WEBVTT 00:30.000 --> 00:57.240 Micro Focus, creators of visual programming tools for software development, is pleased 00:57.240 --> 01:13.240 to provide major funding for the Computer Chronicles, the story of this continuing evolution. 01:13.240 --> 01:17.040 Welcome to the Computer Chronicles. I'm Stuart Chaffee and this is Gary Kildall, whom I'm 01:17.040 --> 01:22.600 trying to beat in a game of Pong. Pong is the granddaddy of all computer games and that's 01:22.600 --> 01:26.320 the subject of our program today, Computer Games. And Gary, computer games in fact were 01:26.320 --> 01:29.080 important, weren't they, in getting the whole personal computer thing going? Well, they 01:29.080 --> 01:33.880 certainly were a part of it. One of the unique aspects of a personal computer is that it 01:33.880 --> 01:39.600 often has bitmap color graphics like the Apple II, for example. And that way you can do very 01:39.600 --> 01:44.840 dynamic things, games that you couldn't do, say, with a teletype style or scrolling display 01:44.840 --> 01:48.880 you would find in a larger computer system. This particular game, obviously, is a pretty 01:48.880 --> 01:52.720 old vintage and they've gotten a lot more sophisticated since then and we're going to 01:52.720 --> 01:56.160 see some of that today. Indeed, we've got a very exciting show. We'll be meeting some 01:56.160 --> 02:00.400 of the superstars of computer game programming from Electronic Arts, from Atari, and from 02:00.400 --> 02:05.240 Activision. And while the idea of computers in games may be new, the idea of people playing 02:05.240 --> 02:12.240 games with machines is not really new. Now that was a first one. Before the first program 02:12.880 --> 02:18.160 was written to simulate a starry background or a speeding racer, Penny Arcades offered 02:18.160 --> 02:25.120 simpler, more mechanical amusements, but with the same goals in mind, to challenge and entertain. 02:25.120 --> 02:30.320 If the locale was less exotic and the competition less ferocious, at least some of the game's 02:30.320 --> 02:35.840 interactions were similar. A player needed manual dexterity in competing for points or 02:35.840 --> 02:41.640 a reward, more tangible in some cases than in others. As a device for escaping daily 02:41.640 --> 02:46.360 routine, computer-generated graphics brought a level of fantasy that no mechanical game 02:46.360 --> 02:51.280 could ever approach. Instead of escaping from a schoolroom or an office, a player could 02:51.280 --> 02:57.360 leave the Earth or move to a different universe. Modern arcade computer games offer different 02:57.360 --> 03:03.200 kinds of challenges, from fast-action games that demand even faster reactions, to maze-type 03:03.200 --> 03:08.160 games where the player threads his way around obstacles, and war games where the object 03:08.160 --> 03:14.300 is to destroy or be destroyed. In one of the latest adventure games, animated images are 03:14.300 --> 03:19.880 stored on laser discs to be recalled sequentially following the story's plot and according to 03:19.880 --> 03:24.640 the player's responses. If the player moves the control stick in the right direction, 03:24.640 --> 03:29.480 he is rewarded with a successful escape. But if the player makes a mistake, the program 03:29.480 --> 03:35.200 picks an alternative sequence of images, and the results can be extremely uncomfortable. 03:35.200 --> 03:41.360 Whether used to create unknown worlds or to enhance the reality of familiar worlds, computer 03:41.360 --> 03:47.320 games succeed in an unlikely domain, transforming pinpoints of light on a little screen into 03:47.320 --> 03:54.320 a believable realm, larger than life and usually more exciting. 03:54.320 --> 04:06.520 Our guests in the studio are Steve Kitchen, designer of an incredible new game, Space 04:06.520 --> 04:10.920 Shuttle, from Activision, and Chris Crawford, one of the top game designers with Atari. 04:10.920 --> 04:15.320 Gary? Steve and Chris, you both build computer-based 04:15.320 --> 04:19.560 games. Do you call yourselves designers or programmers? 04:19.560 --> 04:26.320 I call myself a designer because most of the sweat and blood I expend occurs in the design 04:26.320 --> 04:31.720 phase, not in the programming phase. I spend a great deal of time worrying about what my 04:31.720 --> 04:35.880 audience will experience in the game, and only towards the end of the project do I actually 04:35.880 --> 04:39.360 get down to writing any code. When you think about the design of the game, 04:39.360 --> 04:43.080 what are the elements of the game that make it interesting? 