Posted on 04/06/2005 7:13:26 AM PDT by grundle
http://www.ataritimes.com/features/ataritop20_6.html
Why Atari 2600 Adventure is such a fun game
by Warren Robinett
First of all, let's not forget the game that directly inspired me -- the original text adventure game (also named "Adventure") which was created by Don Woods and Willie Crowther. They invented the idea of moving from room to room, carrying objects that you could use to get past obstacles, and creatures that moved around and did things in the game world. Their game was pure text -- the user typed text commands and then received text descriptions of the room he or she was in, and the objects being carried.
My main breakthrough, I think, was figuring out how to do this kind of game -- rooms, objects and creatures -- in the video game medium -- with animation, color, sounds, and joystick controllers. There are 3 powerful ideas in this that were, at the time, different from how most video games were done.
1. Exploring a large space (in this case, the network of rooms).
2. Objects that the player could pick up and move around, and which functioned as tools to do things in the game world.
3. Creatures which moved around on their own, initiating actions. ("AI's", in modern terminology) Putting these elements together in a video game produced what we now call an action-adventure game, which has shown, over the last few decades, that it is a very fertile genre.
At the time, game designers were trying to figure out what you could do that was cool with this new medium of interactive computer graphics, so I think you could now say that I discovered one of the "sweet spots" in the medium.
Of course, all the details were important -- what the objects and creatures did, and what they looked like, how the game world was laid out, how the controls worked. I dug out a list I made once for myself of why I thought Adventure worked well. Here it is.
1. Game world good size (30 rooms, 8 regions). Closed -- can explore it all. Having regions (eg castle interior or catacombs). Regions can be (temporarily) inaccessible.
2. Object permanence -- objects and creatures are never created or destroyed. Each one is always somewhere in the game world.
3. No randomness during game-play. Algorithmically- generated complex behavior is more interesting and understandable than just generating a new monster every so often based on a random number generator.
4. Fairly consistent fantasy (Dungeons and Dragons).
5. Creatures (objects that moved around on their own, initiating actions). The creatures in the game were similar to animals in real life -- they move around, they do things, they have motivations which can be inferred from their behavior. Each creature had a subroutine that controlled what it did, which was executed 20 times per second. I came up with a data structure to represent a creature's goals -- a prioritized list of objects and whether to go toward or away from that object. The creature went down its priority list until it found an object on the list in the same room with it. Then it went towards the object, or away from. (I called this chasing and fleeing.) Each creature had its own priority list, and so had different behaviors. There were 4 creatures altogether -- three dragons and one bat. This was a pretty good scheme, because it modeled limited perception (couldn't "see" across room boundaries), and allowed a creature to "change its mind" when a new object came into the room.
6. Objects as tools to get past obstacles. Problem-solving. I chose not to have a timer in the game to emphasize exploration and problem-solving, which I felt would not be enhanced by arbitrary time limits.
7. You can win the game. In many video games at the time, you just kept playing until you finally got killed.
8. Mazes. The multi-screen, non-planar mazes were interesting. Having isolated parts that you needed the bridge to get to added further interest to the mazes.
9. Progressive difficulty levels. Level 1 was designed for beginners, and Levels 2 and 3 were harder. Flipping the difficulty switches made the dragons significantly more challenging.
10. Variety. Random object placement at the start of Level 3 (similar to shuffling the cards before a hand of bridge) gave it much more variety. The bat, which moved around objects, kept the game from being *too* predictable. It had enough variety to not be a pure puzzle, which can be solved the same way every time.
11. Grabbing objects. There was something simple and satisfying about grabbing objects and carrying them around. Allowing only one object to be carried at a time was a good decision. It simplified the user-interface. It meant the game could stay always in real-time (never going to an inventory screen). It created strategic choices (carry the weapon or the treasure?).
12. Simple, understandable story, theme, and goal. Good manual. Nice-looking box which conveys theme. (Well, the theme was a quest for the Holy Grail. But the Atari marketing department renamed the Holy Grail to be the Enchanted Chalice.)
13. Controls intuitive. I used the joystick for what it is best at -- moving an icon in 2D on the screen. The user interface for grabbing and dropping objects was very easy to learn and remember.
14. Object-object interaction was easy to understand. (example: sword killing dragon). These were triggered by overlap of object shapes (which were called "collisions"). This is like in the real world when two objects touch each other, they affect one another.
15. Restarting (re-incarnating) when killed. Simple and understandable. Leaving all the objects where they were was a good decision. This meant getting killed did not cause you to start over. But it did penalize you. Bringing all dead dragons back to life when the player re-incarnated was analogous to being vulnerable in the game of bridge. You have more to lose in some situations.
16. Sounds. The sounds were fairly good, given the hardware. They changed over time, which not all 2600 sound effects did. Tying short sound effects to game events was effective.
