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New 3D FPS released for 1979 Atari 800

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Re: New 3D FPS released for 1979 Atari 800

#31

Post by varelse »

buescher wrote: post #29
varelse wrote: post #25

1982 is calling but expects to be connected to some HN pedant "helpfully" pointing out that you can't actually shoot stuff. https://youtu.be/j4OLnrwLcJA

The Lucasfilm games ('84-'85) blew my mind at the time. Fractalus, Ballblazer, Koronis, Eidolon.

Hot take: The Eidolon is more impressive than this effort and it works with the technological limitations of the platform rather than against it like this does.

All those LucasArts games were stunning for the time and Rescue At Fractalus has a genuinely terrifying experience within it not replicated IMO until the first time you hear "Anytime..." in Alien vs Predator...

Re: New 3D FPS released for 1979 Atari 800

#33

Post by kingcharles »

varelse wrote: post #25

1982 is calling but expects to be connected to some HN pedant "helpfully" pointing out that you can't actually shoot stuff. https://youtu.be/j4OLnrwLcJA

That's incredible. Was this the earliest instance of raycasting in the wild?

Good intro to raycasting for those interested: https://lodev.org/cgtutor/raycasting.html

Re: New 3D FPS released for 1979 Atari 800

#34

Post by kingcharles »

wombat-man wrote: post #3

Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92K9wnk_4Cw Pretty interesting but it's a little hard to make out what's going on sometimes.

Thank you. I can't help but feel the wall textures have screwed the whole thing. It might be that they've tried to just be too clever with this and a less complex solution (flat shading, gouraud shading) would have worked better.

Re: New 3D FPS released for 1979 Atari 800

#35

Post by protomyth »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #26
protomyth wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the 400 and 800 had upgrades to 64K. The Atari 400 required some soldering and the 800 was simply a plug-in expansion.

Not so. Behind the two ROM cartridge slots there were three slots for RAM expansion, each being 16KB.

Yeah, the 16KB cards were from Atari and the banked switched cards were from third parties. Antic Magazine (named for the chip) had a lot of ads in the back for those.

Re: New 3D FPS released for 1979 Atari 800

#36

Post by buescher »

laurent123456 wrote: post #17
wombat-man wrote: post #3

Here's a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92K9wnk_4Cw Pretty interesting but it's a little hard to make out what's going on sometimes.

If you reduce the window to a very small size (or look at your monitor from a few meters away) then it's actually easier to see what's going on.

I wonder how it would look on a CRT TV over RF.

Re: New 3D FPS released for 1979 Atari 800

#37

Post by GekkePrutser »

flatiron wrote: post #7
aliswe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the FPS is really smooth - and the floating point (?!) calculations of the raycasting engine seem to be totally "on point" ?!?!

Comment a bit of a limitation of the ray casting: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/326709-final-assault-new-g... simply amazing what they did. could you imagine if this came out in the 80s?!?!

Yes this would have been mind-blowing.

Ps there was a game that had a similar FPS view in those days. It was a maze game with polygon graphics but no textures. I forget the name. No shooting though!

Re: New 3D FPS released for 1979 Atari 800

#39

Post by varelse »

kingcharles wrote: post #33
varelse wrote: post #25

1982 is calling but expects to be connected to some HN pedant "helpfully" pointing out that you can't actually shoot stuff. https://youtu.be/j4OLnrwLcJA

That's incredible. Was this the earliest instance of raycasting in the wild? Good intro to raycasting for those interested: https://lodev.org/cgtutor/raycasting.html

I think it is. But... But PLATO Moria might be the OG of 3D in this space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moria_(1978_video_game)

Re: New 3D FPS released for 1979 Atari 800

#40

Post by ciroduran »

I love that the credits mention the raycast tutorial by Permadi https://permadi.com/1996/05/ray-casting-tutorial-table-of-co...

I used this tutorial in the 2000's to write a raycaster myself in C using Allegro. It's wonderful that these tutorial are still useful so many years after they've been written.

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