zhorton

Welcome BuckeyeFan_4eva! Our project (which is based at the University of Pittsburgh) is very much alive! The best way to get involved is to join the OdysseyNow Facebook group, if you haven't already. That's a space not only for news from our project, but also for general discussion of the Odyssey and its games.

We are readying our next release of newly developed Odyssey hardware and games: OdysseyNow Game Pack 2! The largest focus will be on hardware, as this will contain the most consequential hardware add-on in the Odyssey’s history. It will make new games possible, as well as have a major impact on many existing games. We call it the English Splitter. In the original Odyssey controller, three knobs and one button control every aspect of the player spots and the ball. The problem is that the human body only possesses two hands, and thus we can operate a maximum of two knobs simultaneously. This affects every Odyssey ball game, as the hand and brain must “switch gears” from controlling the Vertical knob to controlling the English knob (ball spin). This gap of time involved slows down the games. One of the greatest Odyssey ball games, Volleyball, is terribly hindered by this: there just isn’t enough time to lunge after the ball, hit it, then switch to the English knob fast enough to direct the ball over the net and then down into the opposite court. As a result, the game has to be played on a relatively low ball speed. The English Splitter is a device that plugs into your controller socket (there’s one for the Left and one for the Right; each is electronically equivalent but physically different). Each English Splitter is connected by a cable to a special English Controller, which contains one knob and one button. The Splitter also contains a duplicate controller port into which you plug your original controller. Thus when both Left and Right Splitters are plugged in, you will have four controllers in total. Each Splitter contains a switch that turns the English Controller on or off. When on, it takes over control of the English knob from the main controller (turning the main controller English knob will have no effect, but turning the knob on the English controller will give that player full control over ball spin). When the Splitter’s switch is turned off, full control is transferred back to the main controller. This way you will never have to plug and unplug your controllers and Splitters in order to instantly switch between classic and split modes. In addition, the yellow button on each English Controller allows the holder of that controller to serve the ball. This makes it possible for a single player to, for instance, return the ball to their own side without requiring possession of the other player’s main controller. This can be used in the original game Submarine or the OdysseyNow game Tannhauser Gate, for instance, to greatly ease gameplay. The English Splitter system can also be used to multiply the number of players from 2 to 4. Any ball game can now be played with 3 or 4 players, with English control transferred to a second player on each team. It can be used to great effect in nearly any ball game. Our new version of Volleyball, Team Volleyball, makes full use of this capability: Note: This image is a simulation. Our game comes with a half-height overlay. In addition to Team Volleyball, this game pack includes Danceoff, a new ball game that is meant to be played for the duration of one pop song. It involves attempting to “knock” the opposing side’s dancers off the dancefloor. This game can be played 2-player, but when played with 4 players using the English Controllers, it becomes a team dance in which one player defends the team’s dancers while the other goes after those on the opposing side. The dancers are plastic chips that are physically stuck to the overlay and removed as they are defeated. Before the game begins, players may either choose a pattern for their dancers to occupy or randomly generate their positions with two included, color-coded dice. The third game included in this game pack is a reproduction of the rarest of all original Odyssey games: Soccer. Soccer was only released as a bundled game with some European releases of the Odyssey. Because the Odyssey did not do well in Europe, and not many sets have been preserved, the game is almost impossible to find. We have lovingly reproduced the overlay, instructions, and dual-wheel scoreboard in all of their detail, allowing this game to be played by a new generation. Note, however, that our scoreboard is 85% of the size of the original. We had to made it slightly smaller to be cost effective to produce, and to fit in our tube box. The overlay is reproduced with filled-out corners for a rectangular shape, to better fit more contemporary televisions. However, the original rounded contour is preserved as a thin line in the overlay, so players may cut out the original shape if they wish. The English Splitter sounds deceptively simple, but inside it is anything but: the unique analog nature of the Odyssey makes simple pass-through circuits impossible, and multiple versions of this device failed before a year of development finally lead to the breakthrough (specially implemented diode logic) that made it possible. It is also very time consuming and expensive (using obsolete, discontinued components) to manufacture, or we would be able to make more and charge less! In order to get the most out of Team Volleyball (or even regular Volleyball), this Pack comes with a Wall Height Adjustment kit. This is an optional upgrade. It requires two solder points on the Odyssey’s motherboard, and some hot glue for the final adjustment pot. It is an easy upgrade to perform and comes with fully illustrated instructions. When used with the Team Volleyball overlay, you can adjust your wall height to exact spec. Most Odysseys are well out of spec for wall height, which can greatly diminish this game. This game pack confers a couple of advantages to Tannhauser Gate, for owners of OdysseyNow Game Pack 1. First, you can adjust the height of the open gate with the Wall Height adjustment. Second, the Scan player can utilize an English controller to return their ball without needing to reach over and utilize the Explore player’s controller. We have several more amazing games in development that make special use of the English Splitters. Those will appear sometime in the future. Because our last game pack sold out within a few hours of being posted, we’re trying to manage this release a little more equitably, in two tiers. The notice for the first 10 copies will be posted in the OdysseyNow Facebook group (only), to give that community the best chance of picking these up. We're letting everyone know this in advance, to give you time to join that group and turn your notifications on so you are ready. Once those copies are gone, we'll post elsewhere (such as in this forum). At that time, anyone who wants one will have to let us know (very briefly) why/where/who. We'll give it a few days to ensure that more people will know about this in time, then select the homes we think will be happiest, and then process payments. This will also help us get to know more of you better! We will produce only 15 of these sets in total. Stay tuned to the Facebook group for orders to open soon! https://www.facebook.com/groups/odysseynow/

