual environments with objects in them. The programming is done by dragging and dropping instruction constructs into a sequencer, and making selections of numeric values from drop-down lists. This makes it so the student "can't make a mistake", which is apparently supposed to reduce the frustration associated with learning programming in traditional ways.
I'm wondering about the source of the rendered environments. If there are tools to create these included in the Alice system, it might be useful for prototyping Atari type games by creating simple graphics to be manipulated from an overhead view. Doing that might even be useful for teaching the concept of separating presentation from program logic; the same logical control "engine" should work for moving objects in the same way, whether they are immersed in a 3D rendered world, or simple two dimensional objects viewed from overhead.
Any thoughts?
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Greetings Greg,
I love the ProSystem emulator. Thank you for your work on this.
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While I agree with the sentiments voiced here that if you are skilled enough to program for PC, you could probably learn BBasic programming, I would be fine trying out new games with a classic look written for the PC. I hope you're talking about sharing freeware as a hobby though and not a commercial enterprise. One big advantage to posting ROMs as opposed to executables is that there is less of a trust-factor required, since it is a lot easier to smuggle malicious code in an executable than in a ROM file. Best of luck to you in whatever you decide.
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I see that GameTap has Atari 2600 games available for their download-able player. What's the deal with that? Are they PC conversion ports? Do they have a proprietary emulator? Is GameTap set up in such a way that you can play Atari 2600 games against other players?
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The funny thing is, I think the reason I like the Atari (or classic arcade games for that matter) is BECAUSE of the lack of depth in most of it's games.
I just don't have the time or patience anymore to play a game for hours on end. Even Super Mario Brothers or Sonic the Hedgehog just can't hold my attention span anymore.
I TOTALLY agree with this sentiment. Back in 2001, I played Half Life for 30 minutes a day during my lunch break over the summer, and it took me three months to get through the game in God mode with a walk-through. With the old 2600 games, I can clear a couple screens of Space Invaders or Asteroids - maybe playing with some of the variations from the numerous hacks, and I'm satisfied.
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In the arcades of the mid 1970's there was a black-and-white version of this game for up to four players, with AI opponents rounding out the competition for however many less than four were playing. I think it would be interesting to have one and two player versions with the addition of two more AI opponents; each using slightly different strategies. I wish I could remember the name of th coin-op game; the KLOV search isn't very helpful if you don't know a title word that is at least close to what the real title was. I'm sure it was not called "Surround". I thought it was an Atari game but it might have been a Kee game.The screen I remember in my faded memories was a light gray, with the different players displayed as white, darker grays, or black. But my memory might just be wrong on this. Even now, I sometimes switch my Atari to B&W mode when I play Surround to try and recreate the arcade experience. I may have convinced myself that the image created doing that is like what I saw in the arcades...
Well, not knowing the actual game I was trying to remember was driving me nuts. I think I've found it though. I'm pretty sure it was "Checkmate" by Midway. I was playing the awesome Cybergoth Galaxian hack today and I started thinking about a time around 1982 when I played Galaxian on a neighbor's Bally Astrocade system. I was looking for screen shots of the game to compare with how good some of the Galaxian hacks have been getting when I saw a screen shot of the port of Checkmate to the Astrocade. So I did a search on the KLOV for "Checkmate" and found this screen shot.
The game description says, "This game can be played by one to four players. A one-player game is played against three computer players. After coins have been deposited, you press the proper "number of players" button to start the game." This was what I remembered about the way the game worked, so I'm pretty sure the mystery is solved.
In my mind I thought it was an Atari game, but I guess the reality is that I "wished" for it to be an Atari game. I was so oriented towards all things Atari that it was just hard for me to face up to the reality that there were any other companies competing with Atari at all. But now I find that the Bally/Midway coin-op games of that era were Z80 based, as was the Astrocade home system. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the Z80 CPU because of my memories of my first encounters with Radio Shack's TRS-80 computer (I can still remember the way the thing smelled!). So I guess now I can put everything in perspective and be at peace once again.
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It just seems appropriate to have a port of the original video game on the original video game system.I don't think it could be done on the Odyssey, though Interplanetary Voyage is pretty good.
