game loading

[vanhelsing]

What about a feature on how people passed the time while games were loading?

[thevulture]

Espically for us Atari tape owners.No Turbo load`s for us, sob. Ace of aces was over 20mins, Red Max?Another that took a lifetime. Real Bas*ard to get BOOT ERROR near the end.

[tekaotaku]

I always remember the Atari load times, wasnt aloud to touch them,too young, but it was an Atari 800XL, used to takke years, well what felt like it for a 6-7 year old......used to pass the time by shuffling between the two frooms, the atari was set up in the front room, every few minutes

"is it done yet?"........NO...........Id dissapear

Used to wind my brothers up something cronic with it

[Fred83]

we cant forget invade a load!

[TMR]

we cant forget invade a load!

There were a couple of different loading game systems on the C64, if memory serves Invade-A-Load was the last in the line but Richard Aplin wrote another one which was a bit more abstract called Load 'n' Play (i heard a rumour that there was a third by Aplin, but the mastering system murdered a master disk and Mastertronic refused to use it after that) and there were a couple from Players, Micro Painter and a Lunar Lander clone if memory serves. And of course, Dragon's Lair 2 played the current level whilst loading the next...

Actually, the C64 did pretty well for stuff during loading, many games had music whilst the game was being pulled in and some had small demos going, for example Delta and Hawkeye had the "Mix-E-Load" music toys to mess around with - both Hawkeye and Flimbo's Quest would tally up end of level bonuses on an animated screen as they loaded level data as well.

[Fred83]

the hawkeye one was brilliant,really enjoyed mixing on that,one question i always wanted to ask,how did they put the program data onto cassette tapes/floppy disks?,was there an industrial type tape decks/floppy drives going all the time?,pictures of the machines they use would be appreciated aswell.

[necronom]

Loading games off tape on the C64 was often brilliant, as you got a great picture and amazing music. Sometimes, I'd put a game on just for the loading, then switch it off

[thevulture]

On slight tangent, but anyone remember any cool PAUSE modes? I.E The off duty mode in C64 hunters Moon or The colour cycling stuff on Atari Chimera?

[Mire Mare]

I'd just sit and wait. Maybe flick through Zzap64 or the inlay of the game if it was new. As necronom said already, the C64 had some great loading screens and epic music to keep us entertained.

[TMR]

the hawkeye one was brilliant,really enjoyed mixing on that,one question i always wanted to ask,how did they put the program data onto cassette tapes/floppy disks?,was there an industrial type tape decks/floppy drives going all the time?,pictures of the machines they use would be appreciated aswell.

The actual duplication was handled by massive commercial grade tape or disk duplicators, the machines would record the data to the cassette tape and then it was cut to length and spooled into the cases; occasionally they'd goof, which is why i have a C64 cassette with the title Renegade screen printed on it where the cassette itself contains Edd The Duck. The duplicators weren't owned by the publishers themselves because they were vast and expensive, lookums here (wind forwards to 26:30) to see a commercial duplicating plant mass producing cassettes for Ocean.

[Fred83]

that was great thank you for the link,what about testing,i remember in ocean manuals in particular asking you to return the game if it was defective,how did they test them,hardly the obvious on a home computer was it?.

[TMR]

that was great thank you for the link,what about testing,i remember in ocean manuals in particular asking you to return the game if it was defective,how did they test them,hardly the obvious on a home computer was it?.

The master copies the duplicators used were usually put together on a perfectly aligned tape deck (with some firms using a different azimuth setting for the other side of the tape, that's why some people find they can only load the B side of a specific game), so the majority of returns were generated by mis-aligned tape decks - the chances are they'd just ship a replacement in those cases.

One of my jobs when i did computer sales in the 1980's was cleaning and aligning C64 tape decks for customers, that'd fix most issues...

[PanzerGeneral]

I remeber whilst waiting on my Atari tapes loading - I developed a cure for cancer, developed a new kind of cold fusion reactor, found a way to fold space between different dimensions and still had 1 minute 7 seconds left before Mr Do finally loaded.

[Dominoid]

I can't remember which game it was but I recall having an Amstrad game that let you play a space invaders clone while it was loading from tape, that was ace. I generally used to just watch the loading picture appearline by line!

[Hitman_HalStep]

i remember my brothers old spectrum can't remember which model(seperate tape deck)you would have to stare at the screen 'cause you wouldn't know at which point the load would crash,rewind the tape,adjust the volume on tape deck,start again.every game seemed to need a different volume setting.