Intellivision Video Art?

[ballyalley]

I've been interested in video art for the Bally Arcade/Astrocade for the last year or two. I doubt anything like this existed for the Intellivision back in the 1980s, but does any video art exist for the Intellivision today? Here's an example of video art for the Astrocade that I uploaded today:

 

Here are a few examples of video art for the astrocade that I've uploaded to YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJdViXGk3iI&list=PLADcQ67H2uU0R8npUnSmT6X8Ad6mKh_3o

This sort of art can be created relatively easily on the astrocade because it has a bit-mapped screen and BASIC was available on cartridge. Could intyBASIC be used to make video art like these examples?

Adam

[Intymike]

I don't know how artsy it have to be for your taste. But take a look at this Intellivision demo classic:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo_5MaUjnzc

[mr_me]

Intybasic is still limited by the hardware. Intellivision graphics is tile based and has enough ram for 64 tiles. That's about 25% of the screen; tiles can be reused in different colours to fill the entire screen. Although intellivision can mirror sprites, it can't mirror background tiles. A Tutorvision, however, does have enough memory to effectively bitmap the entire screen of 160x96 pixels.

[ballyalley]

I don't know how artsy it have to be for your taste. But take a look at this Intellivision demo classic:

 

I think I watched this demo many years ago when I still had my Intellivision with the Intellicart. I also seem to remember a Christmas demo too. I just watched the demo again and it remains very impressive to me. This looks like it's running under emulation, is that right?

 

I love "Euro demos!" So, yes, this is to my taste-- very much so, in fact-- but it isn't exactly what I'm looking for when I say "video art." Honestly, video art is such a broad term that it obviously must include these sort of demos. Specifically, in my original question, I should have narrowed my focus down to random art. Sometimes random art looks just, well... random-- not very impressive at all. Other times, art with random elements can be quite dramatic and look like it was deliberately created.

 

Adam

[ballyalley]

Intellivision graphics is tile based and has enough ram for 64 tiles. That's about 25% of the screen; tiles can be reused in different colours to fill the entire screen. Although intellivision can mirror sprites, it can't mirror background tiles.

 

This description of of the Intellivision reminds me of all the unusual workarounds that creators of game consoles had to come up with to make inexpensive systems for consumers in the late 1970s and 1980s.

 

The astrocade has many limitations of its own. Even though the system has 4 kB of RAM, nearly all of it is screen RAM is devoted to the 160x102 bitmap display. In effect, to use a full-screen display the programmer must use ,4080 bytes of the 4,096 bytes available. This leaves just sixteen bytes available of RAM for use with cartridges. Luckily, as with many other game systems of the time, the engineers allowed programmers to make many decisions to allow systems to be more flexible. In the case of the astrocade, the parameters could change the amount of screen RAM used and effectively gain RAM for use with cartridges.

 

Bally BASIC had to use a trick that allowed the screen to be mono-colored to give the system 1.8 K of RAM for program storage. The BASIC program was literally stored on-screen.

 

There is no reason to get off on a tangent about the astrocade here. I'm curious about what can be done on the Intellivision. What sort of flexibility is built into the Intellivision system to allow random art to be created?

 

Adam

[+fdr4prez]

While this is not posted as "art", per se, but this is still quite interesting:
Intellivision Bad Apple

[carlsson]

This one isn't entirely useless either:

[+nanochess]

This one isn't entirely useless either:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUx-f686Wg4

First time I see this demo!

[Intymike]

Someone from here has the rom?

[ballyalley]

[The TRSi - Voyage demo] isn't entirely useless either:

 

The TRSi - Voyage demo is really cool. It's put together very-much like you'd see one on the Atari ST or Amiga (complete with the program "crashing!"). The number of people credited for the demo is also mighty impressive. The programmers even through to credit the sprites to Nintendo (Mario) and Mattel (the Running Man). The only part of the demo that didn't quite fit was the use of the Intellivision Voice. It really brings the demo back to the sound of the early 80s. Heck, maybe that was the point?

 

It's really neat seeing the "video art" on the Intellivision. Keep 'em coming!