04:43.080 --> 04:48.400 Well, that has to do a great deal with what I'm trying to accomplish. I set a goal. I 04:48.400 --> 04:52.920 want a game to achieve a certain effect. I want to somehow communicate a message to my 04:52.920 --> 04:59.360 audience. That message then dictates the topic and the style of the game, the nature of the 04:59.360 --> 05:04.600 graphics, the feel, the texture of the game that I'm trying to build into it. That's what 05:04.600 --> 05:10.000 I spend most of my time worrying about. Chris, you're talking more like a writer rather 05:10.000 --> 05:13.560 than a computer programmer. Steve, is that how you see what you do? 05:13.560 --> 05:17.840 That's basically what we are. We're writers. We're writing a book, a novel, creating a 05:17.840 --> 05:23.200 vicarious universe in this computer program. We have to model everything we want, put every 05:23.200 --> 05:28.480 small detail in. Very often in my game, for instance, I had to do extensive research for 05:28.480 --> 05:32.200 a year and a half to understand my subject before I could distill the important aspects 05:32.200 --> 05:35.240 out and then put them into this cartridge. Like a writer would. 05:35.240 --> 05:39.420 Exactly like a writer would. When a writer writes a book, the book is a vicarious universe. 05:39.420 --> 05:42.880 You read it and become part of it. It's the same thing. When you play these games, these 05:42.880 --> 05:47.720 programs, you vicariously become part of the universe that the programmer puts into it. 05:47.720 --> 05:52.360 Okay, you've got Space Shuttle up here. Give us a demonstration of how this works. 05:52.360 --> 05:56.560 This is an automatic demo flight we're going to fly. This is a complete Space Shuttle mission 05:56.560 --> 06:01.920 from launch to landing. This is actually themed after the STS-2 flight back in November of 06:01.920 --> 06:07.480 1981. We're starting off now at Cape Kennedy in the morning. The clouds are rolling by. 06:07.480 --> 06:12.120 The sun is coming up. And we're doing our countdown now. Now at T minus four seconds, 06:12.120 --> 06:15.920 we're going to turn our main engines on. You're going to see the thrust indicators at the 06:15.920 --> 06:21.080 top of the screen there moving along. There we go. At T plus three seconds, the solid 06:21.080 --> 06:23.880 rocket boosters are going to turn on and we're going to go through the clouds and off the 06:23.880 --> 06:29.640 pad. And there we go. Now the aspect of the game here is to fly the Space Shuttle successfully 06:29.640 --> 06:33.960 into a 210 nautical mile orbit, doing all the control functions that an astronaut would 06:33.960 --> 06:39.800 really do, setting your yaw and your pitch, keeping on a trajectory line. At 26.2 nautical 06:39.800 --> 06:43.640 miles, the solid rocket boosters will jettison off. Now this is a very important point of 06:43.640 --> 06:48.880 accuracy is there's a yellow flash. There we go. This is something that wasn't noted 06:48.880 --> 06:53.380 until STS-1 when the first astronauts went up that this actually happened. I had to find 06:53.380 --> 06:57.000 all of these details out about what you would experience if you were inside of the Space 06:57.000 --> 07:00.600 Shuttle and you were doing the flying so that when you play this game, you feel like you've 07:00.600 --> 07:05.200 actually flown. Steve, it seems to me the incredible thing is this game is running on 07:05.200 --> 07:10.640 an Atari 2600, not a computer. How do you squeeze all of this into that unit? Well, 07:10.640 --> 07:16.040 it takes a lot of time programming, coding. You have to model the universe as you feel 07:16.040 --> 07:20.360 it should really be. And then you have to find how you can fit it all in piece by piece. 07:20.360 --> 07:24.840 You start off with the basic mission and then you add features and you add the functions 07:24.840 --> 07:29.360 all along the way. When I finished the game, I was not happy with it. And I had an additional 07:29.360 --> 07:35.560 list of 146 separate items I wanted to put in that I still felt were important. I spent 07:35.560 --> 07:39.080 an additional three months finishing those off and getting them all in. I wanted this 07:39.080 --> 07:44.040 to be absolutely accurate and absolutely complete. And it is. You put this all inside of a, how 07:44.040 --> 07:48.880 big a ROM? It's an 8K cartridge. It's an incredible amount of... It took 13 months 07:48.880 --> 07:52.560 of programming and a lot of that time was spent putting it all together. Now, we've 07:52.560 --> 07:55.960 just achieved orbit. There's the Earth's room rolling underneath. The external tank will 07:55.960 --> 08:00.280 jettison. There it goes. And we've docked with an orbiting satellite, which actually 08:00.280 --> 08:04.800 was themed after the Skylab. In fact, Dr. Ed Gibson did a review on the game and he 08:04.800 --> 08:10.600 noted that it looked like you were trying to