avoid missing ball for high score

[Ryo Saeba]

These simple instructions are all you need to know, when you're playing PONG for the first time, but is it really that simple? Is it just the mindless task of not missing the ball, or is there more to it?
Is PONG the ultimate "Video Skill Game" as it was advertised by its inventors back then?

I'm asking not entirely out of curiousity as I've recently started learning a new programming language and been delving into the theories and practices of Game Design. One of the first projects I want to undertake is a PONG game, but instead of just coding something in a few minutes, I really want to understand how PONG really worked.

That's why I'm trying to examine and understand everything about the mechanics and ball physics of PONG, cause here I'm sure to find the answers to my questions.

But sadly I never got the chance to play a real PONG machine (I started gaming in the early 90s) and finding info on this subject on the net turned out to be more difficult than I first thought and most of the stuff I've found is also quite irritating and incomplete.
That's why I'd love to receive some help from people who played the original PONG rather extensively (I'm sure there must be some folks here who played this in their youth) and/ or know the ins and outs of the game and help me fill out the blanks.

Aquiring an actual Atari machine is rather tedious (cause of their expensiveness and rarity here, where I live) so Emulation is the only way to play for me atm. Unfortunately those old arcade machines are hard to emulate (cause at that time, nearly every machine was different and only created to play a single game) and that's why MAME isn't supporting them afaik.
There's an Atari 2600 game called Video Olympics, that has some PONG variants on it, but I don't know how accurate those are in regards to the original PONG arcade machines.

Nonetheless I've been able to gather a healthy amound of info, here's what I found out:

At first there's the question of the size and form the objects and the playfield.
The playfield of the original PONG seems to be as large as the screen itself and there aren't any visible borders. It's notable that many later versions and variants of PONG have visible borders (in the Tennis variant the borders are generally placed at the top and bottom of the playfield). So what happens, when the ball reaches the top or the bottom of the screen? I've no idea, but I guess that the ball just reappears at the other side of the playfield with its trajectory being otherwise unaffected, but of course I could be wrong and the ball is repelled (just like in all the versions with visible borders), so that the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.
The size of the paddle is something that could be altered in later versions (I don't know if it was possible to alter the paddle size in the original arcade version). In the pic above, you can see that the paddles are rather small, the Ball looks like a diagonal line, but that's just because it moved relatively fast when the photo was taken (the pic is from system16 and according to them, shows the original 1972 Atari Arcade version of PONG).

Secondly it's important to know something about the input device.

'Atari 2600 paddle controller'

The onscreen paddles are controlled with your paddle controller, which practically consisted of little wheels or better to say knobs that were rotatable through a fixed arc (usually about 330 degrees), with a stop at each end, that allowed accurate and fast movement along one axis. They were "absolute position controllers" which directly indicated the position of the paddle knob.
That's why playing PONG with a keyboard or joypad is rather pointless, cause the loss in speed and accuracy in contrast to a paddle controller, though a trackball or a mouse comes relatively close to emulating such a device.

At last, maybe the most important thing to know for me is how you, as a player, can determine the trajectory of the ball and more importantly, how to influence it with your paddle.

ATARI'S PONG - CONQUEST OF THE LIVING ROOMS

Compared to the Odyssey
The home version of Pong was mainly based on the arcade version. It contained only one game: tennis. Unlike consoles that appeared later, the controllers couldn't be separated from the device.
A revolutionary phenomenon was that Pong displayed the score on the screen. Players on the analogue Magnavox Odyssey had to write the score down or remember it. Also unlike the Odyssey, where the controllers contained an extra button to add spin to the ball, Pong automatically added spin. The amount of spinning depended on the segment of the paddle that hit the ball - like the arcade model each paddle contained eight segments.

So the on-screen paddles were segmented and the vertical motion of the ball could be purposely influenced by the player, if he could manage to hit the ball with a specific segment of his paddle.
The speed of the ball doesn't seem to be affected by these segments. I've read elsewhere, that the speed increased automatically over the course of the game, when the ball was hit by each players.
It's also important to note that, when they're talking about "spin" the writers generally seem to only refer to the angle at which the ball reflects off the paddle.



Afaik the ball doesn't curve, it still travels in a straight line. I haven't seen anyone ever mentioning a PONG Tennis variation, where the ball curves, it would be interesting to know if there exists one. While those curve physics may seem too complicated to be realised at that time, a PONG variation called "Rebound" (a Volleyball like game) offered curved trajectories and even gravity, so it would've been possible.


