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The Atari interview discussion thread


Savetz

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Knowing that the Jumpman is made of 2 Players, it should be possible to make the 3-color sprite from the C64 version with a DLI. During the lines occupied by Jumpman, you could use both Players, changing colors as necessary then turn the 2nd sprite black and reset the collision registers right at the feet.

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Owen Rubin: Major Havoc, Space Duel

Owen Rubin worked in Atari's coin-op division from 1976 to 1984 — he is best known for his programming work there on Major Havoc, Space Duel, and Battlezone. He also served as a go-between between the arcade division and the consumer division, where the Atari home computers were created. After that, he was a game designer at Nolan Bushnell's Bally Sente.
In this interview, we discuss Ed Rotberg, whom I previously interviewed. This interview contains some coarse language.
It took place on February 12, 2016.
Teaser quotes:
"And I lost it. I just completely lost it with him ... and I slammed the listings down on his desk, basically clearing his desk of just about everything else, and I said, 'Do it yourself, I quit.'"
"I find MAME both very cool that you can see it, and very sad that you don't get the right feel."
"We really wanted coin-op games to be about a 90-second experience. Up to a couple minutes if you got good at it."
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That would be incredibly cool if you two were to catalyze Randy Glover's creation of some new Jumpman levels. I hope you'll be keeping podcast listeners informed of your de-coding progress. :)

 

 

I've created one level so far, which is available on the Jumpman hacking thread (http://atariage.com/forums/topic/252267-jumpman-hacking/?p=3505464). I'm working on more. When @playermissile and I release our reverse engineering notes, anyone will be able to make a level — but it's not easy. But a couple of people are talking about building a level editor. That would make basic levels much easier — though anything with custom bad guys would still require assembly language.

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Ursula Wolz, early computing and education

Ursula Wolz was thinking about computers and education in the early days of personal computing. She worked on Apple ][ games for Children's Television Workshop, consulted for Atari Research on their endeavors in educational software, and taught Logo to some of the first students who learned it.
This interview took place on February 12, 2016
Teaser quote:
"It was one of the first games that was completely graphical ... Because the kids using it might not be able to read the text, we did everything through gestures."
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I've created one level so far, which is available on the Jumpman hacking thread (http://atariage.com/forums/topic/252267-jumpman-hacking/?p=3505464). I'm working on more. When @playermissile and I release our reverse engineering notes, anyone will be able to make a level — but it's not easy. But a couple of people are talking about building a level editor. That would make basic levels much easier — though anything with custom bad guys would still require assembly language.

 

Indeed, but if we can see where to inject custom assembly routines, etc.. then snippets of code could be collected to make custom stuff, and become part of the editor.

 

-Thom

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Robert Waldman, Financial Asset Managment System

Robert Waldman wrote Financial Asset Managment System, which was published by Atari Program Exchange. It first appeared in the Fall 1981 APX catalog, where it won second prize in the personal finance and record keeping category.
As explained in my interview, Robert submitted a program called Atari 800 Olympic Gamebook System to Atari Program Exchange but it was not accepted or released. Robert sent me his only copy of the never-before-published Olympic Game Book System software, which was lost in the mail. He scanned the manual and a small part of the program listing, which I've uploaded to archive.org (you'll find a link in the show notes at AtariPodcast.com). But it appears that the complete program is gone forever.
This interview took place on February 8, 2016.
Teaser quote:
"I remember writing long BASIC programs. I would come home from work and then stay up all night coding."
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Tod Frye, Asteroids

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-174-tod-fry-asteroids

 

Most notably, while working at Atari, Tod Frye developed the 400/800 version of Asteroids and the 2600 version of Pac-Man, converting them from the coin-op version. He has many other games to his credit. He later worked for Axlon, Nolan Bushnell’s company.

This interview was conducted on January 3, 2016.

Teaser Quotes

  • “While I was at Atari, it went from a pretty big company, to a huge company, to a complete flop.”
  • “I didn’t work at Atari; I LIVED at Atari; and I loved it.”
  • “Because of the CTIA and GTIA and Antic, the sprite hardware was WAY better than the sprite hardware on the Commodore.”
  • “The hard parts were: writing code that was fast enough, writing code that was small enough to fit in the cartridge, and writing code that would fit in the RAM. Basically everything was hard.”
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Clyde Spencer: Stereo 3-D Graphics and Isopleth Map Making

