Star Raiders - AI Comedy

[+MrFish]

Just now, _The Doctor__ said:

Is this on real hardware or emulator?

I first learned about it on real hardware; but I'm doing the vids in emulation.

 

[_The Doctor__]

Try with real hardware and computer targeting on and then computer targeting off from the start each time and see if there is a difference, Highest difficulty.

 

I remember something about this being described previously.

 

Edited January 29, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[+MrFish]

2 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Try with real hardware and computer targeting on and then computer targeting off from the start each time and see if there is a difference, Highest difficulty.

I've got no real hardware hooked up ATM. I leave real-hardware testing as an exercise for the reader...

 

[Keatah]

Another amusing behavior is if you just sit in a sector next to a starbase. They won't move into your sector and can't surround the base. But if you sit there long enough, the game goes into its attract mode with a starfield-only display. I guess it times out if you don't do something.

[Keatah]

23 minutes ago, MrFish said:

I've got no real hardware hooked up ATM.

Same. I don't know what happened to my original 400/800 stuff. It's just like kinda gone I guess.

[+MrFish]

3 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Same. I don't know what happened to my original 400/800 stuff. It's just like kinda gone I guess.

I've still got all my gear. I just never hooked any of it back up after changing some furniture around. It'll get put back eventually. I have no problem living with Altirra for long periods of time. In fact, I ran Atari800Win PLus for years (Altirra wasn't around back then) -- when I was first getting back into the hobby -- before I even got real hardware again.

 

[Keatah]

I think my stuff got lost in some moves pre-2000's or got donated/stolen/lost. I simply don't recall. I consider Altirra my go-to for anything Atari 8-bit. While I could replace it with real hardware I got used to its many features and conveniences. And I just don't want to go playing around with mods and monitors. I get the exact picture I like now as it is.

 

Apple II stuff is a different story. Managed to hang on to +95% of my original gear. It was a real hoot going back and forth between A2 and the 800, playing and comparing Space Raiders vs Star Raiders.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Keatah

[+MrFish]

I prefer to have both. I find Altirra essential for many things, and hardware is the real thing.

[ClausB]

20 minutes ago, Keatah said:

comparing Space Raiders vs Star Raiders.

Elaborate?

[Keatah]

As a kid I wanted my A2 to be the end all be all. And Space Raiders was about the closest thing to Star Raiders A2 enthusiasts got. In plain truth the only thing better about it vs Star Raiders was the detail in the enemy ships. Just about everything else was 2nd rate.. What with the A2 having no sound or graphics chips whatsoever - it just ticked the speaker as if you touched a battery to it. Same with the video, graphics were artifacted and built around interference/disturbance injected into the video signal more or less. Sather's "Understanding the Apple II" explains it all.

 

With the industry still in its infancy we'd suck up anything and everything and loved every moment.

 

We'd get Epoch and Hadron from Sirius Software in the later portion of 1981. These were similar games in that they were first person space shooters. I might argue they were actually more colorful than most Atari space games. The ships while square and rectangular could fill a good portion of the screen. A feat on the A2 no doubt. They were drawn in such a way you could see horizontal/diagonal scanning lines. You could get into a running chase with them from time to time if they noticed you following them. By the color of the engine intakes/exhaust you could tell which direction they were oriented, at you or away from you. All this was very 2.5D'ish.

 

[magnusfalkirk]

Something I discovered, quite by accident, recently is a version of Star Raiders for the Mac that looks and plays exactly, or as exactly as I can tell, like the orignal on the Atari! I downloaded it from this website: https://gamesnostalgia.com/game/star-raiders

Just booted it up again and noticed that it is running in a Pico-8 emulator for the Mac.

[Keatah]

Yes the magic of emulation. Not sure the defaults used on your Mac version there. But the PC package/version uses Atari800 Emulator, a good one to be sure. But they default it to PAL video. And that makes the colors all wrong as well as the speed of the game. The shields aren't supposed to be green, but, instead, a darker hazy blueish tone.

[ClausB]

Doug Neubauer:

Zylon AI Algorithm

When I first designed the Zylon “brains” section it was fairly sophisticated. I quickly realized however that a mere human has no chance against a computer with reflexes on the order of 1/60th a second.

So I had to “dumb” down the Zylon brain to something on the order of a turnip. This gives the human at least a fighting chance.

Which I always think of when watching a Star Trek episode. Trying to manually fly/shoot at Warp speeds…

Kirk: “Fire Photon Torpedoes”
(Sound of Torpedoes firing)
Chekov: Sorry Captain, we missed by 5 light-years.

[magnusfalkirk]

9 hours ago, Keatah said:

Yes the magic of emulation. Not sure the defaults used on your Mac version there. But the PC package/version uses Atari800 Emulator, a good one to be sure. But they default it to PAL video. And that makes the colors all wrong as well as the speed of the game. The shields aren't supposed to be green, but, instead, a darker hazy blueish tone.

What's interesting is that I hadn't noticed it was running in an emulator the first time I booted it up, but I guess that was because I wasn't really paying that much attention to the computer screen. It's all of 5 seconds from double clicking to being in the game. It does put up an intial screen saying Pico-8 and some other stuff with "Booting Cartridge" a the bottom.

 

I have also run Star Raiders in my Atari800MacX

[bfollowell]

No video to see here for me. It just says 0.00 of 0.00 on my end. Gray screen and nothing plays. I'm reading from my iPad at the moment though. I'll have to check it out from my desktop later.