I know you're making the point that the Odyssey preceeded that Atari VCS, and I respect that. It is unfortunate that it seems that Ralph Baer has never really gotten the amount of respect he deserves for his work in bringing the video game experience into the home. But I feel like Nolan Bushnell isn't really well known outside of the world of enthusiasts like those here either. Mention the name "Nolan Bushnell" during casual conversation with any group of non-retro-gamers and you'll get blank stares. The same can also be said of Philo Farnsworth with respect to television.
I think what I'm trying to do is establish linkage between Bushnell's first attempt - Computer Space; a commercial failure, and one of his greatest successes - the VCS (...which admittedly, he didn't really personally have a whole lot to do with). But it's like, the beloved 2600 VCS owes its existence to Bushnell taking a chance, and working to develop a form of entertainment that the technology really wasn't yet ready for (...it would have made far more sense to wait for the microprocessor to be readily available, and to have designed the first commercial coin-op games around one of these CPUs, like the 6502 or the Z80.).
But the fact of the matter was, Bushnell couldn't wait. He was impatient. He knew that it wasn't commercially viable to develop a coin-op arcade game around a million-dollar general purpose computer, but if he could just work the logic out, and architect it around discreet TTL circuit chips, he could introduce the public at-large to the excitement that was being shared by a small cadre of University computer nerds who were getting the opportunity to play Space War on a PDP computer.
It's just an incredible wonder that the damn thing worked at all. It was one of those seminal historical events - like when Bill Gates wrote that BASIC interpreter program for an Altair 8800 - a computer that he didn't actually have access to. Gates has persisted the historical nod to himself in making sure that the BASIC programming language has always been a big part of Microsoft - from the GW BASIC that was distributed as part of every MS DOS installation, to including it as a scripting language in MS Office software and the IE browser, all the way up to the present with Visual BASIC .NET.
It's a little bit like when the Disney Company re-gained the copy rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. He wasn't a successful character for Disney and was actually a tremendous source of frustration and discouragement when Disney lost ownership of the character and had to come up with a new character - Mickey Mouse. But without the hope for success that was started with Oswald, Disney wouldn't have had the realization of success that came from Mickey. The Disney Company is now distributing Oswald cartoons on DVD - not expecting it to be a successful commercial enterprise, but because it's a part of their legacy, and it should be there as part of the Disney story.
So it is with Computer Space and Atari. Computer Space wasn't the fulfillment of a dream - but the first step towards it. In the years from 1977 to the crash in 1983, Atari was THE name in the video game business. Their slogan, "Have you played Atari today?" was a way of putting the branding stamp on something the way that people say "Make a Xerox copy" or ordering a "Coke" instead of saying "I'd like whatever brand of Cola soft-drink your establishment sells along with my Taco Bell meal...". "Playing Atari" was synonymous with playing video games. And in 1978 if you were "playing Atari" at home, odds were it was on an Atari 2600 VCS console.
Thanks for participating in this thread.
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In the arcades of the mid 1970's there was a black-and-white version of this game for up to four players, with AI opponents rounding out the competition for however many less than four were playing. I think it would be interesting to have one and two player versions with the addition of two more AI opponents; each using slightly different strategies. I wish I could remember the name of th coin-op game; the KLOV search isn't very helpful if you don't know a title word that is at least close to what the real title was. I'm sure it was not called "Surround". I thought it was an Atari game but it might have been a Kee game.The screen I remember in my faded memories was a light gray, with the different players displayed as white, darker grays, or black. But my memory might just be wrong on this. Even now, I sometimes switch my Atari to B&W mode when I play Surround to try and recreate the arcade experience. I may have convinced myself that the image created doing that is like what I saw in the arcades...
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Bump...
I did a search for "Computer Space" in the thread titles for Atari 2600, and this was the only thread that I found. I also found nothing in the "Homebrew" forum. I'm hoping that anyone who is interested in the original arcade game has seen this web page where you can download a simulator program. It isn't available on MAME, because this game was created before the age of microprocessors and had no CPU. I agree with the sentiments of the previous posts that while this game was not a success, there would be some merit to bringing it to the 2600 platform. I also agree that the graphics on Suicide Mission seem to come close to the "feel" of this game.
