Crystal Castles Franz Lanzinger 30 years of Bentley Bear, Trees and - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Crystal Castles Franz Lanzinger 30 years of Bentley Bear, Trees and - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Mar 08, 2023 532 likes •1.57k views

Classic Game Postmortem: Crystal Castles Franz Lanzinger 30 years of Bentley Bear, Trees and Bees What is Crystal Castles? Coin-op game by Atari, released 1983 Contained a 56K bytes number of Crystal Castles firsts Designed and Coin-op

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Classic Game Postmortem: Crystal Castles

Franz Lanzinger 30 years of Bentley Bear, Trees and Bees

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What is Crystal Castles?

Coin-op game by Atari, released 1983 56K bytes Coin-op sold about 7000 units coin revenues 100 million dollars Designed and developed by very small team Contained a number of firsts

Crystal Castles

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Video of Crystal Castles Gameplay

Crystal Castles

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Highlights of Today’s Talk

  • Live music performance
  • Video of advanced play by Mark Alpiger
  • Amazing videos from the early eighties
  • Rare scans of original sketches and documents

Crystal Castles

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History

  • Personal background before Atari
  • How I got hired at Atari
  • Development of Crystal Castles
  • Classical Music

Crystal Castles

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Personal Background

  • Born and raised in Austria
  • Math major at Notre Dame

Crystal Castles

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First code: PL/I on IBM 360

Crystal Castles

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Graphics at ND, 1973 - 1977

Crystal Castles

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Systems Control

  • First full-time job
  • 4014 terminal
  • Arpanet

Crystal Castles

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Systems Control Graphics

  • Graphics at Systems Control
  • Precursor to Crystal Castles mazes

Crystal Castles

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Vector hidden line removal

Crystal Castles

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Artificial Intelligence

  • Advanced Information and Decision Systems
  • Research in Artificial Intelligence
  • Learned to program in Z80 assembly language

Crystal Castles

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Arcades in 1981

  • Video shot at Chuck E Cheese arcade, 1981
  • Into the Valley of the Space Invaders
  • Broadcast in 1981

Crystal Castles

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Arcades 1981

Crystal Castles

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Mountain View Arcade Group

  • Mark Robichek, Eric Ginner and Sam Mehta
  • Desiree McCrorey, Brian McGhie
  • Centipede World record, 1981
  • FXL, MAR, EDG, SSM, DES, BBM

Crystal Castles

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Chicago 1981

Crystal Castles

  • Centipede World championship Chicago, 1981
  • Eric Ginner finished 1st, Sam Mehta 2nd
  • Franz 26th
  • Video of News coverage
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Centipede World Championship, 1981

Classic Game Postmortem: Crystal Castles Franz Lanzinger

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Coin-op, the real Atari

Partial list of games developed internally at Atari Coin-op

720, APB, Area 51, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Battlezone, Black Widow, Breakout, Centipede, Cloak & Dagger, Crystal Castles, Cyberball, Fire Truck, Firefox, Gauntlet, Gauntlet II, Gauntlet Legends, Gravitar, Hard Drivin’, I Robot, Indian Jones, Indy 4, Indy 800, Klax, Liberator, Lunar Lander, Major Havoc, Marble Madness, Millepede, Missile Command, Night Driver, Paperboy, Peter Pack Rat, Pit-Fighter, Pong, Qwak!, Rampart, Red Baron, Roadblasters, S.T.U.N. Runner, SF Rush, Skull & Crossbones, Space Duel, Space Lords, Sprint, Star Wars, Stunt Cycle, Super Sprint, T-Mek, Tank, Tempest, War Final Assault, Warlords, Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey, Xybots.

Crystal Castles

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Getting hired into coin-op

  • Brian McGhie at

Golfland

  • Interviewed with

Mike Albaugh

  • Centipede world

record

Crystal Castles

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SLIDE 20

Atari Employee Handbook

Crystal Castles

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Atari Mission

Crystal Castles

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Atari was huge in 1982

Crystal Castles

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Technology at coin-op 1982

  • 6502 assembly language was king
  • Forth
  • Vax timeshare system

Crystal Castles

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Typical Team Composition

  • One or two programmers per team
  • One Hardware engineer making custom hardware
  • Project leader

Crystal Castles

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Typical Project Schedule

  • Hardware and software developed simultaneously
  • First major milestone: Basic Gameplay
  • One milestone that matters: Fieldtest

Crystal Castles

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Work Environment

  • Work was divided between office and the lab
  • Incredibly fun to walk around the labs and play the games
  • No set work hours: results were all that mattered

Crystal Castles

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Project Management

  • Design Documents existed but were short and usually ignored
  • Agile development 20 years before the word was invented
  • Field tests and your peers were your real bosses

