38 replies to this topic

[opcode]

I am a little late but, yeah, Atarisoft ruled. From a technical point-of-view they were by far the best developers for the CV, which is quite ironic. Games like Moon Patrol and Defender do a lot of tricks, like changing the sprite table mid screen. Games like Pac-Man and Centipede used background shapes as sprites to reduce flicker. So very advanced stuff for the time, quite ahead of others developers, even Coleco.

[youki]

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like changing the sprite table mid screen.

Interresting. In what goal did they do that?

[Pixelboy]

youki, on Thu Jun 16, 2011 2:47 AM, said:

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like changing the sprite table mid screen.

Interresting. In what goal did they do that?

Probably to implement a richer scrolling background, I would guess, especially in the case of Moon Patrol.

If Eduardo goes all the way with his arcade port of Moon Patrol, he may have to pull off similar VRAM stunts.

[opcode]

Pixelboy, on Thu Jun 16, 2011 7:07 AM, said:

youki, on Thu Jun 16, 2011 2:47 AM, said:

Quote

like changing the sprite table mid screen.

Interresting. In what goal did they do that?

Probably to implement a richer scrolling background, I would guess, especially in the case of Moon Patrol.

If Eduardo goes all the way with his arcade port of Moon Patrol, he may have to pull off similar VRAM stunts.

Atari changed the sprite table mid screen with Defender, so all sprites are repurposed after being used for the radar. In theory you get twice as many sprites on screen with that.
For Moon Patrol I know for sure they change the border color mid screen, so top and bottom borders have different colors. Very advanced stuff for the time. Too bad we didn't get all the planned releases, I was curious to see how they would handle Pole Position.
Anyways, Atari's Moon Patrol is famous for its smooth scrolling, and I think they deserve a lot of credit for that. On the other hand some of the techniques Atari used with their CV releases had more to do with good presentation than gameplay fidelity.
Examples: you get an already somewhat boring game like Jungle Hunt and sacrifice the small touches like monkeys and bubbles in name of smooth scrolling and you get a even more boring experience. Or you use background graphics to create eyes in Pac-Man to reduce flicker but end with sprite priority problems (when ghosts cross paths). Their concern with flickering was such that they decided to flicker all sprites in Dig-Dug from the get go. While that produces flicker 100% of the time, the flicker is very predictable, so we don't go from no flicker at all to terrible flicker; we stay in a fixed, very stable 30Hz flicker...
It is all a very delicate balance, there is no easy answer for what is better or more important. That depends on the developer's tastes. Personally I prefer gameplay fidelity, so that is why some of my choices with Moon Patrol are quite different, just like some of my choices with PMC were different.

[youki]

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Too bad we didn't get all the planned releases, I was curious to see how they would handle Pole Position.

Yes, it is pity. Concerning Pole Position , i'm not sure that would do something good, i have been very disapointed by their TI 99 version that use the same video chip.

But i'm sure , from my prelimary testing with my long term "outrun" project , that a really good pole position can been done on C.V.

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Atari changed the sprite table mid screen with Defender, so all sprites are repurposed after being used for the radar. In theory you get twice as many sprites on screen with that.

I don't think i would take this option if i was in charge of dev. Seems quite tricky just to handle "more or less" simple point in a radar.

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For Moon Patrol I know for sure they change the border color mid screen, so top and bottom borders have different colors.

Here too, i think it is lot of "energy" used for thing that add nothing to the game. Without that, Moon Patrol would be as good imho.

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About Flicker

Yes, i think it is a matter of taste. Personnaly i hate that but i have to admit that on colecovision sometimes it is a necessary trouble otherwise the kind of game doable on coleco becomes limited. Flickering is more terrible on 50hz console...

[retroclouds]

youki, on Thu Jun 16, 2011 9:21 AM, said:

Yes, it is pity. Concerning Pole Position , i'm not sure that would do something good, i have been very disapointed by their TI 99 version that use the same video chip.

True, Pole Position for the TI-99/4A is not a good game. Perhaps it had a little to do with the fact the ROM is only 16K.
And they had to bankswitch (two 8K pages).

As a matter of fact Atarisoft had a few crappy games for the TI-99/4A (Shamus, Picnic Paranoia, etc.)
I did very much like the Donkey Kong, PacMan and Ms. Pacman version they did for the TI-99/4A though.

[ColecoFan1981]

retroclouds, on Thu Jun 16, 2011 12:45 PM, said:

youki, on Thu Jun 16, 2011 9:21 AM, said:

Yes, it is pity. Concerning Pole Position , i'm not sure that would do something good, i have been very disapointed by their TI 99 version that use the same video chip.

