Why no Galaxian?

[Retrospect]

Hi guys 'n' gals I hope you've all had a great, smashing super christmas .... right, now to my question.

 

Why no Galaxian on our TI-99?  AtariSoft made lots of great games, Defender, Centipede etc etc but Galaxian avaded that list.

 

Was it because of the sprite limitation, (4 sprites on a line)?  I know TI made TI Invaders work by using characters that shifted their patterns so theoretically Galaxian should be possible using a similar technique?  The swooping aliens could be sprites?  

 

Was Galaxian attempted , but for some reason failed?  Was the execution speed not satisfactory if they tried to have scrolling, twinkling stars?

 

Does anyone know? 

[+retroclouds]

8 minutes ago, Retrospect said:

Hi guys 'n' gals I hope you've all had a great, smashing super christmas .... right, now to my question.

 

Why no Galaxian on our TI-99?  AtariSoft made lots of great games, Defender, Centipede etc etc but Galaxian avaded that list.

 

Was it because of the sprite limitation, (4 sprites on a line)?  I know TI made TI Invaders work by using characters that shifted their patterns so theoretically Galaxian should be possible using a similar technique?  The swooping aliens could be sprites?  

 

Was Galaxian attempted , but for some reason failed?  Was the execution speed not satisfactory if they tried to have scrolling, twinkling stars?

 

Does anyone know? 

 

Don't know, but the TI-99 should do a version as good as the colecovision.

 

Edited December 27, 2021 by retroclouds

[Retrospect]

"The Galaxians are multicoloured while they are in formation but when they break off and attack you they are single colour sprites"

Yeah sounds like they did use character graphics for the formation aliens and sprites for the swooping ones.  Yes I'd say this is possible on the TI.  

 

What's confusing me is, if they are character graphics whilst in formation, how were the smooth scrolling stars done? 

[carlsson]

I would assume it had a lot to do with the fact that Texas Instruments announced the discontinuation of the TI-99/4A in October 1983 and stopped production in March 1984. That probably told 3rd party publishers this was a dwindling system, so Atarisoft would finish and release the titles already in development but not start any new ones.

 

From what I could tell by the data on Mobygames, the timeline should look something like this regarding TI-99/4A versions:

 

Oct 1983: Picnic Paranoia (perhaps a Synapse title)
Nov 1983: Centipede, Defender, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man
Dec 1983: Shamus
Feb 1984: Dig Dug, Protector II (perhaps a Synapse title)
Apr 1984: Jungle Hunt, Moon Patrol, Ms. Pac-Man
Jun 1984: Pole Position (thus three months past the last computer was built)

 

Galaxian on the other hand has been dated to May 1984 (ColecoVision), June (Apple II and VIC-20), July (C64) and December (ZX Spectrum).

 

For comparison, Commodore didn't discontinue the VIC-20 until January 1985, so publishers may have been motivated to keep making games for it though the system was starting to become obsoleted (and in many aspects inferior to e.g. TI-99/4A) by that time.

[unhuman]

OOh, a few comments here...

 

1. I really like how the CV version looks to play "fast".  I have never played that version.

2. The stars look like they're not displayed behind the formation, so no character/sprite conflicts.

3. The attacking aliens look similar to how they behave on the atari 2600.  Multicolor -> single color.

[+OLD CS1]

52 minutes ago, Retrospect said:

"The Galaxians are multicoloured while they are in formation but when they break off and attack you they are single colour sprites"

Yeah sounds like they did use character graphics for the formation aliens and sprites for the swooping ones.  Yes I'd say this is possible on the TI.  

I wager the game uses bitmap mode on the ColecoVision.  This game is absolutely possible on the TI, since the only difference in hardware is the CPU (Z80 vs. TMS-9900) and available CPU RAM (1k vs. 256 bytes.)

 

Sonic the Hedgehog was just ported from the Sega Master System to the Commodore 64, and it appears they translated the Z80 code to 6502, and of course made some changes for the VIC-II video and SID audio.  Why not the same for some ColecoVision games to the TI?  Complex games which make use of the full 1k RAM of the CV would need to be optimized to use less memory, use some VDP RAM for game variables (at what kind of speed impact?), require a special cartridge to offer more memory on a bare console (a la MBX games,) or require the 32k RAM expansion.

 

There is an allure to me to have a game which can run on a bare console. @retroclouds' Pitfall! accomplishes this, as do @sometimes99er's games.

