/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10393479
Why don't you try making a 2600 game then?

>>10393479
There's whole documentaries on this shitty game. Go watch one of those.

>>10393479
Injecting soul takes a lot of time

I read some documentation regarding 2600 homebrews and i recall it saying something like you had to dedicate a part of the code in every game to actually explain to the system how the mechanics of a television set work regarding rendering a picture or something. Dont full remember, but the opening from the guy who wrote it said something along the lines of being either "super dedicated or super insane" to even attempt programming games for it. Maybe now a days there are equivalents to that GameBoy Studio engine that makes the process a lot easier.

As for why ET sucks? I think they just didn't have a solid idea to build a game around, though some enjoy the randomized nature of it every time you play.

>>10393583
>though some enjoy the randomized nature of it every time you play.
ET the first Rogue confirmed

>>10393496
huh, that explains how this game ended up like that

ET was fine if you read the manual, which was the case for most of the more complex Atari 2600 games.

>>10393484
Good idea.

>>10393479
>How difficult is it to create a game like this on the hardware?
In your case the answer is obviously impossible. At the time, with the tools available, it was still a fair bit of work even for a skilled programmer.
>>10393583
I'm hoping that explanation is just retarded because you didn't understand what the guy was saying. But odds are he's just retarded.
Yes, there are tools now that make building 2600 games much easier. But the fundamental problem is that it's a very limited system. Unless you have the mental capacity to design a build a game that's enjoyable within those limitations those tools won't make your garbage game good.

>>10393867
Yeah idk, i think it was an old manual someone posted online back in the 2000s, so im only remembering the vague details of the first section that was a few pages that went over that primary detail. It may have been more along the lines of taking the limited bytes you had to make a game and then cutting that amount in half because you needed to save half of the space you had just for basic instructions on how the game is supposed to even show up on the television at all, possibly because the actual system itself lacks that ability. Im not 100% sure how the hardware works, but the gist of what it said was the actual processing of an image on a screen from the Atari was way more primitive then everything later or maybe even contemporaries so you had to reserve a part of your code in every game for that fact. I think i may still have the guide downloaded on an old drive so ill link it later if i find it.

>>10393989
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJFnWZH5FXc&ab_channel=RetroGameMechanicsExplained
You might enjoy this

>>10393989
The 2600 is very basic and you need to deal with video at a much lower level than anything anyone pretty much under the age of 60 has ever had to. Most kiddos don't even understand how a video signal works so can't even begin to comprehend the concept of how you could control one at that level. It's interesting stuff and you can watch a youtube or whatever about it. But unless you're going to write a 2600 game from scratch in a text editor it's mental masturbation. Any 2600 toolchain will have kernels that do all that shit for you in ways few people can fathom.

>>10393496
>Made in 6 weeks
>Oozes soul

>>10393583
>they just didn't have a solid idea to build a game around

Yeah the thing is, it's not a very action packed movie. E.T. spends most of the runtime chilling in Elliot's house. Although I still say they should have just gone the obvious route and turned the bike chase scene into a grand prix rip-off. Sure, it would have been unoriginal but it probably would have gone over better than the levitating simulator they wound up with.

>>10394725
>Yeah the thing is, it's not a very action packed movie.
When has that ever stopped a licensed movie game from being non stop action? Theres one Alien in Alien 3 yet you fight a hundreds of them. They could have made ET like any Disney platformer where you jump on evil dancing walkie talkies.

>>10393479
>How difficult is it to create a game like this on the hardware?
Today? Trivial. Back then? Who knows. You had a much shallower pool of knowledge to draw on, basically limited to whatever tricks your coworkers and yourself figured out (or were able to reverse engineer from competitors games). That said, ET wasn't particularly outstanding in how it used the hardware even for the era. There's a reason that high end modern homebrew on these antique consoles looks insane. They have decades of knowledge to exploit and tooling that devs back then would've killed for.

And yeah, the "worst game ever xDD" stuff is retarded when there are literally unplayable games even on the same console. ET's issue is that it was an officially licensed ET product during a time when the public was obsessed with ET - the game needed to be amazing to move the volume expected and to leave a good impression with non-gamers buying Ataris just to play ET and it massively failed to deliver. If it was simply released as "Alien Quest" it would've been just another meh title like most of the 2600 library.

>>10393479
>3 months
was way less than that. he had a few weeks in total to code it.
>>10394487
>The 2600 is very basic
hardware is basic, programming is not.
>Any 2600 toolchain will have kernels that do all that shit for you in ways few people can fathom.
i have bad news for you: nearly all atari 2600 game developers had their own kernels for games. they didn't program a game entirely from scratch everytime.

