[HN Gopher] How Pitfall builds its world (2021)
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How Pitfall builds its world (2021)
Author : kibwen
Score : 209 points
Date : 2022-12-22 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (evoniuk.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (evoniuk.github.io)
| mike_hock wrote:
| > We got really lucky that Microsoft released the source code for
| MS DOS, and maybe if we're lucky Activision and Atari and
| Nintendo have all their original code somewhere in a vault, which
| they'll release freely into the public for the good of mankind,
| but I'm not holding my breath. Everyone who is able should be
| working to preserve whatever piece of history they can, 'cause
| it's not gonna preserve itself.
|
| Amen.
| ilamont wrote:
| Pitfall _really_ stood out ... and made many of us think, "why
| can't other 2600 games hit the bar set by Pitfall?"
|
| I mean, there were fun games with very basic graphics (Combat
| springs to mind,
| https://www.free80sarcade.com/atari2600_Combat.php) but there
| were also way too many uninspiring original games and arcade
| copies that were just lame.
|
| Now we know why. It's a great article, thanks for sharing
| @kibwen.
| chungy wrote:
| It still stands out as an actually-fun game on the 2600.
|
| The 2600 is before my time. I grew up with the NES and its
| library. I do see 2600 nostalgia in older generations, but for
| me, Pitfall is pretty much the only title worth playing.
| bluedino wrote:
| If you like Pitfall you might like Keystone Capers
| toast0 wrote:
| If you've got the paddle controllers in good condition, and a
| low latency screen, super breakout in progressive mode is a
| treat. And paddle controllers disappeared since then, so hard
| to replicate. Arkanoid with a spinner on newer systems is
| similar but different.
| thom wrote:
| The two-player games were all fun, the arcadey stuff like
| Centipede and Missile Command were addictive. My memories of
| Pitfall were mostly that it was repetitive and hard, but I
| was pretty young so presumably sucked. I do remember that
| things like Submarine Commander and Star Raiders/Solaris felt
| very, very sophisticated though and I can imagine they'd be
| worth a revisit.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| A YouTube video
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkDllyETiBA) showing the
| complete walkthrough where all 32 treasures are acquired
| leaves less than a minute on the 20 minute clock (actually
| 8 seconds left). Nintendo hard doesn't have much on certain
| types of Atari hard.
| duskwuff wrote:
| The best tool-assisted speedrun for this game comes in at
| 18:11. According to the runner, a lot of the obstacles,
| like swinging vines, all run on the same timer. This
| means that saving a bit of time on one room may not put
| you ahead (because it just means you have to wait longer
| for the next obstacle), but missing a "cycle" on an
| obstacle is an unrecoverable setback.
|
| https://tasvideos.org/4000M
| popularrecluse wrote:
| You may find many of the Activision titles still hold up.
| River Raid, Megamania, Seaquest, Frostbite. There's a lot of
| fun to still be had in those games, especially if you're
| competing head-to-head.
|
| But for my money the most fun you can have on an Atari 2600
| today is 4-player Warlords with well-maintained paddles.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > for my money the most fun you can have on an Atari 2600
| today is 4-player Warlords with well-maintained paddles
|
| This was definitely the most fun for larger groups of
| players back in the day.
|
| https://www.giantbomb.com/warlords/3030-25096/
| chungy wrote:
| I'll definitely have to check them all out. Thanks!
| kgwxd wrote:
| Do you know about Medieval Mayhem?
| https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=842
|
| "adds arcade features such as the launch dragon, multiple
| fireballs, and a level of polish missing from the original
| 2600 release."
|
| There are a ton of homebrew games for the 2600 that are
| super fun.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Yeah! 2-player (or 4-player!) simultaneous Warlords or
| Medieval Mayhem are _really_ fun, even in 2022.
|
| After many decades I finally managed to try it out, on a
| real CRT and everything. It's not something you generally
| want to play for hours or anything like Mario Kart... but
| it is really really good.
| virgulino wrote:
| My vote for River Raid, H.E.R.O., and Enduro. Cool fact
| that I only recently discovered: River Raid was designed
| and programmed by a woman,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Shaw .
| lowercased wrote:
| Others have mentioned some other good games (Ms Pac, Keystone
| Kapers, River Raid, etc).
