Amityville315 Posted December 20, 2015 Share Posted December 20, 2015 So, Real Sports Baseball and Berzerk had some voice synthesis going on - any reason Wizard of War is mute? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted December 20, 2015 Share Posted December 20, 2015 Different developer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted December 20, 2015 Share Posted December 20, 2015 Because digital speech takes a ridiculous amount of memory (by 80s standards) to store. Berzerk and Realsports Baseball have rather minimalist graphics, so they had ROM space to spare. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amityville315 Posted December 21, 2015 Author Share Posted December 21, 2015 Not all that much different from Berzerk really. Instead of robots in a maze we have monsters. Instead of Evil Otto, we get the Wiz. Probably just going out on the cheap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted December 21, 2015 Share Posted December 21, 2015 Not all that much different from Berzerk really. Instead of robots in a maze we have monsters. Instead of Evil Otto, we get the Wiz. See, this is why I get cranky around here, because of the seemingly-endless supply of people who post without thinking. Berzerk: player, 2 enemy types, 2-bit color, very simple animation Wizard of Wor: 2 players, 5 enemy types, 4-bit color That's a heck of a lot more sprite data to deal with. On top of which, WoW has significantly more complex game logic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amityville315 Posted December 21, 2015 Author Share Posted December 21, 2015 Its just food for conversation dude. Nothing to get pissy about. Ok, 2 players, more enemies and more colors. I see your point. I just play the games guy - and even then, not very often. Sorry if my ignorance of Atari programming offended you. That being said, I dont get pissy when a student of mine has a problem with a basic F chord or the inabilty to make it through an Ac/Dc song. We all have different gifts fella. Btw, happy holidays! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter_J64bit Posted December 21, 2015 Share Posted December 21, 2015 Its just food for conversation dude. Nothing to get pissy about. Ok, 2 players, more enemies and more colors. I see your point. I just play the games guy - and even then, not very often. Sorry if my ignorance of Atari programming offended you. That being said, I dont get pissy when a student of mine has a problem with a basic F chord or the inabilty to make it through an Ac/Dc song. We all have different gifts fella. Btw, happy holidays! Don't let ZylonBane get you uptight he just eats razors blades with he's cornflakes every morning. :-o Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amityville315 Posted December 21, 2015 Author Share Posted December 21, 2015 S'all good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+darryl1970 Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 A few thoughts: Wizard of Wor is identical to a previously released version, by Roklan, for the A8 computers. I think CBS wanted to cash in and make a quick buck by re-releasing an old game to a new system (Always disappointed me the use of low res players x2 height) Just adding that it was programmed before Atari tried to do anything "cool" like Berzerk or Baseball voice. The speech in Berzerk and Baseball require a lot of processing power. All of the action pauses to grant focus to the processor. This probably would be distracting in WOW or even Gorf, as the action would have to stop and possibly blank the screen. (without use of dedicated hardware) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big_Mo Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 Digitizing speech in the early 1980s was very expensive. It cost something like $1000 per word to digitize the audio for the original Berzerk arcade game, and the digitized audio took lots of space. It's why RealSports Baseball is such a big cart (albeit Keithen Hayenga says he got the bigger cart because of the audio but didn't use all that extra space for it). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+darryl1970 Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 Digitizing speech in the early 1980s was very expensive. It cost something like $1000 per word to digitize the audio for the original Berzerk arcade game, and the digitized audio took lots of space. It's why RealSports Baseball is such a big cart (albeit Keithen Hayenga says he got the bigger cart because of the audio but didn't use all that extra space for it). On that note, I have to say that I got more enjoyment out of Realsports Baseball than many others to follow. Admittedly, I am not a big sports game fan, but that game was fun. The controllers really made that game something special, and helped the 5200 to live up to the original intent. For that year, the voice, the ability to control any on screen character, steal, bunt, etc. Awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amityville315 Posted December 23, 2015 Author Share Posted December 23, 2015 Much more helpful and interesting replies guys. Thank you. $1000 per word - wow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+darryl1970 Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 Digitizing speech in the early 1980s was very expensive. It cost something like $1000 per word to digitize the audio for the original Berzerk arcade game, and the digitized audio took lots of space. It's why RealSports Baseball is such a big cart (albeit Keithen Hayenga says he got the bigger cart because of the audio but didn't use all that extra space for it). I thought Berzerk used a bunch of unused speech synthesis chips that were not samples. I know Wikipedia has that information, but I thought I read an article where Stern got a bunch of unused synthesis chips. I might be mixing this up with how Midway used a failed pre-cursor to the web cam to make Journey's digitized heads. I'd be interested to know. Regardless. LOVE the robot voices. Perfect feel for the time period! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted December 23, 2015 Share Posted December 23, 2015 Digitizing speech in the early 1980s was very expensive. It cost something like $1000 per word to digitize the audio for the original Berzerk arcade game, and the digitized audio took lots of space. The reason Berzerk's audio was so expensive was because it didn't take a lot of space. The expense wasn't the audio digitizing (which is technically trivial), it was converting the speech to LPC coding for playback by the speech synthesis chip. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big_Mo Posted December 28, 2015 Share Posted December 28, 2015 The reason Berzerk's audio was so expensive was because it didn't take a lot of space. The expense wasn't the audio digitizing (which is technically trivial), it was converting the speech to LPC coding for playback by the speech synthesis chip. True that. But I was giving the Readers Digest Condensed version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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