fly into his old nemesis in space. And 08:10.600 --> 08:15.520 then we do our de-orbit and we come in for a landing at Edwards Air Force Base. Now, 08:15.520 --> 08:20.480 one thing unique you did in adapting this game to the 2600 is using the switches in 08:20.480 --> 08:24.880 the 2600 as functional switches. How did you do that? What we had to do was I had to throw 08:24.880 --> 08:29.240 out all the old ideas of what this machine would do. This was originally a video game 08:29.240 --> 08:32.640 console so I said, look, all these switches are controlled by the computer. I'm going 08:32.640 --> 08:36.080 to redefine them to be computer switches. I'm going to control the main engines, the 08:36.080 --> 08:41.000 backup engines, the cargo bay doors, the landing gear, the sequence of information on the screen. 08:41.000 --> 08:45.120 It became so different that we had to develop an overlay to fit over the screen. We had 08:45.120 --> 08:48.880 to develop a, what's called a cheat sheet, which is just what the astronauts use. This 08:48.880 --> 08:53.320 gives you all the instructions that are necessary to fly your shuttle. And the instruction book 08:53.320 --> 08:58.920 is 30 pages long. And it gives you a lot of detail into exactly how to fly the space shuttle. 08:58.920 --> 09:03.920 And basically it's a small flight manual. We provide a glossary. We provide drawings 09:03.920 --> 09:09.560 of the space shuttle, engine indicators. Here's a side view of the space shuttle that we provide. 09:09.560 --> 09:13.440 So really, you understand all about the space shuttle in order to fly this game accurately. 09:13.440 --> 09:18.080 Do you get a little pilot's license when you get through this? If you fly successfully, 09:18.080 --> 09:23.480 you receive a patch. And if you fly just as an astronaut would, you might get your wings. 09:23.480 --> 09:27.160 We're entering the Earth's atmosphere now, and you see we're getting the ionization cone 09:27.160 --> 09:30.760 that appears around the space shuttle. If you saw the movie The Right Stuff, you would 09:30.760 --> 09:34.320 see in the sequence with John Glenn, this is what the astronauts see in the window. 09:34.320 --> 09:38.360 This is hot ionized gas being superheated by the friction of the shuttle on the way 09:38.360 --> 09:41.760 in. We've even lost our signals. We've lost our altitude and speed information. We've 09:41.760 --> 09:42.760 lost our computer screens. 09:42.760 --> 09:47.800 Steve, it seems piloting the space shuttle is very difficult to do, one would think. 09:47.800 --> 09:51.640 Can a kid or a normal person actually pull this off? 09:51.640 --> 09:56.000 Well, what I did when I designed this was I understood that problem. Having the average 09:56.000 --> 10:00.040 individual fly the space shuttle would take years of work. But I looked at how NASA trains 10:00.040 --> 10:04.160 its astronauts, and they start off, first of all, by giving them a lot of book exercises. 10:04.160 --> 10:08.200 They give them film strips of what it's like to fly the space shuttle. This is flight number 10:08.200 --> 10:12.280 one. You're seeing essentially a film strip. You can pick up the joystick and take control 10:12.280 --> 10:14.760 at any time you want to, but you don't have to. 10:14.760 --> 10:17.560 There's a second flight called a training flight, and that basically is like flying 10:17.560 --> 10:21.160 in a simulator. You can make mistakes, you can make errors, and the computer will compensate 10:21.160 --> 10:25.200 and it will let you know. And then flight three is the actual real thing. So you work 10:25.200 --> 10:29.200 your way up to flying the actual mission. You can get into it very easily, and then 10:29.200 --> 10:31.480 work your way up and finally try to achieve your wings. 10:31.480 --> 10:36.440 The interesting thing about this game, I think, is that it's an educational learning experience 10:36.440 --> 10:37.440 as well as a... 10:37.440 --> 10:40.960 Vicariously educational. You're not sitting there playing flash cards. You're learning 10:40.960 --> 10:45.320 about one of the most technologically advanced items today. There are the dual sonic booms 10:45.320 --> 10:48.680 that occur. The first one was the space shuttle. The second one was the chase planes. And we're 10:48.680 --> 10:53.840 coming in now at Edwards Air Force Base. When you get done mastering this game, you've effectively 10:53.840 --> 10:57.360 learned all about what an astronaut does when he's in orbit. So the next time you see a 10:57.360 --> 11:00.680 launch go off, you're going to know what he has to do, when he has to do it, and what 11:00.680 --> 11:01.680 he goes through. 11:01.680 --> 11:06.680 It's incredible. We need another minute or so before we land here. While we're waiting, 11:06.680 --> 11:11.200 Chris, let's talk about... Your new game is called Excalibur. What is that about? 