Mikebloke, welcome to the Odyssey homebrew scene! I highly suggest you post this in the OdysseyNow Facebook group, a dedicated space for these kinds of discussions. This looks like it could become a great project! I'll offer more advice there about boards and overlays, but the short version is: overlays are the most difficult/expensive things to produce, so I'd suggest keeping it to just the combat overlay and doing the maps as boards or sheets. As for a physical copy and reaching more customers without huge shipping costs, we could potentially work something out with you in terms of producing and bundling this with an OdysseyNow game pack. That could make it much cheaper and easier for you, and you could set a fee for the game that would go to you for each copy sold. We would bear the costs of producing it, and set the price accordingly. But the quality would have to be up to our standards, etc. Anyway, just a thought, as our main mission is to encourage creative and boundary-pushing use of the Odyssey as a gaming platform.

These shipped out today! Thanks to everyone who ordered one! If you didn't get one and want to get advance notice for future releases, you may wish to join our new Facebook group (also a great place to discuss Odyssey games and systems): https://www.facebook.com/groups/odysseynow/ Please post any feed back on these games here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/289945-new-game-card-special-controller-and-3-games-for-magnavox-odyssey-1/

Thanks again, everyone! I didn't realize that these would go so quickly. For those of you who managed to snag one of these, we expect to ship in about a week, so within two weeks you should receive your game pack. When you do, we'd love to hear your feedback at the thread about this pack! For news about future developments, please join our new Facebook group! You may also want to follow this thread.

I'm closing new orders for now. Significantly more than 10 people have contacted me, but as of now, only 8 kits have been paid for. So there are two up for grabs among the folks I've contacted. I'll accept payment until midnight tonight (that's 6 hours from now) from anyone who has already contacted me. After that I'll cancel any outstanding invoices. If you contacted me and didn't receive an invoice, please let me know right away. If we end up with more than 10 payments and have to make an extra kit or two, no problem. If we end up under 10, I'll post here and open it up for others. Thank you for all of your enthusiastic interest! It's fun to hear from you all.

Make that 7...

6 out of 10 are spoken for already! You don't waste any time...

Thanks for updating this important thread! Our three announced games have now been officially released (at least in a limited set of 10 copies). See this thread.

