5 ms·

Video footage of that code executing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VDM8nC9sM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VDM8nC9sM

by gorhill 11y ago

themodelplumber 11y ago
Wow, the silent hyperspace mode followed by the red alert alarm sequence is pretty cinematic! Had to watch that a few times.
- ddingus 11y ago
  Yes. Playing this back in the day, with a stereo, larger TV, etc... delivered a pretty serious impact. There was nothing else like it. IMHO, that game sold a lot of Atari computers. Was written by the guy who designed the sound chip, and it was kind of a side project that turned out great enough to showcase the computers. The particle calculations are not well optimized. While this is seen as a bug, and there is an effort to make the game run faster, many players appreciate the slowdown in battle. There is a feel associated with that which adds a lot to the overall impression of the game. It's oddly gratifying to feel it slow down as the enemy and their shots explode...
  - david-given 11y ago
    Did it simulate a proper 3D world, with your ship and the other objects all occupying space (and therefore requiring vector calculations everywhere), or did it cheat by keeping minimal position information and just fiddling the display to make it look like you're moving? From the way the enemy ships move it feels like it's cheating, but the starfield and the starbases all look pretty good.
    - chipsy 11y ago
      It cheats a ton. You can turn misses into hits by carefully jiggling the camera. Still a great game though.
  - pkroll 11y ago
    It's like the "wasted" in GTA going to slow-mo to accent the kill. Only it's serendipitous slow-mo.
    - ddingus 11y ago
      Yeah, that's how I feel about it. Somewhere, I read some comments by the author on all of that. He just did fairly straight up, simple, cheater type 3D on the 6502. Those slowdowns were an artifact of all that. They add a lot to the game, though the author didn't intend for it to go that way. Funny, for that time period, there are a lot of "effects" that were resource limits, or bugs that ended up making for a better experience. Little things, like getting an extra color to work with were a very big deal. We have come so damn far... This did cause me to pull my old 400 out of the closet. It has this cartridge in it. Turned it on, and it plays fine. My HDTV is a bit cranky about it all though.
- glhaynes 11y ago
  When I watched the video of Star Raiders, my first thought was "hey, that looks like Solaris!", a game I grew up playing on a friend's Atari 2600. Turns out it was also by Neubauer, just a few years later. Cinematic is definitely the right word — it easily felt as epic and expansive as a good NES game, which is pretty astounding considering the limitations of the 2600. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buhHMAcRSwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buhHMAcRSwU http://www.1up.com/features/solaris-atari-2600-starfighter http://www.1up.com/features/solaris-atari-2600-starfighter
sageikosa 11y ago
Thanks, I had forgotten that I had ever played that game. As soon as I saw the hyperspace navigation reticule I instantly flashed back to memories of fighting to keep it centered.
flurpitude 11y ago
Wow, that's impressive for an 8-bit computer in 1979. Especially within 8KB of RAM. Elite (1984) was more sophisticated on essentially similar hardware but had a little more RAM to play with.
CWuestefeld 11y ago
Wow, that brings back memories. This was the first piece of software I ever owned. I learned so much from that Atari 800 as a teenager. Understanding the difference between COLOR and SETCOLOR (where COLOR didn't refer to a particular RGB, but referenced whatever happened to be in the specified SETCOLOR; this is presumably how the flashing alarm screen is implemented) taught me about indirection. I wrote my own "Breakout" game in BASIC. At first I had a long IF/THEN to react to the joystick direction, and it slowed the game appreciably. I later found (after seeing an example in one of those magazines with the type-in-this-program's-source-code) that it's far more efficient to store offsets into an array, and update the paddle coordinates just from indexed lookups into the array. I had an interest before this, and new some rudimentary basics, it's stuff like this that gave me the incentive and the means to learn much more.
XJOKOLAT 11y ago
What a throw back ... "Red 5 standing by ..." I remember pretending be to part of the rebel alliance in that game ... many hours spent. Thanks to the designer. Looking at the OCR of the code that provided the foundation of a tiny part of my early years is a strangely odd experience. The source code of a childhood ...
aidenn0 11y ago
Here's the version I played (ported to the less-capable 2600) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wh8Gb9J1nE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wh8Gb9J1nE It came with a multi-button controller with replaceable overlays, which presaged the Atari Jaguar's controllers.
andyidsinga 11y ago
thanks for posting that -- was one of my fav childhood games!

