平台研究：Atari视频计算机系统

4星 · 超过85%的资源需积分: 0 188 浏览量更新于2024-07-27 收藏 2.14MB PDF 举报

"Racing the Beam" 《Racing the Beam》是由Ian Bogost和Nick Montfort编辑的一本书，它是平台研究系列的一部分，专注于探讨Atari Video Computer System（VCS），也就是我们熟知的Atari 2600游戏机。这本书被誉为游戏设计领域的经典读物，与《Game Design Reader》一起被认为是所有游戏设计师必读的作品。在游戏开发的历史中，Atari 2600扮演了至关重要的角色，它开启了家用游戏机的时代。"Racing the Beam"这一术语源自Atari 2600的硬件特性，其中“Beam”指的是电视屏幕上的电子束，游戏开发者需要巧妙地利用这个电子束来创建游戏画面，因为它的限制性很大，但同时也提供了创新的可能性。这种技术挑战激发了早期游戏程序员的创造力，他们通过理解和利用这些限制，创造出了一系列经典游戏。书中详细介绍了Atari 2600的硬件架构，包括其微处理器、内存系统以及图形和声音处理能力。作者们深入剖析了如何在有限的硬件资源下进行编程，解释了为什么某些游戏看起来是特定的样子，以及如何通过巧妙的编程技巧来实现更丰富的视觉效果。这些内容对于理解早期游戏开发过程以及现代游戏技术的发展有着重要的历史价值。此外，《Racing the Beam》还分析了一些Atari 2600的经典游戏，如《Pong》、《Space Invaders》等，揭示了这些游戏背后的编程策略和技术挑战。通过这些案例，读者可以了解到游戏设计中的艺术与科学是如何结合的，以及如何在有限的技术条件下创造出引人入胜的游戏体验。书中的内容不仅限于技术细节，还探讨了文化和社会背景对游戏发展的影响。Atari 2600的成功推动了整个游戏产业的繁荣，也为后来的游戏平台奠定了基础。因此，这本书不仅是对游戏历史的回顾，也是对游戏设计思想的深入探讨，对于当前的游戏开发者来说，它提供了一种反思和学习的机会。《Racing the Beam》是一本深度挖掘游戏技术与文化交织的著作，它帮助读者理解早期游戏开发的艰辛与创新，同时也启发了新一代开发者如何在现有技术框架内寻找新的创意。对于想要深入了解游戏开发历史、技术演变，以及平台对游戏设计影响的人来说，这是一本不可或缺的参考书籍。

1 Stella [3]

form. In general, platforms are layered—from hardware through operat-

ing system and into other software layers—and they relate to modular

components, such as optional controllers and cards. Studies in computer

science and engineering have addressed the question of how platforms

are best developed and what is best encapsulated in the platform. Studies

in digital media have addressed the cultural relevance of particular soft-

ware that runs on platforms. But little work has been done on how the

hardware and software of platforms inﬂ uences, facilitates, or constrains

particular forms of computational expression.

When digital media creators choose a platform, they simplify devel-

opment and delivery in many ways. For example, such authors need not

construct an entirely new computer system before starting on a particular

creative project. Likewise, users need not fashion or acquire completely

new pieces of hardware before interacting with such a work. That said,

work that is built for a platform is supported and constrained by what the

chosen platform can do. Sometimes the inﬂ uence is obvious: a mono-

chrome platform can’t display color, for instance, and a videogame

console without a keyboard can’t accept typed input. But there are more

subtle ways that platforms inﬂ uence creative production, due to the idioms

of programming that a language supports or due to transistor-level deci-

sions made in video and audio hardware. In addition to allowing certain

developments and precluding others, platforms also function in more

subtle ways to encourage and discourage different sorts of computer

expression. In drawing raster graphics, there is a considerable difference

between setting up one television scan line at a time as the Atari VCS

demands, having a buffered display with support for tiles and sprites, or

having some more elaborate system that includes a native 3D renderer.

Such a difference can end up being much more important than simple

statistics of screen resolution or color depth that are used as shorthand by

fans and marketers.

We offer here such a platform study, one that considers an inﬂ uential

videogame system that helped introduce computing to a popular audience

and to the home. Our approach is mainly informed by the history of

material texts, programming, and computing systems. Other sorts of plat-

form studies may emphasize different technical or cultural aspects, and

may draw on different critical and theoretical approaches. To deal deeply

with platforms and digital media, however, any study of this sort must

be technically rigorous. The detailed analysis of hardware and code

connects to the experience of developers who created software for a plat-

form and users who interacted with and will interact with programs on

that platform. Only the serious investigation of computing systems as

[4]

speciﬁ c machines can reveal the relationships between these systems

and creativity, design, expression, and culture.

