The "Distributed Proofreaders" project uses a similar technique to crowd-source OCR transcription of old public domain books in the browsers using side-by-side comparisons:
Wow, that brings back memories. This was the first piece of software I ever owned.
I learned so much from that Atari 800 as a teenager.
Understanding the difference between COLOR and SETCOLOR (where COLOR didn't refer to a particular RGB, but referenced whatever happened to be in the specified SETCOLOR; this is presumably how the flashing alarm screen is implemented) taught me about indirection.
I wrote my own "Breakout" game in BASIC. At first I had a long IF/THEN to react to the joystick direction, and it slowed the game appreciably. I later found (after seeing an example in one of those magazines with the type-in-this-program's-source-code) that it's far more efficient to store offsets into an array, and update the paddle coordinates just from indexed lookups into the array.
I had an interest before this, and new some rudimentary basics, it's stuff like this that gave me the incentive and the means to learn much more.
Yes. Playing this back in the day, with a stereo, larger TV, etc... delivered a pretty serious impact. There was nothing else like it.
IMHO, that game sold a lot of Atari computers. Was written by the guy who designed the sound chip, and it was kind of a side project that turned out great enough to showcase the computers.
The particle calculations are not well optimized. While this is seen as a bug, and there is an effort to make the game run faster, many players appreciate the slowdown in battle. There is a feel associated with that which adds a lot to the overall impression of the game. It's oddly gratifying to feel it slow down as the enemy and their shots explode...
Yeah, that's how I feel about it. Somewhere, I read some comments by the author on all of that. He just did fairly straight up, simple, cheater type 3D on the 6502. Those slowdowns were an artifact of all that.
They add a lot to the game, though the author didn't intend for it to go that way.
Funny, for that time period, there are a lot of "effects" that were resource limits, or bugs that ended up making for a better experience. Little things, like getting an extra color to work with were a very big deal.
We have come so damn far...
This did cause me to pull my old 400 out of the closet. It has this cartridge in it. Turned it on, and it plays fine. My HDTV is a bit cranky about it all though.
Did it simulate a proper 3D world, with your ship and the other objects all occupying space (and therefore requiring vector calculations everywhere), or did it cheat by keeping minimal position information and just fiddling the display to make it look like you're moving? From the way the enemy ships move it feels like it's cheating, but the starfield and the starbases all look pretty good.
When I watched the video of Star Raiders, my first thought was "hey, that looks like Solaris!", a game I grew up playing on a friend's Atari 2600. Turns out it was also by Neubauer, just a few years later. Cinematic is definitely the right word — it easily felt as epic and expansive as a good NES game, which is pretty astounding considering the limitations of the 2600.
Thanks, I had forgotten that I had ever played that game. As soon as I saw the hyperspace navigation reticule I instantly flashed back to memories of fighting to keep it centered.
Wow, that's impressive for an 8-bit computer in 1979. Especially within 8KB of RAM. Elite (1984) was more sophisticated on essentially similar hardware but had a little more RAM to play with.
Where did this source code come from? There must be an interesting story about were this print-out came from, why it was preserved, and now published 36 years later.
> Note: If you are going to Mirror these sources or place them onto your own site, please have the respect and courtesy to include with them - Source: www.atarimuseum.com as these wouldn't exist if I hadn't of climbed into a filthy dumpster at 3am in the morning behind the old Atari building in Sunnyvale and salvaged them and restored them from their diskettes.
I'm sure I've missed out on plenty of games that reproduced the feelings I had playing Star Raiders but ... That game felt so awesome at the time.
If you don't know the game you need to destroy every enemy on the map. The enemies need to destroy you or all your star bases. On the map the enemies move sector to sector every few seconds (30? 60? 120?) probably depended on the difficulty level. If some enemies made it to one of your Star Base sectors you had just a few seconds to get over there and kill them all before you lost a base.
To move from sector to sector you'd go to the map, pick a sector, then press H for hyperspace. The ship could accelerate, then warp to the next sector decelerating
Add to that your ship could take damage. Normally you had 0-9 thrust levels. With damaged engines the thrust would be erratic. With broken engines you couldn't go anywhere. Normally you could fire 2 shots at from the bottom left and bottom right. Damaged then only 1 short. Broken 0 shots. Then you had shields. Damaged they'd flicker on and off. Broken no shields. One hit with shields down and you're dead! Hit a meteor with shields down you're dead.
So, if you're playing on hard you have to target the ships closest to your bases and get rid of them quick. They fire like crazy! If your shields go down or get damage you have to warp instantly or you'll be dead. No time to look at the map. Just press H now. When you warp there's a targeting reticle, on hard it move erratically. If it's in the center when you warp you'll arrive at the destination you picked on the map. If it's off by 1 inch you'll warp 1 inch off in the same direction on the map. That meant if you were good you could warp to your base without using the map. It felt so awesome to get it right.
You'd beam in. Then you have to find the base in 3d. Sensors help. Once there you have to wait for some guy to come out and repair your ship. So nerve racking when you know in a few moments some other base will be gone. Then you need to warp out back into the battles ASAP.
It all added up to some of the most intense space battles I've ever personally played in a video game.
You played a lot! I agree with most of your comments and want to add all of that gets just a bit better, more easy, and fun with a second player.
A friend and I would take turns piloting and engineering. The trick was to make good decisions as the "engineer" player, like taking that warp when destruction was imminent, or being able to vary speed while watching the pilot deal with the baddies.
Of course, it was great fun to yell, "shields!", "map", "4", etc... too!
Loved that game (and its variants). The ship took damage and became less effective, so you had to take time out to find a base to repair. So few games of that era carried any interesting state.
Loved it! Spent many hours on that cartridge. I remember trying to follow the "supply ship" that came out of the base, squirrely MOFO never went anywhere!
The local driving range had pinball machines, and I used to hang out among them while my dad played a round of golf, then one day this big ol' cabinet showed up. Pinball machines just didn't do it for me after that.
I can still remember my first exposure to video games.
It was during my dad's (second) wedding. My grandfather told me he had something to show me. He brought me into the bar at the reception hall, and sat me down in front of a Space Invaders machine with a stack of quarters. The rest is history.
Just thinking about this now, I'm re-experiencing the darkened environment of video arcade, with weird electronic noises from every direction. I had a few quarters in my pocket, and I was trying to decide which machine to spend them on. The movies War Games and Tron may be iconic, but their portrayals of video arcades really didn't match my own experiences.
Wow, star riders was actually the reason why I wrote my space simulator, I also wanted to keep the pixelated look but html canvas (via imageSmoothingEnabled) only support pixelation for images, not for lines so I eventually gave up on that old-style look.