While it is true that the PDP game "Space War" was the inspiration for Computer Space, and it motivated Nolan Bushnell to try to figure out a way to bring this kind of game experience out of the university computer departments to the masses, Computer Space was a very different game. It was originally a solo game (...interesting, because the first video games to become "hits" were two-player), although a two-player version was added later.
I remember the first, and only time I played it on real hardware - it was a couple years after Pong had come out; although Computer Space was first. I remember dropping my quarter and placing my fingers on the buttons... ...it seemed like the saucers pounced on me immediately and before I knew what was happening, I was being blasted repeatedly and spinning around hopelessly. And of course, the whole experience was over in the allotted 90 seconds of game play. At the time, of course, I had no concept of "screen wrap" and so I was unable to employ the kinds of strategies that I can use today to defeat the saucers soundly when playing the simulator version.
I'm hoping that someday there will be a 2600 version of this game. It just seems appropriate to have a port of the original video game on the original video game system. It seems to me that a ROM with game variations could present something close to the original as "game 1", and then variations could be added to make the game more playable. That way we could recognize the historical nature of the game, while providing another fun homebrew for the 2600.
Thanks for reading,
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In the arcades of the mid 1970's there was a black-and-white version of this game for up to four players, with AI opponents rounding out the competition for however many less than four were playing. I think it would be interesting to have one and two player versions with the addition of two more AI opponents; each using slightly different strategies. I wish I could remember the name of th coin-op game; the KLOV search isn't very helpful if you don't know a title word that is at least close to what the real title was. I'm sure it was not called "Surround". I thought it was an Atari game but it might have been a Kee game.
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First of all, kudos for bumping a 4-and-a-half-year-old thread... ...better than bringing it up as a "new" topic only to be a repeat of a prior discussion.
I always liked the swaying Centipede.my favorite was by far journey escape. i used to listen to it for hoursStarmaster or Star Raiders...with the moving starfield. Quite relaxing.Runner-up: Jr. Pac Man...nice attract-mode gameplay.
I agree with all of these - great attract screens. I'd like to throw in Crystal Castles. It uses a cool font and retains the final score of the most recent game and alternates to show the first level play field. It's very "arcade like".
How about Strat-O-Gems (with AtariVox) or Toyshop Trouble? And I look forward to seeing what people think about Stella's Stocking.Well, if we're going to include homebrews/neo-retros, then how about Xype's "Gunfight"? It has the computer-controlled gunfighter running around the screen while the logo scrolls. Plus, not only does it play the entire tune of "Ring of Fire", but if you hit your fire button instead of "reset", you can "play" the attract screen, with the Xype logo as an obstacle on the screen to shoot around. How cool is that?
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Hi Happymonster,
I'm a professional Windows programmer so I have an appreciation of the thought and work that goes into game programming for any kind of system. I just downloaded your game and I'll give it a try. Don't be discouraged by the somewhat cold response you've received so far. From what I've seen in the forums here over the past year that I've been a member, there are so many projects going on at once, with some really amazingly talented people churning out these games that push the hardware of the 30 year-old VCS so far beyond it's originally designed capabilities... ...I think it makes it hard to compete for attention.
But I also think there are a lot of friendly, considerate people here as well, who will offer encouragement and support for anyone interested in extending the legacy of the original video games that we grew up with.
I've seen many helpful and encouraging posts here for new programmers trying to create something for the VCS using Batari BASIC, or getting down and dirty with 6507 assembly language and understanding the TIA chip.
There have also been discussions of homebrew programming for non-Atari systems like ColecoVision here, so you shouldn't be made to feel like an outcast for trying to create something with the "feel" of a vintage video game, just because you're developing it on a system that you're already familiar with. Every time a programmer makes a move from a system and language that he/she already understands, to something different - be it something new like .NET or Java, or 1970's era 8-bit hardware, it is YASTL - Yet Another Syntax To Learn.
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Having seen how well the CV nailed the ports of arcade games like Donkey Kong and Galaxians, I'm really surprised at this version of Pac Man. The Atari 7800 version is much closer to arcade in both play and look. It may be unfair to criticize it in the prototype stage, but it would have been much better to have left black space on the sides of the maze to get it closer to at least a square, rather than using up all of the horizontal space in the landscape screen orientation that differentiates all home versions from the arcade version.