17. Square cursor and walls. Most games since Adventure have used a character as the user's avatar. An advantage to the square cursor is that it is easy to see when the cursor will run into a wall, and where the paths are. The visual feedback (jiggling cursor) when running into a wall was valuable. You could also slide along a wall when the joystick was attempting a diagonal movement. Since you spent most of your time moving through mazes, it was important to have this interaction smooth, intuitive, and glitch-free.
18. Some objects could not be picked up. (eg dragon carcass).
19. Jokes. Bat steals your sword. Bat carries dragon. (This always got a laugh the first time someone saw it.)
20. Bat and dragons could go through walls, but you have to follow the maze paths. Good balance since the player is actually smarter than the simple AI routines of the bat and dragons.
21. The secret room. Having a really hard-to-find secret place in the game, that was so secret it was secret even from Atari was kind of cool. It fueled a good rumor buzz. Maybe the kids could appreciate the programmer (little guy -- me) getting away with something (putting my signature in the game).
Scott Adams... I loved that one as well. THGTTG is a great book and was a great game.
My sister likes Burgertime. Come to think of it, I love it to!
My friends dad worked for IBM and he had a pretty cool PC (For back then anyway, 1980 or something like that.) and I distinctly remember one cool game called "Sun Tsu's The Art Of War" That was really cool!
Looking at the games in front of me right now, it is hard to believe that they have come so far. Those old ones bring back some fond memories though...
Arioch7 out.
"A stroll down memory lane is great, but the new adventure games are awesome. I expect AI and VR games to be just around the corner...."
Yep. At that rate, someone will release VR versions of "classic" video games. Imagine a VR version of Pole Position...
I still use Plugh, Plover and xyzzy as passwords on quizzes. My students are too young to remember.
Well, that was a nice little waste of time. (But I did get the Chalice)
I played Zork on a TRS-80 Model III.
I used to loathe hearing the disk spin, because you knew the chip was hitting the fan then...
I know nobody else will agree with me, but I always loved the Combat game which came with the original game console. Especially Invisible Tank Pong. That ROCKED!
And 5 million of those hideous cartages ended up being buried in the New Mexico Desert
Adventure was the best, Haunted House probably second. The worst game of all time was the X-rated Custer's Revenge. Pac Man for the 2600 was almost as bad.
One of the greatest days of my young life is when I beat my brother in combat game #20 playing the big slow plane while he had the 3 quick little planes. The game overwhelming favors the 3 little planes but I still pulled it out and won. Occasionally if we go out together and if he beats me at pool or darts or whatever, If he gloats too much - I like to bring that up.
If you want to have a real "adventure" have your next birthday party at Neverland, I hear there's an awesome secret room you can play in. Make sure you're wearing your tight fitting scooby doo underpants, it enhances the experience or so I'm told...
Getting that slippery little bugger defined the word 'persistent'....didn't it? Check out reply # 80 on this thread.
This is a true story.When that game first came out back in 83 for the 2600 my mom who spent a large portion of every day bitching at me about how i am wasting my life on these mind numbing stupid computer games played one game of 2600 pac man and then got so friggin addicted to it she actually called in sick from work for 2 days in a row and played it almost non stop.She went 20 hours the first day then 18 the second day and on day two the blister she got on her thumb from day one burst open and started pouring blood all over the controller and the floor!So like any normal human being she KEPT ON PLAYING WITH BLOOD RUNNiNG DOWN HER HAND.She would grab some paper towels and wipe the blood off of the controller and then in bwetween boards would run in to the bathroom and get a bandaid for her theumb and keep playing.Then when the blood would go through the bandaid she would get a new one and wipe the blood off the controller that went on for a n hour until my dad came home and freaked out and locked the atari in a closet for a full month until she could control herself. That christmas we got imagics demon attack and I honestly thought that my mom was going to die in front of the television playing that game no matterwhat time you went in the tv room it seemed she was in there playing it for weeks before she regained controll and her sences.Those are the only two games she lost all grasps on reality playing though.Those are practically the only games she ever did play forsome reason wich is probably a good thing considering the way she was with them.
My father and I wore out the controllers playing Intellivision baseball...those were the days.
Superman was one of my favorites.
I agree with you. Combat was a very fun game.
Yeah, the 2600 Pac-Man sucked. The guy who programmed it only had 6 weeks to do it, and he allegedly didn't like the arcade version anyway. But the 2600 Ms. Pac-Man was much better.
Aw, man...when I saw the pictures I remembered that I used to play that thing for hours. Atari had some great games for those of us in the infancy of video games. It was like a new magical door opening that challenged our minds as well as motor skills. I still have an original Nintendo and an original Sega system. Don't know what happened to my Atari 2600 over the years.
Yeah, the baseball game was addictive. I liked Space Armada quite a bit, too. Remember the aftermarket "joysticks" that could be added to the controllers?
Speaking of controllers, that was a perennial weak spot with many console games. The 2600 joysticks were simple and stout, but the Atari 5600 and 7800 controllers were always in demand as replacement parts. The Intellivision controllers were a bit fragile, too - more so than those of the ColecoVision/ADAM.
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