CA1129071A - Apparatus for generating a plurality of moving objects on a video display screen - Google Patents

Apparatus for generating a plurality of moving objects on a video display screen

Info

Publication number
CA1129071A
CA1129071A CA306,711A CA306711A CA1129071A CA 1129071 A CA1129071 A CA 1129071A CA 306711 A CA306711 A CA 306711A CA 1129071 A CA1129071 A CA 1129071A
Authority
CA
Canada
Prior art keywords
objects
horizontal
vertical
memory
memories
Prior art date
Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
Expired
Application number
CA306,711A
Other languages
French (fr)
Inventor
Steven T. Mayer
Ronald E. Milner
Current Assignee (The listed assignees may be inaccurate. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of the list.)
Atari Inc
Original Assignee
Atari Inc
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by Atari Inc filed Critical Atari Inc
Application granted granted Critical
Publication of CA1129071A publication Critical patent/CA1129071A/en
Expired legal-status Critical Current

Links

Classifications

    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A63SPORTS; GAMES; AMUSEMENTS
    • A63FCARD, BOARD, OR ROULETTE GAMES; INDOOR GAMES USING SMALL MOVING PLAYING BODIES; VIDEO GAMES; GAMES NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
    • A63F13/00Video games, i.e. games using an electronically generated display having two or more dimensions
    • A63F13/55Controlling game characters or game objects based on the game progress
    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A63SPORTS; GAMES; AMUSEMENTS
    • A63FCARD, BOARD, OR ROULETTE GAMES; INDOOR GAMES USING SMALL MOVING PLAYING BODIES; VIDEO GAMES; GAMES NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
    • A63F13/00Video games, i.e. games using an electronically generated display having two or more dimensions
    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A63SPORTS; GAMES; AMUSEMENTS
    • A63FCARD, BOARD, OR ROULETTE GAMES; INDOOR GAMES USING SMALL MOVING PLAYING BODIES; VIDEO GAMES; GAMES NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
    • A63F13/00Video games, i.e. games using an electronically generated display having two or more dimensions
    • A63F13/80Special adaptations for executing a specific game genre or game mode
    • A63F13/803Driving vehicles or craft, e.g. cars, airplanes, ships, robots or tanks
    • AHUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A63SPORTS; GAMES; AMUSEMENTS
    • A63FCARD, BOARD, OR ROULETTE GAMES; INDOOR GAMES USING SMALL MOVING PLAYING BODIES; VIDEO GAMES; GAMES NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
    • A63F2300/00Features of games using an electronically generated display having two or more dimensions, e.g. on a television screen, showing representations related to the game
    • A63F2300/80Features of games using an electronically generated display having two or more dimensions, e.g. on a television screen, showing representations related to the game specially adapted for executing a specific type of game
    • A63F2300/8017Driving on land or water; Flying

Landscapes

  • Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
  • Multimedia (AREA)
  • Human Computer Interaction (AREA)
  • Controls And Circuits For Display Device (AREA)
  • Processing Or Creating Images (AREA)
  • Closed-Circuit Television Systems (AREA)

Abstract

TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
BE IT KNOWN THAT WE, RONALD E. MILNER and STEVEN T. MAYER, citizens of the United States of America, residing at Grass Valley, County of Nevada, State of California, and residing at Auburn, County of Nevada, State of California, respectively, have invented certain new and useful improvements in an APPARATUS FOR GENERATING A PLURALITY OF
MOVING OBJECTS ON A VIDEO DISPLAY SCREEN

Abstract of the Disclosure Apparatus for generating a plurality of moving objects on a video display screen in, for example, a video amusement game utilizes separate horizontal and vertical line memories, each pair corresponding to a separate object to be displayed, to drive an associated graphics generator and picture memory to display the moving object. Such logic architecture provides for economy and simplicity in pro-graming for video games having a relatively small number of objects.