The CV version of Donkey Kong gets a lot of praise for its fidelity to the coin-op version - some of it unearned as has been discussed here previously. But the look and motions of "jump man" (I don't think he was known as Mario yet) along with the dead-on sounds contributed to that special feeling that you were saving 25 cents every time you hit that reset button.
Wasn't there a homebrew programmer working on a new port of Pac Man for the CV using original Z80 assembly source code from the MAME version?
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...However to have a new machine that will do modern things AND LAUNCH AN OLD CLASSIC HOME & GAMING SYSTEM might make many sales. How does a $200 notebook sound? Terrific. And if it runs Atari 8 bit programs is sounds even better!Whoever said the OLPC project is similar to what we felt in those early days was on to something.
<>< Redbeard
I said that... ...thank you for the compliment.
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Interesting.And completely different from our top 100 (total downloads and hits) lists:
http://www.atarimania.com/top100.php?TYPE_...n_sauver=Search
http://www.atarimania.com/top100.php?TYPE_...n_sauver=Search
Hey Rom Hunter,
Any chance you could make zip files of the ROMs from all three lists available from your Atarimania site? Say on your Total Collection download page? I've downloaded your collection (which is awesome, by the way...) but in actual practice for playing the games, it makes a lot more sense to have a folder with just the games I'm interested in playing and point Stella's .ini file there. I've assembled such a folder with all the FB2 games in it, so I have a "Virtual Flashback 2" along with my real one. I've noticed some games on all three lists that I don't think I've played before (Frostbite?) -- if there are that many players who consider these games among the best, I think I should at least give them a try.
Thanks,
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I love reading about the details of history like this. I very much enjoyed the Gamasutra article and the posts in this thread. Thanks everyone for contributing.
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While I think we can all agree that the term "home brew" is not likely to go away anytime soon, would there be any point in throwing out some suggested alternatives? We've seen "Independent Release" as one suggestion. How about "Neo-retro game programming"?
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Wow, they look so pretty when they're all shiny and new...
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...Anyone who sniffs and scoffs that bB games can't possibly be considered "real" 2600 games should take a look at what was accomplished with this. Then they should jump into traffic......I'm laughing... ...but only because it's true!
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Sayton is THE LORD!
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I want to throw in another vote for Space Invaders. The multiple options of playing it with two players represents a rare moment where the home game version actually surpassed the arcade version from which it was derived. I would also like to add a vote for 2 player and 4 player paddle games such as Video Olympics and even Street Racer (Scoop ball and Tandem Skiing... ...how cool is that?).
And then there's the ultimate multi-player paddle-controller game: Medieval Mayhem. Not only can you play it with 1, 2, 3, or 4 human players, the advanced menu options let you decide where to put the human/computer opponents and you can give the human players an advantage by restricting the computer players from being allowed to "catch" fireballs.
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Which Atari 2600 game is the the best programming feat?
in Atari 2600
Posted
I think he was talking about the way the entire screen flashes different colors in-between moves while the computer is "thinking". With the 4K limitation, the programmers just plain ran out of space to do anything cool like show an animated chess clock or something. Also, blasting the solid colors to the screen doesn't take a lot of CPU time, so the CPU can be dedicated to running through the move algorithm to pick the next move more quickly while the screen is flashing.
According to the AtariAge game description, bank-switching techniques were first explored in response to the need to create a video-chess game for the 2600 (...apparently mandated by a court decision). According to the Wikipedia entry (...which denies the validity of the court decision story), this was also the source of the creation of the Venetian Blinds technique.
IIRC the game cart was quite expensive when it first came out - in the neighborhood of $50. Anyone else remember it that way? I don't think I've ever been able to beat the computer, even at the easiest level; although I don't consider myself to play at a level much above novice. Anyway, I much prefer the Chinese version of Chess, the Elephant Game or "Xiangqi" (Syang-Chee). While it is technically the most popular board game in the world, it doesn't get a lot of attention in the Western world. It is difficult for me to find opponents; most people of European descent have never heard of it; Asian players are either so skilled that they easily crush me, or don't want to play me to risk the shame of losing to a "round-eye". But I enjoy playing against this freeware Windows version.