Thank you all for your comments and feedback! We're very proud to be pushing the Odyssey platform further than it has been in 47 years. We're making 10 copies of this game and hardware pack available. For details, see this thread. Please keep this current thread focused on the games or their development.

To the Odyssey 1 (1972) community: I'm excited to be able to be able to release 10 copies of our new game pack for the Odyssey. It includes three brand new games, a newly designed game card with an attached controller, and the first ACC controller besides the original light gun. These kits are 100% hand-assembled. The overlays are full laser prints on translucent film; no transparencies (which do not display properly), no ink (which can smear), and no undersized or partial overlays. These are all the full, original Magnavox size for 19in screens. Note that we do not have the ability to manufacture 26in overlays. The Tannhauser Gate overlay includes a fully opaque element (the black hole), which is applied as a separate, opaque layer of special material to the back of the overlay. To learn more about the games and hardware, see this thread. To learn more about the OdysseyNow project, see this thread. The entire set of hardware and games comes in the following cylindrical case: Complete list of contents: OdysseyNow Game Pack cylindrical case Card 13 Card 13 Switch Controller Damocles Controller Damocles Controller power supply Tannhauser Gate overlay Tannhauser Gate instructions Tannhauser Gate cards (3 decks) Fukushima overlay Fukushima Meltdown Cycle card Fukushima instructions Super Cat and Mouse: Cheesy Castle overlay Super Cat and Mouse instructions Bonus Game: Trumpocalypse instructions Needless to say, nothing like this has ever been released for Odyssey before, and we are proud to push the platform forward, 47 years after the console's release! The price is $150 for the set, plus shipping. At only $50 per game, plus substantial new hardware, this is less than the other significant homebrews of the past. However, I am only releasing 10 copies, so this is an extremely limited release. I just want to get a few copies of our work out there for people to enjoy; we don't have the capacity or interest to manufacture large numbers. Any money we bring in from this release will go straight into further game and hardware development; we are not doing this for profit. All items have been manufactured and will ship within one week of your purchase. To purchase, PM me with your Paypal email address and shipping address and I'll send you a Paypal invoice. The first 10 payments received will get the set. Any others will be canceled/refunded. I'll update this post when all 10 copies have been sold. Thanks for your interest and support of the Odyssey!

Yes, @Flowmojo, that is exactly it! The putting controller was developed in 1967 during the prototyping of what was to later become the Odyssey, and the development team liked it enough to keep it around through all of the prototypes. They delivered it to Magnavox, but the Magnavox team decided not to produce it. The controller sat on the floor and basically had a golf ball on a short stick. Players would use a real putting iron to tap the ball, which would direct it around the screen. 1967 Wii Sports, indeed! We are exploring ways to bring this to life now.

Actually, you were correct originally: we are re-creating the Odyssey from scratch! We're just doing a lot of other things as well. I'm not sure if the rebuild will actually be cheaper, though we will release the plans for folks to build it if they like. There are so many components in an Odyssey--it is much more expensive to build today than it was in 1972! The cool think about our rebuild, however, is that it will incorporate all of our Odyssey upgrades. More on those soon... Active and multi game cards: We have been working on several new card designs, and some of them have onboard switches to change certain features. However, we've found that in most cases, switching a bunch of switches is a lot more tedious and slow than actually swapping cards. I think the Magnavox engineers got this one perfect: it's better to have multiple cards than a bunch of switches. I'm aware of the active cards Ralph Baer created, and maybe at some point someone in my lab, or someone elsewhere, will go ahead and re-create those or create new ones-- you should do it! We've been focusing on direct modifications to the daughter cards inside the console, because it can lead to more radical upgrades. There are only so many functions you can control from the card. But I definitely think that making a card that moves the line around would be a cool project! It's interesting that you mention the putting controller, because we are experimenting with exactly that! You must have read my mind! (Actually, you are full of ideas. Let me know if you'd like to collaborate with us.) The website hasn't launched yet. We are still working on a number of the gameplay videos for it. I'll definitely post here when it goes live, though!