Description

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Background of the Invention The present invention is directed to apparatus for generating a plurality of moving objects on a video display screen and more specifically to apparatus used in the context of a video amusement game.
One example of a system for causing images of objects to move about on a screen of a video display tube under the control-of an operator is U.S. patent 3~793r483 issued February 19, 1974, in the name of Nolan Bushnell entitled "Video Image Control System For Amusement Device" and assigned to the present assignee. This patent shows a separate motion counting or com-parator circuit for each moving object to be displayed.
Another system is disclosed in U. S. Patent No.
4,116,444 issued September 26, 1978, in the names of the present inventors and assigned to the present assignee and entitled "Method For Generating A Plurality of Moving Objects On A video Display Screen". The video game which uses this Patent is a tank battle game designed for as many as eight players where each play-; er is assigned a unique tank. Because of the large number of objects and the relatively complex movement of the tanks, the Patent discloses a system which includes a horizontal memory whichmay contain an object identification code in any one of 256 hori-zontal memory locations. The actual video image is generated by an associated graphics generator and picture memory which responds to the object code.
The above U. S. Patent 4,116,444 also discusses the disadvantage of other approaches.

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Objects and Summary of the Invention It is a general object of the present invention to provide an improved apparatus for generating a plurality of moving objects on a video display screen.
It is another object of the invention to provide apparatus as above which provides an optimum approach for display of between four to eight objects on a screen.
In accordance with the above objects there is provided apparatus for generating a plurality of moving 10 objects on a video display screen which is scanned in successive frames by an image forming beam traversing the screen along a plurality of horizontal lines in response to horizontal and vertical synchronizing signals. Manual control inputs are provided for a plurality of game players.
15 The control inputs determine the movement of the objects.
Graphics generator means associated with each object are ,.~
provided for supplying video data~to the image forming beam.
A plurality of horizontal and vertical line memories cor-respond to each of the objects. Each horizontal memory has a number of bit memory locations corresponding to each resolution element of the horizontal line and each vertical memory has a number of memory locations corresponding to the total number of horizontal scan lines. Means connect each of the horizontal and vertical memories to the graphics generator means associated with a single object and are responsive to a coincidence of bits from both of the memories to activate the graphics generator means to form an image.
Brief Description of the Drawings Figure 1 is a schemmatic representation from a player's point of view of the video game utilizing the present invention;

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Figure 2 is a cross-sectional view substantially taken along line 2-2 of Figure 1 showing one set of player controls; and Figure 3 is a block circuit diagram embodying the present invention.
Detailed Description of the Preferred Embodiment Figure 1 illustrates the front of a display cabinet in somewhat schematic form of a video game called COPS N' ROBBERS (Trademark of Atari, Inc.). Each player has a pair of controls lla through lld which control an as-sociated car 12a through 12d which are placed on video display screen 10 on a simulated city street. As shown in Figure 2 each player has a foot pedal 13 to control the speed of his car along the street and a pistol grip 14 ` 15 movable to seven different positions to control the angular orientation of a gun 15 sticking out of the window of the car. Push-button (Figure 2) 16 at the top of the pistol ' handle fires the gun and simulated bullets 16a-d are shown on the screen. When an opposing car is hit it crashes to the bottom of the "street" out of sight. By pressing the foot ' pedal 13 again, it reappears ready for another pass at ; "blowing away" the other car. Cars 12a and 12b at the left ; side of the screen belong to the "cops" and cars 12c and 12d to the "robbers". A beer truck 18 driving up and down the middle of the street between opposing sides provides cover and challenges timing and accuracy.
The overall circuit block diagram shown in Figure 3lincludes the video display screen 10 which is controlled by a computer or microprocessor 21 having player control inputs 11. Typically the game format would be ~tored in a li~9~

