Missile Simulator Game + Odyemu = Possible ?

[sut]

I'm currently planning on starting from the beginning of video games and going on a Chrono-gaming stint through time, but due to real life issues such as two kids, stressful (aka crap) job with very limited time and disposable income this will be purely PC emulator/simulator based. Idea is to work through each game. If this sounds similar to Chronogamers blog, the idea is pretty much the same but I really want start at the very beginning and cover all angles, not just the home consoles. Initially with everygame released (or I can find emulated) upto 31/12/1979. I will make a masterlist along the way and try to obtain information on all games, even those not available via emulation (I know there will be loads of problems/obstacles - but one game at a time eh ? ).

 

I do not intend to do a blog as Chronogamer did (Where are you Chronogamer ? - your blog was ace!), this is purely for my own personal adventure/journey.

 

Wikipedia is going to be my best friend during this (predictably very long project) so i'll start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_video_games#1971

 

So to start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_simulator_game, The missile simulator game. More information here: http://www.pong-story.com/intro.htm

 

Now finally to get the point of this topic ! I have googled to the cows come home and there appears to be no emulator/simulator available, but the description of the game (I know no-one has ever seen it running, but we can make assumptions) to me the premise sounds similar to the Magnavox Odyssey 1 (Analogue, overlays etc). So in the unlikely event of an emulator/simulator appearing perhaps it's possible to shoehorn it into Odyemu ?

 

Now based on my assumptions of the game, one of the bats would act as the 'missile' & another as the 'target' and create some sort of overlay as described in the available literature. Now I may be barking up completely the wrong tree here and in my wishful thinking that I could experience somehow one of the first video games be mightily deluded, but it sounds at least feasible ?

 

Attachment of how I plan to organise things using the Gamebase Frontend.

Edited September 5, 2010 by sut

[Odysseus]

It should be easily doable by someone who knew what they were doing. from what ive read your desription is pretty correct for the game. I have played Tennis for 2. Its not that hard to build one from what ive heard and that game has been emulated. I even have "tennis for U" on my iPhone which is the same thing but with a computer opponent. But after the Cathode ray amusement device was Noughts and Crosses which was a computer game.

 

Then came Tennis for Two. not the best but gets the point across download Here

 

Then the last two youll have to wind are Space War which can be found Here

 

and computer space. There is a downladable simulator i never tried it but have downloaded it from Here

 

Then youll be at the odyssey

Edited September 6, 2010 by njb12287

[sut]

Thanks for the information, also found an edsac emulator that runs noughts & crosses. Also on Wikipedia it's got Space Travel as an early game, but I cannot find any screenshots let alone emulation for this.

Also saw Galaxy Game, but this I believe is just Space War in a different cabinet, so the emulation will double for both Space War & Galaxy Game.

[Retro Rogue]

I'm currently planning on starting from the beginning of video games...Now finally to get the point of this topic ! I have googled to the cows come home and there appears to be no emulator/simulator available,

 

That's because it's not a video game. It's an EM game (electro-mechanical game) that uses a CRT as a prop. It could have just as easily subsituted a flashlight and silk screen for it, or even stream of water. The person uses mechanical controls to manually move the CRT beam gun, whose motion is made hard to move around through some gears, while trying to direct the beam to hit the spot on the tube where the targets are affixed - which is pre-arranged and detected mechanically.

 

but the description of the game (I know no-one has ever seen it running, but we can make assumptions) to me the premise sounds similar to the Magnavox Odyssey 1 (Analogue, overlays etc). So in the unlikely event of an emulator/simulator appearing perhaps it's possible to shoehorn it into Odyemu ?

 

It is absolutely nothing like the Odyssey. And the Odyssey is not Analogue - it's a digital system that uses flip-flops and has pulse timing.

 

 

Now based on my assumptions of the game, one of the bats would act as the 'missile' & another as the 'target' and create some sort of overlay as described in the available literature. Now I may be barking up completely the wrong tree here and in my wishful thinking that I could experience somehow one of the first video games be mightily deluded, but it sounds at least feasible ?

 

Attachment of how I plan to organise things using the Gamebase Frontend.

 

No, as I stated it had nothing to do with the Odyssey other than Ralph cited it in some of his original patents as previous work of using a CRT in an entertainment device.

 

It is not a "video game" and was not one of the first. Which brings us to the next point - you have to differentiate and define what definition of "video games" you're using. The original term (which is solely applied to electronic games that interface through a CRT display via a video signal - hence the term "video game" or sometimes "tv games"), or the later evolved (and technically inaccurate) pop-culture definition of anything electronic with a display. Naughts and crosses and the like have been refered to as computer games, not video games. Likewise, Tennis for Two and Spacewar! have no video signal (they're vector) and had the term applied to them much later in hindsite via the pop-culture definition. Most serious scholars (such as those involved with the IGDA-Preservation group, which consists of archives, museums, academia, etc. across the world) prefer to use "electronic games" to skirt around the "video" issue.

 

It should be easily doable by someone who knew what they were doing.

 

It's a mechanical game, any attempt to recreate it would simply be a simulation of a mechanical device no different than simulating pinball.

 

from what ive read your desription is pretty correct for the game. I have played Tennis for 2. Its not that hard to build one from what ive heard and that game has been emulated.

 

It's been simulated. There's no runnable code to emulate. Spacewar! is an actual computer game running code (since it was a mini-computer game), so as long as you simulate any of the PDP or other mini's it was run for, you can run the actual code (i.e. emulate the game and setup). Computer Space, the Odyssey, PONG (and all pre CPU based video arcade games) are done purely in discrete logic (what's called a state machine). They have no runable code, and hence have to be simulated. The exception is DICE, which has made good efforts in simulating actual individual discrete components to tie in to the actual circuit level logic to emulate the original discrete game logic.