11:11.200 --> 11:18.320 Excalibur is a game of leadership. The concept... I wanted to express to people the ideas behind 11:18.320 --> 11:23.520 von Clausewitz's statement, war is the extension of policy to other means. That is, I was a 11:23.520 --> 11:29.480 little tired of war games that glorify war. So I wanted to show that war is something 11:29.480 --> 11:35.600 that sometimes cannot be avoided, but must never be entered into in a cavalier manner. 11:35.600 --> 11:40.840 And so really, I was trying to teach concepts of leadership. And so in the game Excalibur, 11:40.840 --> 11:49.160 I make you, as King Arthur, I give you the task of unifying Britain. Now, unification 11:49.160 --> 11:55.160 is entirely different from conquest. That is, you have to convince people of your authority. 11:55.160 --> 11:59.800 You have to convince them to follow you. And that involves more than merely brute force. 11:59.800 --> 12:03.240 Chris, we have a little bit of time left. Can you get Excalibur up on the screen and 12:03.240 --> 12:04.720 show us just a piece of that? 12:04.720 --> 12:13.480 This is the title scene to Excalibur. And it does nothing more than give the title and 12:13.480 --> 12:17.200 set a tone and show off who did it. 12:17.200 --> 12:20.640 And this was designed to run on the Atari 800? 12:20.640 --> 12:29.520 Yes. I've cut it off. This was designed for the 800 with 48K and a disk drive. It's a 12:29.520 --> 12:35.400 huge game. It actually won't fit on the 800. It requires disk swapping. And so you bring 12:35.400 --> 12:43.160 in whole chunks of game at a time. It's actually 66K of object code. Very, very large game, 12:43.160 --> 12:44.600 all written in assembly language. 12:44.600 --> 12:49.440 Okay. Well, if you've played Raster Blaster or messed around with Pinball Construction 12:49.440 --> 12:54.000 Set, you've been manipulated by the mind of Bill Budge, one of the premier game designers. 12:54.000 --> 13:09.080 We'll meet Bill and the president of Electronic Arts in just a moment. 13:09.080 --> 13:13.120 Joining us now is game designer Bill Budge, who works with Electronic Arts and the president 13:13.120 --> 13:14.520 of Electronic Arts, Trip Hawkins. 13:14.520 --> 13:19.820 Bill, there's quite an array of games out here on the table. And what is it that makes 13:19.820 --> 13:23.840 a game successful? Or what kind of factors go into the design of a game? 13:23.840 --> 13:28.120 It's really hard to... You can't ask people what they want to see on the computer and 13:28.120 --> 13:31.160 what kind of programs they want. I really think that a person writing a program has 13:31.160 --> 13:35.960 to have an inner conviction of something and write a program that they want to write and 13:35.960 --> 13:39.680 a program that they want to use. When I started writing this program, it was something I really 13:39.680 --> 13:40.920 wanted to do. I wanted to see it work. 13:40.920 --> 13:42.920 Where did you get the idea for it? 13:42.920 --> 13:47.120 I always liked building things. And it was a funny, indirect kind of process. I got tired 13:47.120 --> 13:50.520 of writing video games. I was really sick of playing them by this time. And I thought, 13:50.520 --> 13:54.280 well, it's fun to make video games. I still kind of like to write them. And I bet other 13:54.280 --> 13:56.280 people would really like to write them. 13:56.280 --> 13:58.400 You're talking about the pinball construction set. 13:58.400 --> 13:59.400 Right. 13:59.400 --> 14:02.880 And this is kind of a nice game because it actually involves you in the construction 14:02.880 --> 14:04.480 of the game itself. It's kind of like a metagame. 14:04.480 --> 14:05.480 Yeah. 14:05.480 --> 14:08.560 Is the success of that been pretty good in the sense that... Is there a special segment 14:08.560 --> 14:10.640 that you're selling to as far as the construction set? 14:10.640 --> 14:14.920 Well, when you start out, yeah, you're looking to really avant-garde computer users. It takes 14:14.920 --> 14:18.760 a while for the message to get out there. When everyone is still discovering Pac-Man 14:18.760 --> 14:21.840 and a program comes along that's telling them they can build video games, well, it doesn't 14:21.840 --> 14:26.360 register at first. But it's got a slow growth that builds up. And finally, now we're getting 14:26.360 --> 14:30.560 very good results. The game kind of craze dies out. This stuff's taken off. 14:30.560 --> 14:34.920 Trip, on the business side, what do you look for for a successful software game? 14:34.920 --> 14:38.520 Well, I think pinball construction set has a lot of the things that you look for. And 14:38.520 --> 14:43.800 that's why it's now one of the top ten sellers in the country, according to Billboard magazine. 