DanOliver
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Posts posted by DanOliver
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That's a hoot. First I say I never heard Cosmic Combat while at Apollo and there's Leeza Gibbons saying it in front of me on video...shows what I remember. I certainly was never in the loop by any means.
I have a different impression than many things in the video. I remember distributors not being able to get enough Pacmans and our sales people saying "we have a Pacman like game" and then asking Steve to make one to fill the orders. And when Steve is holding a drawing of the Lockjaw screen I think the game was brought up first and then the drawing was done for packaging. The video makes it seems like there was some kind of design process and I don't think that was really very accurate. I do think some exec had the idea of Lost Luggage but to me the real design happened at the keyboard by Ernie. It's one thing to say "a game about a luggage carousel going crazy" and actually making a game on the 2600.
At 1:23 I believe the woman in red was Pat Roper's sister. Seemed very level headed and the few times I spoke with her I walked away hoping she was controlling things somewhat behind the scenes.
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No, "Cosmic Combat" was a working title for the game Guardian, as stated above in post #2.
No, I'm not claiming Cosmic Combat wasn't used sometime after Space Cavern came out. I'm claiming I wasn't at Apollo after Space Cavern came out and therefore have no idea whether or not Cosmic Combat was used for anything after that period. I will defend by ignorance with gusto.
I am responding to post #1 about whether or not Cosmic Combat was any kind of title for Space Cavern. I have no response to post #2 because I don't know anything about Guardian.
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I should add I left Apollo right after Space Cavern so Cosmic Combat could have been used after that.
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I never heard the name Cosmic Combat at Apollo. At the time Space Cavern was made there really wasn't what I would call a marketing department. Just Pat and Ed. I assume Pat came up with Space Cavern. I also assume they came up with the name at some point when I had a screen up, black background, creatures kind of looked like something in a cave, hero in white looked like a space dude. For sure the game wasn't developed to be space or cavern based. The characters looked liked they did because that was the best I could to do.
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Would like to buy or lease a frob card that goes into an Apple II. Acts as a RAM cart for the 2600. I'm a developer not a collector so I'd be happy to return the frob when done with a game.
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Wickeycolumbus's post #9 has a great link to a frob thread.I use and iPad with DOSBOX for some developing. I wonder if most of your setup could be duplicated with an emulatior. Not entirely sure what a frob card is.
I know emulators can be amazing but I've always stayed away from them for development. I don't even like web development that much because I have so little control over what this or that browser will display. It's just too limiting. Too much time making code work with the emulator rather than pushing the platform. Rob Fulop might not had found his star field trick used in Cosmic Ark if had been using an emulator (not that they existed at the time).
But I think it depends on what a person is writing. I generally do end user apps so I try to stay as close to them as I can. If I could I'd like to be writing the app in their house on their machine while wearing their clothes.
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I did like typing on them. Wonder if that would still be true today? I liked that they were pretty darn portable, really thick case compared to the sheet metal cases but still light.It would be awesome to write a game with a retro setup like that
Agree Apples were comfortable to type on.
I don't think I ever did a bank switched game. I think only 4K games. Could the frob handle bank switched carts? I'd be surprised if it did.I guess you coded each bank as a seperate assembly file?
VentureVision.Awesome that you wrote your own Assembler at AdventureVision; you used this instant Assembler afterwards at Atari in lieu of theirs or did you use both sets of tools?
At Atari I was writing Final Legacy for the Atari 800 and 5200. I can't remember exactly, pretty sure on a VAX and downloaded I don't remember how. That was all Atari's stuff.
The 2600 work on Telepathy was kind of out of the blue. Our group wasn't tasked to write for the 2600 so we didn't have any equipment for that. I never even saw any Atari 2600 manuals. I'm sure my boss Chris Horseman could have made an Atari development system appear in short order but I would have had to come up to speed on that and there wasn't a lot of time. It was just pure luck that I'd finished Final Legacy and had about a month to mess around and one thing I had done was bring in my Apple system and I was getting it to target a 800/5200. I'd gotten a 512K RAM to make that work. So when asked if I could do a demo for the MindLink I just happen to be all set up and ready to write code.