Edited September 7, 2010 by wgungfu

[sut]

Thank for the in depth reply, missile simulator game is obviously more closely related to fairground mechanical games, than video games.

I have great trouble with this defining of video games, why are computer games judged differently ? For me Jet Set Willy on the Spectrum is a computer game, but also a video game I assume you'll say it's a video game because you can play it on a tv/monitor even though it's a computer providing the signal.

Regarding Space War I find this really difficult not to regard this as a video game, was it purely down to the fact that when it was programmed ( same for tennis for two) that raster display equipment was not the best to use at that time ?

 

For me computer games and video games are as alike as White people and black people, same species, different race but the same nonetheless. Therefore I think as you suggest the more encompassing pop culture remit of video games is more acceptable and easier to interpret than the technical terminology.

 

I must also thank you for the explanation of missile simulator game, that is the deepest and most informed information I have read about the game to date and has completely changed my mental image on how the game played.

[Retro Rogue]

I have great trouble with this defining of video games, why are computer games judged differently ?

 

It's the output, not that they're computer games. Naughts and Crosses uses a row of lights for the visual display.

 

For me Jet Set Willy on the Spectrum is a computer game, but also a video game I assume you'll say it's a video game because you can play it on a tv/monitor even though it's a computer providing the signal.

 

Home/personal computers are a different breed, since most were designed to hook up to televisions for their output. When you're talking about mainframes and minis, you have to differentiate as not every game that ran on them involved display to a monitor.

 

Regarding Space War I find this really difficult not to regard this as a video game, was it purely down to the fact that when it was programmed ( same for tennis for two) that raster display equipment was not the best to use at that time ?

 

It's that you're falling victim to the hindsite curse. The term didn't exist then. "Video Game" arose out of a technical discriptive of the actual process - an electronic device that connects to a telelvision set (usually through the antennta) and interfaces with the video signal decoder. I.E. at some point the signal from the game circuitry outputs it's information in a video signal. That's why quite often they were referred to as "TV Games".

 

Spacewar! (it's not Space War I, it's a single word with an exclamation point) and other mainframe and mini-games that ran on computers lucky enough to have CRT displays) run on a direct controlled vector display. A vector CRT display is not a video display. There is no video signal, the computer directly controls the CRT gun. This is why time and again both Tennis for Two and Spacewar! were thrown out of court as a viable pre-existing "video game". We're talking about many cases over a 20 year period in multiple courts. Sometime in the early 80's the press (and some companies and advertising firms) started using the term outside of it's original usage as more of a branding of everything with a display - to the point that even LED handheld games were even referred to as "video games" at one point. This usage stuck in the pop culture and people have been applying it in hindsite ever since.

 

And no, Tennis for two was not programmed in the way you're thinking, there was no stored program run that Higginbotham sat down and programmed like someone would in a normal computer. Analogue computers are a different beast. It's purely a physical programming, done by how different logic blocks are wired together to interact with the physical changes of the environmental input (in this case the analogue dial control to provide variable analogue data used to simulate a return trajectory).

 

And so you understand, that's very different than say the Odyssey or PONG where the paddle was used to directly control the motion of an onscreen object, which then "interacted" with another onscreen object (like the ball) which then itself affected the path of the ball which was calculated off of that (and all represented and calculated digitally). In tennis for two, you're literally just using the input to "fill in the blank" of the variable portion of a pre-defined (i.e. pre-wired), and continuously calculated, equation. Think dy/dt trajectory motion, which is something analogue computers were designed and used for - missile trajectory calculations.

 

)

Therefore I think as you suggest the more encompassing pop culture remit of video games is more acceptable and easier to interpret than the technical terminology.

 

No, I suggested the opposite. The pop culture version has lead to nothing but confusion, as is also evidenced by this thread. That's exactly why as I mentioned, a lot of the archives, museums, researchers, etc. simply use the all encompasing term "electronic games" instead. As it covers an lamp display game like Noughts and Crosses just as easily as one on a television display, vector display, or teletype output. Likewise, state machines, analogue computer, or general purpose digital computers (which is what microprocessor driven consoles are).

 

I must also thank you for the explanation of missile simulator game, that is the deepest and most informed information I have read about the game to date and has completely changed my mental image on how the game played.

 

Not a problem, but you can easily read about it in it's patent which is linked to both at David's site and the Wikipedia article. It even describes how it used the beam "intensity" (i.e. the brightness control) to simulate an explosion by making the beam loose "focus". The motion circuitry is also described via the deflector plates, which is how the beam in a CRT gun is generally controlled at it's root (regardless of vector or raster display technology). It "deflects" the beam in to different directions. So you understand display technology a little more: In a vector dislay, the beam is directly controlled in this manner by the computer or electronic circuitry it's interacing with. In a video display, the display circuitry itself has control of the beam and does automatic exact row by row sweeps across the tube (termed scanlines), moving down one row at a time to produce a frame. The number of times it does this down the entire tube over a certain time period is called a frame rate (vector displays have no frame rate because there are no frames). Likewise, each scanline is (in simplest terms) divided horizontally in to subsections of decoded material (on or off, beam intensity, color information) called pixels, the display of which across a scaned line is called a "raster display". The transmission of the display data for this format (and in later transmitted formats) is called a video signal.

Edited September 8, 2010 by wgungfu