14:43.800 --> 14:49.480 We have a philosophy of having products that are simple, hot, and deep. Simple so that 14:49.480 --> 14:52.880 you don't have to read a lot of instructions. Of course, most people don't want to have 14:52.880 --> 14:57.320 to learn how to operate the computer. They want to just do things with it right away. 14:57.320 --> 15:01.480 And pinball construction set, you can immediately play one of the pinball games that are included, 15:01.480 --> 15:04.800 or you can quickly make up one of your own. And it's very simple to do that, as I think 15:04.800 --> 15:06.200 Bill will illustrate. 15:06.200 --> 15:10.480 We also like to have products that are hot, in that they should fully use the sound and 15:10.480 --> 15:15.040 graphics and other capabilities of the machine. And we also look for programs that are deep. 15:15.040 --> 15:19.520 In the case of pinball construction set, you can make your own pinball game. So it has 15:19.520 --> 15:24.760 a lot of creative possibilities and allows people to control what they're going to make 15:24.760 --> 15:29.880 and interact with it and change it. And that's one of the things that extends the life of 15:29.880 --> 15:32.400 the product and causes people to come back to it again and again. 15:32.400 --> 15:33.400 Bill. 15:33.400 --> 15:34.400 It's kind of fun to take a look at this. 15:34.400 --> 15:35.400 I'm dying. 15:35.400 --> 15:36.400 Dying to see it. Go ahead, Bill. 15:36.400 --> 15:42.360 Well, this is a very simple sort of real-world idea. It's a construction set. You have something 15:42.360 --> 15:45.880 that you're building on this side of the screen and a set of parts over here. And I have a 15:45.880 --> 15:50.280 hand here that I control with the joystick, and I use that to move things around, say, 15:50.280 --> 15:54.320 on the board, the game I'm building. I can modify this game. And I can get parts out 15:54.320 --> 15:55.800 of the box, and I can just add them over here. 15:55.800 --> 15:57.480 So they're kind of bumpers you're putting into your game. 15:57.480 --> 16:01.480 I'm just putting bumpers, yeah. This is a favorite of really young kids. They like to 16:01.480 --> 16:05.440 just grab a whole bunch of bumpers, fill the board up with them, and put a ball on there. 16:05.440 --> 16:09.960 A pinball aficionado would gasp, but little kids don't really build pinball machines. 16:09.960 --> 16:13.600 They just sort of build things with this. And I can get a ball and put that over here. 16:13.600 --> 16:18.080 Then if I want to try out the game, I can just push this menu selection right here, 16:18.080 --> 16:19.080 and the game starts to play. 16:19.080 --> 16:23.040 And now you can see I've got two balls, one up there. I can launch this one, and I can 16:23.040 --> 16:28.520 go out and play the game a little bit. And the balls drop down at the bottom eventually. 16:28.520 --> 16:32.800 But before I let that happen, I'll just go back to the parts box and start editing again, 16:32.800 --> 16:33.800 get rid of some of these. 16:33.800 --> 16:40.240 Bill, this was kind of a new level, I suppose, of computer game, where you really can design 16:40.240 --> 16:43.520 the game yourself. If you can tell us, what are you working on now? What would be the 16:43.520 --> 16:45.480 next step in computer games? 16:45.480 --> 16:49.200 I want to extend the idea of a construction set. I think this one was hard to do when 16:49.200 --> 16:53.720 I started, because there are lots of combinations and things you can't really predict when you're 16:53.720 --> 16:58.760 making a kit to make a metagame, as you said. I'd like to extend the idea even further. 16:58.760 --> 17:02.440 And the problem there is then designing the parts box. In pinball, it's a small set of 17:02.440 --> 17:08.920 parts. You don't really have to worry about thinking up abstractions. In a general construction 17:08.920 --> 17:12.240 set, it's not clear what the parts should be. It's almost like you're inventing a new 17:12.240 --> 17:18.280 language for representing specifications for programs. It gets very difficult computer 17:18.280 --> 17:19.600 science problems. 17:19.600 --> 17:25.200 Chip, at the arcade level, we hear that maybe games sort of peaked and people aren't quite 17:25.200 --> 17:29.840 as interested. Are computer games here to stay, or is it a fad? 17:29.840 --> 17:33.680 I think computer games are fundamentally different from video games, mainly because computer 17:33.680 --> 17:40.720 technology in the home can be extended and become a much broader base of technology. 