185 replies to this topic

[Albert]

Scott Stilphen said:

Those screen photos just beg for some indepth comparison....so here it is

Excellent, you pointed out some of the same things I noticed in addition to others, such as the fact that the sword rides higher than the bottom of the title. And of course took time to illustrate your points with graphics.

..Al

[TheRedEye]

THANK YOU, Albert. I have no reputation around here, I'm glad someone "big" was able to notice this stuff too. I mean, come on. How the HELL can a vidcap only have 9 colors?

Next time you want to fake a prototype, make sure you do some jpg distortion.

[Paul Slocum]

Albert said:

In addition, I have noticed something about all the images that suggests they are all faked. The Atari 2600 is only capable of a horizontal resolution of 160 pixels.  However, every one of the images

Hey, maybe the programmer had figured out a way to double the horizontal resolution... If we could just combine that with the interlacing trick...

-Paul

[Cafeman]

EGADS! Remember the Bigfoot shaky-cam footage from the 60's or 70's?



Anyway, I don't know squat about the 2600's graphics, but then again, I guess I do. The square pixels confused me from the first view (The Atari 8bit/5200 also use rectangular-wide pixels and it appears from your comments the 2600 does too).

I guess this was done in the interest of selling a fake at a huge $$$ cost. But... what about the letter from Tod Frye that Dutchman refers too?

[Warren]

Thanks to Stephen's excellent frame by frame analysis, I have to safely say that I'm now very much skeptical. There are just too many inconsistancies, especially with the resolution of the sword, and the horse display.
Thank you for clearly showing issues that could possibly call into question the legitimacy of whether the cart could actually exist on 2600 hardware, let alone if a proto/stolen cart had leaked.

[Albert]

Cafeman said:

I guess this was done in the interest of selling a fake at a huge $$$ cost. But... what about the letter from Tod Frye that Dutchman refers too?

Well, that was from April 15th, 2002. The main thing he pointed out was that Airworld had a multicolor man on a flying horse on the title screen, instead of the sword. Given that four months have passed since that message, that's plenty of time for someone to mock up some screenshots that pay homage to what Tod said.

..Al

[jahfish]

wow scott ... thanx for the scientific approach

ladies and gentleman ... from now on it's dr. scott, please

:wink:


and i think we can now all go to bed and go back to ebay tomorrow, helping poor collectors to get rid of their collections ....

let's change the topic, this airworld thing gets boring

did anybody notice that lots of people separate from really nice goodies?

come on, nobody wants to change the topic?


ok, let's go for some more beef ....

[Warren]

Quote

ok, let's go for some more beef ....

I had a Big Montana a couple days ago at Arby's myself....

[Thomas Jentzsch]

What makes me most sceptical is the green hand. If the graphics and code are taken from Earthworld (where the hand has the color of the background), then this can not be. To me it looks, like the floodfill of the graphics program missed that pixel (BTW: are there green backgrounds in Earthworld?).

The sword overlapping might be possible, but the 320 pixel resolution discoveres the truth completely.

Sorry, but I have to agree. IMO this is definitely a hoax!

He should have asked me before posting this...

[DuckandCover]

NOT that I could have been a competitive bidder had this thing landed on Ebay , but it is reassuring to know that there are such knowledgeable people here who are willing to look out for the interests of collectors. I had really hoped that this proto was the real thing, not because I'm a big Swordquest fan, but because I would have liked a glimpse at how Atari planned to wind the whole thing up. Between the analyses of Albert, Thomas, and Scott, I'm pretty convinced this is just a fake. (Scott's comparison of the title screen and the Nazgul from Lord of the Rings sealed it for me.) Too bad, but at least no one shelled out an enormous amount of money for a prototype that wasn't genuine.

[Albert]

As Thomas just mentioned, the green hand is the most damning evidence so far. As soon as I saw Scott's mention of that, I loaded up Earthworld in Stella and took this snapshot of the guy running against a green background. I then compared this to the shot from Airworld. Here you go:



The green color is exactly the same. It is supposed to be transparent, but whoever copied the image from Earthworld missed this pixel. The green color in both images is 8, 136, 23. This further enforces my belief that the images were derived from Stella, since each emulator uses a slightly different palette (if z26 was used, for instance, the colors would be slightly different).

..Al

[CrazyImpmon]

I happen to have ATI TV Wonder VE and even with gold cables, there's still no way to get that super sharp and clear screenshot. Like someone pointed out the viceo card is a customer level (read: under $50 cheap, especially with "Value Edition" or VE for short) and even with the best driver for it there will always be a slight distortion so vertical line would show a very slight waves and if hooked via RF, some slight snow or RF interference. Atari RF modulator isn't the best designed modulator in the world.

And what the heck OpenGL has to do with video capture?!? OpenGL is mainly used for 3D video rendering and is used only on video *output*, not video capture from the tuner card.

After reading the other's comments and seeing some picture comparasions there's too many irregulatirities. Unless you get that dumped, a lot of us are going to avoid your auction (if you do post it later) and probably will continue to pick apart your screenshots and your claims bit by bits.

EDIT: a new post had come in just before I posted this. The remark about the stray green pixel in the screen shot, if you look at the screenshot #3, there's the same green stray pixel in the same place. I doubt the Atari programmers were that sloppy

[MrRetroGamer]

Now that we got that mystery cleared up, can you guys tell me who REALLY shot JFK????

Nice detective work everybody!