Sylvan, good to hear from you! That's very interesting about the jumper. It makes sense: that would slave the vertical value (voltage) of P2 to the vertical value of the ball. I suppose that would be a good way to practice one's Tennis skills! Shawn, thanks for the suggestion. I may post something over there at some point. I just don't want to spam these forums! Anyone else is also free to share this wherever they wish, of course. I'm not much of a promoter--I'm just excited to be able to expand the world of Odyssey gaming. Quite a few people on the OdysseyNow team have worked for a couple of years to develop something really special for the Odyssey platform. It's a big moment for us to give the outside world a peek at what we've been up to! Thank you to those of you who have shown interest so far!

This is a fantastic thread for folks interested in Odyssey homebrews! @Dastari Creel, if you're willing to update your original post, I have a big announcement: the project I run is releasing a pack of three new games for the Odyssey that include two new accessory controllers and a new game card (#13!). These are elaborate productions that have been in development for about two years. You can read about them in this thread. For the purposes of this thread, the names of the games are: Tannhauser Gate, Fukushima, and Super Cat and Mouse: Cheesy Castle. If updating the list, you also might want to note that Captain Bruce was released, and the others were never completed, so can probably be safely removed from the list.

Hi folks, I should have linked it here sooner, but I've now started a thread in the Homebrew section about our first public release, a game pack including three new games for the Odyssey, as well as a new game card (the first one designed from the scratch) and new accessory controllers. You can read about it here!

We're working on a very limited release for this community. The challenge is reaching the currently very small Odyssey community! No dedicated forum on AtariAge, or anywhere else that I know of. Let me know if you have any suggestions about how to get the word out!

Indeed, I have both of your games. :-) Odball, however, used card #11, designed by Magnavox. They never deemed the card useful for any games, and therefore never released it. They did, however, release the schematic for it, which RevRob used to produce the physical card for Odball--a very cool project. Our card #13, on the other hand, is a completely new design.

