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Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic

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Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic

#51

Post by allenbrunson »

doodlebugging wrote: post #46
allenbrunson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh boy, can't believe i am going to do this. but. if there is one topic i am qualified to write about, it is asteroids. in my early twenties, i was good enough that i could play for hours. i could have like 50 or 60 extra ships piled up, going all the way across the screen. my longest game on a single quarter was nine hours. i finally had to stop because i was hallucinating. based on that, i can say for certain that,…

You are the king! I could line up a sizable collection of expendable ships but nothing like that. Nine hours would definitely not have been a 25 cent adventure for me. Your method of staying alive sounds a lot like mine. Make good use of salvos, follow the rocks as they near the edge of the screen while blasting them and just before they reach the edge pivot to face the emerging edge and begin blasting so that many n…

oddly enough, i also wrote an asteroids clone, in C for DOS, using VGA graphics. i am not mathematically inclined, so writing the routines that allowed the ship to act exactly as it did in the original, subject to friction and thrust, nearly killed me. i’ve still got the code around here somewhere.

Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic

#52

Post by acomjean »

smcameron wrote: post #31
acomjean wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could get a laser projector and port asteroids to it (like this guy did) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FkHjG759ABY

A buddy of mine built his own RGB laser projector for about $400 back in 2013 or so, and got MAME to work with it. But the games typically try to draw too many lines for a laser projector to keep up with, so you either need multiple, and split up the lines among the projectors and carefully align the projectors. Anyway we learned that filming laser projections is hard, and doesn't look like it does in real life. http…

Very cool. A lot of games i forgot we’re cector based.

Battle zone, tempest, Star Trek and some game with vector blimps and space squids (world war vi?). How did the mame output which is usually to a crt translate to your projector?

Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic

#53

Post by Damark »

allenbrunson wrote: post #51
doodlebugging wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the king! I could line up a sizable collection of expendable ships but nothing like that. Nine hours would definitely not have been a 25 cent adventure for me. Your method of staying alive sounds a lot like mine. Make good use of salvos, follow the rocks as they near the edge of the screen while blasting them and just before they reach the edge pivot to face the emerging edge and begin blasting so that many n…

oddly enough, i also wrote an asteroids clone, in C for DOS, using VGA graphics. i am not mathematically inclined, so writing the routines that allowed the ship to act exactly as it did in the original, subject to friction and thrust, nearly killed me. i’ve still got the code around here somewhere.

The dial turning to position the ship was a wrist killer after a few hours.

I liked Megaroids too on the Atari ST!

Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic

#54

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #35
blt wrote: post #27

If you have never seen one, I strongly recommend seeking out a real vector arcade machine. The monitor has a beautiful, otherworldly appearance that can't be captured in photos or emulation. Somehow the lack of the raster grid makes the image feel more tangible. In an arcade the vector machines have an aura that even the best raster machines don't have.

For me, it's the intensity and brightness that really stand out. In Asteroids, the ship and rocks are clear, smoothly drawn straight lines, but the shots from enemy ships are intensely bright points that actually make a small circle around it on the CRT also glow faintly.

The first time someone sees what Asteroids really looks like is pretty special. Those ridiculously bright bullets burn themselves into your retina in a way that simply can't be emulated.

Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic

#55

Post by apo »

doodlebugging wrote: post #45
rdiddly wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You thinking of Missile Command, hoss? We used to play in the back room of a barber shop, of all things. Not much in the way of amenities, but he was the only guy who had the foresight to get some games, what can I say?

Yes! That's it. Missile Command. That and the one where you are the tank driver and you keep having to blast those stick-figure tanks into their respective lines - BattleZone I think. Some businesses were right on top of the trend for arcade games. Good times.

Yep, Battle Zone. It had two joysticks and greenish vectors.

There was another vector 3D game called Red Barron.

Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic

#56

Post by erickhill »

apo wrote: post #55
doodlebugging wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! That's it. Missile Command. That and the one where you are the tank driver and you keep having to blast those stick-figure tanks into their respective lines - BattleZone I think. Some businesses were right on top of the trend for arcade games. Good times.

Yep, Battle Zone. It had two joysticks and greenish vectors. There was another vector 3D game called Red Barron.

I had trouble getting my face up to the viewport for that game, but I loved the look and feel of it. When I later got a Vectrex in about 1982, I thought I had my own Battlezone right in my house. Minestorm was a great little Asteroids clone, too.

It wasn't until many years later (decades) when it occurred to me how nasty that Battlezone viewport was. You had to literally stick your eyes and nose into the think and press your face onto the plastic. Some of us worry about those Dyson hand dryers in bathrooms sometimes. They can't hold a candle next to Battlezone!

I saw a panel a week ago in Portland with a bunch of ex-Atari engineers at the PRGE 2018. One of them, Ed Rotberg now retired, was the creator of Battlezone. Atari actually got recruited by the military to do a similar simulator afterwards. (He hated the project and nearly quit but shipped their product.)

Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic

#57

Post by apo »

erickhill wrote: post #56
apo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, Battle Zone. It had two joysticks and greenish vectors. There was another vector 3D game called Red Barron.

I had trouble getting my face up to the viewport for that game, but I loved the look and feel of it. When I later got a Vectrex in about 1982, I thought I had my own Battlezone right in my house. Minestorm was a great little Asteroids clone, too. It wasn't until many years later (decades) when it occurred to me how nasty that Battlezone viewport was. You had to literally stick your eyes and nose into the think and pr…

I totally forgot about the scuba-mask viewport... yikes.

Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic

#59

Post by smcameron »

acomjean wrote: post #52
smcameron wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A buddy of mine built his own RGB laser projector for about $400 back in 2013 or so, and got MAME to work with it. But the games typically try to draw too many lines for a laser projector to keep up with, so you either need multiple, and split up the lines among the projectors and carefully align the projectors. Anyway we learned that filming laser projections is hard, and doesn't look like it does in real life. http…

Very cool. A lot of games i forgot we’re cector based. Battle zone, tempest, Star Trek and some game with vector blimps and space squids (world war vi?). How did the mame output which is usually to a crt translate to your projector?

Word War vi[1] is a little game I made long before the laser projector, and we were looking for things to do with the projector, so I converted word war vi to be able to use it.

You can look in the commits here to see how MAME is hooked to the projector. https://github.com/jv4779/openlase-mame/commits/master

I believe the jist of it is MAME already has to start with lines meant for a vector display and rasterize them one way or another for a modern computer. Before this happens, the data can sent to the openlase library[2] which generates signals on 5 channels of audio: 2 channels for control of X and Y galvos, and 3 channels for red, green, and blue laser power control. These signals then get sent to amplifiers and then to galvos and laser controls.

[1] http://smcameron.github.io/wordwarvi/ [2] https://github.com/marcan/openlase

Re: Atari Asteroids: Creating a Vector Arcade Classic

#60

Post by allenbrunson »

Damark wrote: post #53
allenbrunson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oddly enough, i also wrote an asteroids clone, in C for DOS, using VGA graphics. i am not mathematically inclined, so writing the routines that allowed the ship to act exactly as it did in the original, subject to friction and thrust, nearly killed me. i’ve still got the code around here somewhere.

The dial turning to position the ship was a wrist killer after a few hours. I liked Megaroids too on the Atari ST!

asteroids did not have a dial. you must be thinking of some other game.
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