NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Rescue on Fractalus!

Rescue On Fractalus! is a 1985 computer game created by Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts Entertainment). It was originally released for the Atari 8-bit systems, such as the Atari 800 and the Atari 5200. It was also ported to other popular platforms of the day, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum (by Dalali Software Ltd), Amstrad, Tandy Color Computer 3 and Commodore 64. The game was one of the first two products from the fledgling Lucasfilm Computer Division Games Group led by Peter Langston. screenshot Atari 5200 Rescue_On_Fractalus, made myself. ... screenshot Atari 5200 Rescue_On_Fractalus, made myself. ... The Atari 5200 is a video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari. ... 1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... Official LucasArts logo LucasArts Entertainment Company (sometimes shortened to LEC), is a video game developer and publisher. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... An Atari 800XL, one of the most popular machines in the series. ... Atari built a series of 8-bit home computers based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU, starting in 1979. ... The Atari 5200 is a video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari. ... In computer science, porting is the adaptation of a piece of software so that it will function in a different computing environment to that for which it was originally written. ... The 1977 Apple II, complete with integrated keyboard, color graphics, sound, a plastic case and eight expansion slots. ... The ZX Spectrum is a home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd. ... Amstrad is a manufacturer of electronics based in Brentwood in Essex, England and founded in 1968 by Sir Alan Michael Sugar in the UK. The name is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading. ... 4k TRS-80 Color Computer from 1981, 26-3001 The Radio Shack TRS-80 color computer (also called Tandy Color Computer, or CoCo) was a home computer based around the Motorola 6809E processor and part of the TRS-80 line. ... The Commodore 64 is the best selling single personal computer model of all time. ... Lucasfilm Ltd. ... Peter Langston is a computer programmer who wrote and distributed for free several games for Unix system in the 1970s, including versions of Empire and an Oracle. ...

1 Synopsis
- 1.1 Flying
- 1.2 Rescue
2 Trivia
3 Credits from the game manual
4 Unreleased versions
5 References
6 See also
- 6.1 External links

Synopsis

Flying

The game utilized fractal technology to create the craggy mountains of an alien planet, where the visilibility was drastically reduced by a gaseous atmosphere. The player controlled a fictional Valkyrie space fighter ^[1] (converted for SAR duty) from a first-person view, attempting to land and pick up downed Ethercorps pilots. Some of these mountains held anti-aircraft guns, which had to be avoided or destroyed. Due to the varied terrain, the direction finder had to be used to locate the pilots, whose visual beacons were often masked by mountain ridges. The boundary of the Mandelbrot set is a famous example of a fractal. ... View of Jupiters active atmosphere, including the Great Red Spot. ... The Valkyries Vigil, by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Robert Hughes. ... Search and Rescue (acronym SAR) is an operation mounted by emergency services, often well-trained volunteers, to find someone believed to be in distress, lost, sick or injured either in a remote or difficult to access area, such as mountains, desert or forest (Wilderness search and rescue), or at sea... American troops man an anti-aircraft gun near the Algerian coastline in 1943 Anti-aircraft warfare, or air defense, is any method of engaging military aircraft in combat from the ground. ... A radio direction finder, or RDF, is a device for finding the direction to a radio source. ...

At higher levels, the enemy Jaggis began flying kamikaze saucers at you. Your mission area also moved into day/night boundaries. Night missions were particularly difficult, requiring diligent use of the altimeter to avoid crashing. It has been suggested that Personnel involved in the development of World War II suicide attacks be merged into this article or section. ... A Radar Altimeter measures altitude above the terrain presently beneath the aircraft. ...

The thick, gaseous atmosphere was sufficiently acidic that downed pilots' craft were being slowly disintegrated. An exposed pilot's survival time outside his craft was less than a minute, due to his flight suit and helmet literally dissolving. This made it imperative that the player rescue pilots as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Rescue

After landing within sufficient "walking" proximity to the pilot, the player would shut down the jet's engine, also turning off the ship's shields. (Turning on the engines and the shields prematurely would incinerate the exposed pilot.) The downed pilot would then disembark his crashed ship, run down to the Valkyrie (out of sight of the cockpit), and tap on the crew entry door; the player could then open up and let the pilot in (rescue complete). Failing to open the door would let a human pilot die, as his knocking on the hatch would become at first frantic, then slower and more feeble as they perished in the corrosive environment.

