Asteroids Emulator, When Did This Happen?

[Rybags]

I've got no idea if money changed hands between divisions for royalties or profit sharing for arcade conversions. My guess would be no. It just generates unnecessary accounting. If anything it'd be more a case of budget reallocation, e.g. home wants to port Asteroids so arcade is granted an extra $5 million dev budget that will come from home's slice of the pie. But again my guess would be that wasn't practiced either.

 

I suspect the margin and profit per game would have been much higher in arcade. Consider 2 examples:

 

- typical arcade release: 20,000 produced and sold @ $4,000 per machine = $80 Million revenue. Profit per unit likely equal or greater than the cost of production.

- typical cart release: 200,000 produced and sold to retailers @ $25 per cart = $5 Million revenue. Profit per cart likely to be less than the cost of production.

Edited December 12, 2012 by Rybags

[atx4us]

I was checking Atarimania.com this morning for one thing or other and chanced upon the arcade Asteroids emulator in what seems at first glance to be finished form. OMG!

 

http://www.atarimani...tor_s20091.html

 

I tried it in Altirra, no joy but it's probably just some setting. I don't have time to fiddle with that right now. But I tried it in A800 and whoopee! Runs right off the bat! It has sounds!

 

Merry Christmas early, and thanks Santa!

 

Wow! It was really well done. Thanks for posting this.

[Cebus Capucinis]

I've got no idea if money changed hands between divisions for royalties or profit sharing for arcade conversions. My guess would be no. It just generates unnecessary accounting. If anything it'd be more a case of budget reallocation, e.g. home wants to port Asteroids so arcade is granted an extra $5 million dev budget that will come from home's slice of the pie. But again my guess would be that wasn't practiced either.

 

I suspect the margin and profit per game would have been much higher in arcade. Consider 2 examples:

 

- typical arcade release: 20,000 produced and sold @ $4,000 per machine = $80 Million revenue. Profit per unit likely equal or greater than the cost of production.

- typical cart release: 200,000 produced and sold to retailers @ $25 per cart = $5 Million revenue. Profit per cart likely to be less than the cost of production.

 

I agree, but I spoke too soon, and I'm thinking more from an EBIT standpoint as opposed to pure revenue (which I guess I should have clarified, since I said pure revenue in the first post) -- since arcade also generated a larger amount of costs, I'm curious as to whether their net income or EBIT numbers were anywhere near what consumer's was. I wouldn't think they'd exchange money or royalties between departments -- that would certainly be messy -- but I wonder if the EBIT numbers were just lower for Coin to the point where management never even considered royalties on Coin as an option. If anything I'd think they'd set up separate royalty structures for each division independently.

 

I'm going to see if I can find some SEC filings for 10Ks from that period. There should be records out there, I'm just interested in how the business model operated.

 

Then again, I'm derailing the thread in very off-topic territory as well. I might make my own thread about it.

[Creature XL]

I looked into doing 6502 arcade conversions, one of the big stopping points was that I couldn't find documentation on the hardware used - although I was probably barking up the wrong tree, probably best to use Mame drivers and code as a reference point rather than chasing datasheets or trying to reverse-engineer based on program behaviour.

 

In a very big computer magazine (c't) was a contest regarding Asteroids two or three years back. They explained in the article every detail of the Asteroids machine.

I think that was a big help to write the emulator.

 

Wow, its already 4 years

[Retro Rogue]

I've got no idea if money changed hands between divisions for royalties or profit sharing for arcade conversions.

 

Like said in my previous post, it didn't. Marketing just looked at it as "this is our IP, let's maximize our profits off of it and get it out in as many different formats as possible." The idea of it being related to a specific division never crossed their minds, and they simply made more pushing out 2600 cartridges - big bonuses for sales. That's why Marketing guarded the 2600 like a jealous bitch for the early 80s and didn't want anything jeopardizing their sales bonuses.

 

The only reason 2600 programmers were getting bonuses in the early 80s were because of all the ones that had left to start Activision and Imagic. They wanted some incentive to retain them.

 

My guess would be no. It just generates unnecessary accounting. If anything it'd be more a case of budget reallocation, e.g. home wants to port Asteroids so arcade is granted an extra $5 million dev budget that will come from home's slice of the pie. But again my guess would be that wasn't practiced either.

 

No.