Crystal Castles

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1982 Coin-op design rules

  • Game time average 3 minutes
  • Easy to learn: People should enjoy the game right away
  • Hard to master: Keep up interest for several months

Crystal Castles

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Getting Oriented

  • VAX - timeshare system with terminals
  • Fortran - general purpose language, no C available yet.
  • 6502 - most existing Atari coin-op games used 6502

Crystal Castles

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Credits for Crystal Castles

Franz Lanzinger, programmer Samuel Lee, hardware Barbara Singh, Susan McBride, Dave Ralston, art Scott Fuller, project leader John Ray, team leader Paul Mancuso, Gardner Crosby, technicians Larry Bryan, assisted with music entry Rusty Dawe, RPM music system

Crystal Castles

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John Ray and Scott Fuller

Crystal Castles

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Larry Bryan and Paul Mancuso

Crystal Castles

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Barbara Singh Franz Lanzinger

Crystal Castles

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Susan McBride and Sam Lee

Crystal Castles

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Rusty Dawe aka Bryson Dawe

Crystal Castles

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Crystal Castles Constructors 1983

Crystal Castles

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Cloners

Crystal Castles

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Toporoids history

  • Found it in the big book of preapproved projects
  • Original Toporoids had vector hardware, Asteroids controls,

shooting!

  • Resisting the urge to use Forth, went with 6502

Crystal Castles

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Toporoids development

  • Screen resolution 256 x 240
  • Character looked like ET
  • Programmer typed the art

Crystal Castles

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Coding in 6502 assembly

  • High level language macros made life easier
  • Great debugging tools
  • 16x more RAM than the 2600, 10x times more ROM

Crystal Castles

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Lineprinter listing from 1983

Crystal Castles

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Code from Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles

EN.JTL: .BYTE 00,04,08,0B,0E,11,14,16,18,1A,1C,1D,1E,1F,1F,20 .BYTE 20,20,1F,1F,1E,1D,1C,1A,18,16,14,11,0E,0B,08,04 EN.PLU: LDA EN.LMD ; must be alive IFNE RTS ENDIF

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Code excerpt continued

Crystal Castles

LDA EN.JFL IFNE LDA EN.JDL TAY LDA EN.JTL(Y) STA EN.HOF ELSE TRAI 0 EN.HOF ENDIF RTS

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Brainstorming

  • New theme: fantasy
  • Main character now a bear
  • Witch, moving trees, and gem eaters
  • Original name was Bear Braveheart

Crystal Castles

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Tools for making levels

  • Levels were made by coding in Fortran!
  • Subroutines for stairs and blocks
  • Tunnel bit

Crystal Castles

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Music

Crystal Castles

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RPM

  • Used in-house RPM tool by Rusty Dawe
  • Similar to Midi
  • Limited to 4 channels
  • In Crystal Castles one channel dedicated to sound effects

Crystal Castles

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Crystal Castles Unplugged

  • Main Theme: Mephisto Waltz by Franz Liszt
  • Extra Life: Mephisto Waltz by Franz Liszt
  • Last Gem: March from Nutcracker by Peter Tschaikovsky
  • Game Over: Rage over the Lost Penny by Ludwig van

Beethoven

  • High Score Table Entery: Scherzo from 3rd Symphony by

Ludwig van Beethoven

  • Game Ending Music: 1812 Overture by Peter Tschaikovsky

Crystal Castles

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Ludwig Van Beethoven

  • Scherzo from 3rd Symphony (1804)
  • High Score Entry

Crystal Castles

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Ludwig Van Beethoven

  • Scherzo from 3rd Symphony (1804)
  • End of Level

Crystal Castles

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Franz Liszt

  • Mephisto Waltz (1862)
  • Main Theme
  • Beginning of game

Crystal Castles

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Franz Liszt

  • Mephisto Waltz (1862)
  • Extra Life Music

Crystal Castles

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Peter Ilyich Tschaikovsky

  • Nutcracker Suite short excerpt (1892)
  • Invincibility Music
  • Plays when wearing the magic hat

Crystal Castles

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Ludwig Van Beethoven

  • Rage Over a Lost Penny, Vented in a Caprice (1798)
  • End of level

Crystal Castles

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Ludwig Van Beethoven

  • Rage Over a Lost Penny, Vented in a Caprice (1798)
  • Game Over

Crystal Castles

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Peter Ilyich Tschaikovsky

  • March from Nutcracker Suite (1892)
  • You got the last gem

Crystal Castles

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Peter Ilyich Tschaikovsky

  • March from Nutcracker Suite (1892)
  • They got the last gem

Crystal Castles

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Peter Ilyich Tschaikovsky

  • March from Nutcracker Suite (1892)
  • You got the last gem

Crystal Castles

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Peter IlyichTschaikowsky

  • 1812 Overture

Finale (1882)