'Rebound'

As said, the paddle was divided in eight segments and afaik the further away from the center of the paddle the segment with which the ball was hit, was located, the bigger the angle would be, something like this I'd guess:



I've no idea how big the angles are and how much they differ between the segments, though I've stumbled over many PONG clones that offered the option to choose between 20° and 20°-40° angles before the game started so I suppose that the paddle could've been segmented like this (from top to bottom) when the 20°-40° option had been selected:

40°
30°
20°
0°
0°
20°
30°
40°

As always I'd like to know if someone could confirm or disagree with this. I've also no clue how big those segments were in relation to the ball or if some segments were bigger than others.

The last picture also only shows, what happens, when the ball travels horizontally and collides at an 90° angle with the paddle.
I don't know exactly what happens, when the ball already has some "spin" applied to itself, but imo there could be two possibilities:
a) The angle is "reset", as if the ball would travel exactly in a horizontal motion so that it doesn't actually matter at what angle tha ball hits the paddle.
b) It could also be culmulative (up to a certain degree at least), so that you could deflect the ball at the same angle, if you'd hit it with the centre, raise the angle even more, or lower the angle (so that the ball would travel horizontally again).

Doesn't sound so simple anymore, but it gets even worse.
I've found another description of the mechanics, which hints to another way of controlling the angle of the ball:

The evolution of gaming: Sports games
The ball would normally reflect off the paddle at the same angle it approached it from, but if the paddle was in motion it would impart some extra vertical motion, or "English" to the ball, adding an element of strategy to the game.

Here we have no mentioning of segments, but instead it seems, that the motion of the paddle itself would alter the angle of the balls trajectory. I could imagine, that the resulting angle would be calculated in relation to the vertical direction and speed in which the paddle moved, while making contact with the ball.
It's also interesting to see someone saying that PONG incorporated an element of strategy (although it may seem a little exagerated). So it's not just a pure reaction test?

1Up Essential 50: Pong
The ball's motion was affected by how and where it hit a paddle, and the longer a ball was in play the more quickly it moved.

At last, here's a description that leads you to assume that the interplay of both indicators (segment of paddle, movement of paddle) could've influenced the trajectory of the ball.

How is it that so many people seem to remember a different behaviour of the games mechanics? Is it because of the miriad of PONG clones, that offer subtle differences in comparison to Atari's original? Is it because it's just too long ago and memory isn't always that accurate or are the underlying principles of the balls behaviour just so hard to grasp?

Players liked Pong because no luck was involved and the more you played, the more skillful you became.

I hope you can help me to evaluate the quality of the competetive gameplay PONG offers and the skills required to master it ^_-

[Swaain]

Great idea for thread / read, I really like the idea of
trying to understand all aspects of a game's play mechanic (as opposed to its artwork, level design etc.). Sorry I can't help you out though - never played the original pong myself...

[Psyduck]

I guess Windjammers on Neogeo was a version of pong with spin, quite a different game to the original though.

[Leon Retro]

My brother made a game once called " Fist Of The Pong Dimension "

It was basically pong, but with sound-effects from the fist of the north star anime. The visuals were nice, with chunky metallic bars etc... It even had a title screen with speech, which proclaimed, " The Fist Of The Pong Dimension " .. in a deep powerful arcadey voice.

He was 9years old. An Amiga and Amos were his tools. I wish I had the disk now. I lost all the Amiga stuff years ago.

[babs]

I remember an old PC (I think it was PC) called Mortal Pong which was good fun too

[Mayhem]

Gotta admit, that's one pretty detailed look at Pong

I'm just glad to have touched this unit in my time...



This is the first Pong arcade machine built, I believe the one that ended up in Andy Cap's Tavern...

[buster_broon]

I guess Windjammers on Neogeo was a version of pong with spin, quite a different game to the original though.

but excellent nevertheless

its the game that sold me on the Neo Geo system

[Nijo]

Good summary of pong. I never knew what the mechanics were but it 'felt' like you could influence the ball direction by moving the bat during contact. It certainly didn't feel like the bat in (eg) arkenoid where contact location altered the angle significantly.
This is based on dim memories of my cousin's Atari, plus brief looks elsewhere. Last time I went to Game On in the science museum they had a version with 2 controller dials per player: left and right as well as the usual up and down. Bloody hard to play I can tell you.

[Ryo Saeba]

Great idea for thread / read, I really like the idea of
trying to understand all aspects of a game's play mechanic (as opposed to its artwork, level design etc.)

That's the part of a game that generally interests me the most, especially with such an influencing peace of videogame history, which was obviously all about its gameplay and therefore its mechanics.

