
Space Invaders - Tomte
http://www.computerarcheology.com/Arcade/SpaceInvaders/
======
kabdib
> The code makes some dangerous assumptions . . .

In this era, code for games was essentially write-only, by one or two
engineers. No one would be confused by the code in later releases because
there simply weren't any. Code that was common between games was the exception
rather than the rule (at Atari, some of the best debugged and well-structured
code was the stuff that operated the coin mechanism, because it _had_ to be
right or customers would aggressively exercise the tilt switch mentioned in
the article).

Code also had to run on really tiny hardware. ROMs cost real money, and
marketing wasn't going to give you more just to make your life easier. If your
code ran in 4K, but Joe's code was a complete train-wreck that ran fine in 2K,
guess who got the big bonus?

One cow-orker of mine had spent some time writing code for pinball machines at
Midway. He said that on one project the hardware engineers wanted to save
money by half-populating the board's RAM; unfortunately the way they sliced it
was to only provide the bottom 4 bits of each byte.

"The ROM is still 8-bits wide, you can work around the RAM thing in software."

He only got his full-width RAM by pointing out that the processor's stack
wouldn't work.

~~~
ww520
> sliced it was to only provide the bottom 4 bits of each byte.

That’s hilarious. I guess people were not that knowledgeable back then.

~~~
kabdib
You underestimate the cruelty of a hardware team intent on cost reduction.
They knew perfectly well what they were asking. IIRC the showstopper was that
the CPU wouldn't be able to handle interrupts.

~~~
mntmoss
One thing that struck me when I started studying pinballs in more depth is
that they really had the same basic technologies in use between the 40's and
the 70's, decades spent entirely on finding creative uses of EM relay logic
and coils and rubbers. To the extent that those games have memory, it's just
enough to count credits, trigger a score reel and serve bonuses.

And that scale of logic translated into a microprocessor makes for some pretty
trivial software; the games got to skip over all the intermediate technologies
of vacuum tubes and drums and core memory. So part of that initial video game
boom - and the corresponding switch to solid state pinball - really was a kind
of seeking out of applications for hundreds to thousands of bytes of memory,
often supplemented with existing analog tech. It's a fascinating crossover in
many ways with a punctuated ending: the '84 games crash and the '85 computers
crash precipiated cheaper RAM and in following years, suddenly all the games
started having more expansive worlds, full soundtracks, keyframed sprite
animation etc. The development shifted from a hardware and manufacturing focus
to a software one; and the computing devices became much more convergent and
portable. And that is the trend we've been on since in the consumer space -
inexhaustible cravings for more memory and higher fidelity, held at bay only
by the whims of hardware teams.

But I'm looking at coverage of CES this year and see this long trend as
something that's played out, with a lot of companies across the board aiming
to pitch new concepts. We're in a space where people have Enough Memory. So
things are getting exciting again.

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djmips
Note this other recent Space Invaders effort. Space Invaders in C. "a memory
accurate reimplementation of the 1978 arcade game Space Invaders in C."
[http://blog.loadzero.com/blog/si78c/](http://blog.loadzero.com/blog/si78c/)

~~~
dang
Discussed a month ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21719575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21719575)

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Joeboy
What I would like to know is, how come David Bowie uses the term "space
invader" in his 1971 song Moonage Daydream, when the game didn't come out
until 1978? They don't seem to me to be words that naturally belong together.
Glitch in the matrix?

~~~
deepnet
Space Invader Arcade Equipment from 1954, probably pinball

[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xB4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA88&dq=...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xB4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA88&dq=%22space+invader%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBgtDyl_7mAhWHXsAKHazOAggQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=%22space%20invader%22&f=false)

~~~
Luc
It's actually a shooting game:
[https://strangewars.livejournal.com/21891.html](https://strangewars.livejournal.com/21891.html)

~~~
Symbiote
The Oxford English Dictionary has let me down, it doesn't have anything prior
to the 1979 game.

[https://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/185414#eid2154...](https://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/185414#eid21541915)

------
flohofwoe
For some interesting trivia on Space Invaders watch this wonderful 40th-
anniversary educational demo on C64 by Hokuto Force (running in an emulator):

[https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/c64.html?file=c64/space_in...](https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/c64.html?file=c64/space_invaders_demo.prg)

(alternative YouTube link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU49fpXtUTU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU49fpXtUTU))

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fnordprefect
Great article, but I'm curious about a spelling error in it that I've seen
more and more recently:

> Move so you are peaking out of the right edge

Obviously, "peaking" should be "peeking".

I don't recall seeing it much until relatively recently, and it seems to have
become very common.

Have I missed something? Was it always a common homophone error? Or is there a
reason for it peaking recently?

~~~
lowdose
Grammarly?

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sixothree
I might have played a clone as a small child. Or maybe an early revision? I
distinctly remember questioning what happens when more than 9 credits are
added to the machine. This was because there was only one digit for credits. I
found that adding 10 credits only counts as 9. Looking at imagery I am seeing
two digits.

Incidentally, 9 credits of space invaders ruins the space invaders experience.

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boyadjian
Loved this game. First video game for me.

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_eLRIC
Don't forget that you can hunt them IRL through the flashivaders app. We need
to stop the invasion !

~~~
Zenst
That's pretty neat: [https://space-invaders.com/flashinvaders/](https://space-
invaders.com/flashinvaders/)

~~~
watmough
Damn, I noticed a bunch of these when I was in Paris.

That's awesome.

