8 ms·

Bang – An Atari 2600 VCS Demo

49 points by apaprocki 12y ago

lubilubilubi 12y ago
He will give a Talk [0] at Hackover 2014[1]on how he did the Demo and explains some of the tricks he used. The talk will be recorded and maybe even streamed (for those of you who are interested) [0] https://hackover.de/fahrplan/events/6046.html https://hackover.de/fahrplan/events/6046.html [1] https://hackover.de/ https://hackover.de/
- jamiesonbecker 12y ago
  I saw a lot of SLI and mixed modes. I'm guessing the helix animation was done with sprites (full screen height). But there are a lot of things that just seemed beyond what's possible on that platform. No idea how the Coca-cola logo was done (sprites moving together? but how the curves?), or how any of this was so smooth and fluid. Simply mind-blowing.. especially on a 2600, which IIRC have less capabilities than even a XL/XE (POKEY/ANTIC/etc).
  - beagle3 12y ago
    The 2600 had a 1D display buffer. You would rewrite the contents of that buffer at the end of every scanline to actually get a 2D image. Game logic would usually only run during flyback. (Yes, that's why atari chess did not show the board while thinking, and why if there was a bug you'd get a 1D horizontal image all over the screen)
minikomi 12y ago
Also related - Ctrix's Guitari https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8e7g8kJIlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8e7g8kJIlo
raldi 12y ago
Reminds me of this prediction from longbets.org: “A machine capable of passing the Turing Test will be made in 2075 using only hardware that was available in 2005.” http://longbets.org/172/ http://longbets.org/172/
- hyp0 12y ago
  yes! Speed isn't a barrier, it just runs slower. But people can't consider ridiculously slow algorithms (nor expt/iterate them). this doesn't address RAM/store limitations though.
  - cturner 12y ago
    What's interesting about the above thought is it supposes that what have the technology now, we just lack the technique. You might disagree, but what you wrote paved over the essence of the parent.
    - hyp0 12y ago
      I see what you mean. I'd read through the comments at the linked page, and I'd forgotten that the linking comment here on HN didn't include those debates. Especially, whether you can pack in a human's worth of knowledge into a 2005 HDD (of course you can if you have huge numbers of them, but seems against the spirit of the idea). And, the estimates of human neural complexity. It's possible that the human brain isn't very efficient at intelligence alone - there's many survival functions and the historical path evolution happened to take. (as harder evidence, I also read of a guy with almost no brain, just a few millimeters coating the skull, who had normal college IQ...) But I was really adding my own tangent, a thought I had long ago: assuming intelligence can be simulated by an algorithm, it can be done now, because of turing machine equivalence (provided we have sufficient memory). If it used too much memory, it seems likely we could still run a cut-down version, or some aspect of it. [BTW: Arguably, if a mathematical model of consciousness exists, with variations for personality, knowledge, present state of mind etc, all of them are virtually conscious and feeling at all times - just frozen in stasis at the moment]. Historically, one barrier to new algorithms is that practical people just don't entertain algorithms that are computationally infeasibile on present hardware. But when hardware is fast enough, they are more willing to. Perhaps the ability to experiment and iterate quickly is also helpful.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- 12y ago
tluyben2 12y ago
It's been on my bucket list a long time; making a demo for one of my 70-80s systems and running it on the actual hardware. Won't be a 2600 (although I have some very old working ones). This kind of things inspires me to get cracking on that.
ssdsa 12y ago
"Only legal opcodes were used in this demo" - Great! Some information on 'illegal' opcodes for the 6502 CPU: http://www.pagetable.com/?p=39 http://www.pagetable.com/?p=39 http://www.oxyron.de/html/opcodes02.html http://www.oxyron.de/html/opcodes02.html
venti 12y ago
I really like the references to the German sci-fi cult classic "Space Patrol" at the end of the demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AvjMHs7U7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AvjMHs7U7I
- ZenoArrow 12y ago
  Never seen Space Patrol, so missed that, but I liked the references to the Amiga, C64 and the game Impossible Mission... http://www.ohgizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/impossible_mission_2.jpg http://www.ohgizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/impossible...
guidedlight 12y ago
Great demo. Working with the Atari 2600 is extreme. It only has enough memory to hold one row of pixels. So at every scanline it would need to compute the gameplay and on-screen elements on its 8bit 1.19Mhz CPU and 128 bytes of RAM. Insane!
drudru11 12y ago
jaw dropping incredible. i've never seen any body pull off that much on the 2600. respect!