 

I have always envied the ColecoVision, as it represents to me what the TI-99/4A could have been for games.  When I first saw a CV when I was a kid, I immediately recognized the graphics and just "knew" it was my TI in a box.

[Asmusr]

59 minutes ago, OLD CS1 said:

Why not the same for some ColecoVision games to the TI?  Complex games which make use of the full 1k RAM of the CV would need to be optimized to use less memory, use some VDP RAM for game variables (at what kind of speed impact?), require a special cartridge to offer more memory on a bare console (a la MBX games,) or require the 32k RAM expansion.

It's possible to port Z80 code directly, line by line, to TMS9900 as I did with Knight Lore, but I couldn't have debugged it without a fully commented disassembly. I converted it manually, but in theory a program could do it. The code grows larger and slower in the conversion because all instructions take at least two bytes, because of lack of push/pop instructions, and because of clumsy byte and bit test operations etc. On the plus side you can sometimes replace several Z80 instructions with one TMS9900 multiply or shift instruction. I could dig up more information about that project if anyone is interested.

 

For Pyjamarama I had an even better Z80 source code and was able to rewrite the code to better fit the TMS9900, so that conversion ended up as fast as the Spectrum version (also because I had the advantage of using hardware sprites). 

 

Fitting code written for 1K RAM into 256 bytes sounds difficult, since the original programmers would most likely have used the available RAM to the maximum. I think a direct conversion would have to depend on the 32K expansion.

 

 

[Asmusr]

2 hours ago, Retrospect said:

What's confusing me is, if they are character graphics whilst in formation, how were the smooth scrolling stars done? 

The stars just disappear under the character graphics. I have done the same in multiple games, Bouncy's obstacle course being the latest example, which BTW runs on the bare console. Having 1K RAM means that you could store a copy of the screen image table, which would make it faster to test where to display stars.

 

 

[RXB]

Would it be even slightly possible to get to level 50? (Does not look possible!)

[+dhe]

Similar, but not the same, I think Barry Boone ported over a number of games from Tomy Tutor to the Geneve. Same CPU / Same VDP - different architecture.

 

 

[Airshack]

On 12/27/2021 at 8:45 AM, Retrospect said:

What's confusing me is, if they are character graphics whilst in formation, how were the smooth scrolling stars done? 

When I watch the star pattern I notice:

 

A. A predetermined initial starfield/background pane made up of tile (character) graphics is drawn when the game begins. 

B. The non-flying tile enemies are drawn onto that same graphics pane. They're not transparent sprites so they completely cover the star tiles when they're drawn in their place. Note how non-flying enemies do not coexist with star patterns.

C. The flying enemies are sprites (on a higher graphics pane) as they have transparency proven by the fact that stars do not disappear completely when the flying enemies are nearby, as they disappear when non-flying enemies are close.

D. When a star tile disappears on the bottom of the screen it reappears at the top of the screen, shifted one column to the left.

E. When a star tile exits the bottom of the screen at the left-most column, it immediately reappears on the top right-most column.

 

The smooth scrolling here can be accomplished with a combination of redefining individual character definitions for vertical motion, while re-ordering/shifting the screen name table, which lists which character resides in each of the tile locations, to make the starfield appear non-repeating, or scroll slightly left in this case.

 

The starfield is absolutely repeating due to RAM limits. Just massaged enough to appear infinitely random.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Airshack

[Airshack]

On 12/27/2021 at 8:59 AM, carlsson said:

Jun 1984: Pole Position (thus three months past the last computer was built)

 

May this be why it's one of the ugliest of the otherwise excellent Atarisoft conversions? It really appears unfinished.

[Airshack]

Nov 1983: Super Demon Attack Demon Attack (1983) TI-99/4A release dates - MobyGames

 

This one from has the opposite problem: very beautiful graphics with broken gameplay. Plays like an unfinished and/or untested version of the game.  Did TI just program the Imagic and Atari titles in-house?

[carlsson]

4 hours ago, Airshack said:

Did TI just program the Imagic and Atari titles in-house?

Interesting thought. Only a handful of the Atarisoft titles have individual credits:

 

Robert Lafore: Centipede and Dig Dug. Also credited for a bunch of interactive fiction (multiple choice adventure) released by Adventure International in 1980-81 for the TRS-80, but nothing after his TI-99/4A arcade conversions.

 

Douglas Brian Craig: Donkey Kong for the TI-99/4A, then nothing else is known.