It was cool because of an instant turn around so fast it was like having a graphic editing system. Instead of drawing sprites on graph paper I could code it, see it, change, view almost like drawing. I could tweak pixels and colors way, way more than I'd ever consider burning EPROMs. So not only could I write code faster I could try way more stuff and make a better game. Telepathy only took a week or two but it was like 2 months worth of development the old way. A real bummer that was the last project I got to use that system. Finally a perfect development system and then have to move on. If I could have done one or two more 2600 games with that system and a reasonable deadline...who knows.
Later I did (I think) an instant assembler for the 65816 while at Apple working on the IIGS. Another guy in our group, Rob Turner, wrote one too. I think his was better, further along. I think we were comparing our build speeds. But once again we never got to use it for very long as new Macs were out, IIGS was spinning down, time to move on.
It amazes me we don't have instant C++ compilers today. Certainly we've had more than enough horse power for a long time. With the number of programmers in the world, the amount of time they spend waiting around and the money that costs companies, they could afford to pay $30K for an instant compiler and still come out a head. And get better products too. In almost ever other industry they've modernized. Not programming. More stuff, more features, more complexity, able to write fatter and fatter apps, sure. But productivity...I don't see any great leap. Builds get slower and slower. Seems like basically the same deal it's always been. But I think programmers are OK with it, more time to mess around. So little chance of an instant compiler catching on.
No question though that I consider writing Telepathy on that system the absolute apex of app writing for me. Never thought of this before but that development system was like a Mind Controller. As fast as you could think of an idea it appeared on screen.
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Yes, $495 I saw in an ad someone posted. In those days $495 for something like that was a steal. And it was a very nice design and well built. At the time I think they might have been better off charging more, like $2-3K. It was such a limited market. Anyone writing a 2600 game then could sell the game for a lot of money so the cost of something like frob would be well worth a lot more.
Seems like maybe they got into the same issue as Magicard. Amazing value but I guess they thought tons of people wanted to program. At that time I know companies were willing to buy stolen 2600 programming manuals for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But then Magicard comes out for $50 with what turned out to be a complete 2600 programming manual. I think every company that started making 2600 games at the time bought one copy of Magicard. They could have priced it a little higher. Brilliant engineers to be sure, but could have used some sales and marketing.
Sure wish I'd kept my Apple IIe and frob card, I'd be writing a 2600 game right now. But sadly I tossed them. Just too much stuff. I'll have to take another look around, but I'm not hopeful.
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I've never really been interested in having old systems, not enough space. But I must say remembering frob...I now want one. And the Apple II was a beautiful machine to program.
The name Cromemco doesn't ring any bells, but I don't think I ever used one so I wouldn't know. I actually thought they were called Stella because I didn't even know the 2600 was called Stella until recently. Maybe someone called it Stella because there was a Stella in side. Would be interesting to find out what that box did. It was as big as a TV but seem to just act as a RAM card.
I learned the 2600 by reverse engineering and the manual from Commavid, so never saw the term "Stella".
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That picture of Steve Woita has a big box to the left of the TV that I think is what the VAX downloaded code into. I don't think I ever got to use one. I did write 6502 on Atari's VAX I think for the 800...but can't remember.
At Apollo we wrote code on an Atari 800 and used Atari's Assembler cart to compile. Then we burned EPROMs to test code. As I was leaving Apollo they had a hardware guy designing a RAM card type deal.
At VentureVision I wrote code on an Apple II using an assembler I wrote. I called it an instant assembler because the compile time was about 1 second. But I still had to burn EPROMs to test.
At Atari for Telepathy I used my Apple II system, with a 512K RAM drive (like $1000) using some RAM card in the 2600. So instant compile, instant download = sweet development system...just hope the power doesn't go off. The "some RAM card" I'll bet was a frob..thanks Wickeycolumbus, I'd forgotten about that. I remember it now as being the most unbelievably advanced piece of hardware ever created. Just seeing the name again made my knees instantly buckle. I doubt seriously you could have a better 2600 development system today using modern computers.
