Cosmac VIP

Hi guys, please check the Cosmac VIP games when you get a chance. I've been adding Fred1 and Fred1.5 games there. Not sure if I'm doing it correctly or if there is a better way.
Let me know the best course of action.

I will check the edits and write something later when I am back from work. There are some things that I would do a bit differently. Especially in the person = developer field vs. crew info and article type of descriptions (main description vs. editors note).

Yeah, those are the options that have been concerning me, I wait for your evaluation.

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The main description in many cases is not a description and should be changed to article type "editors note".
E.g here: www.uvlist.net/game-279935-Bowling

You can do this by clicking on edit article and then change the document type.

What the mainly used types in game entries are:

The main description is a "neutral" description of the game. Gameplay, story etc. Short but precise. Writing descriptions are the most difficult type of article. On contrast with very simple games there is often nothing to describe. Who wants to describe the 34th Tic-Tac-Toe game? Well its not mandatory and sometimes tags are enough anyway to describe something.

Official description is copy/paste from the official publisher/maker site or description on the back of the box or a description from inside the manual or readme-file. Those are often not as neutral as the main description and sometimes sound like commercials. But its ok, thats what the category is for.

Personal Review: Your thoughts about the game. If a main description becomes too subjective it becomes a personal review.

Editors note. This one is often used. Its for the "rest". Tidbits of added information not fitting in other articles. Also used to list if there are expansions for a game or if it was released in compilations. I also use it to describe when I have rest doubt if a game exists or if I am not sure about some facts. So the main description of the above mentioned Bowling game is clearly an editors note.

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The publisher and developer field are for company names or team names and such. Not for the names of the individual who made the game. If an individual (or several individuals) made a game and "published" it then the word "author" should be written in publisher field (developer can be kept empty, because the author is always the developer and here its only important that the game was not published by via a company/team/brand). After writing author in the publisher field you should add the author(s) name(s) via the "Crew profiles" menu option. Add the names there. This way we now it was (self)-published by an author and which one is given as crew. If neither a company nor author name is known put a "?" in the publisher field. That hints that there is missing info.
You can fill in the job names when you add the persons but its not necessary.
In the end it looks like this: www.uvlist.net/game-276812-Alien+Gate

I do not know what is meant with -Fred1- as developer. It sounds neither as a company nor development team name nor the name of a single author.

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I do not know if this qualifies as a game.
www.uvlist.net/game-279947-Life
Was this meant to entertain children like a coloring book program? Or is it more something like a prehistoric "serious" paint program? It very much looks to not belong into the broad "entertainment" program/games category. And I say this although I would really like to keep that screenshot...

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Thats it.

Ok thanks for the info, I'll make the necessary changes within the next few days.

Fred1 was put there to keep a record of which games were made for or developed on that system. Easier to see as the Cosmac had various systems and there is no clear way to differentiate between them apart from the tags, that being said as a user I never really looked at the tags until I became an editor so maybe there should be another easier way to differentiate between them. Just an idea that I had during the process not absolutely necessary.

Thanks

Any ideas on the best way to differentiate between the CosmacFred, CosmacElf and CosmacVIP games within the RCA CosmacVIP Platform? Or is the tag within each game sufficient? Also the Chip 8 needs to be considered as all these systems are intertwined. Can be very confusing.


As for www.uvlist.net/game-263804-Life , yes I agree its not really a game but most sites that have old systems include the Life game for various platforms, I have always asked myself why its there, guess its a part history that no one wants to disregard.

If they are hardware variations then should be handled with a hardware entity tag, as we do with Arcade ( www.uvlist.net/groups/info/arcadehardware ) and other platforms.
I understand why you want it more visible, I'll try to address it in the new game info page I'm working on.

Perfect, thank you

Maybe the Cosmac VIP platform could be renamed to just Cosmac. That way its less confusing and its more obvious to find different kind of Cosmacs models under that platform category.

