Slide 1Slide 2Slide 3Slide 4Slide 5Slide 6Slide 7Slide 8Slide 9Slide 10Slide 11Slide 12Slide 13Slide 14Slide 15Slide 16Slide 17Slide 18Slide 19Slide 20Slide 21Slide 22Slide 23Slide 24Slide 25Slide 26Slide 27Slide 28Slide 29Slide 30Slide 31Slide 32Slide 33Slide 34Slide 35Slide 36Slide 3725-1Video Games•1987 –Nintendo's hold on the market grows, leaving little room for Sega and Atari. –Nintendo releases The Legend of Zelda, Kid Icarus, and Metroid offering better graphics than the initial launch titles and longer quests. –NEC releases the PC-Engine in Japan and advertises it as a 16-bit machine. In reality, the machine contains an 8-bit processor and a 16-bit graphics processor.25-2Tetris Troubles•1988 –Atari Games creates a subsidiary, Tengen, that produces games for home consoles including the NES. Atari Games takes Nintendo to court, claiming that Nintendo has an illegal monopoly on the video game industry. Specifically, they claim this is achieved via illegal practices, such as fixing prices and using lockout to prohibit unlicensed development of NES software. –Tengen discovers a way to bypass the NES lockout and announces that it will develop, manufacturer, and distribute NES-compatible games without Nintendo's authorization. •1989 –Tengen acquires the rights to distribute the home version of Tetris from Mirrorsoft. The trouble is, Mirrorsoft did not own the rights in the first place. –Nintendo acquires the legitimate home rights to Tetris and forces the Tengen version off of shelves.25-3The media problem. . .•1989 – NEC also releases a $400 portable CD player that attaches to the TurbroGrafx-16 and plays games that are stored on compact discs. TG16 sales are poor for a number of reasons.•Let’s look at why we want to move away from cartridges:–Cartridges are circuit based (remember circuits are fast and expensive).•Each cartridge contains ROM (physical memory), and ROM is expensive•The larger games get the more memory we need in the cartridge•We can not reuse the cartridge’s memory Manufacturing costs are high!25-4Moving to CDROM•Cartridges are primary memory, CDs aren’t–Cartridge access is fast•we can get read program data from carts directly–CD access is slow •We can’t read program data directly from the CD (we need to put it in primary memory first!•we’ll need some RAM connected to our CD rom interface so we can read data off the CD as our system needs it. programconsole game systemPrimary MemoryPrimary MemoryPrimary MemorySecondary Memory25-5don’t copy that floppy…err cartridge•Piracy in the console world . . . –All games up until now are stored on these read only memory cartridges–What if we have a RAM-based cartridge instead of a ROM based cartridge, then I copy whatever I want onto the RAM cartridge.–Further, what if I can read the contents of the ROM cartridges and save them (they are just bits after all)…•NES games tended to be quite small•SNES/Genesis games averaged ~1MByteconsole game systemAnd thus the “console-copier” is born• Introducing an otherwise “safe” computer world to digital piracy• fortunately, piracy of cartridge based games was fairly uncommon in the US• required expensive and obscure hardwareprogrambackup25-616-bit players emerge•1989–Sega releases the truly 16-bit system, Genesis, in the US. The $249 system is packed with a conversion of the arcade game Altered Beast. Marketing efforts stress the system as a true arcade experience better than previous home game machines. Sales are slow.•1990 –Nintendo releases Super Mario 3. The NES enjoys its best year despite its more powerful competition. – Meanwhile Nintendo of Japan unveils the Super Famicom, a 16-bit system with better audio and 3D graphics capabilities than either the Genesis and TurboGrafx-16.25-7Forget 16-bits, how about 24?•1990 –Nintendo and Blockbuster go to court over video game rentals. Nintendo would obviously like to block game rentals, as they dissuade people from buying games. The courts decide in favor of Blockbuster.•now if we could only copy those games . . . Oh snap!–SNK releases the 24-bit NeoGeo in arcade and home formats. The graphics and sound are far beyond any competitor, but the $400 retail price (with no game included) and $200 per game severely limits the NeoGeo’s sales. Each cartridge actually contained 4 circuit boards bound together to create cartridges in the neighborhood of 256Megabit (or 64Megabytes).25-8Alright, alright, 16-bits it is.•1991 –Nintendo releases the Super Famicom in America under the name Super NES (SNES). –Sega unveils Sonic the Hedgehog for the Genesis. •The 16-bit wars are on!•“Platformers” a.k.a. jump and run games are the in-thing•How do we make a platform game . . ?25-9What goes into platform games…•Let’s make our own game! –StickMan will run around and jump over pits in the ground. When bad guys chase him he can jump on their heads to stun them.•What do we need?–Individual bitmap graphics for each frame of animation corresponding to all the different states that stickman could be in. The more frames in the animation, the more realistic things will look.•Jumping, running, walking, getting hurt, dead, etc–We’ll also need to keep track of the user’s input and update his state accordingly (we can’t duck if we’re in the middle of a jump, and we can’t run in mid air, for example.)–We need to know where on the screen stickman is, and where the bad guys are.–We need to design the levels and store information about them (what’s floor and what’s a pit) and we’ll need graphics for the levels. When the game is running, we’ll need to draw the part of the level that StickMan is in, and keep track of when StickMan has fallen into a pit.–We’ll need graphics for the bad guys too, and we need to keep track where they are, and what they’re doing!–Finally, what about score, health, music, sound. . ?25-10Level design…maps of the world_ YYY Y <XXXXX000XXXXXXXX000XXXY=0=X=_ = character start pos.< = enemy start pos.25-11Backdrop graphics25-12putting it all together 0000025-13why we need all those bits…•Let’s imagine a very simplified processing loop…while (playing==TRUE){read_controller_input();update_character();for each opponent_on_screen{ update_opponent();}update_opponents_off_screen();redraw_screen();playing = NOT(character_dead OR game_complete);