 

Howard E. Scheer: Pac-Man and Donkey Kong (as well). He was also credited for the puzzle game Peanuts Maze Marathon (Random House, C64 version) in 1984.

 

Douglas D. Dragin: Mountain King (Beyond, C64 version), Donkey Kong, Math Mileage (CBS, C64 version), Jungle Hunt, World Games (Epyx/K-Byte, C64 version), Spiderbot (Addictive Games, Apple II version).

 

Paul Urbanus: Parsec, Jungle Hunt

 

Actually the last person is the only obvious link between Texas Instruments and Atari that I could find, just like you spotted at least one link between TI and Imagic.Possibly Urbanus was a freelancer for both, or simply changed employer between 1982 and 1984.

[+Lee Stewart]

7 hours ago, carlsson said:

Paul Urbanus: Parsec, Jungle Hunt

 

Actually the last person is the only obvious link between Texas Instruments and Atari that I could find, just like you spotted at least one link between TI and Imagic.Possibly Urbanus was a freelancer for both, or simply changed employer between 1982 and 1984.

 

Perhaps Paul (@urbite) will tell us himself—though it appears he has not visited AA in two years.

 

...lee

[Toucan]

7 hours ago, carlsson said:

Interesting thought. Only a handful of the Atarisoft titles have individual credits:

 

Robert Lafore: Centipede and Dig Dug. Also credited for a bunch of interactive fiction (multiple choice adventure) released by Adventure International in 1980-81 for the TRS-80, but nothing after his TI-99/4A arcade conversions.

 

Douglas Brian Craig: Donkey Kong for the TI-99/4A, then nothing else is known.

 

Howard E. Scheer: Pac-Man and Donkey Kong (as well). He was also credited for the puzzle game Peanuts Maze Marathon (Random House, C64 version) in 1984.

 

Douglas D. Dragin: Mountain King (Beyond, C64 version), Donkey Kong, Math Mileage (CBS, C64 version), Jungle Hunt, World Games (Epyx/K-Byte, C64 version), Spiderbot (Addictive Games, Apple II version).

 

Paul Urbanus: Parsec, Jungle Hunt

 

Actually the last person is the only obvious link between Texas Instruments and Atari that I could find, just like you spotted at least one link between TI and Imagic.Possibly Urbanus was a freelancer for both, or simply changed employer between 1982 and 1984.

Interesting on Robert LaFore, as James Landowski was the one I contacted who mentioned he worked on the games, but was not the sole programmer. I think he ended up taking over the games from someone else. So that could be where Robert LaFore comes in.

 

One note, I was not the sole programmer on Digdug or Centipede. Other people also did some work, like the graphics for Centipede. I did game logic and sound for that. Digdug was given to someone else at first but after he hacked at it a while and made a mess of it and quit, Doug ask me to look at it and try and fix it and finish it. I did but with some help because the deadline for delivery was looming and they (ICG) got a pro-rated payment if late on delivery. That one had a few all nighters in it to get it out. I did do Cannonball Blitz solo. This was a Apple ][ game that was popular at the time.

 

As to TI programming the games in house, not from what I came across. All TI Atarisoft titles were outsourced by Atari to various outfits (ICG handled the TI Dig-Dig and Centipede and Battlezone ports, and ICG in turn outsourced them to Rich & Rich for the programming, while ICG actually produced the boxes, carts, and manuals in Hong Kong which is why the manuals for Centipede and Dig-Dug look different from the other Atarisoft releases). As to Paul Urbanus, they had founded Sofmachine by that time when they got the Atarisoft contract, he along with Jim Dramis, and Garth Dollahite had left TI to form the company. K-Byte did the DK, Pac-Man, and Ms. Pac-Man conversions (which is where Douglas Brian Craig worked along with Howard Scheer). Super Demon Attack was programmed at Western Technologies in CA. I do know Microsurgeon and Fathom were done in-house at Imagic by Rick Levine and Neil McKenzie respectively. Parker Brothers also used Western Technologies for many ports as well. I did talk with Dawn Stockbridge from PB (project manager) and she said Popeye for the TI was done in CA (so I would guess Western Technologies). While Frogger was done in NJ by Wickstead Design.

[carlsson]

Great, a lot of background work already done!