At Atari we had logic analyzers to help debug code. They weren't generally super helpful, but for certain bugs they were great. I think I was told they cost $60K.
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SpaceChase. Is there a game with a better explosion sound?
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You are deeply confused over what an interest in doing games is and what covering your ass is. At the very start I'm sure they did keep some people to "do games", but only because they bought a huge company with buildings and buildings full of product. I don't think it would be very bright to fire every single person and then try and figure it out. The kept a few and pretty quickly figured out they weren't needed.
A couple of emails is not the same thing as actually doing games or having any kind of serious interest in games.
Not really sure why you want to believe all that stuff, but enjoy it.
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They sure hid it very well indeed.
Trying to get game developers to stay? I'm pretty sure every single programmer that stayed and worked on the ST were game programmers. There were a few game programmers that they had stay as "contractors", and they were charged rent for their cubes. That may have been an exaggeration by the contractors, I don't know what was in the actual contracts. But those programmers just used the time to find their next job. I don't know how long they stayed, I'm guessing a month max.
I don't know why the Tramiels kept them as contractors, perhaps they thought they could hire them out and take a cut. Maybe there was some royalty arrangement from previous Atari and the Tramiels wanted them to quit instead of be fired. No clue. But I'm 100% sure it wasn't to create games for Atari Corp, or even finish games that were almost done. Maybe some games to complete some contracts so they wouldn't get sued. Don't know.
After the ST shipped Atari had maybe a dozen game programmer still on staff, the people who worked on the ST. Atari owned a bunch of great titles, would have been a breeze to port any of those to the ST. Cost would have been almost zero since they were already paying us and some of us didn't have much to do after ST shipped. IMO a few good games on the ST would have help sell some systems, plus the profit on the games. Or even give away the games on the system. Not once was this ever suggested even in passing. The concept of doing any kind of game was completely off the table. So in mid 85 still zero interest.
Instead we created the rotating cube, Neochrome, ST Writer, a Finder, etc. Anything but a game. All those projects we did on our own. My feeling is if we got caught writing a game we'd probably be shown the door. To say the Tramiels weren't interested in games is actually an understatement imo. And I might add for very good reason. Hindsight is 20-20, but in 84, early 85, anyone who thought there was money in games was considered insane.
Nintendo showed the Tramiels their system in July or Aug of 84. I was in part of the meeting. Tramiels wanted nothing to do with it. And it would have been really cheap for them to have Atari games ported, or to be the US distributor, or do any kind of deal with Nintendo they wanted. Zero interest.
In 85 after the ST was tanking and Nintendo was doing well things changed I guess. I'd moved to Apple by that time but Atari did have me fix some bugs in Desert Falcon for the 7800 in 85 so they were starting to think maybe games could earn some money.
Believe as you wish. But good luck trying to convince me what I experienced was something different.
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Tramiels didn't want anything to do with any thing even remotely related to games in the beginning, just like the rest of us. I don't remember a single person who was left there ever saying anything about ever doing a game again. My impression was everyone thought the video game market was gone and would never come back. Even when the ST was released I don't remember a single person even mention doing a video game for it much less writing a single line of code. I think it seemed silly to everyone there to consider any game effort. It wasn't that MindLink was more silly than anything else in games.
It wasn't until later when other people showed there was serious money in games that it all started to look less silly to people at Atari Corp.
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I used to try and "help" CL posters with old typewriters I collect...most of the time profanity was the response, maybe a few death threats. I stopped. I think one of 2 things go on, they're dumb as a post, CL is perfect for them. They think you're dishonest for "helping", just trying to talk them down to "steal" their prize.