49 points by apaprocki 12y ago

He will give a Talk [0] at Hackover 2014[1]on how he did the Demo and explains some of the tricks he used. The talk will be recorded and maybe even streamed (for those of you who are interested) [0] https://hackover.de/fahrplan/events/6046.html https://hackover.de/fahrplan/events/6046.html [1] https://hackover.de/ https://hackover.de/

jamiesonbecker 12y ago
I saw a lot of SLI and mixed modes. I'm guessing the helix animation was done with sprites (full screen height). But there are a lot of things that just seemed beyond what's possible on that platform. No idea how the Coca-cola logo was done (sprites moving together? but how the curves?), or how any of this was so smooth and fluid. Simply mind-blowing.. especially on a 2600, which IIRC have less capabilities than even a XL/XE (POKEY/ANTIC/etc).
- beagle3 12y ago
  The 2600 had a 1D display buffer. You would rewrite the contents of that buffer at the end of every scanline to actually get a 2D image. Game logic would usually only run during flyback. (Yes, that's why atari chess did not show the board while thinking, and why if there was a bug you'd get a 1D horizontal image all over the screen)

minikomi 12y ago

Also related - Ctrix's Guitari https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8e7g8kJIlo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8e7g8kJIlo

raldi 12y ago

Reminds me of this prediction from longbets.org: “A machine capable of passing the Turing Test will be made in 2075 using only hardware that was available in 2005.” http://longbets.org/172/ http://longbets.org/172/

hyp0 12y ago
yes! Speed isn't a barrier, it just runs slower. But people can't consider ridiculously slow algorithms (nor expt/iterate them). this doesn't address RAM/store limitations though.
- cturner 12y ago
  What's interesting about the above thought is it supposes that what have the technology now, we just lack the technique. You might disagree, but what you wrote paved over the essence of the parent.
  - hyp0 12y ago
    I see what you mean. I'd read through the comments at the linked page, and I'd forgotten that the linking comment here on HN didn't include those debates. Especially, whether you can pack in a human's worth of knowledge into a 2005 HDD (of course you can if you have huge numbers of them, but seems against the spirit of the idea). And, the estimates of human neural complexity. It's possible that the human brain isn't very efficient at intelligence alone - there's many survival functions and the historical path evolution happened to take. (as harder evidence, I also read of a guy with almost no brain, just a few millimeters coating the skull, who had normal college IQ...) But I was really adding my own tangent, a thought I had long ago: assuming intelligence can be simulated by an algorithm, it can be done now, because of turing machine equivalence (provided we have sufficient memory). If it used too much memory, it seems likely we could still run a cut-down version, or some aspect of it. [BTW: Arguably, if a mathematical model of consciousness exists, with variations for personality, knowledge, present state of mind etc, all of them are virtually conscious and feeling at all times - just frozen in stasis at the moment]. Historically, one barrier to new algorithms is that practical people just don't entertain algorithms that are computationally infeasibile on present hardware. But when hardware is fast enough, they are more willing to. Perhaps the ability to experiment and iterate quickly is also helpful.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
12y ago

tluyben2 12y ago

It's been on my bucket list a long time; making a demo for one of my 70-80s systems and running it on the actual hardware. Won't be a 2600 (although I have some very old working ones). This kind of things inspires me to get cracking on that.

ssdsa 12y ago

"Only legal opcodes were used in this demo" - Great! Some information on 'illegal' opcodes for the 6502 CPU: http://www.pagetable.com/?p=39 http://www.pagetable.com/?p=39 http://www.oxyron.de/html/opcodes02.html http://www.oxyron.de/html/opcodes02.html

venti 12y ago

I really like the references to the German sci-fi cult classic "Space Patrol" at the end of the demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AvjMHs7U7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AvjMHs7U7I

ZenoArrow 12y ago
Never seen Space Patrol, so missed that, but I liked the references to the Amiga, C64 and the game Impossible Mission... http://www.ohgizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/impossible_mission_2.jpg http://www.ohgizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/impossible...

guidedlight 12y ago

Great demo. Working with the Atari 2600 is extreme. It only has enough memory to hold one row of pixels. So at every scanline it would need to compute the gameplay and on-screen elements on its 8bit 1.19Mhz CPU and 128 bytes of RAM. Insane!

drudru11 12y ago

jaw dropping incredible. i've never seen any body pull off that much on the 2600. respect!