Clyde Spencer published two programs through Atari Program Exchange: Stereo 3-D Graphics Package and Isopleth Map-Making Package. Stereo 3-D Graphics Package was first available in the winter 1982 APX catalog, and Map-Making in the Spring 1982 catalog. Clyde was also co-founder of the Bay Area Atari Users Group, and wrote some reviews for Antic magazine.
This interview took place on March 1, 2016. In it, we discuss Liza Loop and John Crane, both of whom I previously interviewed.
Teaser quote:
"I actually withdrew my teacher's retirement money out to help fund the startup on that. ... About a year or two into that project, Atari went bankrupt. ... I was left with an orphan then at that point in time."
post-803-0-21083100-1463928803_thumb.png
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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1neIlWZQQYo_rdJO7XtcPrCtf_zgSquBzL9TA51Bocas/edit?usp=sharing



Having a hard time keeping up with the Antic interviews? Want to see who has been interviewed so you can go back and listen again to your favorite ones? We've created an index of all the interviews on the ataripodcast.com Web site to make it easier for you.


Thanks to Wade Ripkowski (Inverse ATASCII) for all his help in getting this created!


Enjoy!


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Steve Smith, ANTIC chip

Steve Smith was an engineering technician at Atari from 1977 until 1979, where he worked on the development of the Atari 400 and 800 computers. He was one of the technicians who designed the ANTIC and CTIA chips.
In this interview, we discuss Liza Loop, whom I previously interviewed.
This interview took place on February 9, 2016.
Teaser quotes:
"...Huge roomful of 1 MhZ but not 1.1 MhZ devices. So that's what they put in the peripherals, was 6507 that they had surplus lying around."
"The first chips came into the lab, and I was plugging in the CTIA, the first one. Completely untested. And I dropped it and it broke in half."
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165 people wrote Atari Program Exchange software. 56 have been interviewed*; 8 known dead; 3 declined. That's 40.6%.

 

I think I'll go for another 27. Interviews with fully half of APX programmers will be enough. Some would say, more than enough.

 

APX programmers' names include 8 Johns, 8 James/Jim, 8 Stephen/Steves, 7 Dave/Davids, 5 Williams, 5 Michael/Mike, 4 Richards, 4 Pauls, 4 Bobs.

 

(*This includes Randy and Rob. Also, not all in this count have been published yet.)

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I hope you can get interviews with David Bueler, Wes Newell ,Greg Christensen, and Dan Rohr. Greg will be the holy grail.

 

Allan

 

 

Haven't found him yet (but I have another lead); no leads; hasn't responded to my request (if it's even the right guy); hasn't responded to tweets and mail (if it's even the right guy).

 

Kevin

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Wes Horlacher, Magic Melody Box

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-178-wes-horlacher-magic-melody-box

 

Wes Horlacher published one program in Atari Program Exchange: Magic Melody Box. Magic Melody Box first appeared in the winter 1982-1983 APX catalog, where it was awarded second prize in the education category. It was also published as Boîte à Musique by Atari France.

Teaser quote:
"These machines aren't just for accounting and computation and mathematics. We can do creative things. Let's see what we can do with these machines to actually inspire the least thing you would expect from a deterministic machine like this: how can it inspire a human being to create?"
This interview took place on February 15, 2016.
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Been listening to some of these interviews at random...very investing and informative. During the David Crane interview he mentioned something about Alan Miller insisting on having a way to turn off the OS in the 400/800 so that a game programmer could have complete control over the hardware without any overhead. Just wondering....did that really make it into the OS, and if so what is the "Al Miller bit" (memory location).....also are there any games that actually used this method?

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Been listening to some of these interviews at random...very investing and informative. During the David Crane interview he mentioned something about Alan Miller insisting on having a way to turn off the OS in the 400/800 so that a game programmer could have complete control over the hardware without any overhead. Just wondering....did that really make it into the OS, and if so what is the "Al Miller bit" (memory location).....also are there any games that actually used this method?

 

Star Raiders is a diagnostic cart, which bypasses the OS.

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Greg Thrush and Marian Dillashaw: Stock Management and WordGo

http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-179-greg-thrush-and-marian-dillashaw-stock-management-and-wordgo

Greg Thrush published two programs through Atari Program Exchange: Stock Management and — with his wife Marian Dillashaw — Wordgo. Stock Management first appeared in the fall 1982 APX catalog, where it won first prize in the business and financial applications category. Wordgo first appeared in the summer 1983 catalog.
This interview took place on March 4, 2016.
Teaser quote:
"If nothing else, it got them a little excited about technology. They could see that they could actually make some things happen."
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