Talk:Asteroids (video game)

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[edit] Asteroids Record

There was a recent record attempt where someone played this for 27 hours. I will pull it up. Mark Richards 23:45, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

How did he get 40 million points if the score wraps round at 100,000? 212.219.190.6 13:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Not that hard to conceive that wrap arounds are counted. I.E. 40 million means 400 wrap arounds. --Marty Goldberg 14:03, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Link suggestions

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[edit] "Asteroids" shouldn't go to the computer game

Excuse me for saying so, everyone but diehard game fanatics would think that "Asteroids" should refer to astronomical asteroids, not the ancient computer game which after all was named after them. It's pretty ridiculous that this happened. Google for asteroids and the top 9 hits links to astronomical asteroids, not the computer game.

I think this an example of wikipedia being hijacked by a small but obsessive minority to the detriment of the common user. --24.6.109.20

Wikipedia standards state that whenever possible, articles should always be singular. Therefore, asteroid does indeed link to what you think it does. Asteroids, however, is the proper name of an arcade game and cannot be made singular. There is no conflict because anyone wanting to link to the "asteroid" article should make the wikilink singular, even when referring to them in the plural, like this: [[asteroid]]s. — Frecklefoot | Talk 13:39, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
I would expect this page to have been about lumps of rock that float around the solar system, not the computer game. I'd kinda expect this page to be a redirect to Asteroid and this article to be contained in Asteroids (Computer game) or something like that. Although I reckon most people will have come accross the game and be aware of it I imagine that any one who was wanting to research Asteroids as in the object in space would just type 'Asteroids' into the search and wouldnt expect to find this page. At the worst case can this page at least be a disambiguation? I dont think the text at the start has the right effect. --Timmywimmy 15:19, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
I can see what you're getting at, but I don't understand how making this page a disambig would make things better. People looking for the game would have one extra hop, people looking for the astronomical meaning would still have to go through an intermediate page, and the disambig line is currently the first thing in the article anyway.
If you wish to have a go at rephrasing the disambig line here, please do. I don't think it's that great, personally. Fourohfour 15:26, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Asteroids is the name of the computer game. Asteroid is the name for a rock in the solar system. The problem is not with the definitions but that people tend to type "Asteroids" instead of "Asteroid" by human nature - for some reason we don't think of a singular asteroid when we go searching for them. It doesn't matter how inconvenient Wikipedia is as long as it is accurate! That's the most important thing. Must point out (using me own bad grammar) the main argument against this by Timmywimmy is full of "kinda" and "reckon" not really lending weight to the correct definition argument. movieapply

[edit] 1981?!

What is the basis for the inclusion of Asteroids in the "1981 computer games" category? Perhaps someone released a conversion in 1981. Versions were probably released in 82, 83, 84 and 85 too, but I don't think that warrants Asteroids inclusion in those years' categories. If there are no objections, I plan on removing this. Fourohfour 17:56, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Link Spam

I count 16 Asteroids external links. That's like link spam! I'm clearing it up. You can see the history if you want to see the original links. I mean, Asteroids Fan Fiction! WTF? 24.19.161.152 03:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if the inclusion of such links is justified or not, but I found the very *existence* of Asteroids Fan Fiction to be..... WTF indeed. You're in a triangular ship, and you shoot rocks and robot ships. It's amazing they got such a great game out of such a basic premise, but I think it defies belief that anyone wrote "fan fiction" about it.
BTW, the "Asteroids: Festival Among the Rocks" story reminded me of the spoken lines in the loading screens of the 1998 Activision "update" of the game; I wonder if they were taken from there?
Fourohfour 17:24, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Half-baked page move

Regarding the page move, I made this comment to the user responsible. I don't have a problem with people moving stuff where there is a reasonable case, but I do believe they have a duty to carry it through properly. The way things are just now, it appears that the page move was simply making a point, and has done nothing except to add a small level of additional unneeded complexity into the system.

Either Asteroids should be a disambig page, or it should be the game article. There is no point simply redirecting Asteroids to Asteroids (game). The question is, what should go on the disambig page? The game, yes. The planetary bodies, yes. Anything else.?

Fourohfour 10:04, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

On second thoughts, it might be a good move to have Asteroid (disambiguation) and have Asteroids (with the planetary Asteroid article remaining where it is. Fourohfour 12:42, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hyperspace

I think it would be a good idea if someone could expand the information on this function of the game - always remembered even by people who only played it once or twice.

What do you mean? Hyperspace does one thing: It moves your ship to a random position on the screen, and it has a chance of blowing you up or putting you inside an asteroid (blowing you up). There isn't much more to say about it than that. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 06:37, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Asteroids arcade clones....