Also ran into sellers who's profanity was smart enough and worded to make me think they knew exactly what they were doing. I think that's pretty smart too. For every CL poster with an IQ of a grape there are 100 CL readers ready to fall for crap. Costs zero to post and any you don't get a lot of responses you have to deal with. Instead when the phone rings you have a pre-qualified sucker. I've meant lots of people who think if something is on CL it must be cheap and do no research.
I feel very old...I remember lots of people called game cartridges cassettes or tapes back in the day. These were people who never played games so they really had no idea what the deal was.
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Were you and Joe able to do this face to face or virtually? Going to work together on the next game?
I do think good game designers are naturally built, so experience isn't required, just a basic understanding of the platform is needed. Seems like most also are talented graphically, maybe it has something to do with being able to create and hold imagines in your mind.
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This I know but Ive opened other publishers games and they didn't have them.
It's purely a call each manufacturer made, even depending on the cart. For example Games by Apollo used shields because they saw other carts had them, so they just did the same. The shield isn't strictly something that's required for the cart to work. It only reduces risk of interference on the TV screen. Like maybe 10% of TV sets might be prone to EMI problems for many reasons and the shield could reduce that risk. EMI can be dealt with many ways. For example I believe the TV switch box that came with the 2600 has a ferrite core inside used to reduce EMI.
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Yes, kind of brain storming online, better than nothing. Tough though. I always wished to be able to team up with someone like was done on Myst, Super Meat Boy, etc. I think maybe 2 people can design a better game than one person. But also really tough finding someone that has the time, desire and I think it has to be done in person.
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Metal shields were used to reduce electromagnetic interference which could mess up the TV picture.
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Deal gone bad on Craig's List??? Shocking.
I used to buy a lot on CL and saw all kinds of stuff and heard all kinds of stuff from sellers too about flaky buyers. The only CL rule is that there are no rules...at all. Buyers are under no obligation to tell a seller their price is too low and sellers are under no obligation to hold anything for anyone. It's the wild, wild west. CL is full of all kinds of scams, for both sellers and buyers, a long with lots of very honest people. Personally I enjoy that aspect of CL. Part of the hunt.
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For game ports picking a fav from a list can work.
But for original titles I think the author is totally on their own. I like shooters, but not poorly done shooters. I don't like adventure games...until someone does one I love.
IMO a bunch of ideas in an author's head means their next game idea hasn't jelled yet. If you keep designing a single concept should emerge as something you just have to do. One thing I do is try to merge ideas and see where that goes. Even if it seems crazy. Maybe a new idea will emerge.
If you think players can be polled for the next great game idea I think you'll be disappointed. Many games were developed based on market research and didn't do very well. Has to come from inside you.
I tried recently to see if I could involve players in the design of a game...utter failure. Seems like it should work, sounds like it would be fun, but never seems to work out very well imo.
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I assume the 5200 version would be basically the same because I remember the port being very simple.
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Tweaks were done by me. I was the only programmer on the project.
I'm not sure where I picked up my version number scheme. I do like using dates as version numbers, I assume I just hadn't learned of that scheme yet. I do remember spending way too much time worrying about such silly things.
The sequential scheme has the advantage in theory that you have some idea about how many releases were made. I assume there was no 0.x version numbers. I would have started with 1 or 2, I'd guess 2. That scheme would mean at max I would have burned ROMs for 2.x, 3.x, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x, so 6 sets max, maybe some for release to manufacturing. It's very likely I skipped some of those numbers altogether. Just something I would have dreamed up, like "this seems pretty far along so I'll call this 5.3" type silliness. The minor number, after the decimal point, could likely be totally made up or if I screwed up a EPROM. Version numbers are more useful as the game is close to release when getting ready for release to manufacturing, don't want to screw that up. Did that on Space Cavern.
However, I think collectors and Archivists like Scott actually have a better handle on all this by looking at the carts themselves and comparing features. After all I thought Robert Wheatherby did the music for Final Legacy and it's been proven to me that it was Brad Fuller. Human memory is crap.
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Favorite game review.
in Atari 2600
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This review is better than the game.