GB1268821A - Television gaming and training apparatus and method - Google Patents

Abstract

1,268,821. Indoor games. SANDERS ASSOCIATES Inc. 13 March, 1969, No. 13242/69. Heading A6H. [Also in Divisions F3 and H4] The invention is concerned with an arrangement for producing patterns (e.g. dots) on the screen of a standard television receiver the positions of the patterns being adjustable by manually operated means. Thus, as shown in Fig. 1, a standard television receiver 10 is connected via its aerial socket and a cable 12 to a unit 14 which generates "video" signals modulated on a carrier wave of suitable frequency, the video signals producing the dots 20 1 , 20 2 the respective positions of which may be adjusted by operation of controls 16, 17 and 16 1 , 17 1 , controls 16, 16 1 controlling the vertical positions and controls. 17, 17 1 , the horizontal positions of the respective dots. The pairs of controls may be combined as single joystick control respectively. The unit 14 may also include circuitry which produces a colour background when receiver 10 is a colour receiver and the colour produced may be altered by control 15. Instead of a single unit 14, the controls 16, 17, the controls 16 1 , 17 1 and the control 15 and a switch control 26 (to be referred to later) may be in (three) separate units (Fig. 1B, not shown). The invention is intended for use in playing games, e.g. a modified form of draughts utilizing a checkerboard patterned mask in front of the tube screen (Fig. 2), chase games and shooting games (Fig. 1E) the general arrangement being that when one dot is "captured" (by superimposing the other dot thereon) or "shot" (by the correct alignment with one of the dots of a toy gun containing a light sensitive device) the dot captured or shot is blanked out from the display and operation of press-switch 26 is then necessary to restore the display of this dot. When background colours are produced an inertia wheel may be put on the shaft of the potentiometer controlled by control 15, the game being to guess the colour that will appear when the wheel stops after being spun. The circuit which blanks out the "captured" or "shot" dot may be arranged to also effect a colour change. Fig. 3, shows the general scheme in which horizontal and vertical synch generators 31, 32 each comprising an astable multivibrator (Figs. 5A and 5B not shown) operating at 15.75 KHz and 60Hz respectively control a pair of dot generators 34, 35 each comprising a horizontal and vertical delay multivabrator and an AND gate (Figs. 5C and 5D, not shown) and operating to produce output pulses the time position of which in each scan may be adjusted by controls 16, 17, 16 1 , 17 1 controlling the delays of the multivibrators. Outputs from the synch generators and the dot generators are then summed and employed to control a modulator 37 which modulates a carrier wave produced by an oscillator 38 (Fig. 5F not shown) to provide the input signal for the' television receiver. Outputs fromthe dot generators are also supplied to the dot coincidence detector 40 which operates when inputs are received from both generators simultaneously to fire a SCR connected to short-circuit the output of dot generator 34 and to remain in this condition until reset by operation of control 26 (Fig. 5E not shown). The same result is obtained when an output is produced by the (gun) target circuit 36 (Figs. 4 and 9, not shown). The output of the dot coincidence detector 40 is also supplied to the chroma generator 33 comprising an oscillator operating at 3.579545 MHz and providing an output including a chroma signal burst forming the 0‹ phase reference signal together with a variable phase signal the phase of which may be changed (e.g. to change the background from red to blue) by the short-circuiting action of the SCR in the coincidence detector 40 when coincidence between the dots is detected or by an output from the target circuit 36. The invention may also be employed in conjunction with information originating from a cooperating TV station and to avoid the need for making electrical connections to the internal circuit of the TV receiver, the horizontal and vertical synchronising signals in the transmitted signals are derived by means of a device secured to the bottom edge of the receiver screen (Fig. 1D not shown), the device containing a photocell, responding to a white strip generated by the cooperating station and reproduced at the bottom of the screen to generate the vertical synch signals and a pickup coil responding to the radiated 15,570 Hz horizontal scan signal to generate the horizontal synch signals (Fig. 7, not shown). The synch signals thus generated, are then employed to synchronise the synch generators 31, 32 and thus the various "games" played by the operators may be "overlaid" on the transmitted TV picture. To allow for this the dot video signals are modulated onto the received (modulated) carrier wave in a modulator which utilizes a transistor as a variable shunt resistor across the input (modulated) carrier wave to produce negative modulation (Fig. 8, not shown). The chroma signals from generator 33 may also be supplied to this modulator.