Let's break the silence... :-)
I've finally obtained a copy of the March 1983 IEEE Spectrum article on the
Atari VCS. Thanks! ;)
First of all, I must say that it's a very interesting article, and any 2600
enthusiast would love to read it.
Here are some interesting points:
<<The rest of the sounds that the programmers have made the VCS produce
come essentially free, and they have been extensive - Mr. Mayer said he has
even heard the VCS reproduce the words "E.T. phone home".>>
So they must have been working on a talking ET game... :-/
<<Writing the kernels that make up game programs - Mr. Mayer said - is like
solving acrostic puzzles with lots and lots of possibilities. There's a
certain class of programmer that can deal in the microcode like that. If it
were easier to program, we wouldn't have these programmers, because they'd
be bored. The VCS is an absolute challenge>>
Weee! :-)
<<Today, however, designers estimate that the hardware has ben 70 to 80
percent exploited. "More and more the cute things aren't showing up" Mr.
Whitehead said, "but then every time we discover something new, we think
that it is the last thing.">>
In the following section they say that the "change player objects on the
fly" trick was first used by Whitehead when he designed Blackjack.
Also, Whitehead created the Chopper Command chopper with background
graphics only! I've never noticed this! And Kaplan first rewrote color on
the fly to get a multi-color player figure in Bowling.
Another Whitehead's trick explained at page 50 is the boxer's arm in
Boxing: the arm extends into a punch with a change in player size. Hmmm,
this isn't very clear to me.
Btw, they say that David Crane was known in the industry as "a coding
machine". He he :)
Finally, I was wondering if IEEE would let us type and distribute the
article for free.. after all, it's an old article without many technical
details. Who knows...
Ciao,
P.
--
Archives updated once/day at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/
Unsubscribing and other info at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/stella.html