[CrazyImpmon]

I don't know who did it. I don't think 'Who Shot JFK' game was ever finished because the programmer assigned to that task mysteriously dissapeared. Police suspected foul play but alas the 15 year old dissapearance case remains unsolved and so the game remains unfinished.





PS an advice for making a better fake, check out the Doom 2600 site: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcad...91/2600DOOM.HTM

[finalize]

i have tv wonder card and get good pictures using the linux drivers supplied. especially with opengl capture rendering you can eliminate most all statics. the images are distorted because tv wonder does not save images in card the same way that it captures them because linux drivers eliminate static with both the post capture renderer and the gif conversion process alters the pixel enumeration causing the alteration everyone is writing about

http://www.volny.cz/geby/

i'm excited to see more, the misplaced pixel in the man piccture above is also common in the earthworld series in somplaces, so i would not worry about it

can we see more images pleez

[TheRedEye]

finalize said:

i have tv wonder card and get good pictures using the linux drivers supplied.  especially with opengl capture rendering you can eliminate most all statics.  the images are distorted because tv wonder does not save images in card the same way that it captures them because linux drivers eliminate static with both the post capture renderer and the gif conversion process alters the pixel enumeration causing the alteration everyone is writing about

http://www.volny.cz/geby/

i'm excited to see more, the misplaced pixel in the man piccture above is also common in the earthworld series in somplaces, so i would not worry about it

can we see more images pleez

So...let me get this straight. This capture card and the superiority of Linux will take a screen grab, size it to the exact specifications of a Stella screenshot, PERFECTLY eliminate all distortion down to the pixel, send a reverse signal that actually enhances the 2600's graphical capabilities, AND convert the gif to use the same palette as Stella?

That's fucking awesome. I need to get one of those.

[Scott Stilphen]

"MrRetroGamer" said:

Now that we got that mystery cleared up, can you guys tell me who REALLY shot JFK????    

Nice detective work everybody!

According to the Onion, Kennedy was slain by the CIA, Mafia, Castro, LBJ, Teamsters, and the Freemasons. He was shot 129 times from 43 different angles.

[Albert]

finalize said:

i have tv wonder card and get good pictures using the linux drivers supplied.  especially with opengl capture rendering you can eliminate most all statics.  the images are distorted because tv wonder does not save images in card the same way that it captures them because linux drivers eliminate static with both the post capture renderer and the gif conversion process alters the pixel enumeration causing the alteration everyone is writing about

http://www.volny.cz/geby/

i'm excited to see more, the misplaced pixel in the man piccture above is also common in the earthworld series in somplaces, so i would not worry about it

can we see more images pleez

For the record, this post was posted from the same IP that flexured (the person with this "AirWorld" proto) posted both of his messages from. They are the only two users posting with this same IP address. Your bullshit has been called, why don't you go away now?

..Al

[Lemmi]

hahahaha

I had that same feeling that finalized and flexured was the same person, but i dont have the skills to find out for sure

this guy is a joke

[Curt Vendel]

Tough to say it is truly legit after such detailed investigations....


Scott's going to be joining CSI's show next year as their screenshots investigator, nice work :-)




Curt

[Scott Stilphen]

"finalize" said:

i'm excited to see more, the misplaced pixel in the man piccture above is also common in the earthworld series in somplaces, so i would not worry about it

Where, exactly??

[Dutchman2000]

The message from Tod Frye I posted about earlier was originally posted on the 2600 connection message board back in April by someone with the e-mail address: ifjq216@hotmail.com.


After a little research this address has been linked to this other e-mail address: Jeremy@neosurf.net.

Just did a quick search and found the following:

Hello All-

I need a line to add to the following shell script that will rename files from this format

JJONES.12345
THONEYCUTT.44332
RCRASUS.55555

to this format

12345.pdf
44332.pdf
55555.pdf

respectively.

Basically dropping the original alphabetic prefix, making the numeric extension the new prefix, and adding a .pdf extension. This is not a conversion job, just a renaming.

The original filenames are passed to the script in variable format by an oracle application. The file needs to be renamed before it is copied to it's destination (invoice_in)

Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated!

--BEGIN KORN SHELL SCRIPT--

#!/usr/bin/ksh
# A simple script to copy a file submited to invoicetopdf to the invoice_in
# directory. It takes the first positional parameter as its only argument.

echo "I am in the script" >> /tmp/inv.err
echo $# >> /tmp/inv.err
echo $* >> /tmp/inv.err
echo "File name is: $1" >> /tmp/inv.err
cp $1 $APPL_TOP/ecan/invoice_in/in/ >> /tmp/inv.err
print $? >> /tmp/inv.err

--END OF SCRIPT--


Thanks-Jeremy

ifjq216@hotmail.com
jeremy@neosurf.net


My guess is he made it up.

[finalize]

I work with flexured as engineer who help set him up with the graphics workstation which took the pictures. please do not use foul language in these posts there is little need to be uncivil. he will not be posting here but has asked me to answer questions about the graphics used and point out falsities in your reasoning at

we develop graphics card and are not without the tools to properly capture simple video frequency

thank you and good night

[finalize]

I work with flexured as engineer who help set him up with the graphics workstation which took the pictures. please do not use foul language in these posts there is little need to be uncivil. he will not be posting here but has asked me to answer questions about the graphics used and point out falsities in your reasoning at

we develop graphics card and are not without the tools to properly capture simple video frequency

you should know about our actual ip's are masqueraded by the firewall (if you know what that means) and so there are thousands of others

thank you and good night

[Scott Stilphen]

Nice work, Dutchman!

Bu-bu-bu-BUSTED!