|
| There was something about the first generation Activision
| games that seemed to stand out compared to the rest. Whether
| simple or complex, they had some hard to pinpoint quality
| that was just... 'good'. David Crane mentions this in one of
| the linked videos. "2 line kernel didn't look good. 1 line
| kernel was harder to do, but looked better, so we just did
| that". He's referring to doing more work to be able to make
| visual updates every scan line, instead of every other scan
| line. This made their games so much more visually sharp and
| appealing compared to what came before on the same hardware.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| So the TIA (the Atari video chip) has a "delay" slot for
| its "player" graphics--a player being an 8 dot wide object
| - the CPU is supposed to program in new data the player
| graphics register during the HBLANK portion of the display
| for each scaline it's visible.
|
| The intention was that the CPU would spend 1 scan line
| updating P0 graphics, then the next scan line updating P1
| graphics, and by setting the delay for P0, both player
| graphics would appear on the same 2-line portion.
|
| So "2 line kernels" were doing it in a way the TIA
| supported and providing time to do other things like check
| paddle status (because you're supposed to be programming a
| Pong game). Of course the TIA has been wonderfully pushed
| and twisted in ways never imagined by the designer. I think
| someone even experimented with interlaced 160x400 graphics.
| antiterra wrote:
| "River Raid" stands out to me as the most actually fun Atari
| 2600 game.
|
| Despite having awkward controls, "Combat" is also fun due to
| couch multiplayer. "Jungle Hunt" is similar to Pitfall but
| faster. I also managed to spend a lot of time playing the
| 2600 version of Asteroids, but I don't know if it actually
| holds up.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Yep. Anybody hating on Combat never played Combat the way
| it was meant to be played. I treated it as the game you
| just put to the side as a kid because we were too busy
| playing Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Breakout, Chopper Command,
| Galaga, Galaxian, Defender, Adventure, Vangard, etc. But
| once you've played Empire Strikes Back ten dozen times and
| the fun of shooting glowing pixels on the backs of AT-ATs
| wears off... Combat was still there and took almost zero
| explanation for how to play.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| I really loved playing Vangard when I was younger. The
| multi-level types and fast-paced action really drew me
| in.
| lowercased wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B21K8X1eja0
|
| Check this out - a list of 20 Atari VCS games the author
| thinks still hold up in 2022.
|
| I'm not sure I agree with all the choices, but it's an
| interesting list nonetheless.
| caseyf wrote:
| If we're listing fun games i'd like to add Berzerk :)
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Did you try Ms Pacman? It's pretty solid.
| chungy wrote:
| Probably haven't, but I'm not usually enamored with home
| console ports of arcade games when I can just as easily
| fire up MAME. I can recognize them for what they are on the
| hardware they target, but nearly always the arcade original
| is preferable.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| No doubt, but I bought a VCS2600 and actually used it a
| couple of years ago. Pretty fun!
| s1mon wrote:
| I didn't have a 2600, but my friend did. Pitfall was by far the
| game I remember going to his house to play. It really was
| worlds better than the rest.
|
| This was also a time (1982) when arcade games (Star Wars, Tron,
| Zaxxon, etc.) and their graphics were an order of magnitude
| more impressive than home console games, but Pitfall still had
| enough playability and complexity to keep it interesting.
| coldpie wrote:
| > Combat springs to mind,
| https://www.free80sarcade.com/atari2600_Combat.php
|
| Fun Copyright Fact: This website is violating Atari's copyright
| and will do until the year 2072!
|
| "For a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of
| 95 years from the year of its first publication"
| https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And this is all thanks to the goddamned mouse and the
| politicians that decided disney's desire for infinite money
| was more important than societal good from more media
| turnover and ability to riff on it.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Just for fun, here's the Pitfall TV commercial (and Jack Black's
| first acting gig): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfLgSdAAHMA
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time (of the article):
|
| _How Atari 2600 Game Pitfall Builds Its World_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27111377 - May 2021 (29
| comments)
| bluedino wrote:
| > We have the original source code for basically zero games for
| the Atari, NES, SNES, ColecoVision, you name it
|
| Aren't those dumpster-dived scans of source code to Atari 7800
| games?