Although it was not the ﬁ rst home videogame console, the Atari VCS

was the ﬁ rst wildly popular one. It was affordable at the time, and it offered

the ﬂ exibility of interchangeable cartridges. The popularity of the Atari

VCS—which was the dominant system for years and remained widely used

for more than a decade—supported the creation of nearly one thousand

games, many of which established techniques, mechanics, or entire

genres that continue to thrive today on much more technologically

advanced platforms. Although several companies ﬁ elded consoles, by

1981 the Atari VCS accounted for 75 percent of home videogame system

sales.

Indeed, the generic term for a videogame system in the early 1980s

was “an Atari.” Yet, despite its undisputed place in the annals of popular

culture, and despite having been the standard system for home video

gaming for so many years, Atari’s ﬁ rst cartridge-based system is an

extremely curious computer.

Cost concerns led to a remarkable hardware design, which inﬂ uenced

how software was written for the Atari VCS, which in turn inﬂ uenced the

video games created during and after the system’s reign. Given that it used

a version of the very typical 6502 processor, which drove many computers

and consoles, one might not guess that the Atari VCS was so atypical. But

this processor interfaced with the display by means of a truly unique com-

ponent, the Television Interface Adaptor, or TIA. A television picture is

composed of many horizontal lines, illuminated by an electron beam that

traces each one by moving across and down a picture tube. Some pro-

grammers worry about having each frame of the picture ready to be dis-

played on time; VCS programmers must make sure that each individual

line of each frame is ready as the electron gun starts to light it up, “racing

the beam” as it travels down the screen.

The Roots of Video Gaming

In World of Warcraft, you start off, as a human, in Northshire Abbey. You

can move your character around using the W, A, S, and D keys, an interface

popularized by the ﬁ rst-person shooter Quake. As you do this, the terrain

that you’re standing on moves off the screen and new terrain appears as

if from off screen. You are in a virtual space that is larger than the screen.

This shouldn’t be at all surprising. It seems that every 3D game, from

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Super Mario 64 to Tomb Raider, offers

virtual spaces that are larger than the screen. Quake and other ﬁ rst-person

shooters have them as well, as do 2D games. In the original Legend of Zelda,

1 Stella [5]

for instance, when you have Link walk off one side of the screen, he

appears on the other side of a new screen in another part of the large

virtual space.

Video games weren’t born with these extra-large virtual spaces,

though. Pong, Spacewar, Space Invaders, and Asteroids are a few of the many

games that have a single screen as their playing ﬁ eld. The idea of a game

with a virtual space bigger than the screen had to be developed and imple-

mented for the ﬁ rst time at some point.

This was done by Warren Robi-

nett, as he designed and programmed Adventure, the ﬁ rst graphical

adventure game, for the Atari VCS in 1978.

Engage with Half-Life 2 and you could ﬁ nd your avatar, Gordon

Freeman, surrounded by attacking enemies who provide supporting ﬁ re

for each other, dodge, and hide behind cover, powered as they are by what

the game industry calls artiﬁ cial intelligence, or AI. The pleasure of many

solo games, whether they are real-time strategy games such as Warcraft III:

Reign of Chaos or ﬁ rst-person shooters, comes from the worthy but sur-

mountable challenge that computer opponents are able to provide.

The computer’s ability to play against a person and to play somewhat

like a person, rather than just serving as the playing ﬁ eld and referee,

wasn’t a given in the early days of gaming. Early on, most games were

either two-player, like Pong and Spacewar, or else offered an asymmetric

challenge, like that of Space Invaders. But there were other developments

that helped the industry move toward today’s crafty computer-controlled

enemies. One early example was Alan Miller’s Atari cartridge Basketball,

which, in its 2K of code and graphics, managed to provide a computer-

controlled opponent for a one-on-one game. But even before then, one

of the VCS launch titles, Video Olympics, offered a one-player “Robot

Pong” mode that provided an opponent who, although not anthropomor-

phic, managed to be challenging without being impossible to defeat.

It’s obvious to any gamer today, and certainly also to those who

produce games, that there are well-established videogame genres: ﬁ rst-

person shooters, real-time strategy games, sports games, driving games,

platformers, adventure games, and survival horror games, for instance.

Video gaming wasn’t always stratiﬁ ed in this way. From the very early days,

in which two-player head-to-head challenges predominated, video games

began to branch out as games employed many types of hardware and soft-

ware interfaces, display technologies, game forms, and representations.

Gradually, conventions of different sorts began to emerge and various

genres became evident.

Some of the development of today’s videogame genres arose thanks

to computer games and arcade games, but games for the Atari VCS made

[6]

important contributions as well. Certain genres the Atari VCS helped

develop (such as the vertical scroller, which was fostered by Activision’s

River Raid) do not deﬁ ne important sectors of today’s videogame market.