True, Pole Position for the TI-99/4A is not a good game. Perhaps it had a little to do with the fact the ROM is only 16K.
And they had to bankswitch (two 8K pages).

As a matter of fact Atarisoft had a few crappy games for the TI-99/4A (Shamus, Picnic Paranoia, etc.)
I did very much like the Donkey Kong, PacMan and Ms. Pacman version they did for the TI-99/4A though.

I am still hoping that it may be possible to do a Pole Position port for the CV. We know that the CV's Expansion Module #2 is the preferred device.

~Ben

[Bartsfam]

I know this is an old topic...but the recent talk about reprogramming Joust got me to thinking....Why weren't the Atarisoft prototypes ever released back in the day?

It's obvious alot of time and effort went into programming them, (Pac-Man, Joust, Moon Patrol..etc..)
Coleco may have been going under, but Atari was still in business. There was a large installed base of Colecovisions. Why not make a cartridge, throw them in a box and make some money? They were good quality games.

You never hear about the lost prototypes of Xonox, Activision, Imagic, or Spectravision for the CV? Why Atari?
Was Atari hurting that much, that they couldn't release a finished product?

[PingvinBlueJeans]

Bartsfam, on Sat Sep 10, 2011 6:22 PM, said:

Why weren't the Atarisoft prototypes ever released back in the day?

....

Was Atari hurting that much, that they couldn't release a finished product?

By the time Dig Dug, Joust, and Moon Patrol were finished, the crash was already happening and Atari was definitely cutting back on production. I suspect that releasing games for a competitor's console was not considered a very high priority. When Warner finally sold Atari, all these unreleased titles were formally cancelled (if they hadn't been already). Although mostly completed, I'm not sure how close any of these titles ever came to being released. (Curt Vendel would have more specific info on that, possibly.)

Pac-Man, on the other hand, was actually one of the first ColecoVision titles completed by Atari, and the decision not to release it was strictly a marketing decision. At the time, Atari was heavily pushing the Atari 5200 SuperSystem against the ColecoVision, with the release of an arcade-quality Pac-Man port for the 5200 being a big part of this push (as seen here). It was decided that releasing Pac-Man for CV would hurt 5200 sales by nullifying one of the prime advantages Atari had over their competitor. CV Pac-Man being superior to the 5200 port didn't help matters either, so Atari marketing killed the release.

[Bartsfam]

Thanks. That explains alot. I always wondered the exact timeline of the production of the protos. Interesting that PacMan was completed first.

[Inky]

I wonder how flickery bad Robotoron or Vanguard would have been.

[Armonigann]

ChuckH, on Sun Jun 5, 2011 4:56 PM, said:

NIAD, on Sun Jun 5, 2011 4:33 PM, said:

ChuckH, on Sun Jun 5, 2011 3:47 PM, said:

youki, on Sun Jun 5, 2011 9:59 AM, said:

And if you test non-released games from AtariSoft , like CV Pacman, and CV Moon Patrol ,they are very very good.

Joust and Mr.Do were AtariSoft prototypes also.

You meant Dig Dug, not Mr. Do!... or did I miss something?

Oops, I meant Dig Dug.

Was'nt there a Joust proto but w/ no sound?

[barnieg]

Inky, on Sun Sep 11, 2011 9:06 PM, said:

I wonder how flickery bad Robotoron or Vanguard would have been.

Considering how well the (unreleased) ZX Spectrum version works for speed I'm sure a decent version could be done, available RAM being maybe the only problem

Note: You might need to turn down the volume, the soundtrack is not from the spectrum!



Barnie

[NIAD]

Armonigann, on Mon Sep 12, 2011 12:07 AM, said:

ChuckH, on Sun Jun 5, 2011 4:56 PM, said:

NIAD, on Sun Jun 5, 2011 4:33 PM, said:

ChuckH, on Sun Jun 5, 2011 3:47 PM, said:

youki, on Sun Jun 5, 2011 9:59 AM, said:

And if you test non-released games from AtariSoft , like CV Pacman, and CV Moon Patrol ,they are very very good.

Joust and Mr.Do were AtariSoft prototypes also.

You meant Dig Dug, not Mr. Do!... or did I miss something?

Oops, I meant Dig Dug.

Was'nt there a Joust proto but w/ no sound?

Yes, it's been available in rom image format for years and there is a project underway to try and add the missing sound/music to the game (not the actual sound/music code that someone has, but recreated from scratch)... there's a separate/recent thread detailing that project.