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Tangent...
|
| From 2000 to 2002 I worked as a QA engineer at a semiconductor
| company in Silicon Valley. We tested the chips using all sorts
| of software. My boss loved dumpster diving at software
| companies, and probably half of our lab's software came from
| stuff she found in the trash. My favorite find was Risk (the
| board game) for Windows 3.0.
| themadturk wrote:
| Did no one here play "Kaboom!"? That was a fun game...
| vikingerik wrote:
| We did, but there really isn't anything interesting about
| Kaboom to make for discussion here. There's no technical
| wizardry or open world or groundbreaking mechanics or sense of
| fascination or urban legendarium about Kaboom, it's just a
| straightforward reflex game doing simple things with the
| hardware.
| CharlesW wrote:
| And yet, this completely uninteresting game by legends Larry
| Kaplan and David Crane had to fit into 2,048 bytes, ran at
| 60fps, won several awards, set sales records, and quickly
| became an instant classic.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| I think much of this is explained at a high level in this talk
| from the original game designer: Pitfall Classic Postmortem With
| David Crane Panel at GDC 2011 (Atari 2600).
| https://youtu.be/MBT1OK6VAIU
|
| I haven't seen it in a while (will rewatch now), but I remember
| him going over how he was able to create so many levels in such a
| tiny space. I love these sorts of examples of breakthrough tech
| products that were the result of a developer figuring out how to
| do something that seemed impossible. Much of Apple's early
| success, for example, could be attributed to this.
| travem wrote:
| My first exposure to the concept of this kind of procedural
| generation was with the game Elite and how it created different
| galaxies. With such limited capabilities available it was eye
| opening to see the creativity that was unleashed.
|
| See
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/18/features.weeke...
| lowercased wrote:
| I think Archipelagos
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archipelagos_(video_game) and
| Sentry/Sentinel https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/The_Sentinel also
| employed this technique.
| gdubs wrote:
| Steve Woz said something in his book that always stuck with me:
| the younger generation is missing out on what it was like to grow
| up during a time where it was possible to grasp the entire
| machine in your mind.
|
| People always chime in to say that you can still do that today.
| But back then the constraint was real; it was the best you had to
| work with, and it forced you to think of creative ways to use it
| and maximize it.
|
| Anyway, super cool piece -- thanks for sharing!
| spogbiper wrote:
| I grew up with early 80s microcomputers. I played around with
| BASIC and a little asm, definitely found it fascinating but as
| a kid just typing in little games from magazines I didn't
| really ever understand the whole computer.
|
| Then in my 30s I found a group of retro enthusiasts that were
| still hacking on the little oddball computer I'd had as a kid.
| It became a hobby for a few years, and coming back to the
| platform with a couple decades of experience programming was
| truly a revelation. Fitting the whole machine in your head,
| knowing what every byte in the memory map and every cycle of
| the CPU are doing.. its an experience I don't think is really
| possible on modern hardware. Maybe with a microcontroller or
| arduino type device, but even these are much more complex than
| the old 80s microcomputers.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| criddell wrote:
| And the generation before the one Jobs was nostalgic for didn't
| have integrated circuits. They knew every transistor, resistor,
| and capacitor.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| [dead]
| hbn wrote:
| It's even more sad for kids being raised on smartphones and
| iPads as their only computing paradigm. If desktop OSes aren't
| complicated enough, there's certainly no hope of you learning
| how one of those work with how locked down they are. There's a
| lot of people who got into programming from learning to make
| Minecraft mods or basic scripting for some game. It feels like
| the mobile application paradigm tightly cements the idea that
| all software that runs on a computer is from some big company
| and shan't be tampered with.
|
| And I don't think Xcode Playgrounds or various Programming
| Environment For Babies applications draw as much attention and
| spark as much imagination as learning to mod infinite lives
| into a game you already play, or even something as simple as
| modifying an ini file for a mod you found online.
| ilyt wrote:
| I do vividly remember feeling of pride when as kid I edited
| some game files to do something funky (like swapping Red
| Alert Tanya weapon to tesla coil...) or managed to cheat the
| game via hex editor or cheat engine.
|
| Mixing "something you like" with "something you can learn" is
| always a winning combo.
| benj111 wrote:
| Well I had a BBC as a kid before progressing to pcs. The idea
| of programming never really occured to me. I had a book but
| it's idea of programming consisted of typing out an ASCII art
| house.
|
| I only got in to programming in my 20s when some company
| called canonical were giving CDs away of this thing call
| Linux.