>>10395541
The 2600 is hardware, it's not programming
I have bad news for you: no one ever said devs wrote a game from scratch every time

design and scope that exceeded the hardware's capabilities. Howard Warshaw pitched the concept to a bunch of Hollywood suits and Steven Spielberg was like "uh...can't we just do Pac-Man instead?" when Steven Spielberg (a boomer who didn't know anything about video games) even thinks this is a bad idea it tells you something. then factor in Atari's ridiculous demand to complete the game in 6 weeks for the '82 Christmas season.

the 2600 doesn't have video memory, your code loop literally draws the playfield line by line. there is also just 128 bytes RAM and the CPU can only see 4k of ROM at a time, you can bank switch ROMs to have bigger games but it's basically like a collection of 4k programs linked together. E.T. was an 8k game, two 4k banks the game alternates between.

>>10393585
Rogue came out two years before ET

>>10395636
Goddamn games really sucked before the nes huh

>>10395817
not sure how that relates to the post you replied to. it's very possible to make a fun game under those restrictions, people have been doing that since 1977.

>>10396974
When was the last time you actually played a 2600 game?

>>10393479
>a game so shitty it crashed the American video game industry and had to be buried in the desert so people could forget about it

To be fair ET is not as bad as haters make it out to be. You can have fun once you get the hang of it although I understand why casuals and zoomers may find it frustrating.

Also fuck people who shit on Atari Pacman.

>>10393479
Programming a game is pretty hard, especially back in those times where they couldn't go online and download a game engine. The fact anything came out at 3 months is amazing

>>10397638
I also seen [insert famous e-celeb]s videos! You and him are totally right with this completely new and different opinion.

>>10397632
I would play pitfall over modern day 10/10 masterpieces.

>>10394760
Alien 3 is an example of a studio making a game first then simply skinning it to graphical fit whatever license they manage to secure. Many such cases.

>>10397732
>would
but you dont. no one does.

>>10394760
I played this so many times, and that horrible clock always destroyed me.

>>10397923
Plenty of people play modern day movie games. To be honest I don't game at all I just come here to talk about old games.

>>10394725
You don't need an action packed movie to make a good game. You don't even need an action packed game to make a good game.

>>10397710
You actually have to read the manual to know what's going on and what to do.
-So naturally these info might as well have been incribed in some ancient pyramids.
There definitely is a steep learning curve on how to navigate around holes to not directly fall in again tho because it's so unintuitive..

>>10397906
Even if it was made the other way round it would be full of aliens to fight. They're not going to use that IP for possibly a single face hugger and alien.

>>10395615
>I have bad news for you: no one ever said devs wrote a game from scratch every time
..
>". But unless you're going to write a 2600 game from scratch in a text editor it's mental masturbation. "
moron.

>>10393583
>you had to dedicate a part of the code in every game to actually explain to the system how the mechanics of a television set work
Is that part supposed to be unique to every game? Can you just copy the code you've already written for a different game?

>>10398725
>btfo
>cope
Were you seething so hard you couldn't read through the tears or can you really just not into reading comprehension?

>>10393479
The hack that made getting out of the pits easier, among a few other things makes the game an ok game. Also wasn't there a theory that they burned the rom for a beta instead of the final.

>>10399878
There was no time for selecting/QC anything.
The story of E.T. has been well documented.

-ATARI secure crazy expensive rights for E.T. game, $$ in eyes
-Suits up there go absolutely nuts and want to have the game ready for Christmas season.
-With packaging/shipping etc that leaves around 6 WEEKS for programming from 0 to finished product.
-One guy takes the challenge
-$$ in eyes block their common sense, also they have to make a lot of money for rights back, so they in their wisdom produce more carts than known system owners at that point - A LOT more carts, banking on it being a system seller.
-Obviously whatever he created has to be immediately shipped, the only "control" basically was the pitch all the way at the beginning where Spielberg gave his okay.
-game sells well but that massive overstock plus returns leads to huge loss for ATARI - who would've thunked...
- Leads to the video game crash. E.T. was just the little drop that overflows the glass but it bacame kind of a symbol for the wave of disappointing games, like being the one that opened consumers' eyes.

For they guy the whole thing was still good, he got a good pay out of the deal.

Deeper and better value than the vic20 game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c42WFI_gruc

>>10400217
Same amount of ROM and the VIC-20 is a lot easier to program than the 2600, and by that I mean a lot. This is pretty fucking bad.

>>10400445
I'm pretty sure the Vic20 game is 8K ROM, with the 5K system RAM.

>>10397923
I literally just played pitfall on 2600 pitfall 2 on 5200 and pitfall 3d for PS1, just gotta play the best one(Mayan adventure) next

Soul doesn't come from the game it comes from the people who played it and probably those who write about it

>>10393496
Atari games don't have soul. Not even Pitfall.