read-only memory associated with computer 21. A sync gen-erator 22 associated with computer 21 (or in many cases an integral part of it) provides for horizontal and vertical address or synchronization pulses and also an indication of the vertical retrace period. It is connected by control line 23 to computer 21 and also to a switching unit 24.
Computer 21 determines from the player control inputs a change of location of all of the four objects which in this case are the cars 12a through 12d and also the bullets 16a-d. This "data" information of the horizontal (H) and vertical (V) positions of the objects is connected to switches 24 where it is used to address vertical storage units or memories 261 N~ and horizontal storage units or memories 271 N Markers ("ones") are written into the memories at locations corresponding to the H and V positions of each object. By setting the appropriate number of adjacent markers, the size of the`coincidence window (e.g., the roughly rectangular outline of cars 12a-b) can be varied;
in other words, the size of the object. The H and V memories 26, 27 are later read in time coincidence under the control of synchronizing generator 22 to decode the H and V coin-cidence windows in time with the electron beam of display 10.
One pair of H and V memories are required to each independent object. These memories as indicated are typical-ly random access or shift registers. They are line memories and contain the same number of bit memory locations cor-responding to the desired number of resolution elements.
For example, each horizontal memory 27 breaks down the 1129~7~

horizontal line into 512 resolution elements and each ver-tical memory 26 of 256 bit memory locations which, of course, correspond to the total number of horizontal scan lines outside of vertical sync. The 256 is, of course, a typical number of lines for a frame of a video picture.
To summarize thus far, computer 21 on a time share basis for each object 1,2...N decides, in response to a player control, where an object to be located in the next frame and outputs a "1" data bit in the horizontal and vertical memories to cause the display of the data at the corresponding location. Specifically, this is illustrated by the point 28 on the video display screen 10 which cor-responds to the binary 1 in memories 261 and 271. This showing is simplified. In actual practice if a car 12a were being displayed a sufficient number of markers would be stored in a memory 26 to indicate the length of the car and thus provide the vertical portion of the coincidence window.
Movement of the car in a vertical direction is accomplished by a simple shift of the vertical markers. In the case of the horizontal memories since the cars 12 at least do not change position the capability of the horizontal memories is j not fully utilized.
The pictorial content of the object is provided by the use of graphics generators 29 and their associated picture memories 301 N. These are coupled to the associated vertical and horizontal memories 26 and 27 by AND gates 31.
For example, AND gate 311 responds to the 1 bits in vertical and horizontal memories 261 and 271 to activate its as-sociated graphics generator 291 to produce on the video line 321 the actual video data. The output line of the AND gates g~7~

actually provides the H and V coincidence window in which is placed the object by the graphics generator means 29, 30.
In practice graphics generator 29 consists of horizontal and vertical counters, the 14 MHz and HSync clock inputs, re-spectively. These counters are enabled by AND gate 31 andaccess the video data from picture memory 30 under the overall control of computer 21. It is apparent that since the H and V memories 26, 27 determine the horizontal and vertical size of the object to be displayed the graphics generator logic is very simplified.
Operation Now referencing the block diagram o-f Figure 3 to the video game shown in Figure 1 typically objects 1 through 4 provide the car objects 12a-d and objects 5 through 8 would be the bullets from the associated guns on the car.
; The car object includes the gun 15 in any one of its seven angular orientations. Each orientation is stored in the associated picture memory 30 and the proper angular orien-tation is retrieved from this picture memory by appropriate command from the computer~or microprocessor 21. In one mode of operation the binary one or marker data of the vertical and horizontal memories will provide the coincidence window of the object to be displayed such as a car.
However in the case of forming the bullet objects which may consist of only single bits (or one resolution element) the actual binary ones in the horizontal and verti-cal storage memories can be utilized for this purpose without the use of graphics generator or picture memory.
Vertical and horizontal memories 26 and 27 are updated during vertical retrace. In general, the random ~lZ9~.

access memories 26 and 27 are organized N by S where N is the number of objects on the screen and S is the sum of the number of resolution elements of the sync generator for the respective axes. For a game with four moving objects, 512 horizontal resolution elements, and 256 vertical elements, only 3,072 memory locations are needed. This compares with 524,288 locations using a conventional memory approach and assuming separate decoded outputs for each object to be displayed (512 x 256 x 4).
The present approach is optimum for display of generally between four and eight objects on the screen assuming each object has horizontal and vertical size greater than unity. Thus for certain types of games the present invention provides for optimum and economical memory costs. In addition, separate horiæontal and vertical memory structure for each object makes programming of the computer or microprocessor much simpler. Since each object has an independent graphics generator means, objects can overlap, have separate colors or intensities, and can be checked foL overlap with minimum hardware or software.
Because of this simplicity added features are possible where, for example, a slave object can be provided merely by repeating the binary 1 in a horizontal or vertical memory without any change in the other memory. Also for relatively simple objects such as bullets, etc. size can be easily varied.