 

I suspect the margin and profit per game would have been much higher in arcade. Consider 2 examples:

 

- typical arcade release: 20,000 produced and sold @ $4,000 per machine = $80 Million revenue. Profit per unit likely equal or greater than the cost of production.

 

That's actually nowhere near the productions, cost, or revenue. Far less. Atari's arcade games typically sold for around $1000-$2000 per machine. Production runs were typically in the low thousands, with more popular games enjoying a longer production run (but usually a drop in price) and thus higher lifetime production numbers.

 

Liberator had 762 machines built for instance, with an ROI of $2095.

 

Battlezone had 13,022 machines built over its lifetime and started with an ROI of $2095 then dropped to $1495 in March '81 and $725 in August '81.

 

Atari's explosive profits growth in the early 80s was due purely to the Consumer Division and its products, which is why the problems in the Consumer manufacturing and distribution model are what brought the company down.

And typical cart releases in the 80s were in the millions, not thousands.

 

I wouldn't think they'd exchange money or royalties between departments -- that would certainly be messy -- but I wonder if the EBIT numbers were just lower for Coin to the point where management never even considered royalties on Coin as an option. If anything I'd think they'd set up separate royalty structures for each division independently.

 

They were different countries. Coin had a nominal product bonus plan, but it was nothing compared to what the Consumer programmers were getting.

 

 

Here's one of Franz's rants on the whole situation regarding Crystal Castles (taken from an internal email):

 

From: KIM::FXL 30-JAN-1984 02:01

To: @SYS$MAIL:JUNK

Subj: The first annual Jeff Boscole Memorial letter

 

 

This letter is dedicated to Jeff Boscole, someone who wasn't afraid

of sounding obscure, to speak his mind, to be strange, to be brilliant,

to play games, and to use MAIL to its fullest. I don't remember when

he left, but it was quite a few months ago.

 

To anyone who cares, but especially to game designers with more clout than

FXL, and to any and all people in power at Atari (not just coin-op):

 

Recently I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to instigate

improvements in royalties, designer credits, and game testing procedures. I

have had little success. I hereby apologize for all of the negative feelings

and anger that I am emanating because of this. After all, things are pretty

good here, and certainly better than at many companies. I do not however

apologize or regret my negative feelings about the recent release of the

Crystal Castles 2600 Cartridge. (In case you don't know, the cartridge was

released without the approval of the coin-op design team, or anybody else

in coin-op as far as I know).

 

This is pure theft!

 

And I do not even know who to blame for this!! It isn't the programmer, who is

about as mad (or worse) as I am about this situation. He was given a unmakable

release deadline (4 days instead of 3 weeks from when he was told). The game is

much worse because of this (according to the programmer Peter Niday). He had

no choice in the matter. Yet another unfinished, hurried, poorly tested game

from Atari. Won't we ever learn?

 

Games under license from other companies get reviewed by representatives of

that company (Williams and Namco specifically). But games developed in-house

are treated like they are in the public domain, while the original design team

of in-house games is treated like dirt.

 

This is not an isolated incident either. Atarisoft, as a matter of policy,

takes Atari Coin-op games, lets outside companies "convert" them for home

computers (like Commodore 64, Vic-20, Apple 2, TI-99 and IBM-PC), and then

produces them, all without the creative input or advice of the original design

teams (just talk to Ed Logg about Centipede, or ? about Battlezone). Atarisoft

does not ask anyone over here at coin-op for approval for the final version,

but they do show the final version of the game to someone in the legal

department. On the more positive side, there is a chance that Atarisoft will

contribute to the Engineering Product Bonus Plan in a manner similar to 2600,

5200 and 800 products. Wouldn't it be nice to have that guaranteed and in

writing? And shouldn't there be designer credits on Atarisoft products?

 

It's ironic that my name is on the packaging of the 2600 Crystal Castles

cart, a product which I only saw an early version of. Yet when I told people

that the message ("programmed by Franz Lanzinger") appeared in level 10 in the

coin-op version I was told to take it out, or I loose an amount of bonus to be

determined. Boy did that make me mad !!! I complained vocally, but only to be

promised that a designer credit policy would be worked on. This policy is still

"being worked on" eight months later. Now really. It's not that hard to do,

just look at movies, books, not to mention Stern, Mylstar, Simutrek, Sente,

even 2600 carts. If there were a policy right now, credits could be in in time

for the Crystal Castles kits. As it is, I am still mad about the whole thing.

