A different way to do Dragon's Lair on TI-99

[pixelpedant]

So I was just thinking, the other day, that it might be fun to try setting up TI-99/4A Dragon's Lair via a different and more traditional means. 

 

The idea is this:

 

1) Dragon Lair in its original form is really just a controller for a LaserDisc player, which accepts joystick and button inputs and selectively plays required video from the disc.

 

2) Previously, I've used TI RS-232, a homebrew RS-232 routing scheme, and a collection of RS-232 controlled devices (managing power, video, audio, picture in picture) to create a solution which allows me to select and control picture-in-picture video signals overlaid on the TI-99's video, from the TI keyboard via a TI interface.

 

Therefore, it's just one small additional step to add to this PIP solution a means of selectively initiating (based on TI joystick or key input) video events from a device whose video is routed to the Picture-in-Picture device (with the TI-99 coordinating all this via RS-232).  100% of that can be done in software, since all video, audio, picture-in-picture, and RS-232 routing considerations necessary to this are already addressed.  Switching on the fly between full screen and windowed PIP video is also already supported. 

 

So instead of this interface turning on a Sega Saturn and routing it's video to a specifically positioned picture-in-picture window (as in the below example), it tells a PC to play video starting at whatever timecode, and routes/positions its picture-in-picture window accordingly.  Then, it can full screen the video at whatever point, if that's desirable. 

 

All the logic regarding what inputs result in what clips in what game states would then be handled by the TI-99. 

 

 

This idea is so utterly pointless, and utterly specific to a completely ludicrous hardware setup of my own creation (which no sane person would ever replicate) that I'm not sure I'll ever get around to it.  But I got around to making this original TI Gamestation thing which fulfills virtually all the functional requirements.  So who knows. 

 

 

[+Vorticon]

I am a big fan of pointless or ludicrous TI-related projects ?

I think your idea is totally awesome! Go for it.

[Airshack]

Hmm...

 

Dragon’s Lair was an incredible 1980s technical achievement which resulted in an on-rails yawner of a game.

 

At my arcade they charged twice the going rate for Dragon’s Lair gameplay. We expected a game which was twice as good as anything else.

 

The gameplay fell short of my crowd’s expectations. A timing exercise puzzle. Very beautiful but really just an extremely repetitive timing exercise. 
 

That said...I like this idea and would enjoy watching it work 

[Tempest]

6 hours ago, Airshack said:

Hmm...

 

Dragon’s Lair was an incredible 1980s technical achievement which resulted in an on-rails yawner of a game.

 

At my arcade they charged twice the going rate for Dragon’s Lair gameplay. We expected a game which was twice as good as anything else.

 

The gameplay fell short of my crowd’s expectations. A timing exercise puzzle. Very beautiful but really just an extremely repetitive timing exercise. 
 

That said...I like this idea and would enjoy watching it work 

The once or twice I saw DL in the arcades they were charging $1.00!  A dollar a play was insane at the time (1983), but people lined up anyway.  The only other time I remember seeing $1.00 per play for a 'classic' game was when Hard Drivin' was new.

[Airshack]

3 hours ago, Tempest said:

A dollar a play was insane at the time (1983),

As it remains insane in 2021.

 

I also seem to remember games to include:Tempest, Star Wars, Asteroids Deluxe... charging a two-token premium for a few weeks upon arrival, then reverting to the usual one token fee.

 

It all seemed reasonable since the early 80s was a period of amazingly great video games. DL is arguably less of a true video game, and more an animated cut-scene selector.

 

I prefer Mad Dog McCree. 

[HOME AUTOMATION]

I used to make it over to Station Break, in Penn. Station, NYC. When these dastardly clip player machines came along, I didn't really see the point. They seemed to require much less skill, and have little in the way of interactive action. They also seemed to attract a rather seedy and somewhat older clientele. They premiered at 50cents, and as I recall, stayed that way, throughout the city.

 

I had just re-discovered Station Break. They had a few machines that I was partial to. Soon, they were all replaced, driven-out by these disc-playing monstrosities. I was not amused!!!

 

The only machine I could even stand to watch others play, in an effort to "get-it", was Dragons Lair.

 

     P.S. Ahh, now I long for Yesterday's troubles. Ha!

 

 

...Didn't know that Station Break made it into the '90s though.

 

 

[Airshack]

23 hours ago, HOME AUTOMATION said:

 

The only machine I could even stand to watch others play, in an effort to "get-it", was Dragons Lair.

The first game in memory where visuals were more important than actual gameplay. DL kind of initiated that downhill trajectory IMHO.

[Tetlee]

On 5/19/2021 at 6:53 AM, Airshack said:

Hmm...

 

Dragon’s Lair was an incredible 1980s technical achievement which resulted in an on-rails yawner of a game.

 

At my arcade they charged twice the going rate for Dragon’s Lair gameplay. We expected a game which was twice as good as anything else.

 

The gameplay fell short of my crowd’s expectations. A timing exercise puzzle. Very beautiful but really just an extremely repetitive timing exercise. 
 

That said...I like this idea and would enjoy watching it work 

 

Those were my thoughts exactly, looked amazing but I just didn't get it at the time and the game was the first ever I'd seen to charge 50p a go. Most machines were 10p at the time with the latest classics 20p, there was no inbetween so that was a huge jump in entrance fee for a game with to my eyes little player interaction, for that reason I think I only played it once and that was it.

 

 

[acortest]

As a huge Dragon's Lair fan, I would be very interested in following your progress on your DL / TI-99/4A project.

[retrodroid]

I dare you to do it!  😁

[+FarmerPotato]

The time I bought a pristine TI-99/4 from a seller at Midwest Gaming, I also got hooked on a refurbished RCA SelectaVision player.
 

It uses a diamond stylus to play grooved video discs with 5000 tracks per inch. It works by capacitive sensing. (The  tech is called CED.) It's "the final stage of Edison grooved disc media." And it is a very dead media. 

I picked up some movies like The Hobbit (Rankin-Bass) and Lord of the Rings  (Ralph Bakshi) at thrift stores and on eBay. Star Wars is available. (Return of the Jedi is rare and hard to find because CED died in 1983.) 

 

Still sitting front and center under my HDTV. But never played now.

 

It has a weird *wired* remote. See where this is going? On the remote, you can punch in the digits of the track to seek to. It has less latency than I recall seeing in Dragons Lair. The pause on  frame is--well--analog, with jitter and static. 

 

 

I will NOT attempt to interface and then produce a TI-99/4A game based on The Hobbit movie disc. See? Not another project, pointlessly AWESOME. Just something I daydream about while driving. 

 

*When DL debuted, I knew there had been LaserDisc or whatever games.  Creative Computing published two. One had a Moon theme.  The other was based on Rollercoaster.  I think it's listed in "Big BASIC Computer Games." (Remember "100 BASIC Games" and "100 More BASIC Games" with the cute robot sketches?)

 

 

 

 

[Tursi]

We had one of those players when I was a kid, it was pretty cool. There's a good explanation of the tech on Youtube, but yeah, crazy tech that came too late to be useful.

 

[InfiniteTape]