[vox] 1985 paper on using UNIX to build Atari games at Lucasfilm

[Bill Kendrick]

Possibly of interest to the group (definitely of interest to me,
since it combines UNIX & Atari ;) )

  "The Influence of the UNIX Operating System on the Development
  of Two Video Games -- A paper for the Spring, 1985 European Unix
  User's Group meeting."

    http://www.langston.com/Papers/vidgam.pdf
    (via http://www.langston.com/Papers/)

  by Peter Langston, a founding employee at the game development company
  LucasArts, which started out as Lucasfilm Games (and also author of
  "Empire" and "Oracle" UNIX games from the 1970s).
  (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Langston)


Mr. Langston was recently interviewed by ANTIC, the Atari 8-bit podcast:
http://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-126-peter-langston-lucasarts


TL;DR: George Lucas decided to look into game development, and they started
looking at what they could do, and how games were made.  Typically, it
was either a handful of people working for 6 months using limited gear,
or someone working a year or so in their basement in their spare time,
using even more limited gear (e.g., the target computer, and one floppy
disk drive :) )

So, they decided to throw big iron at the problem: UNIX, VAX/VMS,
a Sun Workstation, troff & pic, a Lisp-based cross assembler that they
built (eventually replaced with another macro-assembler, built later),
a flight dynamics simulation using an Evans & Sutherland vector display,
and more.

Their first results, a pair of 'throw-away' games, created as
"a combination rite-of-passage and reality check", were extremely
well-received, highly rated, and still popular today (in the retro-gaming
realm):

  BALLBLAZER
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qri5xavBdh4
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballblazer

  Rescue on Fractalus!
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbZ-chrOgGg
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_on_Fractalus!

While watching the videos, keep in mind these games were made to run on
systems with a ~2MHz 8-bit 6502 CPU, 48KB of RAM, and 90KB of floppy disk
storage! ;)


PS - Plug: I'll be hosting another Atari Party in Davis later this year.
I have the late-80s cartridge-based releases of both of these fantastic
games (and a really nice arcade-quality joystick now! ;) )

-- 
-bill!
Sent from my computer