17:40.720 --> 17:44.960 Just as an example, all of these programs that we're talking about here, they come on 17:44.960 --> 17:50.520 floppy disks, and each one of these holds much more memory than can be held in the memory 17:50.520 --> 17:57.440 of a coin-operated arcade game. And it really is, it becomes a question of the program size 17:57.440 --> 18:01.200 when you finally want to know, how good a program can I have, and how much can I do 18:01.200 --> 18:05.160 with it, and how long will it take before I'm bored with it, or I've exhausted the educational 18:05.160 --> 18:12.200 value. And I can get, oh, something like three or four times more program on here than I 18:12.200 --> 18:15.000 can fit into the memory of a coin-operated game. 18:15.000 --> 18:18.400 Okay, you've got one-on-one there. Maybe we can get it loaded while, I think, Gary, you 18:18.400 --> 18:19.400 had a question. 18:19.400 --> 18:22.760 Well, the only thing I was going to mention is it seems like the games have gone from 18:22.760 --> 18:27.260 relatively unsophisticated games to something that requires a lot of sophistication in terms 18:27.260 --> 18:31.560 of programming, and the memory size is really an important thing, an important aspect of 18:31.560 --> 18:32.560 that. 18:32.560 --> 18:33.560 Yeah, very much so. 18:33.560 --> 18:34.560 So I would really put that back into 8K. 18:34.560 --> 18:38.960 Has that been the difference, really, in the early computer games, pretty limited, now 18:38.960 --> 18:43.880 the incredible graphics and speed? Has it really been a function of the available memory? 18:43.880 --> 18:47.720 Part of it is just programmers getting better, I think. Not many people wrote video games 18:47.720 --> 18:50.680 five years ago. There was a small selection. Now there are thousands of people who are 18:50.680 --> 18:54.760 capable of writing a good video game, and a few people have upped the ante, so it's 18:54.760 --> 18:57.760 not enough maybe to write a video game. You have to write a video game plus a game editor. 18:57.760 --> 19:01.320 I think the more popular games really have these extra features built in. 19:01.320 --> 19:05.240 Can we get one-on-one in there? That's a kind of exciting demonstration of what you can 19:05.240 --> 19:10.040 do, and I think, Chip, you're going to take on either Dr. J or Larry Bird here. Tell us 19:10.040 --> 19:11.040 about one-on-one. 19:11.040 --> 19:15.840 Well, the basic idea of one-on-one was to get these two guys, Julie serving Larry Bird, 19:15.840 --> 19:20.840 who are probably the two best-known basketball players and probably the two best forwards 19:20.840 --> 19:26.560 who have ever played the game, and to capture their personalities in the game. And so we 19:26.560 --> 19:30.720 decided to hire them to help us design the game, and we had photo sessions where we took 19:30.720 --> 19:35.320 pictures of them in action. In fact, we had a camera mounted at mid-court just exactly 19:35.320 --> 19:39.320 from this angle while we photographed them. And then we worked with them on prototypes 19:39.320 --> 19:42.120 of the product, where we'd sit down and talk to them about the moves that they would use 19:42.120 --> 19:45.560 and some of the strategies and the shooting percentages that they would have in different 19:45.560 --> 19:49.080 places on the court. And that was a fascinating learning experience. 19:49.080 --> 19:53.640 You say programmed in the personality. I mean, these characters play like Larry Bird. 19:53.640 --> 19:56.720 Very much so. In fact, why don't I go ahead and get started? Right now, they're playing 19:56.720 --> 20:01.120 against one another in a demonstration game, but if I press the button on my joystick, 20:01.120 --> 20:04.720 it'll take me to a menu, and I can quickly make a selection. I want to play against the 20:04.720 --> 20:08.760 computer. I'm going to allow the computer to play Larry Bird, and I'm going to play 20:08.760 --> 20:14.080 at the varsity level. There are different levels, depending on how good a player I am. 20:14.080 --> 20:18.680 And now I go ahead and start the game. And that's Larry Bird taking an outside shot, 20:18.680 --> 20:23.280 and he hit it. Now, Bird is particularly effective at outside shots. But watch Julius now. I'm 20:23.280 --> 20:27.840 going to be able to drive around him, I hope. Oops, he stole the ball from me. 20:27.840 --> 20:29.880 You're Larry Bird now. No, I'm Dr. J. 20:29.880 --> 20:31.880 You're Dr. J. And unfortunately, I let Bird steal the ball. 20:31.880 --> 20:34.920 And the computer's Larry, okay. He's trying to work his way into the basket. 20:34.920 --> 20:41.800 So he's got a quick 4-0 lead over me. Oh, and now I have to have the indignation of 20:41.800 --> 20:48.560 seeing it in an instant replay. That's great. Where do you think Tripp 20:48.560 --> 20:52.440 the software games are going to next? I mean, what's the next generation of this kind of 20:52.440 --> 20:55.080 stuff? I hate to interrupt you, trying to get back on something. 