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This kind of thing is why I got interested in programming in the first place. Pseudo-3D racing games in particular... as a kid, it was boggling to me how these

This kind of thing is why I got interested in programming in the first place. Pseudo-3D racing games in particular... as a kid, it was boggling to me how these simple 2D machines could produce a pretty convincing pseudo-3D racetrack! The Atari 2600 could hardly handle drawing the ghosts in Pac-Man; how could it draw a decent "3D" roadway? Bizarrely, I lost interest in that kind of programming once machines got so powerful that drawing this kind of thing became easy...

chillingeffect 12y ago
> I lost interest in that kind of programming once machines got so powerful that drawing this kind of thing became easy. Me, too. Once libraries and APIs become commonplace, programming became much more about connecting known working objects together rather than understanding multiple topics in depth. Just before the internet took off, around 1998 or so, I spent months and months learning what every byte in .jpg, .gif, .mid and .wav files did. That really itched the scratching in my brain. I would love to find a new skill or hobby that affects me like that. Making pictures with ImageMagick just doesn't interest me... I'm actually finding woodworking to be somewhat as engrossing, but the difference is that in woodworking, you constantly see steady progress toward a goal, whereas in computers, a picture or sound would spring to life instantly once you'd cracked the code. You really felt the jump. Oh well.
T-hawk 12y ago
The actual answer to your question is that the Atari 2600's fundamental limitation is sprites per scanline, not per screen. It can draw lots of objects by reusing sprites across many scanlines, but can't draw many objects that need to move independently in vertical space. So you can draw the "3D" racetracks by reusing two sprites all the way down the screen for the road boundaries, but you can't draw three Pac-man ghosts on the same scanline so you have to flicker between them on alternate frames.

chillingeffect 12y ago

> I lost interest in that kind of programming once machines got so powerful that drawing this kind of thing became easy. Me, too. Once libraries and APIs become commonplace, programming became much more about connecting known working objects together rather than understanding multiple topics in depth. Just before the internet took off, around 1998 or so, I spent months and months learning what every byte in .jpg, .gif, .mid and .wav files did. That really itched the scratching in my brain. I would love to find a new skill or hobby that affects me like that. Making pictures with ImageMagick just doesn't interest me... I'm actually finding woodworking to be somewhat as engrossing, but the difference is that in woodworking, you constantly see steady progress toward a goal, whereas in computers, a picture or sound would spring to life instantly once you'd cracked the code. You really felt the jump. Oh well.

T-hawk 12y ago

The actual answer to your question is that the Atari 2600's fundamental limitation is sprites per scanline, not per screen. It can draw lots of objects by reusing sprites across many scanlines, but can't draw many objects that need to move independently in vertical space. So you can draw the "3D" racetracks by reusing two sprites all the way down the screen for the road boundaries, but you can't draw three Pac-man ghosts on the same scanline so you have to flicker between them on alternate frames.