Does anybody know where there is a definitive list of Arcade game "clones" or basic copies of the game Asteroids with improvements etc? Just arcade versions is all I am looking for, I remember plenty of them, into the mid-90s even and probably later. I remember them, but don't remember any of their names. Nagelfar 21:31, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


Nowadays, hundreds of different Asteroids clones and variants can be found on the web, as it is a popular game for beginning programmers to attempt.Since this game is such a major classic and so simple, many Flash games replicate it for the user to play while the actual game loads.[citation needed]

A citation is needed? Is this really contested? who would question something like this? and so, I remove. 64.238.49.65 18:03, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bug: Limited number of objects onscreen at once

I seem to recall that the Asteroids arcade machines could only display a certain number of objects on the screen at once (around 40 asteroids or so, I think) and that once you reached this number, strange things started to happen, like being able to destroy a large asteroid with a single bullet. Unfornately, a quick web search doesn't turn up any sources to back me up. Does anyone else have any info on this? RickScott 02:20, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] productized

Is productized even a word? I think the article needs cleaning up and rewriting.

Its produced, not productized or whatever.GalacticExplorer 22:21, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Lurking" strategy should stay in article

I recently condensed the Gameplay section, removed scoring details, and condensed the Lurking strategy description, per WP:CON, Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines and Talk:Pac-Man consensus. However, I didn't remove Lurking entirely because, unlike most game strategies, this one has significant cultural and historical impact in the gaming industry. This issue was one of the most significant things that changed how programmers designed games, both in terms of considering how to design enemy AI and how to anticipate game limitations. It definitely deserves a mention in this article, just not a detailed "how-to". — KieferSkunk (talk) — 00:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opening description

Regarding the recent edits by Lonewolf BC, "simple" is a personal opinion and falls under WP:OR, such commentary is not appropriate here. Sections in parenthesis are also encyclopedic. Likewise, the game play was way to descriptive by current standards. I even tried to work with the your edit and gave the benefit of the doubt by keeping your original edit text and rewording some of that to cut down on length. But even then, the recently featured article Donkey Kong (video game) simply has this for its game play in the opening paragraph: "..the gameplay focuses on maneuvering the main character across a series of platforms while dodging obstacles." That is the current established precedent for video game entries. --Marty Goldberg 20:10, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:D3asteroids.jpg

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BetacommandBot 07:10, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] First to feature a high score table

Recently, the statement that Asteroids was the first game to feature a high score table was removed, indicating that Star Fire came before it. I'd like to see some specifics about the release date of Star Fire and how that compares with Asteroids, since Asteroids has long been known as the first game to feature a high score table. The references in the Star Fire article don't appear to support its claim, at least not concretely. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 19:33, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Kiefer - I wouldn't say that Asteroids is long known as the first. Some sources have simply (incorrectly) reported as such, along side sources that reported Star Fire as being the first. The well known video game community resources KLOV, and MAME's MAWS Database all also state Star Fire as the first. This reference from the Star Fire page is pretty clear on that as is this interview with the designer also looked to in the article. Asteroids was released in November of '79, and its rom copyright date also states this. Star Fire's copyright date is 12/1978 to Exidy (who as the resources talk about was the one who bought the game and released it after shopping it around in '78), with an early '79 release date. Likewise, the Star Fire Operations Manual that comes with the coin-op is dated April, 1979 and supports this. The author of Star Fire, David Rolfe (also involved with Intellivision development) has a web page that I've just contacted him through as well to try and verify the April '79 date. --Marty Goldberg 20:31, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Okay, that sounds convincing enough. I've heard quite a few people familiar with the industry claim that Asteroids was the first to feature a high score table (not just to allow entering initials for the highest score), so it might be worth mentioning in this article something along the lines of: "Contrary to popular belief, Asteroids was not the first game to feature a high score table – the first to do this was Star Fire, released earlier the same year by Exidy." — KieferSkunk (talk) — 20:51, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good. Where would you see adding that in the article without sounding like its trivia? --Marty Goldberg 20:57, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fencepost error

I remember that there was what appeared to be a fencepost error in one of the asteroid shapes -- one side of the polygon displayed brigher than all the others, presumably because it was traced twice. If would be cool if we could find a reference for that. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:31, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] American Museum of the Moving Image

I believe the American Museum of the Moving Image has one of these on display. It works, and you can play the game. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Flaws in collision detection