Yes, Conway's Game of Life is borderline and there are "games" based on that in the database. And I have seen other games databases having them as well. My example was for the other "Life" game that as per your description was a paint program.

Ah ok, yeah I guess my description lacked the extra art plus life simulation, probably because all the life games seem the same to me, you blotch the screen and the blotches move if you find the right button. With the Cosmac there's also the Pattern demo which is similar but not. Are they games? I don't think so. But maybe there is a game of life fan who will put me in my place but I seriously doubt that.

Cosmac as a platform should be fine if it has any type of a sub menu for the hardware. I know it's an old Platform with little interest but it's part of the gaming evolution so it's earned a place somewhere.

Holy progenitor of algorithms! I was concerned that the Cosmac VIP would be forever barren of useful information. Thank you for your efforts, GWSchafer.

Yes, these related systems rely heavily on Chip 8. But Chip 8 is actually platform independent. And each of these systems can have non-chip 8 games. Chip 8 a bit like Java I suppose, in concept ( write once, run anywhere. Runtime interpretation ) but not scope.

Awesome, thank you for the acknowledgement. Games have given me so much over the years it's time I put something back. Trying to go as far back as I can and move forward with the evolution almost like living it again.

Any information on the Chip 8 is very much appreciated, I still don't fully understand how everything fit together back then so if anyone can help me and others understand it better that'll be great. I have to admit I don't know exactly how to differentiate between those old RCA systems and the chip 8 and where the games actually belong, I rely heavily on other people's efforts in this.

Until a week ago I was almost unaware about these machines, so I could be wrong on many points, but thanks to The Internet this is what I learned:


We already have RCA Studio II, RCA COSMAC VIP and Chip 8 platforms

COSMAC VIP is a computer
RCA Studio II is a console

Both could be programmed in machine language or CHIP-8, but they were not software-compatible out of the box due to their differing hardware designs and intended uses.

Chip-8 is very similar to Java (could be made to a tag ? Are there unique games that are not available on the other platforms ?)

What about FRED and ELF ?

COSMAC FRED: The prototype that started it all (TTL-based, no microprocessor).
COSMAC ELF: The first commercial hobbyist kit based on the 1802 COSMAC (so not compatible with COSMAC FRED).
COSMAC VIP: An enhanced version of the ELF for hobbyists. (could be merged in ELF and maybe renamed ELF/VIP)
RCA Studio II: A specialized gaming console based on the 1802 COSMAC.

Does this makes any sense ?

Yes you making sense, as far as the little I know goes. There's quite a bit of information online in various places but I'm not one who can read and absorb too much info, so summarized statements help, thanks.

The Chip 8 does have plenty of it's own games, I believe alot of people who start making emulators start with the chip 8 for some reason and because of that there's plenty of chip 8 games available online, will post links if you like when I find them again. Think Itch.io has some but there is a specialized site that's not hard to find.
Will get around to the Chip 8 at some point.
As far as I know we need a Chip 8 Platform but I'm pretty sure games will overlap and get duplicated but is that a bad thing? Unless someone who knows what's what can lay down some ground-rules to follow. An example would be Mame's CosmacVip, its rom set is called chip8_quik so are those Chip 8 games or CosmacVip games?

I am not a fan of having the very same game version under several platforms. If something was produced for the Cosmac its a Cosmac game, regardless whether it uses Chip8. If it was programmed to run under Chip-8 interpreters with no specific computer platform in mind it might better fit under Chip-8.

I remember a similar discussion about CP/M. In contrast to Chip-8 we have no CP/M platform. And I am fine with that. Because when someone programmed a game with CP/M he still very likely had a specific computer in mind. There are numerous Amstrad CPC and Amstrad PCW games that that run under CP/M, but were marketed as Amstrad games. Its never "look here is the latest CP/M game for you", but its always "look here is our latest Amstrad CPC game". So it never occured to me that CP/M would be a proper gaming platform.

