While researching for a book I learned that Asteroids was inspired by three different games: Spacewar! (the seminal PDP-1 video game), Computer Space (Atari's derivative of Spacewar) and Space Invaders.
The control scheme comes directly from Spacewar; even the hyperspace button works the same way. Space Invaders inspired the "clear the level" aspect of the game. Nishikado cites Breakout as the inspiration for this aspect of Space Invaders. (Shooting games until that point usually didn't have levels to clear, you just ran up your score until the game ended.)
Spacewar! was one of my absolute favourites back in the day. My business partner at the time and I wasted many an hour side by side on the keyboard on an IBM PC/XT trying to outdo each other.
I wonder if there is a browser version, or iOS version around these days?? Would love to revisit it for nostalgic reasons.
The thing that gets me about Spacewar is how gorgeous it looked compared to games released even much much later. The CRT effects and vector graphics really lift that game to a whole other level that pixel rendering and sprites could never match (and this is coming from someone who loves the pixel art of retro games).
As much I sometimes grown when I hear people talking about CRT emulation of classic computers and games consoles, if there was any game that would benefit from CRT emulation it would be Spacewar!
Asteroids is kinda interesting because its a vector based game. (the beam is moved around the screen, turned on and off rapidly to draw the game screen). The vector graphics made the game looks so crisp and clean. Slower beam movement make brighter lines, which is clever.
I recently stumbled across a youtube video where someone takes a modern laser projector and recreates asteroids using it. A little long, but kinda interesting.
The laser projector link you put up is really cool. Laser servos can't move around anywhere near as fast as a vector monitor, so it's neat to see how he had to scale the number of objects down to a manageable level.
Neat.
I think he said 30,000 points per second for the laser I think he said, which seems pretty good. Nearest neighbor..
I'll have to take another look at an asteroids, but the fact that you can't even tell that how it works, even when the screen is full of objects is telling.
those XY monitors were quite the thing. I'm getting "VECTREX" flashbacks (the 80s vector based home game console)..
The definitive guide to how the Atari vector system worked was written by Jed Margolin (ex-Atari engineer). It's amazingly detailed but incredibly easy to read:
The secret is very precise (and expensive) DACs. The vector generator actually did all the hard work in Asteroids. The main CPU (a 1.5 MHz 6502) just created vector lists for the AVG to draw.
Another fun detail about the hardware: deterministic random generators with relatively small state. The German computer magazine c't ran a competition for writing Asteroids AIs in 2008, here is the winning entry playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZHZd0iN8MM
Note how it shoots at asteroids that haven't spawned yet, e.g. at 10s, or lines up perfects shots on the splitters of an asteroid at ~28s, before the large one is actually hit.
Each time something random happens at the beginning of the game, it narrows down the internal state of the PRNG, and quickly can perfectly predict the game.
I love that somebody had to go to a print shop and ask for "Video Game Plan Forms".
Probably the most awe-inspiring thing to me about most great 20th century engineering (and other) accomplishments is that, except in a very few fields (and then rather late) they basically took place without the aid of computerized communication, research, and organizational tools. It seems so daunting to, for example, fight a globe-spanning war on two fronts involving dozens of allied nations and millions of men and women, without even the aid of a spreadsheet.
the western world has no limit and some of the smartest people with intestinal fortitude. Rome had air conditioning and large centralized armies, just like to present day
Is that really a design document that was created before developing the game, or is it a summary that was created after a development prototype was mostly complete?
I'm guessing after some prototype work had been done. I've seen another version of the doc with a back page describing the saucers, which weren't fleshed out until later in the process.
In any case, it's a fascinating sign of the times. Today the completed game would be considered a "creative exercise"--a skilled programmer could probably finish it in a day.
The control scheme comes directly from Spacewar; even the hyperspace button works the same way. Space Invaders inspired the "clear the level" aspect of the game. Nishikado cites Breakout as the inspiration for this aspect of Space Invaders. (Shooting games until that point usually didn't have levels to clear, you just ran up your score until the game ended.)
There's an old archived post with more trivia and design docs here: https://web.archive.org/web/20141222010537/http://www.edge-o... (might be display errors, maybe ad-block-detector caused)