 

It kind of explains why several VDP based conversions of the same game (not only Atarisoft, but other publishers as well) tend to look different, if each format was outsourced to a different team and only having original graphics with other dimensions and colour resolutions to go on. Perhaps in a few cases one port already was done and could be used as blueprint for the next, while others may have been developed independently, possibly not even without the different development teams knowing about eachother.

[Toucan]

8 hours ago, Toucan said:

Interesting on Robert LaFore, as James Landowski was the one I contacted who mentioned he worked on the games, but was not the sole programmer. I think he ended up taking over the games from someone else. So that could be where Robert LaFore comes in.

 

 

 

 

As to TI programming the games in house, not from what I came across. All TI Atarisoft titles were outsourced by Atari to various outfits (ICG handled the TI Dig-Dig and Centipede and Battlezone ports, and ICG in turn outsourced them to Rich & Rich for the programming, while ICG actually produced the boxes, carts, and manuals in Hong Kong which is why the manuals for Centipede and Dig-Dug look different from the other Atarisoft releases). As to Paul Urbanus, they had founded Sofmachine by that time when they got the Atarisoft contract, he along with Jim Dramis, and Garth Dollahite had left TI to form the company. K-Byte did the DK, Pac-Man, and Ms. Pac-Man conversions (which is where Douglas Brian Craig worked along with Howard Scheer). Super Demon Attack was programmed at Western Technologies in CA. I do know Microsurgeon and Fathom were done in-house at Imagic by Rick Levine and Neil McKenzie respectively. Parker Brothers also used Western Technologies for many ports as well. I did talk with Dawn Stockbridge from PB (project manager) and she said Popeye for the TI was done in CA (so I would guess Western Technologies). While Frogger was done in NJ by Wickstead Design.

Some more trivia: Buck Rogers, Star Trek, and most likely Congo Bongo as well were programmed for the TI by McT. Also, Rich & Rich changed their name to Syndein Systems at some point and you can see the games they were contracted to program here: http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Syndein_Systems

 

Here's Jim Collas from McT:

 

Yes, I am the McT programmer that developed the Star Trek game for the TI-99/4A about 36 years ago. That was the only game I developed for the TI-99/4A. I was a college student at UCLA at the time getting my BS degree in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis on Computer Science. I worked at McT for several years to pay my way through college. Honestly, I can’t remember much about developing the game except that they had the arcade version of the game in the warehouse and I used to play it for hours on end to work out the gameplay for the TI-99/4A. I was paid hourly back then so I thought it was cool that I was being paid to play video games.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Toucan

[Toucan]

8 hours ago, Toucan said:

Interesting on Robert LaFore, as James Landowski was the one I contacted who mentioned he worked on the games, but was not the sole programmer. I think he ended up taking over the games from someone else. So that could be where Robert LaFore comes in.

 

 

 

 

As to TI programming the games in house, not from what I came across. All TI Atarisoft titles were outsourced by Atari to various outfits (ICG handled the TI Dig-Dig and Centipede and Battlezone ports, and ICG in turn outsourced them to Rich & Rich for the programming, while ICG actually produced the boxes, carts, and manuals in Hong Kong which is why the manuals for Centipede and Dig-Dug look different from the other Atarisoft releases). As to Paul Urbanus, they had founded Sofmachine by that time when they got the Atarisoft contract, he along with Jim Dramis, and Garth Dollahite had left TI to form the company. K-Byte did the DK, Pac-Man, and Ms. Pac-Man conversions (which is where Douglas Brian Craig worked along with Howard Scheer). Super Demon Attack was programmed at Western Technologies in CA. I do know Microsurgeon and Fathom were done in-house at Imagic by Rick Levine and Neil McKenzie respectively. Parker Brothers also used Western Technologies for many ports as well. I did talk with Dawn Stockbridge from PB (project manager) and she said Popeye for the TI was done in CA (so I would guess Western Technologies). While Frogger was done in NJ by Wickstead Design.

One of the cool things about Dawn is that she broke out her binder from those days and dug up some info on what she had. She said they had 2 programmers in house at PB doing TI games (Ray Miller and Steve Zedeck). She was right about Steve as I later tracked him down and he had the Tutankham proto. Ray Miller is one I have tried to contact but no luck. He was the one that designed "Star Wars: Death Star Battle" and she thought he did that on the TI.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Toucan

[Toucan]

8 hours ago, carlsson said:

Great, a lot of background work already done!

