Redundancy in Pitfall

[Syntaxerror999]

Pitfall is one of my favorite games... its the perfect time killer because the average game lasts at least 10 minutes... but one thing that always bothered me is the redundancy in the traps. Did the game realy need a lake AND a tar pit (sic)? How about the snake AND the fire?

 

I never understood why activision did not give these respective traps their own characteristics; like making the snake move, or at LEAST appear on the opposite side of the screen... or have the fire occasionaly flare up, preventing you from jumping over it. How about the tar pit (quicksand...whatever) be a hole that sends you into the cavern below.

 

Not related... but some holes in the ground on screens other than cave access screens woulda been nice. (watch out for the hole when jumping off the vine...stuff like that)

 

Oppinions?

Edited December 3, 2010 by Syntaxerror999

[raskar42]

i'm gonna go with hardware limitations

 

 

anybody else?

hardware limitations?

[Pitfall Harry]

Pitfall is one of my favorite games... its the perfect time killer because the average game lasts at least 10 minutes... but one thing that always bothered me is the redundancy in the traps. Did the game realy need a lake AND a tar pit (sic)? How about the snake AND the fire?

 

I never understood why activision did not give these respective traps their own characteristics; like making the snake move, or at LEAST appear on the opposite side of the screen... or have the fire occasionaly flare up, preventing you from jumping over it. How about the tar pit (quicksand...whatever) be a hole that sends you into the cavern below.

 

Not related... but some holes in the ground on screens other than cave access screens woulda been nice. (watch out for the hole when jumping off the vine...stuff like that)

 

Oppinions?

 

There's only so much program you can squeeze into a 4K ROM. It was an astounding achievement at the time (1981) that a world with 255 jungle scenes could be created for an Atari 2600 video game.

[raskar42]

yeah! quit dissing the astounding achievement!

[accousticguitar]

I'm going with Pitfall Harry on this. There probably wasn't enough room in 4K. If Dave Crane had another 4K to play with he could have added in a whole lot more.

[bohoki]

I'm going with Pitfall Harry on this. There probably wasn't enough room in 4K. If Dave Crane had another 4K to play with he could have added in a whole lot more.

 

what bugged me is i thogut hey if it is a pit shouldnt i have fallen below into the undergound

[raskar42]

 

what bugged me is i thogut hey if it is a pit shouldnt i have fallen below into the undergound

 

it's not that kind of pit

[Syntaxerror999]

i'm gonna go with hardware limitations

 

 

anybody else?

hardware limitations?

 

Naturaly, but it only answers why they were not more traps, not why they needed two traps that do the same thing. My guess is that they wanted to give the illusion of greater depth in the game. and redrawing the same traps differently does accomplish that.

 

It doesnt matter, Pitfall is still one of my favorites, and pitfall 2 may have had way more stuff than the first game, but pitfall 1 is still a much better game.

 

PS anyone ever play Super Pitfall for the NES? The game was a flop, mostly cause it was REALY hard. Great game though if you stick to it (and learn the continue mode cheat). Heavily influenced by Pitfall 2. Altime favorite Pitfall game. (BOOOO to that crappy Pitfall Jr game on the SNES!)

[Crazy Climber]

When I was a kid I used to think that..."why can't Pitfall Harry have weapons" or "why can't there be crazy tribes of Aborigines chasing after me with spears" or "why can't the game look like regular tv shows do" "How come Dragons Liar looks so much better" etc.. The point I am getting at is I didn't know any better because I was 8 years old, now I know what the Atari is capable of it all makes sense. Crane did what he could and even more with what he was provided, also remember those guys were usually on time crunches. It's not like now where programmers get 3+ years to develop a game, they would get a few months to do it, all by themselves!

[davyK]

Aren't the levels generated by an algorithm from a sequence of numbers that is calculated on the fly? That's the only way Mr. Crane could have done it with the available resources - and it explains the duplicate placing of the enemies/traps and their similar behaviours...