As an amusing twist on this relatively straightforward premise, some of the "pilots in distress" were actually hostile aliens in disguise. (Eagle-eyed players would notice that the aliens' helmets were usually green, not the customary orange, or purple for ace pilots.) After landing near a downed pilot, the player would watch him run off-screen, and then wait for several tense seconds—if it was human, the familiar, frantic "tap-tap" noise would be heard from the ship's hatch; otherwise, the alien Jaggi would suddenly jump back into view, sans helmet, roaring and trying to smash into the cockpit. Unless the player restored the ship's shields, the windscreen would crack open and kill the pilot. Likewise, inadvertantly letting a Jaggi pilot into the player's ship resulted in disastrous results.

Some old-time gamers claim that this is the first time a computer game included a true, "shock appeal" moment.

Trivia

The development version of this game was called Behind Jaggi Lines!. This has a double meaning. The aliens in the game are called "Jaggi", so when playing the game you are flying "Behind Jaggi Lines". The word "Jaggi" was derived from "jagged" during development due to the fact that the graphics depicting the cockpit of the Valkyrie spacecraft were not anti-aliased and are therefore very "jagged". So the player is "Behind Jagged Lines". It's believed that this game is the origin of the term jaggies for aliased artifacts in raster images. In digital signal processing, anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing aliasing (jagged or blocky patterns) when representing a high-resolution signal at a lower resolution. ... Jaggies are the informal name for aliasing artifacts in raster images, often caused by non-linear mixing effects producing high-frequency components and/or missing or poor antialiasing filtering prior to sampling. ... On statistics, signal processing, and related disciplines, aliasing is an effect that causes different continuous signals to become indistinguishable (or aliases of one another) when sampled. ... Suppose the smiley face in the top left corner is an RGB bitmap image. ...

The game, as many of other Lucasfilm Games' early releases (c.f. Ballblazer), was widely available to the computer underground on pirate bulletin boards. Screenshot Ballblazer on the Atari 5200 Ballblazer is a 1985 computer game created by Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts Entertainment). ...

Disk and cartridge based versions, on the Atari 800, also had an extra intro screen depicting the pilot's mothership.

A Poster of the Game appears in Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders A screenshot of Zak McKracken, Enhanced EGA PC version. ...

Credits from the game manual

Rescue on Fractalus! was created by the Lucasfilm Computer Division Games Group. David Fox directed the project and created the concept, transition scenes, animation, and documentation. Loren Carpenter of the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project did the 3-D fractal landscape image generation and co-created the concept. Charlie Kellner was responsible for animation, music, sound, and flight dynamics; Gary Winnick provided animation; David Levine provided support; and Peter Langston, the Games Group Leader, contributed to the concept and designed night flying, music, and sound. Special thanks to George Lucas. Lucasfilm Ltd. ... David Fox is a multimedia producer, best known for his early work on LucasArts games, most notably Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. ... Loren Carpenter (born 1947) is a computer graphics researcher and developer. ... self portrait David Levine (born December 20, 1926), American caricaturist, noted for his caricatures in the The New York Review of Books. ... Peter Langston is a computer programmer who wrote and distributed for free several games for Unix system in the 1970s, including versions of Empire and an Oracle. ... George Walton Lucas, Jr. ...

Unreleased versions

In 2004, an unreleased prototype of Rescue on Fractalus! for the Atari 7800 was found in the possession of its original programmers. While most of the core elements of the game were intact, the project was cancelled before the gameplay could be completed. The 7800 version would have taken advantage of the system's better graphical performance to produce a much smoother simulation of the planet Fractalus. The Atari 7800 is a video game console released by Atari in June 1986 (a test market release occurred two years earlier). ...

References

^ Atari Age scan of original game manual

Contents

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