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#atari#quadrascan#vectorgraphics

Atari's Quadrascan Explained

Retro Game Mechanics Explained

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  • Recommended by 4 people: 3 on Hacker News and 1 on Lobsters.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

239K views5 years ago4 recommendations

HardwareGraphics and audioRetro computingRenderingRetro games and consoles

How Atari's Quadrascan vector displays and hardware generated and rendered vector graphics for classic arcade games like Asteroids and Tempest.

How did Atari utilize vector monitors in their vector-drawn arcade games? It's all explained right here. LINKS Twitter (updates): twitter.com/RetroGameMechEx Patreon (support): patreon.com/rgmechex SubscribeStar (support): subscribestar.com/rgmechex Discord (discussion): discord.rgmechex.com PATRONS Thank you everyone for your support on Patreon and SubscribeStar! Anthony Losego, Dan Salvato, F. Murmel, Jonathan Aldrich, Ange Albertini, Mark Canlas, Avi Drissman, Steven, Mike Gerow, Larry Koubiak, Tina Wuest, Owen Christensen, Gynvael, Buddy, Chris Margroff, Brandan Lennox, Jason Hughes, Diamond Ice, Chris Post, Cypher Signal, Rupix, krivx, Xkeeper, Walter Huf, David Spalding, Acceleration Shark, Rory Kelly, CapnCarl, Joe Mecca, Michael Greb, Kefen, Heptonion, leftler, Scott Beca, 19day, Michael Dragone, John Losego, Travis, Arthur Kunkle, Jordan Wright, Stephan Hennion, Node1729, Andrea, Michael Cafarelli, Red Sona, KieferSkunk, nik, James Church, Rad, Nudelreaktor, tripper, Nebelwerfer Granitara, Sten, 333Rich333, The Revd. Juli Mallett, Glenn hEADcRASH Sugden NPC, Alex Yancey, David Mazarro, null, Ryan, Corey Ogburn, Martin Trozell, Garret Kelly, Jake Hickman, Joel Kuhn, Dan Shedd, Sembiance, Xander479, 4F Panda, David, A Sentient JDAM, Alec Johnson, Brian Henriquez, Travis Nellor, Zach Hugethanks, Yakov, Oxygen Chen, RetroReversing.com, Ceres, Diego Santos Leão, Jeremiah, Chris Connett, Mark, Matthew, sapslaj, Bjoern Hansen, ers35, Pixy011, Daniel Bernard (ReckedCat), Lukas Kalbertodt, Vier Ladair, Bwangry, iPaq, Jeremy Wright, David Johnson, Matt Shepard, Felix Freiberger, Sypwn, Niles Rogoff, Reflet, Yann Le Brech, Evan, Eugene Bulkin, Walter Weaver, Articate, Julien Oster, Steve Losh, Samuel Stoddard, HattyJetty, Paige ? Hex, Yeero, Cruz Godar, Linh Pham, Noah Greenberg, Nick Rogers, Sean Nelson (audiohacked), Bryce, Andrew Yukhymchak, Sean Bryant, John Gabriel, BazBadger, Kyle, Master Knight DH, Tim Romero, Michael B., Eric Loewenthal, Adrian Haslinger, Proxy, Nolan Varani, Daniel Robinson, Hans Jorgensen, Daniel A.A. Pelsmaeker, Aaron, Max Gartung, Nicolas Dohrendorf, Eric Hoppe, Chaz Serir, derHinek, Gyiyg, samfu, Dominic Wehrmann, André Greubel, Anon42, Urda, Ted Berkowitz, araknofennisti, AA, Joseph Torres, serhef, Daniel, Audio, Patrick Johnston, Rodrigo Monteiro, Punchmaster, Stephen Bank, Dasterin, Matthew Yu, Alice Hartley, Marcus N., Agoaj, Nicholas Carhuff, Aaron Murray, Epsilion, bob johnson, Permian Strata, supergtt, Alex Berliner, Sean Coates, Eniplay, iWasHere, Alex, Dominic Cerquetti, Adam Streeter, Eric Romero, Clyde Shaffer, Oast, KitsuneKeira, Esme, ARubiksCube, Stefan Eisenreich, Ariella, & pagetable.com!

Why it's here

4 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended for its deep dive into the hardware and software mechanics of Atari's classic vector graphics systems.

Bluecobraon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Is the Living Computer Museum Dead?”

I love the Atari vector games! There’s an excellent video by Retro Game Mechanics Explained on how they work: link to this video Recently I stumbled on some Tektronix videos on YouTube. Those vector displays are even more mind blowing than Atari’s arcade games. I hope I can get to see one in person someday.
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ngoldbaumon Lobsters • Recommends

How did Atari’s vector graphics technology work?
5View on Lobsters

jamesharton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Vector Games 32c3”

This is a great look at the hardware and of vector display - if you want to get a good in-depth understanding of how Atari's original vector graphics display systems worked from the software side, though, Retro Game Mechanics on YouTube did an incredible deep dive into how it all worked, including emulating the vector instruction sets and step-by stepping through complete frame renders from Tempest. link to this video
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Bluecobraon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Raw footage inside Sears with Atari 800 and 2600 (1982) [video]”

Also the Retro Game Mechanics Explained channel on YouTube has a very well put together video about this as well: link to this video
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aquovaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Atari Tempest: Time-Lapse Photography (2016)”

If anyone is interested further in how vector effects were achieved, there is a good video showing the rendering of frames of Tempest in slow motion 0. And if you're really interested in how vector effects were achieved, here's another that goes into the nitty gritty of how Tempest encoded point, line, color, etc. data in RAM and then rendered those images 1. 0 link 1 link to this video
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DerekLon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ask HN: Which vintage computers do you find interesting?”

After watching a video ( link to this video ), I starting thinking about writing for Atari’s “Quadrascan” vector graphics arcade machines. I wondered if they could play a primitive first-person shooter. You’d need to clip the drawing of partially-occluded objects, either by designing them in some clever way, or by adding clipping support to the hardware. The easiest way to get started would be an emulator.
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derefron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Internet Archive expands Flash support”

To be clear, I didn't (exactly) mean that the author of a Flash animation has to think in terms of creating a "demoscene demo." I rather meant that the Flash abstract machine is designed to primarily do the types of thing that demoscene demos do — i.e. to use vectors and gradient fills and clipping masks to achieve procedural visual effects. You could say that the SWF abstract machine has a "demoscene-alike Instruction Set Architecture." Most of the work of figuring out how to achieve particular visual effects on that abstract machine, though, is domain-knowledge built into the "Flash compiler" of the authoring tool. In my previous post, I emphasized Flash as a distribution format for a reas…
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msarnoffon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production”

Retro Game Mechanics Explained has a video about how the Asteroids vector generator worked and was coded for: link to this video Battlezone and later 3D games used different circuitry that generated vectors with analog circuitry and used a “math box” coprocessor based on Am2901 bit slice ALUs to help with the 3D math.
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