Edited December 12, 2010 by davyK

[Ranthulfr]

Yes, the redundancy in "Pitfall" is completely unnecessary! I mean, what is that second "l" supposed to accomplish, anyway?

 

Naturaly, but it only answers why they were not more traps, not why they needed two traps that do the same thing. My guess is that they wanted to give the illusion of greater depth in the game. and redrawing the same traps differently does accomplish that.

 

The different-looking traps were probably a way to disguise the redundancy made necessary by hardware/memory limitations.

 

PS anyone ever play Super Pitfall for the NES? The game was a flop, mostly cause it was REALY hard. Great game though if you stick to it (and learn the continue mode cheat). Heavily influenced by Pitfall 2. Altime favorite Pitfall game. (BOOOO to that crappy Pitfall Jr game on the SNES!)

 

That was the game where you had the different keys (hearts, clubs, etc) right? I enjoyed that one for a while. The trap where the Easter Island head chases you really freaked me out the first time.

[Mirage]

 

what bugged me is i thogut hey if it is a pit shouldnt i have fallen below into the undergound

 

it's not that kind of pit

 

That's right, it's a portal and the other end is in midair.

[GreenDayRlz]

You can make screens with RLE compression the ROM for them, no need to remember the screens, just what objects have been collected. and in what order But who cares, it's a great game no matter what.

 

 

And IIRC, 6 weeks per game was the development time on average, not bad at all. ^_^

[Syntaxerror999]

Aren't the levels generated by an algorithm from a sequence of numbers that is calculated on the fly? That's the only way Mr. Crane could have done it with the available resources - and it explains the duplicate placing of the enemies/traps and their similar behaviours...

 

Best answer yet.

[+Random Terrain]

And IIRC, 6 weeks per game was the development time on average, not bad at all. ^_^

I thought it was 6 months, except for rush jobs like E.T.?

[GreenDayRlz]

Six months? I highly doubt that..... even with one man on the job, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 6 weeks=240 hours of work on a game. That is reasonable.....but 960 seems a bit high. I forget where I say that at, but I think it was from an article from Activisons programmers being interviewed. Maybe it was ET's interview, not sure, but it was from an interview I read.

[+Random Terrain]

Six months? I highly doubt that..... even with one man on the job, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 6 weeks=240 hours of work on a game. That is reasonable.....but 960 seems a bit high. I forget where I say that at, but I think it was from an article from Activisons programmers being interviewed. Maybe it was ET's interview, not sure, but it was from an interview I read.

Maybe Activision sped up the process, but this is what Howard Scott Warshaw said:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUKPZFva9JA&start=499

 

 

 

Here are a few quotes from the making of Atlantis video about the behind the scenes stuff going on at Imagic:

 

" In January, 1982, Dennis Koble hit on an idea . . ."

 

". . . by February, he has a primitive version ready."

 

"Dennis Koble's major concern is still Atlantis, which by March, is beginning to take shape."

 

"In May, Koble has a prototype ready."

 

That seems to be around 4 months.

 

 

This video says that it takes months and months to design a game from the initial idea to the time when it's tested:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3x6Idp8oT0&rel=0&fmt=35&showinfo=0

 

 

Steve Kitchen had to do research for a year and a half before he could distill the important aspects into his Space Shuttle game:

 

http://www.8bitrocket.com/2009/06/06/1984-computer-chronicles-tv-show-video-on-computer-games/

Edited December 13, 2010 by Random Terrain

[Nukey Shay]

Yeah...the "six weeks" myth has been around forever, usually added to any title that appears to be "less than perfect" in retrospect - ET, Pac-Man, etc. And it's totally false except where you have a direct quote from the programmer himself that states it. BTW Pac-Man was mentioned by Frye in Stella@20 to have taken around 6 months too, far from the 6 weeks that is commonly (mis)quoted.

 

Topic:

So sorry that the game could not have everything you wanted. Mr. Crane only made measly millions from it As mentioned before, the program uses a formula to generate the screen layout - the 256 screen patterns are not held in the ROM.