 

It kind of explains why several VDP based conversions of the same game (not only Atarisoft, but other publishers as well) tend to look different, if each format was outsourced to a different team and only having original graphics with other dimensions and colour resolutions to go on. Perhaps in a few cases one port already was done and could be used as blueprint for the next, while others may have been developed independently, possibly not even without the different development teams knowing about eachother.

In regards to Western Technologies. This might come as a complete shock to the system...But TI outsourced some video game development themselves to them! Yep, the TI that tried to keep all things under wraps when it came to developing for their system. Western Technologies was working on a whole line of E.T. math games (different ones from the Looking Glass ET titles, and I got a screen shot of one from Vicki Sidley who did the artwork for that one. Not sure if I shared that here or not) for TI. It's not clear what else was developed at Western for TI, but Western did work on a localization of Fantasy that was programmed in Japan by SNK. Lasso also shares the same "Game Over" and some other graphic elements as "Super Demon Attack", so since this is also an SNK title, it's safe to say Western worked on Lasso as well.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Toucan

[trapperkeeper]

On 12/27/2021 at 11:44 AM, unhuman said:

3. The attacking aliens look similar to how they behave on the atari 2600.  Multicolor -> single color.

True, but the TI version shows them having flapping wings!  I don't know of any other home versions that showed that.  Even the arcade game doesn't show that.

[trapperkeeper]

On 12/29/2021 at 10:25 AM, Toucan said:

All TI Atarisoft titles were outsourced by Atari to various outfits (ICG handled the TI Dig-Dig and Centipede and Battlezone ports

So Battlezone was done?  Did you or anybody ask them if the code still exists somewhere?

[Airshack]

6 hours ago, trapperkeeper said:

True, but the TI version shows them having flapping wings!  

May have been a move to make the single-colored flying sprite look better. Single colored sprites do often appear rather lifeless.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Airshack

[Toucan]

7 hours ago, trapperkeeper said:

So Battlezone was done?  Did you or anybody ask them if the code still exists somewhere?

I would imagine I would have asked, since that was why I was tracking down programmers of the games (this was back in 2005, BTW). The issue with Battlezone is that Ross Beers was the guy that basically managed the group of programmers in addition to programming some himself, so I never found out who the programmer of Battlezone (or Zaxxon for that matter) was, it wasn't Ross Beers or James Landowski, which were the only 2 people I managed to get in touch with from Rich & Rich. I'm sure by tracking down some programmers from Rich & Rich that did conversions for other platforms, either they might have done a TI game or know one of the programmers that did. Ross Beers mentioned this:

 

. Another group worked on zaxxon. another on Battle zone.

 

So basically some guys worked on those games, just not sure who the guys were. Though if we tracked down other programmers from the company, I'm sure we would stumble upon the guys who did the conversions. I know Rich & Rich did Super Zaxxon for Sega on other platforms, so not sure if this TI-99 Zaxxon was the original or the Super Zaxxon, since this most likely would have been a Sega conversion and not a DataSoft one, since Rich & Rich had a contract with Sega to do ports for them.

[Toucan]

 

Which in turn brings me to this. If that was Super Zaxxon Ross Beers was talking about. How many Super titles did the TI have. I can think of Super Demon Attack, Super Space, and Super Duper.

 

I'm glad we are having this conversation since it shows where there were some holes I didn't dig deeper into, like (Super) Zaxxon, Battlezone, Spy Hunter, etc. The issue with Ross Beers was that after my initial conversation he dropped off, so I was left hanging on any further info, though I did try to get more. Most likely the best bet would be to find other programmers from Rich & Rich/Syndein that worked on any system to see if they know about the TI conversions more.

 

Which reminds me of the first thing I asked programmers that found. It was not what did you program or what was it like to work for the company, but instead the all important "do you remember any others that worked at the company on TI games?". I found this was the most important thing to ask, since sometimes life would get in the way for the people I would contact and this way I would have leads to build on to find more info/games. Never wanted to have a dead end, so I always made sure I got more leads from each lead I contacted.

 

The last email from Ross Beers had this interesting tidbit. Needless to say TI Dig-Dug really got around:

 

Quote

I did the completion work on DigDug for the TI. it was started by another programmer, and I might be able to remember the first name of the guy, but definitely not the last name. What generally happened was that we/they would try to find a good programmer and give them ~3months to write the conversion from scratch. then if/when it looked as if the programmer would not be able to complete, someone like me would come in and try to learn what was written and complete the task. In general, we had no code to start with, just an example coin-op.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Toucan