Classic Game Postmortem: Gauntlet
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ต.ค. 2018
- In this 2012 GDC session, Gauntlet creator Ed Logg, who also designed ground-breaking titles like Centipede and Asteroids, shares his thoughts on creating the game that popularized the phrase "Wizard needs food badly", and paved the way for the class-dependent multiplayer experiences that are a cornerstone for many popular titles today.
Register for GDC: ubm.io/2gk5KTU
Join the GDC mailing list: www.gdconf.com/subscribe
Follow GDC on Twitter: / official_gdc
GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every day. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives.
You can tell he's the real deal - not very slick and polished for public speaking like today's big game company PR people, but just a down to earth nerdy programmer from the 70s/80s who's true genius shines forth in the pioneering works he created. I love people like him!
I've been lucky enough to start my career in the film industry learning from similar people - those with real practical knowledge and genuine passion for what they do, but most of all willing to share their stories and history of their craft with a young upstart. I could listen to this stuff all day.
That's cause he isn't a PR person. But you can bet your ass that there was a PR person behind him pushing the game. He'd not have the recognition without said PR person.
Walker Riley Those are the same PR people pushing ET and Pac Man out the door for the 2600 that basically destroyed their consumer division. The engineers made the company successful, not the PR.
@@Martyballin Both are necessary. Like it or not, marketing is important. Look at what happened with the Dreamcast, which was technically speaking years ahead of all its contemporaries. Without engineers and developers, marketers would have nothing worthwhile to market, but without marketing, nobody would know the software exists or buy it.
“Oh hey a new classic postmortem.... oh wow it’s about gauntlet” instant watch and like 😃
I would like to see a bit more praise doled out to the sound engineers and cabinet artists. I’m an engineer like Ed and he is great, but that total package is what made the game. Otherwise it’s just Dandy 2.
Fascinating presentation. Gauntlet was such a transformative game, and to hear how and why some of the concepts came together, just how much inspiration came directly from D&D and Dandy, and the hundreds of decisions made along the way that shaped the game. A collaborative triumph.
My earliest memory of legit arcade gaming was playing a Gauntlet machine in a boardwalk arcade at Seaside Heights, New Jersey. I had to use a step-stool to reach the controls, because I couldn't have been older than 5~6 at the time. :D
I was able to play the Elf and the Wizard forever. Original revision, of course. This game owned me for the first 6 months it was out. This game made me realize I had a problem, and I went cold turkey from video games for 5 years after this.
On original revision I played both Valkyrie (with left hand) and Elf (with right hand) for 3 hours (effectively endlessly) on minimum coins, only limited by the closing time of the pizza shop!
And I never managed to get the game to say "GOOD COOPERATION!" :(
I also found a Gauntlet (original revision) at a travelling fairground, set to 1 COIN = 100 HEALTH .. So I just HAD to play Valkyrie.
Welcome .. Valkyrie needs food, badly!
I was even being thoughtful, playing at 11am when the place was almost empty, so I wouldn't be deprive them of takings, but the operator was a real scum-bag .. pulling the plug at around level 35 when I had thousands of Health!
Gauntlet was rad.
Raaaaaaaad
Agreed.
1986... I received my paycheck... had 50 Deutschmark on me (25 €) and went with a buddy of me to the local arcade to play some more Pinball. Normally, we played for 5 - 7 Bucks each... lasting us one - two Hours. On this day, "Gauntlet" arrived. I spend my whole money on it... and next weekend with as a Group of 4 Friends we spend 100 Deutschmark... each on a Marathon Session that lasted 2 - 3 Hours... i cant remember... expensive fun... and my last time doing it... that way... cheers. btw. It was a sitting cabinet.
Great presentation, Ed!
If Ed Logg is reading this ... and still remembers .. or someone else knows:
How do you get the game to say "GOOD COOPERATION!" ?
I haven't managed to trigger it, even when playing very cooperatively: Valkyrie with my left hand and Elf with my right hand!
I love these talks!
PS: Wow! They waited 5+ years to upload this!?