When there are programmers that make a game specifically "for Chip-8" it likely is a valid gaming platform. And I think there is such thing as a "Chip-8" game. johnearnest.github.io/chip8Archive/
But then I would not consider such a game as a Cosmac game or game for any other Chip-8 supporting computer. Its simply a Chip-8 game because it was marketed as such. And a Cosmac game is a game that was released for the Cosmac.

So:
Publisher/Developer says "Here is my newest Chip-8 game" -> then put it under Chip-8 platform.
Publisher/Deleloper says "Here is my newest Cosmac game" -> then put it under Cosmac

At least thats how I would do it. And I know that it can be very difficult to find out what an programmer might have had in mind; especially old games from the 70s where there is no documentation. We are delving into difficult terrain here, thats why I never went deeper into these systems for UVL (and the fact that often no proper emulator and romset is available to easily make screenshots etc.). So I mainly kept myself concentrating on platforms that had their heyday in the 80s ;-)

Yes that's the web site I was thinking of (johnearnest.github.io/chip8Archive/) thanks for posting the link.

There's guys here who've been doing this for years so you know best and yes I see your point concerning the CP/M. Definitely see why you've stayed away from the 70's, I'll do my best but most likely will make mistakes as you've stated it's not easy to know what the Developer/Publisher had in mind especially when there's one game that is the same on different systems. I have no problem with people double checking my posts, correcting them or asking me to edit.

Request for Advice

3 games seem like they could be the same, please check within CosmacVIP for "Cosmac Cosmos", "VIP Shooting Stars" and "The Great Cosmac Cosmos Puzzle".
How best to deal with with?

Update: VIP Shooting Stars I found and its not the same. The other 2 still require looking into.

If you are unsure, put an editors note in both entries and say that its possible that these entries are duplicates and needs further validation.

Ok Thanks

Some Information: In my posting of the Cosmac games I have yet to come across a Chip 8 game that doesn't work on the CosmacVIP, can't say conclusively though, just some info that may help when deciding how to best sort the Cosmac Platform

Sometimes there is the situation where a publisher leases _essentially_ the same game on very similar platforms. This happened with the Atari XE system, games released on Atari 8-bit computers where rebranded for the XE system. Sometimes they were different versions, sometimes not. This applies to some games published for the various Amiga systems. It gets very complicated sometimes for Tandy 1000 compatible games. This is one of those areas where we don't have universal solution.

As a user, If I remember correctly I found this site because I was looking for lists of old games. Like the Plato and Chip 8, not many popular sites cover these systems if any.

A way of attracting more users would be to list all games available for each Platform, would make it easier on us to sort, perhaps there are good reasons that I'm unaware of why we should not.
I do know that in the 1970's many many games were often duplicated for different systems with multiple variations so yeah it's tough.

If two games are identical on different platforms, we should carefully consider whether it's necessary to include both.
We should also consider if those platforms really need to exist and not be merged into one.
By identical I mean you "run" the code and it works, without any change needed.

As said by zerothis, there are a lot of fringe cases: rebranding, but also with the years information is increasingly difficult to obtain (and this is one reason UVL exists!)

About Chip-8, looks like will become just a tag, people will still see the list of chip-8 games if they wish, so no information il lost.
A direct link from the Cosmac page to chip-8 will also help.

And thank you for sharing how you have found UVL!

Ahh ok, that makes sense, I have tried adding a Chip8/Chip 8 tag before but it was red so I deleted them, making the Chip8 a tag is fine by me, as you say if people still find the info then everything's good

Just thinking about that, how will we post Chip 8 games made in the 2000's for chip 8 emulators?

Three available options.

- We keep Chip-8 platform
- We use the Custom hardware platform
- We create a new "agnostic hardware" (?) platform that could also be used for games that run on the Java VM and similar.

Are there any concerns with memory storage on the server for this site?
My vote is too keep the Chip8 Platform but there may be a better option to combine various grey area platforms.