Big_Mo

Hey all. Long time no type. I've recently been working on archiving all my old Atari era art and animation into modern formats, which includes things like Movie Maker animations from the 800 and Cyber Studio stuff from the ST. I'm going to be posting these videos online soon, but in the meantime I ran across the original Film Director demo called "BOY" posted on YouTube. Here it is. (This is not my work.) I'm hoping to be able to post the bulk of the animations for the promotional video I made for the product in the next few weeks. Relatedly, I'm also making a post about a Star Trek game pitch I did for Novotrade/Andromeda software in 1986, which was animated using the earlier European versions of Art Director and Film Director.

Back in 1986 I was reviewing the European editions of Art Director and Film Director, and the representative of Novotrade International (which made the programs) was interested in my ideas about game designs. It turned out he was trying to sell a title to Simon & Schuster's interactive division, which then held the videogame rights to Star Trek. Eager to impress, and being a childhood Trek fan.. I wrote a 16 page game proposal called "Balance of Terror", that brought the Romulans back in the movie-era. Then, to help sell the idea, I decided to mock up what the game might look like. This is where I went a little crazy. Armed with Art Director, Film Director, CAD 3D (1.0) and some other tools, I animated 4:20 seconds of simulated gameplay and also animated titles to go with it. Left image is actual resolution of 320x200 (x16 colors). Right is 50% resolution. The running Romulan was from a repel-boarders sequence. I modeled starships, rendered out "sprites", retouched then in Art Director, and then animated them in a cel animation style via Film Director. This game was rejected by Simon & Schuster, with the comment that they wanted a game that "didn't require hand-eye coordination". Whatever. Anywho, I recently converted all the old animation files to something I could edit in Final Cut Pro (preserving the original pixels), and I posted it to YouTube. This is pretty accurate to what it looked like when finished in 1987, but actually looks better than the videotape. The only concession I made to modernity making this 2010 reconstruction was to do a really full sound mix of the type I couldn't do in 1986/7. I wrote about it in my STep-1 column for ST-Log magazine in 1988. Click for the article.

Basically, the instructions cover it, but there are several minds on the best way to play the game. My advice, don't use the engines unless you have to (speed 0). Most of the time the Zylons come to you. If they don't you can always pursue with the engines. If they run like crazy and you can't catch them, hyperspace back into the same sector. The number of ships remains the same, but what they are and their behavior often changes. The instructions give you one major piece of bad advice: telling you to put an enemy ship in the crosshairs to get a target lock and hit them with both barrels at once. Great, except that makes it nearly impossible to duck their shot if they take a pot-shot at you. I swing my ship and puit the basestars right in front of a torpedo tube and just hammer them til they go boom.

On YouTube its Category is listed as "Comedy". How is a 2 bit audio sample comedy?

I have no idea why the manual says that, but one thing about Galaxian that most people don't realize... it appears WE are the Galaxians. The attract mode of the arcade game says "We are the Galaxians. Mission: destroy aliens" and then lists their point values. As to Galaga... Ga is "moth" in Japanese, so it's Galaxian+Ga = Galaga

I drew up a guide for this when I put mine in a few year ago, because the wiring of the ports was hard to follow. I even sent the diagram back to the manufacturer and said they were free to hand it out (guess they didn't). Unless the product was redesigned, this oughta be accurate.

Nice work! The presentation's a little 1979. Give Suduko's typically a pen and paper game, I'm a but surprised it's so blue! The HINT function is confusing, since it instantly wipes out wrong entries...but it happens so fast you don't register which ones went bye bye. This is escepially frustrating if you have one or two numbers you're really struggling with and they just vanish, so you can't even see what you'd entered. I'd suggest one of the following: A more targeted HINT that either checks the answer under your cursor and flags it wrong if it is, Or something similar to what you have now, but which flashes all the wrong answers before it deletes them, so at least you can realize what's happening.

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Although I'd played with other people's computers for a couple of years beforehand, around Christmas of 1984 I got an Atari 800XL with a 1050 drive to do graphics and animation on. Around May 1985 when the 130XE came out I bought that and upgraded...and also had a 2nd 1050. As soon as the 520ST hit the market I had one of those, and I was an early adopter of the Mega ST4.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...venge&st=25 Someone in that thread mentions a room with two skulls...but I'm not sure what he's referring to.

Ok, I'll bite. What's a hip/tip mode?

*From* Atari? I tried playing it. It's needlessly difficult even at the beginning. You have to figure out to jump out of ruts right at the start.

So, I just found this thread and I'm curious is this is the software I should use to try to get at the files on ST Floppies I have from my PC. I believe I backed-up everything to my PC a long time ago, but as I was going through the old discs I'm become concerned that I might have some discs that were not backed up.

Pretty cool! If I have pick a nit, the starfield looks weird because the foreground scrolls slower than the background. To make paralax looks correct the foreground elements need to move faster than the far background.

Hi all: I'm going through a lot of old equipment and software in the garage that I'm going to be moving out of my life, and amongst the Atari stuff I found a 1020 Color Plotter w extra pen nibs and a 1025 Printer. I Have a bunch of power supplies, but I'm not sure which ones those printers use. The 1025 looks like it as an oddball connector. Any hints? Also, anyone in the SF Bay Area who might want them? Can't guarantee if they work until I can resolve the power supply question, though.

I thought I had one, but I was mistaken. I have some of the XL era printers, but not the 822.

More or less. Albeit Zylonbane refers to the more recent 1999 and on usage of sub-pixel, years before that some of us old video game graphics guys used "subpixel" to describe moving images an increments smaller than one computer generated pixel via color shifting (a sort of sliding antialias). I took a starship from the DS9 Sega Genesis game I worked on and converted it to GTIA monochome, and then used this method to move it one GTIA pixel width over 4 frames.

I don't think "sub-pixel" means what you think it means. Then kindly tell me what you think it means instead of implying ignorance on my part.

Well, the program was definately a stronger paint program than animation program, but I remember Rambrandt allowed you to make small animations in the GTIA modes. Bob I recall having that program a billion years ago, but I have some recollection that I couldn't get it to work. The reason I ask is I had created GTIA images for a sub-pixel animation that I never had the chance to get animated on my XL.

Hey all: Does anyone know if there were ever any programs for animating in GTIA modes like GR. 9 or 11?

I was having a similar problem, and, as per your suggestion, I had to type out the full filenames, as in H1:README.TXT,D2:README.TXT, and then it worked. If I didn't write out the full filenames, I would get ERROR 165.

It's actually called CRUELIO.BAS, and was on the ANTIC monthly disc for October 1984... Attached! Antic_v3_n6_Computer_Learning_Magic.zip

Are you referring to the Cyber Bee from the Cartoon Design Disc that I created along with Andy Eddy? I bit of it is in the middle of this page: http://www.asterius.com/atari/designdisks2 I sure am. I loved those animations. I had most of them, and then discovered my disks were bad.. I have a bunch of SEQ files, including the Cartoon Design disc contents, and also another SEQ made with the Bee called BUZZBEE.SEQ. Attached is a ZIP full. Most of these are my work...one or two are not. ST_SEQs.zip

One problem with the idea of Star Raiders as a 5200 pack-in is that it's not an easy game to get the hang of, and while it was an "ooooh" for a lot of people, a lot of them just couldn't steer to save their lives. You'd have to have added a more "automatic" mode for beginners. No, the pack-in should have been something fun and easy to play...and should have been a real two-player to four-player head to head game.

Are you referring to the Cyber Bee from the Cartoon Design Disc that I created along with Andy Eddy? I bit of it is in the middle of this page: http://www.asterius.com/atari/designdisks2