Imagine Speven Spielberg directing a film, but not getting credit. How would

he feel? Are we cogs in a machine? I am not a number !!! This isn't 1984!!

(well OK, maybe it is).

 

While I'm at it I would like to get one more thing off my chest (right

on!!). You may know that the current "coin-op engineering product bonus plan"

(shouldn't it really be called a royalty plan ?) is out of date. The most

recent legally binding document (if it is legally binding) is dated March 26,

1982, and it expired at the end of 1983. It is my understanding by reading

that memo that the bonus plan is still in effect, but it can now be " extended,

enhanced, discontinued or otherwise modified to meet management objectives ".

In other words, Atari has the legal right to screw us any time they want.

Personally, I would feel much more secure, happy, and motivated to work hard,

if there were an updated royalty plan without a gaping loophole like that.

After all, there are plenty of precedents for people getting screwed here.

 

I am tired of fighting a brick wall. So I will resign myself to the facts

of life at Atari. These facts seem to be that change is virtually impossible

when suggested by a single empoyee, but mindbogglingly fast if management wants

it. And I will continue to feel bitter now and then (like right now for

instance).

 

How do you feel about all this? How do you feel about 40% 30% 30% (the

"golden handcuffs")? How do you feel about 1% under 10M, 2% over 10M? How do

you feel about designer credits? How do you feel about the delays in actual

payment of royalties? (I still don't have a cent for Crystal Castles, and it

has been seven months since it started to earn millions for Atari).

 

What can you, anyone who cares, do to make me, Joe Piscopo (oops, make that

Franz Lanzinger) feel less bitter? Well, misery loves company. Please tell me,

better yet, tell your favorite manager, supervisor, or even CEO, how you feel

about these issues. It may not change a thing, but maybe your powers of

persuasion will succeed where mine failed.

 

Until next year, (when I will write the second annual Jeff Boscole memorial

letter)

FXL

(the X stands for "eX trouble maker")

 

P.S. please send your answers to @SYS$MAIL:JUNK, or to someone in a position

to take action, best would be both.

 

P.P.S. If there are any inaccuracies, please let me know. The facts are to

the best of my recollection, some of it is hearsay.

[amiman99]

I just had time to try the game and is very impressive.

I converted the file to real flopy disk and run it on my Atari 130XE, runs well with some slowdown when there is too many rock on the screen.

[Jason1024]

Just d/l'ed this and ran it in Altirra. Wow--what a fantastic implementation. i am blown away on several levels. Many thanks to the author(s) for an amazing job!

[kogden]

I just downloaded this myself.... pretty sweet! Is Lunar Lander doable with the same code base? I heard a lot of Lunar Lander cabinets were turned into Asteroids cabs.... was the hardware similar? The vector games were so much fun.

[Rybags]

The problem I see with LL is that it's mainly a bunch of line draws where with Asteroids some efficiencies could be gained by doing small objects as softsprites.

 

The C64 community is interested in this emulation too - it'd be interesting to see it running on other 6502 computers also.

[mimo]

is there an xex version anywhere?

[w1k]

ALL games for XE/XL is here:

 

http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=6637

[mimo]

ALL games for XE/XL is here:

 

http://atari.fandal....p?files_id=6637

 

Thanks, I already know about Fandals site, unfortunately the link is to an .atr version

[The Usotsuki]

I wonder how viable the Apple ][+ would be for such a thing. XD

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

 

you mean a single / stand-alone *.XEX file ?!? As always, try Homesoft`s site:

 

http://www.mushca.com/f/atari/index.php?dl=393

 

and when downloaded, extract the single XEX file... -Andreas Koch.

[Synthpopalooza]

Looks like Norbert finally ported this to the c=64:

 

 

Tempest would also be a natural for the C=64 due to the ability to have 16 colors in 320 pixel hi-res.

[eegad]

Just stumbled upon this while looking back through old posts to see what I've missed the ast 6 months or so. Grabbed it and put it on a MaxFlash cart....very cool. Too bad this wasn't done back in the mid-80s. Asteroids was one of my favorite arcade games and I was never happy with the Asteroids cart Atari did back in the day.

 

Also wondering what other arcade games (Atari or otherwise) could potentially be pulled off like this? Would be nice to get an emulated game of some of the bad licensed carts from way back (ie - Space Invaders), or to see a couple games that never did get made for the 8bits (I'm thinking of Phoenix and Venture, offhand).