Jan Ders Good things are worth waiting for :P
I must of been 12 years old when I first saw this arcade cabinet while on summer holidays at Morecambe Bay. I remember being absolutely drawn to the sounds and graphics. I never lasted long in the games but loved the Wizard. Great memories !!!
Does anyone know how to get in touch with Ed Logg? I would like to ask a technical question about Xybots.
Wow, the look into the arcade times. A truly priceless lecture.
I AM SO GLAD THEY DID THIS!!
Gauntlet was DnD for people who could never get into DnD.
Yup. I couldn't get into DnD. Loved Gauntlet.
high scores were figured by
score divided by number of coins
omg their test arcade was the Milpitas Golfland! I've been there so many times, I never knew it was historical!
only downside is the lack of visuals/ video clips to reinforce what he was explaining about the game. Otherwise great talk!
AMAZING!
8:37 "I was thinking about Doom"? Wait.. Xybots was released in 1987, Doom in 1993.
yeah that was probably some other game, definitely not doom :P
Time travel confirmed.
He probably meant Temple of Doom, which he mentions later when he shows some metrics.
Xybots is an indoor first person shooter. He probably was thinking about Doom as a genre concept, but was limited by hardware.
motion objects. aka MOBS!
this guy sounds like norm mcdonald
Valkyrie needs food badly
Elf has eaten all the food lately!
I spent hundreds of dollars worth of quarters playing this game. Most fun arcade game ever.
I was lucky, I first played it at the Amusement Trades Exhibition International in London; £10 entry for 3 days of everything on free play! :)
And after that, a friend had a Gauntlet in his pizza shop, and he let me have some all-night free play lock-ins, so I got good at the game without feeding it endless coins :)
Great history about a great game, Ed!
@ 31:30 : Where can I download the 'Orange Elf' levels?
... and before everyone points me to the gaunt2-ls set, they are NOT his, they are MINE! - note : gaunt2-LS -> LS -> Lord Sméagol.
Evidence for gaunt2-ls levels being mine: Internet Archive captured my now dead uk web [lord-smeagol] with a working link to download MY levels. The 2002 capture shows when I uploaded them, with supporting info.
Sorry for the comment trail; my comments were not appearing when I included [www.] and [.co] and [.uk] ! So I had to do it like this.
I still have the level files and editor (written in MBASIC for CP/M) copied from my still existing old 5 1/4 inch Nascom 2 floppies.
2x double sided pcb = 1x 4-layer boards, so why did you not put the game in a shielding box, no radiation out of a metal box
I played gauntlet: dark legacy for the ps2 (still have to do a friendly fire run because we realized that was an option after we beat the game) I'd never heard anything about the original though.
Never heard the term "stamp hardware" before I saw some talks by coin op guys. I assume that's just their jargon for sprite rendering hardware?
Is it not another word for “tiles” I mean it clearly states that sprites was the 52 moving objects per scanline so is stamp not referring to the background playfield?
@@litjellyfish I thought of a lot of different things it could mean and that was one of them. I was mostly confused since I had never heard the term before and I can think of like 3 or 4 things it could reasonably mean given the context. All I feel like I can be really sure about is that they are talking about some aspect of how the blitter works.
@@timseguine2 yeah new to me as well.
In Gauntlet, Stamps are 8x8 pixel graphic elements, a bit like characters on a text display. They are tiled together to produce the desired larger image.
Floor, wall, EXIT, Transporter etc. are formed from 2x2 Stamps. Motion Objects (MOBs) are also formed from Stamps (upto 8 wide and high).
Gauntlet Self Test might help you get a feel for how they work.
@@lordsmeagol3390 Okay, sounds similar then to what the NES and a lot of other systems call tiles. Thanks for the clarification.
We played so much Dandy when I was a kid.
I used to love playing, but I wasn't good enough to let it kill all my quarters... particularly if playing with other folks I didn't think played well (STOP SHOOTING THE FOOD!)
37:10 He talks dismissively about play testing, but adding tutorial levels is such an important thing.
That was mockery of 'focus groups', the followup of 'spent $50 playing' sounded much more like play-testing, and had a rather glowing appraisal.
Really needed visuals. The Personal Memory device would later be revamped by Neo-Geo.