@Mayhem: Oh man, I which I could play with this baby..^^'

My brother made a game once called " Fist Of The Pong Dimension "

It was basically pong, but with sound-effects from the fist of the north star anime. The visuals were nice, with chunky metallic bars etc... It even had a title screen with speech, which proclaimed, " The Fist Of The Pong Dimension " .. in a deep powerful arcadey voice.

He was 9years old. An Amiga and Amos were his tools. I wish I had the disk now. I lost all the Amiga stuff years ago.

Ah yeah.. the good old Amiga times.. (I still have my 500+ around here, I'll set it up in the next few days, just to play some rounds of Shufflepuck's Cafe, which is one of the very best Ball & Paddle games I've ever played, apart from a missing two player option that is).

PS: He was 9 years old and watched Fist of the North Star? Wasn't that the ultraviolent postapocalyptical thing with miriads of exploding heads?

Good summary of pong.

Oh, thx^^ but right now it's nothing more than few info bits gathered around the net and I don't even know if half of what I've written about the mechanics is true.

Too bad that there are no code examples of the original PONG game either, cause obviously, there is no code to begin with. These games were built around analog circuitry and even emulating those old games accurately is damn hard to do, cause as someone on another board wrote: "the problem is that you can't accurately ever emulate analog circuits with digital because of abstraction through quantisation".

All I've written right now about the indept mechanics of the game is mostly guesswork.. It would really help to get ahold of one of the real machines (I've seen a HomePONG machine lately, but at around 100 bucks it's a little too expensive for my taste) and its questionable if I could figure out the behaviour of the ball as accurately as I'd like, by just playing it.

So yeah, I'm a little stuck right now. The background information I need may only be gathered from people involved with the creation of those old machines or through locating and deciphering the old schematics of the PONG machine and that's really quite unimaginable.

So while it seems that I won't ever figure out all the details, it would be enough to know the fundamental behaviour of the game, like if the trajectory of the ball is affected by:
-the segment of the paddle with which the ball makes contact
-the vertical motion (speed?) of the paddle
-both factors influence it

It really kind of baffles me, how maybe the most important piece of gaming history, that everyone knows and recognises, isn't emulated nor documantated (in a sophisticated manner) anywhere.

Last time I went to Game On in the science museum they had a version with 2 controller dials per player: left and right as well as the usual up and down. Bloody hard to play I can tell you.

Ah yes, there have been later PONG variants which also allowed the horizontal positioning of your paddle. That's an entirely different beast I guess^^' but as an interesting side note I'd like to mention the Magnavox Odyssey (some of you may know, it was the first commercial video game console ever) which offered a kind of table tennis game, very similar to PONG. There you had no less than three knobs (two to control the vertical and horizontal positioning of your paddle and another one to control the spin or "english" applied to the ball), so it was kind of more sophisticated than PONg in terms of gameplay, but the real interesting part is that it came out months before the first arcade version PONG was manufactured (the PONG inventor Nolan Bushnell even got sued for copying the game idea and had to pay royalties).


Btw Windjammers is really ace, hope it comes out for the Virtual Console soon.

[elektronhjarnan]

I agree with Swaain; it's interesting to try and pick a game apart and understand all the underlying game mechanics...

But even if you manage to do that, it's harder yet to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes the game fun or interesting to play, and this is where it gets really interesting in my opinion.

[Ryo Saeba]

I agree with Swaain; it's interesting to try and pick a game apart and understand all the underlying game mechanics...

But even if you manage to do that, it's harder yet to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes the game fun or interesting to play, and this is where it gets really interesting in my opinion.

I'd say that figuring out how a game workes is the first and most important step to analyze and understand what makes it interesting or fun to play.
In the case of PONG, where the game is all about its gameplay and its mechanics, I won't be able to fully grasp what made it so fun to play, if I can't figure out how it really worked.

But yes you're right, I'll still have to come up with the right conclusions after I gathered all the info. That'll be interesting indeed.. damn I guess I do have to buy an original machine.
As said, unfortunately I've read at a MAME forum that we'll not see emulation (or rather simulation) of those old arcade machines in the forseeable future.
Someone said, that the machine would've to be approximately as fast as 8GHz to simulate those old analog circuit based games with an adequate accuracy.


PS:
Regarding the games mechanics, someone at another board said, that it doesn't influence the balls trajectory, if your paddle moved while making contact with the ball and that it's only important with which part (segment) of your paddle you hit the ball.
The illusion of altering the trajectory through moving your paddle while making contact came fro hitting the ball with another segment.
He also said that the ball was reflected from the top and bottom of the screen, even if there were no visual boundaries.
This is for the arcade version.

Can anyone confirm this or compare it with the Home PONG version?