Fort Apocalypse Posted April 5, 2009 Share Posted April 5, 2009 From May 30, 2008, but it's a great article I just saw for the first time today: * Gamasutra's Game Design Essentials: 20 Atari Games Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 From May 30, 2008, but it's a great article I just saw for the first time today:* Gamasutra's Game Design Essentials: 20 Atari Games Interesting article. The UK magazine Retro Gamer has had articles on Gauntlet, Paper Boy and Marble Madness in the past too. Last month it had a big article on Pac Man. Its the only retro computer mag that I get on a regular basis. Well worth the read if you can get it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 Good article, though a few oddities stood out: Here's a cool bit of trivia. Sonic the Hedgehog is often regarded as the first platform game to have an "idle animation," where if you don't touch the controls for a few seconds your guy stands and looks at you, tapping his foot. Do people seriously think that? Just off the top of my head, Boulderdash comes to mind - it preceded Sonic by seven years and isn't an obscure game; having multiple home and coin-op ports. Also, to have an entire section about 720 Degrees without even mentioning the unique controller just seems odd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artlover Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 This is proving to be a really good read so far. Regarding Marble Madness The coolest fact revealed by the document is that, in the original concept, the trackball had motors attached to it, so its motion would match that of the marble on-screen. If it rolled down a ramp and the player didn't want to go, he'd have to fight the motor to stay up there! Whoa! THAT would have been f'in awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted April 8, 2009 Share Posted April 8, 2009 (edited) This is proving to be a really good read so far. Regarding Marble Madness The coolest fact revealed by the document is that, in the original concept, the trackball had motors attached to it, so its motion would match that of the marble on-screen. If it rolled down a ramp and the player didn't want to go, he'd have to fight the motor to stay up there! Whoa! THAT would have been f'in awesome! If it worked. Which it wouldn't have. The history of coin-ops is littered with ambitious, over-complicated controllers that couldn't handle the beating. Edited April 8, 2009 by vdub_bobby Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artlover Posted April 8, 2009 Share Posted April 8, 2009 If it worked. Which it wouldn't have. The history of coin-ops is littered with ambitious, over-complicated controllers that couldn't handle the beating. Force feedback was really nothing new, and I don't see anything over-complicated about this concept. It really could have been just about as simple as attaching a motor directly to each of the shafts, a protection circuit to prevent motor generated voltage backfeediing into the motor controller, and a fairly straight forward basic motor controller driven by the code. All you need are two i/o bytes to drive it. Simplest coding application would be to break them down into nybbles and use straight binary for a 16 step resistance level for each direction. If you want to do a bit of bit shifting math, you could make it 128 steps. Mechanically all I could see being needed is for the shafts to be rubber coated to prevent slippage which might make for jerky movement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaGtGruff Posted April 8, 2009 Share Posted April 8, 2009 Good article, though a few oddities stood out:Here's a cool bit of trivia. Sonic the Hedgehog is often regarded as the first platform game to have an "idle animation," where if you don't touch the controls for a few seconds your guy stands and looks at you, tapping his foot. Do people seriously think that? Just off the top of my head, Boulderdash comes to mind - it preceded Sonic by seven years and isn't an obscure game; having multiple home and coin-op ports. Also, to have an entire section about 720 Degrees without even mentioning the unique controller just seems odd. I immediately thought of Boulderdash, too. *But*, I think the key phrase here is "platform game." I don't think you could classify Boulderdash as a platform game. So maybe they're correct, although I don't know enough about the history of video games to know one way or the other. Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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