2 traps that do the same thing? Perhaps from that POV...but it's much easier to keep track visually when playing regarding which screen you are on when ANYthing is different. And since he had the ROM to spare, why not?

[R.O.T.S]

Did the game realy need a lake AND a tar pit (sic)? How about the snake AND the fire?

 

I never understood why activision did not give these respective traps their own characteristics; like making the snake move, or at LEAST appear on the opposite side of the screen... or have the fire occasionaly flare up, preventing you from jumping over it. How about the tar pit (quicksand...whatever) be a hole that sends you into the cavern below.

 

Not related... but some holes in the ground on screens other than cave access screens woulda been nice. (watch out for the hole when jumping off the vine...stuff like that)

 

Oppinions?

 

I personally do not have a problem with the game and never have even with the realism,A lake or a tar pit seems valid for the jungle i guess,snake and fire too.

I would imagine most of the time you see a snake for real it would be coiled up when you disturb it and the fire looks like a camp fire (to me anyway),the tunnels are just a representation that they are below ground and no pit or lake is bottomless so it does not mater

[purduecrum]

Yeah...the "six weeks" myth has been around forever, usually added to any title that appears to be "less than perfect" in retrospect - ET, Pac-Man, etc. And it's totally false except where you have a direct quote from the programmer himself that states it. BTW Pac-Man was mentioned by Frye in Stella@20 to have taken around 6 months too, far from the 6 weeks that is commonly (mis)quoted.

 

Topic:

So sorry that the game could not have everything you wanted. Mr. Crane only made measly millions from it As mentioned before, the program uses a formula to generate the screen layout - the 256 screen patterns are not held in the ROM.

2 traps that do the same thing? Perhaps from that POV...but it's much easier to keep track visually when playing regarding which screen you are on when ANYthing is different. And since he had the ROM to spare, why not?

 

Did anyone ever put Bottomless Pitfall on a cartridge?

[high voltage]

I think it was in Hi-Res where I read in the interview with David Crane that a good Activision game takes 1 year to develop, eg from start to finish.

In the UK, most Spectrum/C64 programmers hammered up a game during the weekend (C&VG)

[GreenDayRlz]

One year? Wow, thats....wow. But I guess with Atari, you have to scanline count to hell and back so I can't understand since I've never had to do that.

 

 

Thanks for clearing it up though. Yeah, forumla is the way to go, but you could extend it to 512 rooms then and keep the same amount of items and have the game play still....is there a source for this game out there somewhere?

[Nukey Shay]

Did anyone ever put Bottomless Pitfall on a cartridge?

 

"Officially"? Not that I'm aware of. However, you can get anybody you choose to burn you a eprom and make a cart (Albert would do it if he's got the time). You might want to use the current version of the hack, tho...which corrects a couple of bugs and adds more options. Most all of the hacks I did have changed since being added to the hacks section (I never know when a hack is finished).

Edited December 13, 2010 by Nukey Shay

[Nukey Shay]

is there a source for this game out there somewhere?

 

http://www.qotile.net/minidig/disassembly/pitfall.asm

 

Some versions of Dasm will have problems with negative values, so you should change such lines if that happens.

 

i.e. change stuff like this:

LDA #-1

 

...to this:

LDA #<(-1)

 

 

Also, his assembly file is manually subtracting 48 ($30) whenever collisions are checked, so you'd want to add this line up where VCS.H is called:

 

TIA_BASE_READ_ADDRESS = $30

[GreenDayRlz]

is there a source for this game out there somewhere?

 

http://www.qotile.ne...bly/pitfall.asm

 

Some versions of Dasm will have problems with negative values, so you should change such lines if that happens.

 

i.e. change stuff like this:

LDA #-1

 

...to this:

LDA #<(-1)

 

 

Also, his assembly file is manually subtracting 48 ($30) whenever collisions are checked, so you'd want to add this line up where VCS.H is called:

 

TIA_BASE_READ_ADDRESS = $30

 

Wow, nice, thanks. Looking at this now, I think I'll stick to NES. This is just insane. Great source!