VCS Game Poems

[ibogost]

Hey all. I've started a new project of very small form Atari VCS "Game Poems." These are a collection of tiny, weird 1k games that I make in a single day, more or less. So far I've got two done, and I thought I'd put up a web page while I work on more, over time.

 

http://www.bogost.com/games/game_poems.shtml.

 

This is, I know, very unlike most homebrew projects, but I hope there might be some interest.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Pretty unique.

[cosmosiss]

Heh, coffee drinking sim. I like it.

[ovalbugmann]

Interesting little programs, I will try them out on my Supercharger, thanks for making them available here. I have checked out your student's VCS games also. I've been intrigued by the VCS hardware itself since around 1980 and never thought the platform would be used to teach any programing classes . It's great that software development for the system has been done on such a wide scale by people around the world, and as a result the full potential of the VCS has been achieved with generations of programs and learning about the system. That's something not every platform has the luxury of; for instance the Sega Dreamcast and Atari Jaguar did not reach full potential with later waves of programs for those systems - because they were axed early in their commercial life.

 

It's great to have the abundence of various kinds of software for the old 2600 - which I might add is an basically an antique now at 31 years old. A true vintage computer entertainment device.

 

Great work Ian!, and it would have been cool to take a class like VCS programming to learn how to make a VCS program back in the eighties(if it had been offered) - glad it's happening now.

[+Nathan Strum]

That's a very cool concept. And you never know when something just might "click" and lead to some amazing, full-fledged game.

[ibogost]

That's a very cool concept. And you never know when something just might "click" and lead to some amazing, full-fledged game.

 

Yes, they definitely act as sketches, so to speak.

[ibogost]

Heh, coffee drinking sim. I like it.

 

And happily, white noise sounds enough like slurping

 

Based on some feedback I received yesterday, the coffee game needs a gameplay adjustment to really be winnable. I'll be posting a revision shortly; the new logic is in, now I just have to strip out 10 bytes or so of ROM to get back under my 1k limit.

[ibogost]

Interesting little programs, I will try them out on my Supercharger, thanks for making them available here. I have checked out your student's VCS games also. I've been intrigued by the VCS hardware itself since around 1980 and never thought the platform would be used to teach any programing classes .

 

(snip)

 

Great work Ian!, and it would have been cool to take a class like VCS programming to learn how to make a VCS program back in the eighties(if it had been offered) - glad it's happening now.

 

Thanks for checking out the students' work! There will soon be a cartridge collection of about 7 of those games for sale.

 

As for teaching Atari programming, something very interesting is happening in computing education these days... there's a tension between making learning programming more accessible through high-level languages like Python and Java and keeping close to the metal with assembly, C, and other low-level techniques. Real hardware, whether it's the VCS, the GameBoy Advance, or even the PlayStation 2 (Sony just announced a program to get devkits into universities), are a great way to reintroduce such things.

 

For me though, the VCS is a special platform worthy of study in its own right, thanks to its unique and weird design and its incredibly important influence on home videogaming.

[ibogost]

After something of a hiatus, I've completed another one of these 1k games. This one is called Thunderstorm and, unsurprisingly, that's also what it's about.

 

 

Now I just need to make one more in this series and I can put them together on 4k carts. Hopefully removing the duplicate initialization code will be sufficient for adding game select switch handling.

[ovalbugmann]

Thanks Ian! - the thunderstorm program looks neat! I will load it up with my Supercharger. I love the stuff your doing with the VCS. I finally got time to start reading Racing The Bean and am about 1/3 of the way through, it's really very interesting stuff and makes me want to turn off my Jaguar and play more VCS. I am going to download all your poems and student prorams and check them out on my H6er with the SC.

 

What do you and your students use to upload programs to the VCS? What was traditionally used to upload binaries to the vcs for programming? Did Atari offer a development system to programmers?

Edited May 14, 2009 by ovalbugmann

[ibogost]

I finally got time to start reading Racing The Bean and am about 1/3 of the way through, it's really very interesting stuff and makes me want to turn off my Jaguar and play more VCS.

 

Thanks for reading the book, much appreciated!

 

What do you and your students use to upload programs to the VCS?

 

Krokokart. Teh awesome.

 

What was traditionally used to upload binaries to the vcs for programming? Did Atari offer a development system to programmers?

 

You know, I once knew this and now can't find the answer. I know that the Activision crew had a pretty simple set up, which you can see in the old studio videos on YouTube. I think they used VIC-20s maybe? I'll have to get back to you on the original Atari setup.

[Glenn Jupp]

These "poems" are good stuff. Very unexpected, and makes the player get into a very different mindset from the usual.

 

I think there is a scanline count problem with Thunderstorm. On my 2600 Jr. (with Krokocart) the picture kinda rolls. Not a full roll, but the picture creeps up the screen about 1/6th of the way, jumps back down to where it belongs, then repeats.

[ibogost]

These "poems" are good stuff. Very unexpected, and makes the player get into a very different mindset from the usual.

 

I think there is a scanline count problem with Thunderstorm. On my 2600 Jr. (with Krokocart) the picture kinda rolls. Not a full roll, but the picture creeps up the screen about 1/6th of the way, jumps back down to where it belongs, then repeats.

 

Wow, I need to visit the forums more regularly. It took me a month to reply!

 

Thanks for this bug report; while I tested one version of Thunderstorm on my Krokocart, I'll admit that I haven't tested the one that's on the website. Looking at the Stella debugger, I see an occasional, regular 261 line frame. I'll check it out and fix it.