All the running men...

[Walter Ives]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:46 PM, decle said:

Something that bothers me a little bit is the way the Intellivision Running Man (tm) is often drawn using square pixels.

    Something that bothers me a little bit is the way the Intellivision Master Component (tm) emulators often use square pixels.

 

    WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:46 PM, decle said:

In reality, the Intellivision's pixels are slightly taller than they are wide, with 5x4 being an often quoted ratio.  This seems to be based on the pixel aspect needed to get a 160x96 resolution (5:3 aspect ratio) to fit onto a 4:3 TV screen.

    The basis is actually much more practical: it's entirely due to the fact that the Intellivision's pixels are exactly one color carrier cycle wide by one scan line tall for standard moving objects and two scan lines tall for background characters.

 

    WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:46 PM, decle said:

This seems to be based on the pixel aspect needed to get a 160x96 resolution (5:3 aspect ratio) to fit onto a 4:3 TV screen.

    In 1941 the National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) specified that "The standard aspect ratio of the transmitted television picture shall be 4 units horizontally to 3 units vertically." The unblanked portion of the video signal is 485 lines tall and, for color television, 188.5 ±0.7 color carrier cycles wide. Applying those values, a standard moving object pixel that is one scan interval tall (non-interlaced) and one color carrier wide has an aspect ratio of 0.583:1 to three significant figures.

    While clearly specifying that the displayed picture was to have a 4:3 aspect ratio, the NTSC was silent on what portion of the video signal was to be displayed. The edges of the picture were often not very pretty and were usually hidden under the TV's bezel. The x- and y-scaling of a television picture are independent, and there are volumes of cow pasture on the question of whether aspect ratio of the displayed picture should be based on some region smaller than the full unblanked portion of the video signal. I shan't be stepping into that pasture today.

 

    WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:46 PM, decle said:

In reality, the Intellivision's pixels are slightly taller than they are wide, with 5x4 being an often quoted ratio.

    Finding myself already hopelessly in the rabbit hole, I measured the Intellivision's 159 x 192 active picture area on my own real NTSC TV with antenna input using the Armor Battle "Push disc to play" screen to get nice, sharp borders. Here are the values I measured:

 

               Width = 394 mm
               Length = 282 mm

 

The aspect ratio of that area on my TV is thus

 

               Width/Length = 394/282 = 1.397

 

Multiplying that by 192/159 gets me the aspect ratio of a standard moving object pixel:

 

               1.397 * 192 / 159 = 1.687

 

That's the ratio of the width to the height. For pixels I prefer knowing the ratio of the height to the width, so I take the reciprocal to get that, at least for my TV,

 

               an Intellivsion standard moving object pixel height is 0.593 times its width,

 

which is pretty close to the value I calculated from the NTSC spec in my previous post. The difference may be due to the cow patties I'm assiduously avoiding.

    As always, your actual results may differ, and if they do the rabbit will deny all knowledge of this post.

 

    WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:46 PM, decle said:

I've also been rather intrigued as to why the canonical Running Man seems to be taken from Football, rather than the first game written Baseball.  I don't know the answer to this, but it seems to go back to the Mattel Electronics days...

    Because Chang's and Klose's goal, way back in 1975, was to create a video game system that could play football.

 

    WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:46 PM, decle said:

I notice that Mattel realised the Intellivision has rectangular pixels

    For "Mattel," read "Dave James." Not only was James a more than moderately competent industrial designer who could generally recognize the obvious when it came to the graphics for which he was himself responsible, he had a pride in craftsmanship that would have never tolerated sloppiness in such matters.

 

    WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:46 PM, decle said:

This animation was reused by David Rolfe in his tutorial game Killer Tomatoes,

    Killer Bees.

 

    WJI

 

[Walter Ives]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:46 PM, decle said:

OK, on to Action Network games and we have the minimal four frame cycle of AD&D that reuses frames 1, 3, 5 and 7 from Baseball.

    Space in AD&D was so dear that the borders were left extended for the outer map.