 

Adam

[ballyalley]

While this is not posted as "art", per se, but this is still quite interesting:

Intellivision Bad Apple

Uh, this message was sort of cross-posted to two sub-forums. Sorry about that...

 

The Atari 2600 version of Bad Apple is really impressive. In a way, that version of the video kind of fits the category of my interpretation of video art, as the "animation" does look random, for if I had not already seen the Bad Apple video, then I never would have known what was going on on the screen.

 

The Intellivision version is mighty impressive, and it even uses the additional voices provided by the ECS. I don't understand how either the VCS or the Intellivision can run this demo given their non-bitmap nature. I guess the Intellivision can manage it with REALLY clever manipulation of the tile set... but the 2600...?!?

 

Does this Intellivision version of Bad Apple run on real hardware? If so, then how is the massive ROM image get laid out?

 

The first time I saw Bad Apple was on my Sega Genesis. That version is amazing. I was hooked on this demo ever since that time.

 

In 2018, I made a few pictures of the Bad Apple "demo" for the astrocade. You can view them here:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/251416-programming-the-bally-arcadeastrocade/page-2?do=findComment&comment=4038826

 

The thing that drives me crazy about Bad Apple is that it's the perfect earworm! As soon as I hear the song it gets stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

 

Thanks for pointing these Bad Apple videos out to me.

 

Adam

[+DZ-Jay]

Someone from here has the rom?

It was supposed to be released with source and a few more effects, but life got in the way and we never got around to polishing it. I was in the middle of it when my computer died two years ago.

 

I still have the source in-progress, so perhaps someday it'll come out.

 

The video really doesn't do it justice; there are many effects of multiplexing that are very nice and impressive that are completely lost in the 30 Hz video. You really have to see it on a console.

 

dZ.

 

P.S. just to clarify, I only worked on it some, it's not mine.

[Intymike]

The video really doesn't do it justice; there are many effects of multiplexing that are very nice and impressive that are completely lost in the 30 Hz video. You really have to see it on a console.

 

 

 

That's what I thought.

[carlsson]

Most of the graphics also are borrowed from demos on other systems so possibly there will be a Voyage 1.1 with dedicated Intellivision graphics. At least my tunes were not straight covers of existing songs this time.

[+DZ-Jay]

 

 

That's what I thought.

Specifically, during the "Credits" sequence, the face on the left part of the screen took a lot of effort and cleverly optimized algorithms to make it work nicely. On the console, it looks like a full face, staying ahead of the STIC bus pre-fetches, without tearing -- at the same time that the right-side is sequencing GRAM to animate the grid (on step to the music).

 

It was a lot of fun.

 

dZ

[+DZ-Jay]

The only part of the demo that didn't quite fit was the use of the Intellivision Voice. It really brings the demo back to the sound of the early 80s. Heck, maybe that was the point?

 

It's funny that you should say that because that's exactly what I told Shazz when we were making it. I think he thought the Intellivoice module was like the Oddyssy2 robot voice, and wanted to give it an "authentic" retro feel.

 

I polished most of the phrases -- they originally spoke with a Northern European accent.

 

dZ.

[intvnut]

Does this Intellivision version of Bad Apple run on real hardware? If so, then how is the massive ROM image get laid out?

 

Yes, but it needs a cartridge with support for enough page-flipped ROM. LTO Flash, for example. I think it may be possible to do w/ two JLP boards as well, plugged into a multi-slot expander. (I have a few of these I've built.) If I ever get around to building a higher capacity JLP board, then I believe it should fit on that as well.

 

The magic of page flipping.

[ballyalley]

This isn't Intellivision-related; it's nine-minute video about Amiga video art, and this 81-year old lady's idea of video art is pretty-much exactly what's on my mind when I think about video art for any computer.

Neat, right?

Adam

 

(This lady should win an award for world's coolest grandmother!)

[Intymike]

This isn't Intellivision-related; it's nine-minute video about Amiga video art, and this 81-year old lady's idea of video art is pretty-much exactly what's on my mind when I think about video art for any computer.

 

Neat, right?

 

Adam

 

(This lady should win an award for world's coolest grandmother!)

 

 

After all, the original presentation of the Amiga was with Andy Warhol!