Others remain inﬂ uential, such as the graphical adventure game, the pro-

totype of which was Atari’s Adventure, and the platformer, pioneered in

Activision’s Pitfall! One game critic even traces the origin of survival

horror to the 1982 VCS cartridge Haunted House.

Regardless of whether

the case for this lineage is persuasive, it is obvious that the Atari VCS was

at least a seedbed for videogame genres, if not the forge in which many

were formed.

The Atari VCS is certainly a retro fetish object and a focus of nostal-

gia, but it is also much more than this. The system is essential to the

history of video games, and in niches it remains a living part of the

modern videogame ecology.

Cartridge Games for the Home

The Atari Video Computer System was the ﬁ rst successful cartridge-based

videogame console. (In 1982, when the Atari 5200 was introduced, the

system was renamed the Atari 2600, the new name being taken from the

system’s original product number. Because our focus in this book is on

the period 1977–1983, we have decided to call the console “the Atari VCS”

throughout the book.) The system appeared at a time when the vast major-

ity of video games were played in bars, lounges, and arcades. The arcade

cabinet has become a rare sight in the United States, but in their best year,

coin-operated games collected quarters that, adjusting for inﬂ ation, sum

to more than twice the 2006 sales of U.S. computer and videogame

software.

Arcade games derive directly from tavern and lounge games such as

pinball. They are indirectly descended from games of chance, including

midway games and slot machines. Among his many trades, Atari founder

Nolan Bushnell worked the midway as a barker before founding Atari.

His contributions to video games owe much to the principles he learned

from his experiences at the carnival.

Midway games rely on partial reinforcement—a type of operant con-

ditioning that explains how people become attached (and possibly

addicted) to experiences. Partial reinforcement provides rewards at

scheduled intervals. Psychologists Geoffrey R. Loftus and Elizabeth F.

Loftus make the argument that video games offer superlative examples of

partial reinforcement, presenting incentives at just the right moments to

encourage players to continue or try again when they fail.

1 Stella [7]

The classic midway games, which involve things like throwing a ball

into a basket or knocking down bottles, appear to be contests of skill. But

the barker can subtly alter the games to tip the odds in or out of his favor.

For example, by slightly, imperceptibly turning the angle of the basket,

the basketball game operator can almost ensure failure, or make success

very easy, for a particular throw.

Midway games are illusions more than tests of skill, designed to offer

the player just enough positive feedback to give the impression that

winning is easy, or at least possible. The midway barker must occasionally

allow players to win, persuading onlookers and passersby that the game is

a sure thing. Bushnell was a natural barker; he had an uncanny ability to

read people and play to their weaknesses. He knew that the big, brutish

fellow would be willing to drop a small fortune trying to beat a game that

he’d just seen a weakling master.

It was as if Bushnell had all of this in mind already when he ﬁ rst

started working with video games. As an electrical engineer educated at

the University of Utah, he discovered Spacewar at school in 1962. That

game ran on the PDP-1 minicomputer and displayed simple graphics on

an oscilloscope. Steve Russell, an MIT student, had created Spacewar

earlier that year. The game quickly spread to the few institutions fortunate

enough to have a PDP-1. Given the price tag of more than $100,000, these

were usually universities and laboratories.

Bushnell spent the next decade trying to make a version of Spacewar

simple enough to run on more common, less expensive hardware. The

result was Computer Space, which arcade game manufacturer Nutting

Associates released in 1971 to very limited commercial success. Complex-

ity of play was part of the problem—the general public wasn’t accustomed

to arcade games. Parlor and midway games inspire play based partly on

familiarity and partly on external rewards. To make a breakthrough,

Bushnell needed to merge his experience as an electrical engineer and as

a midway barker.

Slot machines certainly implement the midway barker’s technique,

providing scheduled payouts of varying amounts based on complex odds

tables. These tables were originally encoded mechanically and are now

represented electronically. But pinball machines and video games give the

player partial control over an experience, and in that respect they have

more in common with midway games than with slot machines. In the

taverns that ﬁ rst hosted Bushnell and Al Alcorn’s coin-operated Pong

(1972), the game became a social hub, serving a function that darts,

pinball, and related tavern sports had fulﬁ lled in that space. In Pong and

its siblings, partial reinforcement operates on two registers. First, the

剩余192页未读，继续阅读

yangchongze00

粉丝: 0
资源: 1

平台研究：Atari视频计算机系统

Touhou Fumo Racing.zip

3D-opengl-racing.zip

python怎么下载gym完整版

找一篇钢包车架英文文献

curr_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)) import_path = os.path.join(curr_dir, '..', '..', '..') sys.path.insert(0, import_path) import racing_utils

torcs timeout for client answer

大学英语一课文 A hero's aspiriation续写

tian ji -- the horse racing

both modified:

最新资源

curr_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(file)) import_path = os.path.join(curr_dir, '..', '..', '..') sys.path.insert(0, import_path) import racing_utils