Icheg & Intellivision

[ghsqb]

Has anyone else here been to Icheg?

 

For the uninitiated, Icheg is located inside The Strong, National Museum of Play, and is a fantastic museum in it's own right.

 

Inside Icheg, there are many classic arcade machines, and tons of displays and exhibits on the history of games, from Pong to PS3 and most things in between.

 

They have some truly unique items, and while I was there Monday, I took some photos of a cool Utopia exhibit they had.

 

Check out the photos below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see that several working titles were used and some ideas in the brainstorming notes never made it to final release.

 

I found it a really interesting look into the mind of the creator of utopia, and a pretty cool look behind the curtain at how something goes from concept to creation.

 

I'll have another topic up in a few about Don Daglow, who created Utopia, but I didn't want to mic it up with the Icheg thread.

 

So for those of you that have been to Icheg, what did you think?

[+DZ-Jay]

Has anyone else here been to Icheg?

 

For the uninitiated, Icheg is located inside The Strong, National Museum of Play, and is a fantastic museum in it's own right.

 

Inside Icheg, there are many classic arcade machines, and tons of displays and exhibits on the history of games, from Pong to PS3 and most things in between.

 

They have some truly unique items, and while I was there Monday, I took some photos of a cool Utopia exhibit they had.

 

Check out the photos below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see that several working titles were used and some ideas in the brainstorming notes never made it to final release.

 

I found it a really interesting look into the mind of the creator of utopia, and a pretty cool look behind the curtain at how something goes from concept to creation.

 

I'll have another topic up in a few about Don Daglow, who created Utopia, but I didn't want to mic it up with the Icheg thread.

 

So for those of you that have been to Icheg, what did you think?

 

Wow! That's awesome! In the map graphics, I wonder what the outside border on the perimeter of each island represents...

[ghsqb]

My knowledge of Inty programming is nil, but I notice how all the numbers fall between a certain range, and some of the repeat...could this have been any kind of reference to programming, or tiles?

[Fushek]

When you're drawing the background, everything is set up is blocks of 8x8 pictures and those blocks are typically setup with a corresponding code ( a number code). That code is used then when placing it on the screen and that code can be used more than once for the background. So, if u notice 22 used on the top of both islands and the bottom of the second island (only inverted). So, in basic terms, place item 22 in coordinates x,y.

 

Cool find on this stuff. Really interesting!

Edited August 29, 2012 by Fushek

[+cmart604]

Very cool documents, glad to see them preserved!

[intvnut]

Wow! That's awesome! In the map graphics, I wonder what the outside border on the perimeter of each island represents...

 

That's the "defensible zone" around each island -- the zone that is potentially defensible with a fort. It's important that both islands have the same number of land squares and equal defensible perimeters.

 

EDIT: Also, if you look closely, the original artwork had lighter areas drawn around the coast. So, it's equally likely that the 1 square border is really just highlighting the squares that are non-empty (ie. have some sort of graphic in them).

Edited August 29, 2012 by intvnut

[+DZ-Jay]

My knowledge of Inty programming is nil, but I notice how all the numbers fall between a certain range, and some of the repeat...could this have been any kind of reference to programming, or tiles?

 

Yes, those appear to be tile numbers. You have space for 64 custom tiles available in "Graphics RAM" in the Intellivision. That is typically how I draw my graphics too, except I use a text editor and "." and "#" to represent pixels, and I use a custom script to extract the unique tiles and create the map.

 

I guess grid-paper and pencil was just as good in the early 1980s.

 

-dZ.

[+DZ-Jay]

Wow! That's awesome! In the map graphics, I wonder what the outside border on the perimeter of each island represents...

 

That's the "defensible zone" around each island -- the zone that is potentially defensible with a fort. It's important that both islands have the same number of land squares and equal defensible perimeters.

 

EDIT: Also, if you look closely, the original artwork had lighter areas drawn around the coast. So, it's equally likely that the 1 square border is really just highlighting the squares that are non-empty (ie. have some sort of graphic in them).

 

The lighter, jagged border is what I was talking about, not the straight-edge one. I suppose those could have been tiles drawn with the background colour to make them invisible, while available for collision detection. Wow! This is really impressive stuff!

 

-dZ.

[intvnut]

Wow! That's awesome! In the map graphics, I wonder what the outside border on the perimeter of each island represents...

 

That's the "defensible zone" around each island -- the zone that is potentially defensible with a fort. It's important that both islands have the same number of land squares and equal defensible perimeters.

 

EDIT: Also, if you look closely, the original artwork had lighter areas drawn around the coast. So, it's equally likely that the 1 square border is really just highlighting the squares that are non-empty (ie. have some sort of graphic in them).

 

The lighter, jagged border is what I was talking about, not the straight-edge one. I suppose those could have been tiles drawn with the background colour to make them invisible, while available for collision detection. Wow! This is really impressive stuff!

 

-dZ.

 

I believe it was actually artwork intended to be displayed, to give lighter-blue areas near the coasts. If it were just for collision detection purposes, it doesn't need to be that ornate. :-)