 

    WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:46 PM, decle said:

So, did I miss any running men

    WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:46 PM, decle said:

I wonder which was the first one drawn by David James for the CES demo back in January 1978?

    WJI

[Walter Ives]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:46 PM, decle said:

I wonder which was the first one...

    APh provided Chang with some examples of pixelated football players and a football field in the spring of 1976 in connection with exploring possible ways to design a system that could implement Chang's vision for football.

 

    WJI

[BSRSteve]

On 4/25/2023 at 2:51 AM, Walter Ives said:

    Killer Bees.

 

    WJI

 

We definitely called the tutorial game Killer Tomatoes at Mattel, which is where that name would have been propagated. I don't know who changed the name (and they may have also changed the code). 

[+DZ-Jay]

13 minutes ago, BSRSteve said:

We definitely called the tutorial game Killer Tomatoes at Mattel, which is where that name would have been propagated. I don't know who changed the name (and they may have also changed the code). 

I thought it was created originally by David Rolfe, and I believe he called it Killer Bees in an interview.

 

Of course, I am not arguing with your recollections -- you were there, after all, and I was not.  Perhaps it was changed over time by others.

 

    dZ.

[BSRSteve]

17 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

I thought it was created originally by David Rolfe, and I believe he called it Killer Bees in an interview.

 

Of course, I am not arguing with your recollections -- you were there, after all, and I was not.  Perhaps it was changed over time by others.

 

    dZ.

And I don't doubt that Rolfe called it Killer Bees. I suspect that Minkoff, Daglow, Sohl or someone brought the tutorial game back to Mattel when we started getting our own systems (before my time) and renamed it for whatever reason. Keith started about a month after I did, so would have known it by the same name and used it in his write-ups.

[+DZ-Jay]

5 hours ago, BSRSteve said:

And I don't doubt that Rolfe called it Killer Bees. I suspect that Minkoff, Daglow, Sohl or someone brought the tutorial game back to Mattel when we started getting our own systems (before my time) and renamed it for whatever reason. Keith started about a month after I did, so would have known it by the same name and used it in his write-ups.

That makes sense.  I think that @decle had the original source from Mr. Rolfe (I sort of remember he showcasing it in one of his development kit demos). Any chance that the source of "killer tomatoes" is available for comparison?

 

    dZ.

[BSRSteve]

7 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

That makes sense.  I think that @decle had the original source from Mr. Rolfe (I sort of remember he showcasing it in one of his development kit demos). Any chance that the source of "killer tomatoes" is available for comparison?

 

    dZ.

This is what I have.

KILL!.txt

[decle]

Sorry to disappoint everyone, but my reference to Killer Tomatoes rather than Bees was just a typo.  Hanlon's razor and all that!

 

@DZ-Jay is correct, I have been collecting variations of Killer Bees, my last posting on the subject, which has a video where I build and run @David Rolfe's original program and mentions the relationship between Killer Bees, Killer Tomatoes and Crazy Clones, was here:

 

 

I think that since then I've turned up another version created by Joe Jacobs, and a quick look at the version posted by @BSRSteve above suggests it might be different again.  Perhaps a small comparison project and posting is in order, if that would be of interest?

[+DZ-Jay]

2 hours ago, decle said:

Sorry to disappoint everyone, but my reference to Killer Tomatoes rather than Bees was just a typo.  Hanlon's razor and all that!

 

@DZ-Jay is correct, I have been collecting variations of Killer Bees, my last posting on the subject, which has a video where I build and run @David Rolfe's original program and mentions the relationship between Killer Bees, Killer Tomatoes and Crazy Clones, was here:

 

 

Oh, so that was already discussed?  I have such bad memory. LOL!

2 hours ago, decle said:

I @BSRStevePerhaps a small comparison project and posting is in order, if that would be of interest?

 

Are you kidding me?  Is a bear polish? *

 

    dZ.