  • End Music
  • Plays after player

completes level 10

Crystal Castles

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Character Art

  • Characters drawn by Barbara Singh with help

from Susan McBride

  • In-house drawing system: PPS
  • Characters first on paper, transferred to the PPS

Crystal Castles

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Scans of paper character art

Crystal Castles

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More character art

Crystal Castles

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Internal Contest

Crystal Castles

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Contest results

Crystal Castles

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Field Tests

  • First Field test was at Galactican arcade in San Jose, early 1983

Crystal Castles

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First Field Test Results

Crystal Castles

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Field test conclusions

  • Earnings OK, but not quite good enough
  • Needed better and more interesting levels
  • Minor fine tuning

Crystal Castles

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New levels by Dave Ralston

Crystal Castles

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Drawn on Paper First

Crystal Castles

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Convert from iso to top-down

Crystal Castles

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More top-down designs

Crystal Castles

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second field test much better

Crystal Castles

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Going to Fresno

Crystal Castles

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They’re building 5000!

  • Work isn’t done yet
  • Localized Versions
  • Sit down Version
  • Total about 7000

Crystal Castles

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INNOVATIONS IN CRYSTAL CASTLES

Ending, flashing trackball, nasty trees, warp system

Crystal Castles

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Hardware Innovations

  • Flashing Trackball -- ball is transparent, light underneath
  • First arcade game with sprites + bitmap, designed by Sam Lee
  • Custom chips by Scott Fuller, including the Leta chip
  • Complex priority scheme between sprites and bitmap

Crystal Castles

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Flashing Trackball

Crystal Castles

Light Bulb

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Game Design Innovations

  • First arcade character game with an ending
  • “Secret” and Tunnel Warp system
  • Initials of high score leader on first maze
  • Initials of arcade legends baked into later mazes
  • Bentley Bear’s red pixels behind wall

Crystal Castles

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Game Design Innovations II

  • Random changes to playfields on some levels
  • Assuring that nobody can “turn over” the score
  • Color schemes based on number of plays
  • Bonus points at end

Crystal Castles

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Secrets

Crystal Castles

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Crystal Castles Expert Video

  • Mark Alpiger
  • Wrote the book on playing Crystal Castles
  • Website: classicarcadegaming (dot com)
  • Taught world record holder Frank Seay, 910,722

Crystal Castles

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Mark Alpiger plays to the End

Crystal Castles

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POSTMORTEM

30 years later

Crystal Castles

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What Went Wrong

  • Needed more story telling, character

development

  • Trackball was fun, but it limited sales and made

it tough to port to consoles, PC

  • Should have preserved more code and art for

posterity!

Crystal Castles

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What Went Right

  • Trackball game mechanic
  • Non-violent yet high-energy and exciting
  • Graphics look good (for 1983)
  • Warp system worked very well, responsible for high

earnings

  • Ending
  • Tuned just right for beginners and advanced players

Crystal Castles

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WHAT HAPPENED AFTER RELEASE

A lot can happen in 30 years

Crystal Castles

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Why did I leave Atari?

  • Royalties vs. bonuses
  • 2600 Crystal Castles
  • History of disagreements with management

Crystal Castles

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A Love-Hate Relationship

  • Joystick vs. Trackball story
  • Credits
  • Ending
  • Best job EVER

Crystal Castles

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Tengen

  • 6502 again?
  • Toobin’
  • Ms. Pacman

Crystal Castles

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Bitmasters

  • Krazy Kreatures
  • Rampart
  • Championship Pool
  • NCAA Final Four Basketball

Crystal Castles

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Mode 7 Rampart on SNES

Crystal Castles

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Actual Entertainment

Crystal Castles

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Classic Game Design Book

  • From Pong to Pac-Man with Unity
  • Publisher Mercury Learning (GDC Booth #235)
  • Printed book at all major retailers summer 2013
  • Available in digital format for any device
  • Uses Unity, Blender, GIMP2 and Audacity
  • Step-by-Step Unity projects

Crystal Castles

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CRYSTAL CASTLES AFTER 1983

Some games keep going, and going, and going…

Crystal Castles

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2600 Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles

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5200 Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles

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Conversions, Conversions

Apple II, Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, BBC/Acorn Electron, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, PC, Playstation, Dreamcast, Windows, Xbox, Playstation 2, Xbox 360, IOS,…

Crystal Castles

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Gubble

  • Often compared to Crystal Castles
  • First released in 1996 for PC
  • Gubble HD: available at gubble.com
  • Gubble for IOS: available at Apple App store
  • Gubble 3 announced in 2012

Crystal Castles

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Gubble vs. Crystal Castles

Gubble Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles

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Advice for Game Developers:

  • Invent
  • Keep your long-term IP
  • Fix bugs before adding new features
  • Archive everything, take photos
  • Have fun and live!

Crystal Castles

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Q&A

Crystal Castles

@lanzinger www.gubble.com