I remember reading a magazine article years ago that said the collision detection was slightly off. Sure enough, if you try the game in Mame, the asteroids seem to box bounded rather and polygon bounded for collision detection. I am struggling to find a reference for this though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mojo-chan (talk • contribs) 15:16, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Mame is an approximation of vector hardware on a raster display, not the same. The arcade's hardware collision detection worked on whether beams were drawn over each other. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 19:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I see, makes sense to do it in hardware. What about the players shots though, as they are points and would need to be tested to see if they are inside a polygon, something the CPU wouldn't be fast enough to do for every on-screen object. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mojo-chan (talk • contribs) 12:39, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
A point is simply a beam drawing at a specific location, no different than the others. When you draw a line, it simply keeps the beam on and moves it, then shuts it off. When you draw a point, it turns the beam on and off at that single location. To keep a dot or a line, or anything else on the screen for any length of time in a vector monitor, you have to continuously draw it or it will fade away. When a line is drawn over a "dot", or vice versa, you have a collision. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 02:56, 25 February 2008 (UTC)


In that case, collision detection would not work. An asteroid is a polygon made up of lines. A bullet is a single point. If that point is inside the polygon, it does not cross any of the lines of the polygon so would not trigger a collision. The only conclusion I can come to is that collision detection must be more complicated than simple line intersection. It is not difficult (mathematically) to test if a point is inside a polygon, but it would be too computationally intensive for the CPU to do alone. Mojo-chan (talk) 13:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
There are no "polygons" in the game, the first game to use those was I Robot which had special polygon based hardware. Each asteroid is made of separately drawn lines. And you are correct on if the point was drawn inside an asteroid it would never detect it until (either) would travel a bit and be hit. But the game never draws like that, the shots always start outside all the shapes. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 16:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm pretty certain that Asteroids didn't use hardware collision detection of this type. Each asteroid is roughly a circle, and it would make sense to check whether a point or line intersects the boundary of an asteroid's "circle", rather than checking every line that makes up the individual asteroid. The math required to check a point's distance from the center of each circular boundary is very simple and can be done with integers, thus making software collision detection not only feasible, but more likely in this case.
To properly detect a collision in hardware in the manner described above, the display hardware would need to be aware of how fast each point and line is moving, and determine if a shot point will intersect an asteroid/UFO line in the next screen update. Vector displays being what they are, simply detecting if two segments cross or a point is drawn directly on top of (or underneath) a line is very unlikely to be good enough - it would be far too likely for a shot to skip over a line between updates and the collision to be missed completely. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 19:53, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Also, it's worth mentioning that MAME treats vector games as having actual vector displays. The game's virtual hardware has no idea that it's actually outputting to a raster display - all drawing operations are done in the same way that they would be on physical hardware, and the MAME display code handles translating the vector draws to a raster image. So as far as the game is concerned, if there is hardware detection being done by the vector hardware, it's supposed to be simulated accurately. (Whether it is totally accurate or not is another question.) — KieferSkunk (talk) — 19:57, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Looking at the MAME source, there does not appear to be emulation of hardware collision detection. It would not be too difficult to do on the CPU because the asteroids could be box bounded and do not rotate. As KieferSkunk said, it would be hard to do in hardware because aside from anything at a resolution of approximately 1024x768 lines would be very small and at the speed they and bullets move an exact intersection is somewhat unlikely. On the hardware, lines essentially have zero thickness from a mathematical point of view. I think it must be CPU based.Mojo-chan (talk) 13:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I'm of the opinion the asteroids are circle-bound, since the displayed shape is roughly circular and thus a square boundary would be visually inaccurate in many cases. Also keep in mind that Asteroids Deluxe is essentially the same game with a few relatively minor changes - the core software is almost exactly the same, and the asteroids DO rotate in that one. To my knowledge, the rotation in that game is purely cosmetic, but has no impact on how collisions are calculated. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 19:18, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
I am trying to devise a test. Is there some way to single frame step MAME? Maybe the ROM can be disassembled.Mojo-chan (talk) 16:03, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Guys, the problem is vector hardware *does not use frames*. There is no framerate, and the single 6502 hardware was not powerful enough to do real time collision detection like what you're suggesting. I'm in the process of talking to the designers of Atari's original vector hardware (this was all pre-mathbox, Battlezone had collision detection algorithms built in to the mathbox). I'll post the results here. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 16:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks Marty, looking forward to your findings. I would just point out though that the 6502 is certainly powerful enough to do collision detection, assuming it is either bounding box or radius based. Integer maths and lookup tables would make it more than feasible in assembly code. I know because I used to write code for the things :) Mojo-chan (talk) 18:20, 28 February 2008 (UTC)