 

[Popeye]

On 3/13/2023 at 12:27 AM, IMBerzerk said:

This was a great series.  I still fall back to Football being the running man.  We used to make fun of the head movement as well. He had a pigeon like head thrust when running.  

 

What about Bowling?  The animation is short, but it's still a "running man" of sorts. Lol.

I do think the Bowling running man deserves a spot!

[+DZ-Jay]

11 minutes ago, Popeye said:

I do think the Bowling running man deserves a spot!

 

Ah ... The Bowling Running Man ... the lesser known earlier TV game show from the ICS broadcasting network that inspired Damon Killian's much more violent and interesting game.

 

I think I'll also use that as the name of my next band.

 

    -dZ.

[+Lathe26]

6 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

 

Oh, so that was already discussed?  I have such bad memory. LOL!

 

Are you kidding me?  Is a bear polish? *

 

    dZ.

 

[mr_me]

On 3/3/2023 at 3:46 PM, decle said:

... In reality, the Intellivision's pixels are slightly taller than they are wide, with 5x4 being an often quoted ratio.  This seems to be based on the pixel aspect needed to get a 160x96 resolution (5:3 aspect ratio) to fit onto a 4:3 TV screen. Whilst this doesn't explicitly take into account screen borders or the vagaries of CRT overscan (mal)adjustment, it seems a reasonable scaling.  ...

That's a 1.25 v:h ratio, and matches the Mattel Electronics running man trademark graphics that goes back to the '70s.  On a standard TV the sprite is not that tall.  WJI's measurements gives a 1.20 ratio for example but it could also be a little less.

 

The graphics from World Championship Baseball solved a bit of a mystery for me.  I always thought the sprite graphics in that cartridge were broken, until seeing this post.  Thanks!

 

Running animation in World Cup Soccer is awful.  Much prefer playing NASL.  Makes me think it was a complete rewrite.

 

On 3/12/2023 at 7:27 PM, IMBerzerk said:

This was a great series.  I still fall back to Football being the running man.  We used to make fun of the head movement as well. He had a pigeon like head thrust when running.  

 

...

This is the other issue with some modern renditions of the animated running man, the animation frames are positioned wrong.  They fix them at the head, where on the original cartridges they're fixed at the hips.

 

Edited April 29, 2023 by mr_me

[Walter Ives]

On 4/27/2023 at 11:24 PM, decle said:

Perhaps a small comparison project and posting is in order, if that would be of interest?

The programs were collectively called "Trivia" programs at APh and "Killer" programs at Mattel. There were over 40 different Trivia/Killer programs created: it will be fun to see how many you can locate and resurrect.

 

Note that the names "TRIVIA" and "KILLER" both contain six letters, the maximum filename size on PDP-10s and PDP-11s. Back in the day system software severely limited the lengths of file and variable names because memories were smaller and longer names would have caused directories and symbol tables to overflow more quickly. To that end, PDP-10 and PDP-11 filenames were encoded in Radix-50, so six letter names fit in one and two words respectively. One of the signs of a skilled programmer was his ability to come up with good short names.

 

Rolfe's Killer Bees was the prototype, in the original sense of the term. Although Rolfe's program displayed the name Killer Bees on its title page, its source filename was TRIVIA.ASM and the executable was TRIVIA.OBJ. I submit that this naming shows where Rolfe's head was: he began with the mindset that he was writing a trivial prototype game, naming it TRIVIA, and gave it the screen title Killer Bees as the theme coalesced. [I say "I submit" because it is an inference, I don't know it for a fact.]

 

Another thing to watch out for as you pursue your project: many TRIVIA/KILLER projects did not adopt the Killer name and not all programs that used the name were mere training exercises. According to Johnson there was, for example, a Killer B's that morphed into Killer Beetles, Killer Beasties and then Killer Betels, which was given a product number (#3605) and made it into the catalog as Arcade before being killed by Rochlis for being "too arcade-like." The naming chain was resumed with the decidedly arcade-like Space Beasties.

 

WJI