I’m excited to show you the OdysseyNow Game Pack, the result of a lot of research and development at the Vibrant Media Lab that I direct in Pittsburgh. We’ve developed a brand new game card for the Odyssey (the first one not designed by the Magnavox team), a brand new accessory controller (the first created besides the original light rifle), and a set of three new games. This was all produced as part of the OdysseyNow project, which you can read more about in another AtariAge thread. Here’s a glimpse of the games… Tannhauser Gate In a remote wing of a remote galaxy, on the frontiers of cosmic knowledge, lies Tannhauser's Gate, a colossal directed energy beam fed by a spacio-temporal anomaly of seemingly ceaseless energy. On the other side of the Gate is The Expanse, one of the most mysterious and deadly regions of outer space yet discovered, a zone that seems to vacillate in its allegiance to the laws of the quantum to the laws of the galactic. Spacetime here seems to have a will of its own. Charybdis, a black hole, lies not far from the Gate, and is clearly related to it in some way. Crimson Maw, a mostly uninhabitable planet, nonetheless provides researchers in the area with an ample supply of both common and rare minerals. Unfortunately, the planet and its single natural satellite, “Odysseus,” are isolated from the gate by the massive parade of interstellar stone known as the Scyllan Corridor. Closer at hand, yet surprisingly more barren, is the planet Coronation. Because few minerals or supplies of interest can be found there, it is used mostly as a garbage dump. Such is the fate of even the most regal of mineral-poor planets. Multiple interstellar civilizations have sent researchers to the area, mainly in an attempt to understand the intergalactic wormhole that serves to connect this remote spot to the energy-rich Flywheel Galaxy via Quantum Refluctuation. While ostensibly a demilitarized zone, Tannhauser Gate is plagued by intense rivalry over the scientific knowledge that it provides to its sponsoring corporations, governments, and collectives. These researchers must uneasily share a moon base shielded by the Gate. To venture beyond its boundaries is to be bombarded with a relentless stream of dark particles. No shields can last for long. While an interstellar team of engineers has managed to harness the local energy flux to construct the Gate, its operation remains partially at the whim of the energy patterns that feed it, making the expanse beyond the Gate even more risky to explore. For this reason, the largest scientific collective to currently study the area has created a specialized, long-range scanning platform. Located safely behind Tannhauser Gate, it launches and receives C-beams capable of probing any form of matter. Their rivals, however, use replicant-manned spacecraft to explore outside of the Gate, directly. Take on the roles of the Scanner, Explorer, and Gate Keeper as you compete to complete your missions and disrupt your rivals. Will you be the one to discover the secret of Tannhauser Gate? Tannhauser Gate is a 3 player game that makes use of a newly designed game card (#13). This card includes an external Aux jack and a “Switch Controller” that attaches to it. The card generates the Tannhauser Gate. The switch controller opens and closes the gate. The Gate Keeper player draws a special Gate card at the beginning of each round, which contains a special gate pattern that must be followed. The Scanner player remains stationary throughout the round, but may send C-beams (represented by the Odyssey’s ball) through the gate to scan various objects in the expanse beyond. The Scanner draws Scan cards that provide specific assignments to carry out. Meanwhile, the Explorer must charge up their ship, activate their life support system, wait for the right moment, and zip out into the expanse, attempting to complete their missions (given on special Explore cards) and return to safety inside the gate before their ship is destroyed by the energy fields of the expanse. This is extremely risky, however, as misjudging the ever-changing rhythm of the gate could cause the ship to implode before it can reach safety! In addition to Game Card #13 and the Switch Controller, Tannhauser Gate makes use of the Damocles controller, the first Accessory controller for the Odyssey besides the light rifle. The Damocles controller plugs into the ACC port on the Odyssey. When Player 2 presses the large red button on its face, a countdown timer lights up and begins counting down. When it hits zero, it extinguishes your on-screen player spot. Its button also lights up red to remind you that you’re dead! A white “regen” button allows you to regenerate your ship when the time is right. In Tannhauser Gate, all three players are doing completely different tasks using completely different tools, yet all three interact in unexpected ways (the gate can bounce the Scanner’s C-Beams away as well as “lock out” the Explorer at a crucial moment, Scan missions can require the Scanner to scan the Explorer, and Explore missions sometimes require the Explorer to intercept C-Beams. The results ensure that no two games of Tannhauser Gate are the same! Fukushima Fukushima is the first-ever cooperative game for the Magnavox Odyssey. Two players are placed inside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and must work together to prevent the inevitable: a meltdown. Each player takes on a different role in the plant. Player 2 uses the Damocles controller to continually complete a Cooling Cycle, while also assisting Player 1 complete a progressively more difficult Maintenance Cycle, which involves directing the ball to specific points while also activating particular buttons at specific times. This would be enough of a challenge as it is, but a third player with a timer consults a Meltdown reference card and at the appointed times calls out various new disasters that the players must contend with. (Note: If you only have two players, you could also make a recording of the Meltdown Cycle and play that back during gameplay.) The game starts out easy, but gets progressively more difficult as you try to beat the clock to safely shut down the reactor before it fully melts down. Because the game has a delineated set of “levels,” you can easily track your progress. Your team can even compete against other teams for a high score (level achieved + time survived at the point of failure). No one here has been able to beat the game yet. Maybe you can? Fukushima is not only the first coop Odyssey game, but is also the first to utilize the “Wall adjust” control on the console itself. In this game, the wall represents the reactor’s containment barrier, which must sometimes be moved by the players to gain access. But be very careful: when the containment barrier is open, you must prevent the ball from entering the core or it will instantly melt down! Fukushima requires game card #13 and the Damocles controller. Super Cat and Mouse: Cheesy Castle At OdysseyNow, we are big fans of the underappreciated Cat and Mouse game on the Odyssey. We think that a fun concept and mechanic was undermined by substandard production design, and have decided to re-invent the game by giving it a proper setting: a medieval castle. Now, the mouse must collect cheese strewn about the castle by lazy humans, while avoiding the King’s fierce cat! As the King’s cat, of course, you must rid the castle of that peasant vermin.