|
| Point is. We have the internet now for kids to discover these
| things, and schools are more up on it and we have inexpensive
| computers and stuff for kids to play about with.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Any kid who wants to build an app for the iPhone/iPad can do
| it pretty easily, they just need a Mac and Xcode. With Swift
| Playgrounds for iPad, you don't even need a Mac.
|
| I know you mentioned it "doesn't spark as much imagination",
| but I'm going to strongly disagree with you there. I don't
| think most software engineers got started by tweaking
| existing software. _You_ may have started that way, but I
| didn't. I got into programming by seeing the kinds of apps
| people made for Mac and iPhone, and wanting to build those
| kinds of experiences.
| gdubs wrote:
| I just want to be clear I'm not framing today's tools as
| "bad" or unable to spark imagination -- my own kids are
| getting started with Scratch and it's great!
|
| But I also feel like there's some magic in the past too.
| Some of it's nostalgia, but there's also lessons there that
| are valuable.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I don't disagree, but it's all perspective and it's all
| fractal. Every generation is building on top. He had his own
| examples of what he laments, I'm sure.
| bitexploder wrote:
| I have been deep in the 6502 hole writing an emulator and
| watching Ben Eater. Throw off the shackles of your massive
| computers and compute for the sheer fun of it! Almost everything
| about the 6502 and writing assembly for it is relevant in some
| way to modern systems programming. You get to trim all the fat
| from programming and computing and see the ingenuity of computing
| unfolding before you in a tiny little 2^16 address space. Where
| you are going there isn't even a div instruction. It is a cool
| way to compute and as retro as it is if you were ever interested
| in systems programming this is a cool, nostalgia themed, way to
| start.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Plus you can make new NES games.
| kgwxd wrote:
| And a whole bunch of other systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/MOS_Technology_6502#Computers_...
|
| And, more recently, the Commander X16.
| bitexploder wrote:
| That is my eventual goal. There are many NES emulators out
| there, but this one will be mine :)
|
| I also wanted to release a decent pure 6502 with a good
| command line monitor that lets you explore programs easily.
| Step. Poke memory. Set registers. Good CLI. We'll see. It
| really helps to have a decent playground when getting started
| :)
| binarymax wrote:
| Awesome write up, thank you for the deep dive and nostalgia!
|
| I also like that this is on the front page the same time as "24
| cores and I can't move my mouse"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34095032
|
| It tells us that software is like a gas - it naturally expands
| and fills the container it occupies.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| Also known as Parkinson's Law[1]. "Data expands to fill the
| space available for storage." And the reason building more
| highways doesn't reduce traffic congestion.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law
| benj111 wrote:
| This also applies to stuff and houses (and garages)
| [deleted]
| Arjuna wrote:
| Awesome!
|
| Any time I think of Pitfall!, I always remember this pamphlet you
| could request and receive via mail:
|
| _Programming Pitfall Harry_
|
| https://archive.org/details/program-pitfall/mode/1up
| aaroninsf wrote:
| This sure takes me back to hand-coding embedded systems firmware
| for a family of products on Microchip 8-bit microcontrollers...
| and that was as recent as this millennium.
|
| In the days before ARM and when we needed to use a $3 processor
| to hit our BOM cost, my code used every byte of the 8K and every
| register... bit-banged I2C, bit-banged RS232 up to 56Khz, LED and
| 8-key touchpad debouncing, and best of all, an IR receiver and IR
| emitter which both learned arbitrary consumer IR codes in the
| fashion of a then-fashionable universal remote, and reproduced
| them including press-and-hold behavior, while emulating their
| carrier frequency... and could do bi-directional device cloning
| via IR by holding the products up to one another face-to-face...
|
| And had a rock-solid bootloader for encrypted firmware updates.
|
| Ah the good ol' days... a tear for the old skool.
|
| I called the binder with the hard copy of the commented assembler
| source "my first novel"...
| isk517 wrote:
| Even though I was grew up well into the Nintendo dominated era of
| video games (NES,SNES) my first video game experience was playing
| on my parents Atari 2600 and both Adventure and Pitfall where
| common go to games for me. Reading the beginning of the article
| gave me real food for thought about how the manual of Adventure
| needed to specifically explain to the user about the concept of
| multiple rooms. Even with my limited exposure to more modern
| video games at the time I instinctively knew that going to the
| very edge of the screen was how you got to the next screen so the
| idea that this was something so new in Adventure it needed to be
| explained just blows my mind.