Video footage of that code executing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VDM8nC9sM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VDM8nC9sM

by gorhill 11y ago

Video footage of that code executing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VDM8nC9sM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VDM8nC9sM

themodelplumber 11y ago

Wow, the silent hyperspace mode followed by the red alert alarm sequence is pretty cinematic! Had to watch that a few times.

ddingus 11y ago
Yes. Playing this back in the day, with a stereo, larger TV, etc... delivered a pretty serious impact. There was nothing else like it. IMHO, that game sold a lot of Atari computers. Was written by the guy who designed the sound chip, and it was kind of a side project that turned out great enough to showcase the computers. The particle calculations are not well optimized. While this is seen as a bug, and there is an effort to make the game run faster, many players appreciate the slowdown in battle. There is a feel associated with that which adds a lot to the overall impression of the game. It's oddly gratifying to feel it slow down as the enemy and their shots explode...
- david-given 11y ago
  Did it simulate a proper 3D world, with your ship and the other objects all occupying space (and therefore requiring vector calculations everywhere), or did it cheat by keeping minimal position information and just fiddling the display to make it look like you're moving? From the way the enemy ships move it feels like it's cheating, but the starfield and the starbases all look pretty good.
  - chipsy 11y ago
    It cheats a ton. You can turn misses into hits by carefully jiggling the camera. Still a great game though.
- pkroll 11y ago
  It's like the "wasted" in GTA going to slow-mo to accent the kill. Only it's serendipitous slow-mo.
  - ddingus 11y ago
    Yeah, that's how I feel about it. Somewhere, I read some comments by the author on all of that. He just did fairly straight up, simple, cheater type 3D on the 6502. Those slowdowns were an artifact of all that. They add a lot to the game, though the author didn't intend for it to go that way. Funny, for that time period, there are a lot of "effects" that were resource limits, or bugs that ended up making for a better experience. Little things, like getting an extra color to work with were a very big deal. We have come so damn far... This did cause me to pull my old 400 out of the closet. It has this cartridge in it. Turned it on, and it plays fine. My HDTV is a bit cranky about it all though.
glhaynes 11y ago
When I watched the video of Star Raiders, my first thought was "hey, that looks like Solaris!", a game I grew up playing on a friend's Atari 2600. Turns out it was also by Neubauer, just a few years later. Cinematic is definitely the right word — it easily felt as epic and expansive as a good NES game, which is pretty astounding considering the limitations of the 2600. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buhHMAcRSwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buhHMAcRSwU http://www.1up.com/features/solaris-atari-2600-starfighter http://www.1up.com/features/solaris-atari-2600-starfighter

sageikosa 11y ago

Thanks, I had forgotten that I had ever played that game. As soon as I saw the hyperspace navigation reticule I instantly flashed back to memories of fighting to keep it centered.

flurpitude 11y ago

Wow, that's impressive for an 8-bit computer in 1979. Especially within 8KB of RAM. Elite (1984) was more sophisticated on essentially similar hardware but had a little more RAM to play with.

CWuestefeld 11y ago

Wow, that brings back memories. This was the first piece of software I ever owned. I learned so much from that Atari 800 as a teenager. Understanding the difference between COLOR and SETCOLOR (where COLOR didn't refer to a particular RGB, but referenced whatever happened to be in the specified SETCOLOR; this is presumably how the flashing alarm screen is implemented) taught me about indirection. I wrote my own "Breakout" game in BASIC. At first I had a long IF/THEN to react to the joystick direction, and it slowed the game appreciably. I later found (after seeing an example in one of those magazines with the type-in-this-program's-source-code) that it's far more efficient to store offsets into an array, and update the paddle coordinates just from indexed lookups into the array. I had an interest before this, and new some rudimentary basics, it's stuff like this that gave me the incentive and the means to learn much more.

XJOKOLAT 11y ago

What a throw back ... "Red 5 standing by ..." I remember pretending be to part of the rebel alliance in that game ... many hours spent. Thanks to the designer. Looking at the OCR of the code that provided the foundation of a tiny part of my early years is a strangely odd experience. The source code of a childhood ...

aidenn0 11y ago

Here's the version I played (ported to the less-capable 2600) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wh8Gb9J1nE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wh8Gb9J1nE It came with a multi-button controller with replaceable overlays, which presaged the Atari Jaguar's controllers.

andyidsinga 11y ago

thanks for posting that -- was one of my fav childhood games!