Claims (5)

What is Claimed is:
1. Apparatus for generating a plurality of moving objects on a video display screen scanned in successive frames by an image forming beam traversing the screen along a plurality of horizontal lines in response to horizontal and vertical synchronizing signals and where manual control inputs are provided for a plurality of game players said control inputs determining the movement of said objects comprising: a plurality of graphics generator means each associated with one of said objects for supplying video data to said image forming beam; a plurality of horizontal and vertical line memories corresponding to each of said objects each horizontal memory having a number of bit memory loca-tions corresponding to each resolution element of the hori-zontal line and each vertical memory having a number of memory locations corresponding to the total number of hori-zontal scan lines; means for connecting each of said hori-zontal and vertical memories to said graphics generator means associated with a single object and responsive to a coincidence of bits from both of said memories to activate said graphics generator means to form an image.
2. Apparatus as in Claim 1 where each of said graphics generator means includes picture memory means.
3. Apparatus as in Claim 2 where said objects associated with said graphics generator means have at least a portion of such object with a plurality of different angular orientations each of said orientations being stored in such memory means.
4. Apparatus as in Claim 3 together with micro-processor means for sensing a player control input which changes said angular orientation and controls said cor-responding graphics generator accordingly.
5. Apparatus as in Claim 1 together with micro-processor means for receiving player control inputs for determining movement of the associated object by updating the corresponding vertical and horizontal memories.
CA306,711A 1977-07-05 1978-07-04 Apparatus for generating a plurality of moving objects on a video display screen Expired CA1129071A (en)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
US81263377A 1977-07-05 1977-07-05
US812,633 1977-07-05

Publications (1)

Publication Number Publication Date
CA1129071A true CA1129071A (en) 1982-08-03

Family

ID=25210178

Family Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
CA306,711A Expired CA1129071A (en) 1977-07-05 1978-07-04 Apparatus for generating a plurality of moving objects on a video display screen

Country Status (6)

Country Link
JP (1) JPS5417616A (en)
CA (1) CA1129071A (en)
DE (1) DE2828786C3 (en)
GB (1) GB2000946B (en)
NL (1) NL7807129A (en)
SE (1) SE7807515L (en)

Families Citing this family (7)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
US4209832A (en) * 1978-06-13 1980-06-24 Chrysler Corporation Computer-generated display for a fire control combat simulator
US4391444A (en) 1981-02-09 1983-07-05 Coleco Industries, Inc. Electronic game providing formation changes and method
US4382166A (en) * 1981-12-03 1983-05-03 Wico Corporation Joystick with built-in fire button
US4420770A (en) * 1982-04-05 1983-12-13 Thomson-Csf Broadcast, Inc. Video background generation system
US4462594A (en) * 1982-09-29 1984-07-31 Coleco, Industries, Inc. Video game with control of rate of movement of game objects
GB2133257B (en) * 1982-12-22 1987-07-29 Ricoh Kk T v game system
JPS61265164A (en) * 1985-05-20 1986-11-22 株式会社 タイト− Video type drive game machine

Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
JPS5417616A (en) 1979-02-09
GB2000946B (en) 1982-01-20
DE2828786A1 (en) 1979-02-22
DE2828786C3 (en) 1980-06-12
NL7807129A (en) 1979-01-09
SE7807515L (en) 1979-01-06
DE2828786B2 (en) 1979-09-20
GB2000946A (en) 1979-01-17

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