[+therealbountybob]

We're playing Asteroids Emulator (and the excellent Sea Quest 2600 port) in the 8-bit High Score Club - plus some other games from last year. Everyone welcome to post scores

[Synthpopalooza]

I think for this to work, the source game has to have been made on a 6502 processor (like Asteroids was) ... which means Star Castle, for example, would be out of the question. I think other vector games like Lunar Lander, and even the color ones like Tempest, Space Duel, Major Havoc, and Gravitar, are certainly possible. My solution for the color graphics is to do a scanline change between mode E and mode F in the display list, changing PF2 between black and the mode E color each scanline, and shaking the screen up and down a scanline. This produces a pseudo 320x192 screen at 4 colors + the BG color.

[Darkhog]

I think for this to work, the source game has to have been made on a 6502 processor (like Asteroids was) ... which means Star Castle, for example, would be out of the question. I think other vector games like Lunar Lander, and even the color ones like Tempest, Space Duel, Major Havoc, and Gravitar, are certainly possible. My solution for the color graphics is to do a scanline change between mode E and mode F in the display list, changing PF2 between black and the mode E color each scanline, and shaking the screen up and down a scanline. This produces a pseudo 320x192 screen at 4 colors + the BG color.

 

That, or just port emulator to XL/XE and use either graphics 11 or APAC, should need arise.

[Synthpopalooza]

The high resolution of 320 pixels is essential, GTIA modes would be too blocky.

[kenfused]

I think for this to work, the source game has to have been made on a 6502 processor (like Asteroids was) ... which means Star Castle, for example, would be out of the question. I think other vector games like Lunar Lander, and even the color ones like Tempest, Space Duel, Major Havoc, and Gravitar, are certainly possible. My solution for the color graphics is to do a scanline change between mode E and mode F in the display list, changing PF2 between black and the mode E color each scanline, and shaking the screen up and down a scanline. This produces a pseudo 320x192 screen at 4 colors + the BG color.

Some of the later games used chips to assist with math I believe. Depending on the game maybe this could be maybe be worked around (rom lookup tables, or add some additional hardware to help). In the non-vector game category it might be interesting to try and do something with centipede/millipede or missile command but there is quite a bit of difference in how the screens are layed out (vs. simulating the vector generator). The 7800 could do a little more the color hirez department (with extra RAM in the cart or using the XM if/when it comes out).

[bfollett]

Just watched the C64 video of Asteroids emulator. It really seems to slow down a lot more than the Atari when there are several asteroids on screen.

 

Looks like Norbert finally ported this to the c=64:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjyaOzl7PFI

 

Tempest would also be a natural for the C=64 due to the ability to have 16 colors in 320 pixel hi-res.

[+Stephen]

That, or just port emulator to XL/XE and use either graphics 11 or APAC, should need arise.

Don't forget - unless using the character mode version of this mode, the CPU is tied up 100% just doing the display kernel for the entire visible portion of the screen. You cannot use a mode like that for anything really useful besides static pictures.

[slampam]

I think for this to work, the source game has to have been made on a 6502 processor (like Asteroids was) ... which means Star Castle, for example, would be out of the question. I think other vector games like Lunar Lander, and even the color ones like Tempest, Space Duel, Major Havoc, and Gravitar, are certainly possible. My solution for the color graphics is to do a scanline change between mode E and mode F in the display list, changing PF2 between black and the mode E color each scanline, and shaking the screen up and down a scanline. This produces a pseudo 320x192 screen at 4 colors + the BG color.

Do you have a working example of this in your gfx demo thread?

[Synthpopalooza]

Actually, I do have an XEX ... posting it here:

 

tempest.obx tempest.asm

 

This only uses 8K of screen RAM, the same as a normal hi-res Antic E or F screen. The vertical shifting creates the illusion of a vertical 192 resolution. You can only do 4 colors here, although if you wanted more colors, you could substitute Graphics 10 or 11 for Antic mode E on those screen lines, although the picture might look more fuzzy. You would also need to correct for the Graphics 10 pixel shift as well if you went that route (i.e. shift your Mode F pixel data to the right by one color clock, or two hi-res pixels).

 

This might also need some resizing to improve the aspect ratio, the score digits seem indistinct here, but this is just a straight conversion from a Tempest arcade screenshot. It might also be possible to overlay PMG's on the enemies or the player to help shore up some of the colors and make them more distinct.

Edited April 16, 2013 by Synthpopalooza