20:55.080 --> 21:01.240 I had to have a slam dunk there. Sorry. Yeah, what's happening next? I mean, what's 21:01.240 --> 21:03.440 the next tier, the next level of computer games? 21:03.440 --> 21:11.680 Well, at a really simplistic level, it's very easy to extend the realism and the graphics 21:11.680 --> 21:17.400 that are in the current products. And I think it's also, you're going to increasingly see 21:17.400 --> 21:21.920 more creative possibilities for the player, which is, I think, where a lot of the educational 21:21.920 --> 21:26.680 value comes from. Being able to create your own pinball game is one example. We've extended 21:26.680 --> 21:31.560 that with Music Construction Set to a product that is about music. And of course, there 21:31.560 --> 21:34.520 are a lot of people that are really interested in music and interested in having their children 21:34.520 --> 21:38.200 learn about music. And it uses a lot of the ideas that Bill pioneered with the pinball 21:38.200 --> 21:44.000 construction set. And I think that the area where the greatest challenges will come is 21:44.000 --> 21:49.240 in looking for original ideas and new creative ways to break the mold. I mean, a lot of people 21:49.240 --> 21:52.160 look at what other people have done and try to do something that's a spin off from that. 21:52.160 --> 21:55.840 But the really creative geniuses in the industry are capable of coming up with something completely 21:55.840 --> 21:58.200 new. Do they just come to you, they say, we've 21:58.200 --> 22:03.240 got an idea and here's a program I've written, and then you turn around and sell it? 22:03.240 --> 22:06.720 It happens all different ways. We have one of our better products, it's called Hard Hat 22:06.720 --> 22:11.640 Mac, and two high school boys came into our office one day and they had three sheets of 22:11.640 --> 22:15.480 high school notebook paper they'd drawn up in their physics class, and we signed a contract 22:15.480 --> 22:18.200 based on that. Gentlemen, we're out of time. Bill, Drip, 22:18.200 --> 22:48.160 thanks so much. Thank you for joining us on this edition of the Computer Chronicles. 22:48.200 --> 23:01.280 Micro Focus, creators of visual programming tools for software development, is pleased 23:01.280 --> 23:27.680 to provide major funding for the Computer Chronicles, the story of this continuing evolution. 23:31.280 --> 23:42.400 Random Access is made possible by a grant from Popular Computing, a McGraw-Hill magazine. 23:42.400 --> 23:46.200 In the Random Access file, Hewlett Packard has made another major move into the personal 23:46.200 --> 23:51.400 computer field with a new portable printer designed for the PC market. It is a non-impact 23:51.400 --> 23:57.040 inkjet printer with low noise operation, battery powered, 150 characters per second, and an 23:57.040 --> 24:03.320 11 by 12 character matrix. The price is under $500 and it will be available next month. 24:03.320 --> 24:07.000 IBM in the news again this week. First of all, IBM announced a licensing agreement with 24:07.000 --> 24:13.000 Intel to allow IBM to produce its own 8088 chips, the microprocessor used in the PC. 24:13.000 --> 24:18.080 Tremendous demand on Intel's output of the 8088 has kept IBM from producing enough PCs 24:18.080 --> 24:21.800 to meet its demand. Perhaps more important, though, is the fact that Intel apparently 24:21.800 --> 24:27.240 also gave IBM the right to make its own 80286 chips, a much more advanced microprocessor, 24:27.240 --> 24:32.360 which analysts believe IBM will use in its new personal computer, codenamed Popcorn. 24:32.360 --> 24:36.040 With the ability to turn out the chips, it is thought that IBM may now be able to introduce 24:36.040 --> 24:41.320 the Popcorn this summer. The use of the advanced microprocessor will enable Popcorn to do sophisticated 24:41.320 --> 24:46.280 graphics and other complex integrated functions. Sounds like Popcorn may take on the Macintosh 24:46.280 --> 24:51.400 Lisa crowd. Victor Technologies, the high-flying hardware computer company which took a nosedive 24:51.400 --> 24:55.600 this year, may be bought out by the British firm Applied Computer Technologies. The would-be 24:55.600 --> 25:02.400 buyer indicated it might close down the Silicon Valley factory and move operations to Scotland. 