10 years of internal Atari Games mail

[solidcorp]

http://www.textfiles.com/games/ATARIMAIL/

[Rex Dart]

Awesome stuff! I've been skimming the progress reports from S.T.U.N. Runner in the 1989 file.

[solidcorp]

Me too ( I ported it to the Lynx )

[Mr SQL]

This is great! Here's a gem from 92 looking at the the emergence of 3D gaming and what seemed to be impossible textured polygons on a 286 PC:

 

People have been curious about the new PC game Wolfenstein 3D.

We have wondered how the speed of the "real" 3D effect was accomplished.

This explanation came off the usenet from someone at SGI:

 

Wolfenstein 3D cheats. It's not really drawing 3D textured polygons.

What it's doing is sort of a cross between ray tracing and bitmap

decimation. For each column of pixels on the screen, they shoot a ray

out and find which wall it intersects with. From the length of the ray,

they know the top and bottom coordinates of the wall in screen space,

and from the intersection point of the ray with the wall, they know

which column to use from that wall's texture. By decimating or

duplicating pixels from that column, they resize it to be the correct

height for the screen.

[bpj1138]

I'm reading it word for word. It sounds like a novel to me. I also read "Dealers of Lightening" about Xerox park. That is truely the best novel I ever read, and I read some good novels.

[exo]

This is great. It really puts into perspective how the employee's did their day-to-day tasks in and out of work.

[DracIsBack]

Nice - hope the Atari Corp ones turn up too!

[wibblebibble]

Wow, theres so much information in here and I just scrached the surface..

 

example:

 

Games under license from other companies get reviewed by representatives of

that company (Williams and Namco specifically). But games developed in-house

are treated like they are in the public domain, while the original design team

of in-house games is treated like dirt.

 

This is not an isolated incident either. Atarisoft, as a matter of policy,

takes Atari Coin-op games, lets outside companies "convert" them for home

computers (like Commodore 64, Vic-20, Apple 2, TI-99 and IBM-PC), and then

produces them, all without the creative input or advice of the original design

teams (just talk to Ed Logg about Centipede, or ? about Battlezone). Atarisoft

does not ask anyone over here at coin-op for approval for the final version,

but they do show the final version of the game to someone in the legal

department. On the more positive side, there is a chance that Atarisoft will

contribute to the Engineering Product Bonus Plan in a manner similar to 2600,

5200 and 800 products. Wouldn't it be nice to have that guaranteed and in

writing? And shouldn't there be designer credits on Atarisoft products?