Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece • Hacker News Board

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#31

Post by eltoozero » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 5:09 AM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #5

Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar is still one of my favorite games of all time. I can’t think of any other game that can get me into that pure zen mind/no-mind state as quickly and for as long. I was playing it at the video games exhibit at the Smithsonian a couple of years ago and setting all the high scores and eventually a small audience was watching me play and asking me questions about it. I wasn’t sure if the g…

Two weird bits of trivia about T2K, it supports spinner input via a secret key combo.[0]

Later on T3K for the Nuon (a system which nearly nobody knows about) also supported spinner input but the spinner controller was never actually released.

It wasn’t until 13 years later[1] a buddy and I reversed the settings to enable spinner control via a modified controller, which are extremely rare themselves because who buys a game controller for a DVD player?

[0]: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/202166-tempest-2000-and-rot...

[1]: https://assemblergames.com/threads/spinner-for-tempest-3000-...

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#32

Post by Tempest1981 » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 5:47 AM UTC

I loved this game. Color vector graphics. Amazing spinner. Thrilling gameplay.

Thanks, Dave, for so many happy arcade hours!

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#33

Post by evo_9 » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 6:14 AM UTC

personally always been a bigger fan of Eugene Jarvis who as a teen write Defender, Stargate and Robotron. I did own Tempest too great game.

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#34

Post by steveax » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 6:24 AM UTC

gedy wrote: post #13

I used to work with Dave Theurer post-Atari, he's still programming and a great guy.

On DeBabelizer? God, what an amazing app. Saved me from so much tedious work when I was in the game biz.

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#35

Post by js2 » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 6:38 AM UTC

> and a software bug inadvertently created by Theurer, where a 12% chance of 40 credits being obtained by a player scoring 170,000 points in one game can occur

I'd love to know the details of that bug. All I've been able to find is this quote which doesn't really explain things:

The fact you can earn 40 free games with a certain score was the fault of developer Dave Theurer himself. He had created a special security code to protect against piracy which checked the placement of different objects. If the objects were not in the correct place, the game would shut down. Before the game was shipped, however, Theurer, who would fuss over minute details, noticed an Atari logo was off-center. He adjusted it slightly. This small change caused the code to malfunction and the player to earn 40 free credits if a certain score was reached.

Also, I seem to recall the bug makes an appearance in the plot of Ready Player One.

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#36

Post by richev » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 7:20 AM UTC

empath75 wrote: post #5

Tempest 2000 on the Atari Jaguar is still one of my favorite games of all time. I can’t think of any other game that can get me into that pure zen mind/no-mind state as quickly and for as long. I was playing it at the video games exhibit at the Smithsonian a couple of years ago and setting all the high scores and eventually a small audience was watching me play and asking me questions about it. I wasn’t sure if the g…

And following on from that, Tempest X3[1] on the original PlayStation.

https://youtu.be/NLGjqmZ4xhY

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#37

Post by gorbachev » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 8:37 AM UTC

Tempest was the first arcade game I fell in big time. I had Tempest dreams at times. Great game!

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#38

Post by _lbaq » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 8:38 AM UTC

Think your compiler works too slow ?

"The programmer had to do everything: Write the whole operating system from scratch, design all the graphics, write the tools to do the graphics, create sound tools, and do the sound design – everything from scratch for every game….I’d write the code on programming sheets and turn it in to the typists who’d type them in to a DEC computer, then give us a tape with the resulting compiled/linked program. We’d then take that to a blue box [which used the FORTH programming language] for debugging. We’d mark changes to the code on a listing, give it back to the typists who’d edit our files and give us a new tape. Repeat ad infinitum."

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#39

Post by Mistletoe » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 10:00 AM UTC

trailbits wrote: post #27

Best. Game. Ever. Tempest came out when I was in high school, and my buddy and I would rather skip lunch and play this instead of eat each day. We produced a little booklet of each level we kept in our wallets so we could jot down where we had the best luck leaving the flipper while we fired away. I was thrilled to find a working Tempest at the “Game Master” exhibit in San Diego's Balboa Park last summer.

I don't think we could ever make people from this generation understand how awesome and mind grabbing this game was back then. It was like nothing I had ever seen and I just wanted to watch it, mesmerized.

Re: Atari Tempest: Dave Theurer’s Masterpiece

#40

Post by gp2000 » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 10:12 AM UTC

js2 wrote: post #35

> and a software bug inadvertently created by Theurer, where a 12% chance of 40 credits being obtained by a player scoring 170,000 points in one game can occur I'd love to know the details of that bug. All I've been able to find is this quote which doesn't really explain things: The fact you can earn 40 free games with a certain score was the fault of developer Dave Theurer himself. He had created a special security…

The bug is explained by Dave Theurer himself in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41TbGi7u598&t=168

Like many games at the time the code in the ROMs had tamper protection. The basic idea is to detect if the ROM has been altered and if so assume it is a pirated copy and do something to cause the game to fail. Pirates could still make exact copies but they'd have to retain copyright notices and trademarks which makes them more vulnerable to detection and prosecution.

At the last minute Dave changed the position of some logos on screen but forgot to update the copy protection. When an illegal copy was detected the game would use some of the digits of the score obtained at the end of the game to zap bytes in memory if the overall score itself was within some range. This kind of random scrambling that only happens semi-randomly is better than copy protection that triggers deterministically. Imagine if the game did a checksum of its ROM and immediately said "Illegal Copy Detected - Program Halted". It would make it easier to find the copy protection routines and disable them.

So the first version that shipped thought it was an illegal copy and triggered the random scrambling. It so happens that sometimes the random scrambling would result in giving the player 40 credits.

There were other effects which players discovered and are listed here: https://forums.arcade-museum.com/archive/index.php/t-79058.h...