25:02.400 --> 25:06.520 Also on the ailing list, Tandon Corporation, the nation's largest maker of disk drives, 25:06.520 --> 25:11.720 says it will lay off about a thousand employees and transfer most of its manufacturing overseas 25:11.720 --> 25:15.600 to cut production costs. In fact, countries all over the world are dropping in on the 25:15.600 --> 25:19.840 Silicon Valley trying to get a piece of the high-tech action. In the last year, 20 different 25:19.840 --> 25:23.960 countries have sent delegations to the Silicon Valley in an effort to lure their business 25:23.960 --> 25:27.960 abroad. The countries offer incentives such as government subsidies and attractive tax 25:27.960 --> 25:33.760 packages. The most successful recruiter by far has been Ireland. One foreign country 25:33.760 --> 25:37.920 very much on the mind of high-tech executives is Japan, with particular attention focused 25:37.920 --> 25:42.380 now on the debate in the Japanese parliament on a new proposed software bill which would 25:42.380 --> 25:48.240 limit software copyright protection for U.S. products to 15 years and force American companies 25:48.240 --> 25:53.280 to allow Japanese firms to sell U.S.-made software. The net result would be little protection 25:53.280 --> 25:57.600 for American manufacturers, with Japanese companies able to sell the same software at 25:57.600 --> 26:02.720 a lower price by avoiding the high research and development cost. And speaking of software, 26:02.720 --> 26:05.880 you say you have a modem but can't use all the bells and whistles because you don't have 26:05.880 --> 26:08.600 the right communication software? Listen to Paul Schindler. 26:08.600 --> 26:16.360 Okay, it's all set. Three men in a monkey suit. Listen, I'm going to have to get back 26:16.360 --> 26:22.560 to you later. Bye-bye. Communications. Did you know that using one of these devices called 26:22.560 --> 26:28.200 modems, computers can talk on the phone just like us, only faster? But if you already have 26:28.200 --> 26:33.080 PC communications, you might be surprised to hear that you're in a minority. Fewer than 26:33.080 --> 26:38.920 one-fourth of PCs communicate. So many of you are waiting to make the plunge. Perhaps 26:38.920 --> 26:43.560 the hundreds of communications packages on the market have daunted you. Well, the Whole 26:43.560 --> 26:48.760 Earth Software Catalog and Review has sorted communications out for beginners. Now, if 26:48.760 --> 26:54.920 your computer runs the CPM operating system, we suggest you consider MITE or Modem 7. For 26:54.920 --> 27:02.400 users of the IBM PC, the best packages are SmartCom 2 and Crosstalk 16. PCTalk 3 is more 27:02.400 --> 27:08.440 limited, but then at $35, it's also the cheapest communications package. Apple computer users 27:08.440 --> 27:15.120 may want TSC Terminal if they use 40-column screens, or Data Capture 2 for 80 columns. 27:15.120 --> 27:21.680 Commodore and RadioShack users will find CompuServe's VidTex a best buy. Now, there simply isn't 27:21.680 --> 27:26.240 time to get into all the wonderful things you can do once you have communications, but 27:26.240 --> 27:32.080 believe me, a PC on the phone opens up new worlds. Just ask someone who already has a 27:32.080 --> 27:38.560 modem, call them, or call their computer. For Random Access, I'm Paul Schindler. 27:38.560 --> 27:42.600 Next week, Paul takes a look at Ken Houston's professional Blackjack program. Well, the 27:42.600 --> 27:47.400 hot software this month, Tax Preparation Programs, two of the more than 20 tax packages, have 27:47.400 --> 27:51.560 hit the software top ten this week. The two best sellers are Tax Advantage from Continental 27:51.560 --> 27:56.480 Software. It sells for about $70. And Tax Preparer from Howardsoft, it's a bit more 27:56.480 --> 28:01.560 complex and sells for $250. And as if you hadn't noticed, there are still more. Computer 28:01.560 --> 28:06.520 magazines coming out on the market. The latest count shows more than 300 computer periodicals. 28:06.520 --> 28:11.520 The fastest growing ones are Compute, Personal Computing, Popular Computing, and InfoWorld. 28:11.520 --> 28:15.680 Finally, the last place you want to see a computer, let alone a robot, is in your neighborhood 28:15.680 --> 28:20.280 bar. Yet it seems the sweep of technology has no limits. In San Francisco this week, 28:20.280 --> 28:25.520 the world's first robot bartender was unveiled. The robot can talk, can take spoken orders, 28:25.520 --> 28:29.720 and can mix 200 different drinks. But on the first test run, when the waitress yelled out, 28:29.720 --> 28:33.800 give me a Bloody Mary and a beer, the robot knocked a glass off the bar and onto the floor 28:33.800 --> 28:37.480 and poured beer all over the counter. The robot's designer said there were still some 28:37.480 --> 28:41.800 bugs to be worked out. Kind of makes a human feel good. That's it for this week's Random 28:41.800 --> 28:45.360 Access File. I'm Stuart Shafae. 28:45.360 --> 29:02.360 Random Access is made possible by a grant from Popular Computing, a McGraw-Hill magazine.