| sasas wrote:
| LFSR algorithms are super interesting. Fabien Sanglard documents
| how it was used in Wolfenstein 3D's 'Fizzle effect' [1]. This is
| also covered in his book on the development of that game [2].
|
| A detailed write up that goes into a bit of mathematics with code
| examples is 'Demystifying the LFSR' [3].
|
| The 'Computerphile' Youtube channel did a whole episode on LFSR
| last year which is very accessible, highly recommended [4].
|
| [1] https://fabiensanglard.net/fizzlefade/index.php
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.com/Game-Engine-Black-Book-
| Wolfenstein/dp...
|
| [3] https://www.moria.us/articles/demystifying-the-lfsr/
|
| [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks1pw1X22y4
| RantyDave wrote:
| 128 bytes. I'm trying to think of something in today's world with
| that little memory - a 'door opening' smart card? a car key?
| There are light bulbs with literally a thousand times as much.
| rsync wrote:
| 128 bytes and _no framebuffer_.
|
| They had to "race the beam" ... but the VCS was not as fast as
| the beam, which is why Atari 2600 games always have a
| horizontally stretched look to them:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam
|
| "The book's title comes from the fact that the Atari 2600,
| initially branded the VCS (Video Computer System), did not have
| a video frame buffer, and required the programmers to write
| each line of video to the television, one line at a time. As
| there were only a limited number of machine cycles in which to
| do this, the programmers were literally racing a high speed
| electron beam across the screen."
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I 2007 or so, my mother bought me a "robot" kit with a Parallax
| branded "BASIC stamp microcontroller"
| https://www.parallax.com/product/basic-stamp-2-microcontroll...
|
| It had 32 bytes of RAM. The IDE and educational materials were
| very heavy handed about encouraging you to split them up into
| very small variables, only as big as needed. Think of all the 8
| bit ints that fit into 32 bytes!
|
| PBASIC was actually pretty cool.
| dylan604 wrote:
| DVDs. There were 16 GPRMs that were 16 bits. Doing anything
| that resembled complicated required the use of everyone of
| those bits. This was the first time I had ever had to use bits
| in this manner, and did things not dissimilar to how Pitfall is
| described using the bits it had available. Of course, I was
| doing things 20+ years later. I found it quite a bit of
| perverse fun thinking in 0s and 1s like that. Not all DVD
| authoring programs were made the same, and the abstraction
| layer software like DVD Studio Pro required use of half of
| those GPRMs limiting what the programmer could do.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Minecraft doesn't have to save generated data. As long as they
| seed is preserved all the data will be regenerated. It only does
| this to save time and to persist any changes made.
| lowercased wrote:
| Standard plug for this book:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Beam-Computer-Platform-Studies...
|
| and
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam
|
| Great read. Very in-depth on some of the great games of that era.
| rsync wrote:
| Came here to mention this.
|
| It is a _fascinating_ book - and not just for the pitfall
| chapter.
| lowercased wrote:
| Without a doubt. There was a David Crane video from 2011
| linked here by russellbeattie(?) in which David plugs this
| book himself in the middle of his talk. It's that good. :)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This reminds me of something I read, am not sure if true:
|
| If you try to save the entire mesh for a video game world's
| surface, it would be absolutely massive. So you just save the
| gist and generate all the in-betweens.
|
| I think it was about Morrowind?
| jerf wrote:
| You could say that about a lot of games. It is a common
| approach. Every compression scheme you can imagine has been
| used and more, from simply shipping the whole thing after all
| to procedural generation and everything in between. I seem to
| recall Oblivion was mostly procedural on the overworld but then
| people would come in and edit the maps afterwards for various
| things.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Did something not too dissimilar for storing test answer
| randomization and answers in an older elearning standard. I had
| limited space, so for each screen, I used a single byte to store
| the state of if it was seen, the answer selected and order of
| answers. The intent was to randomize answer order on display to
| make it harder to pass an answer key around. This is more
| impressive though... Cannot even imagine the effort it took.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I was saddened by the lack of "real" (translation: actual itty
| bitty robots) nanotechnology taking off. I imagined everyone
| trying to drag old Atari programmers out of retirement with a
| "We're used to shipping these fuck-huge executables, how did you
| _do_ all of this under such tremendous constraints? " plea. So
| much with such minimal resources!
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