Yes, an iPhone version of our emulator would be cool; we'll look into that possibility! But I have good news for you godslabrat: if we do, you won't have to pay a dime. Our efforts are open source, and always will be. We are only interested in bringing the Odyssey to more people, and helping folks understand the system better. Newsdee, this is the Odyssey 1. Yes, all logic is "baked" into the hardware, and you are right that game cards just interconnect circuits. However, there are over 40 different circuits that flow through the game card interface, which allows for a lot of different possibilities! Of course, not all produce interesting behavior. The original designers believed that they had exhausted all of the possibilities for machine behavior with their twelve card designs. But I've been able to design several new game cards that produce unique system behavior, which our game designers have used to great effect. And game cards do not equal games. Many very different Odyssey games use the same game card (basic system behavior). Overlays, cards, gameboards, etc. are all equally important to the Odyssey experience, and interact with the same system behavior in very different ways. And some games use multiple game cards. But yes, there are some pretty big barriers as to what's possible on screen. We have broken through some of those barriers by introducing add-on boards to the console. More on that soon! Thanks for that info, CatPix--very cool! On the Atari, the AI was similar to what you describe, but the tracking protocol was written such that certain cycles didn't track and the AI would just interpolate. So if you played a fancy game against the computer, it wouldn't be able to predict all of your moves, making it a pretty effective AI. We'll likely implement something similar for Tennis on the Odyssey. Other games will be more difficult. And of course, many Odyssey games are too complex for any reasonable AI to play (think Invasion, Interplanetary Voyage, Football, Brain Wave, etc.). If anyone wants to take a stab at those games, please join our team! :-)

We have talked about implementing some sort of low-level logic emulator for the Odyssey, but it doesn't really lend itself to an FPGA core because it is a fully analog system. It does implement some digital logic, but that is really simple, and wouldn't benefit from FPGA. Basically, the system functions more like an analog computer than a digital one. Our emulator cheats by simply simulating the behavior of the Odyssey. What it does not try to do--and this is important to the philosophy of the project--is try to emulate the analog components outside of the console: the overlays, cards, gameboards, analog controllers, etc. Our goal with OdysseyNow is to bring the experience of Odyssey gaming to more people, and digital graphics are not part of that experience. Besides, other projects have already attempted that in the past. Our emulator is fully compatible with all Odyssey analog components. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, it is meant to interface with the console itself, enabling some very cool possibilities. Of course, our emulator (Odyssey HAL) is only one part of the OdysseyNow project. Our new games, controllers, console upgrades, and future website are core to the project of conveying and further exploring how this unique system is played. We are taking great care not to dilute or bastardize the experience, a real danger when the digital starts to enter the picture!

Hi folks, I'm the director of the OdysseyNow project, and was pleasantly surprised to see someone post about it here! I started this project about 2.5 years ago here at Pitt, and we migrated to the Vibrant Media Lab (which I also direct) last year. You are all correct about the project: it is both an emulator and a hardware thingy, and a game design project, and an archiving and digitization project! We have collected and scanned all elements of all of the original games, and will make those available when we launch our website very soon. We've also filmed Let's Play videos of all of the games, to give people a much better understanding of why the Odyssey was unique and what it is actually like to play. As part of our project, we have reversed engineered the system, and are creating new accessory controllers and various updated circuitry to make the Odyssey do some fun things. This is in concert with a fair amount of game development. We'll be debuting some of the games we've created very soon as well. Finally, we are also developing an emulator that will be very faithful to the system and, if everything goes well, will actually interface with the 1972 console to realize (among other things), MrMaddog's dream of one-player games (vs. the computer). There's a lot to the project, and I'm happy to answer any questions anyone may have! A lot will be announced at our first big public event, Odyssey Expo, on April 5. After that point, many details will go online.