Apparatus for generating enhanced interactive video game playfield environments

• US 4,890,833 A
• Filed: 04/18/1988
• Issued: 01/02/1990
• Est. Priority Date: 05/18/1987
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Williams Electronics Games Inc. (Scientific Games Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Williams Electronics Games Inc. (Scientific Games Corporation)
• Inventors: Smolucha, Walter E., Bleich, Charles R., Lantz, Kenneth F., Wepner, Gregory W., Herschler, Scott C.
• Primary Examiner(s): Picard, Leo P.
• Application Number:
  US07/182,387
• Time in Patent Office: 624 Days
• Field of Search: 273/1 E, 273/85 G, 273/DIG. 28, 340/720, 340/723-725
• US Class Current: 463/31
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 9/22 using the same beam for more than one primary colour information H04N9/27 takes precedence

Abstract

A video game or the like including a real-time interactive video disk game-play background generation system. The disk player incorporates track skipping capability which is under the direct control of the game processor, on a frame-by-frame basis, whereby substantially instantaneous jumps to alternative video scenes can be effected in response to changing game play. Video scene data is stored on the disk in horizontally compressed format. A video expander/scroller effectively stretches the compressed video from the disk by a factor of two and selects, under game processor control, one frame width, or one-half the expanded background scene, for display. A color programmable read-only-memory (PROM) having at least two pre-programmed color pallets is provided to redefine color relationships of game symbols stored in read-only-memory (ROM) thereby reducing the storage of redundant game symbol data in this ROM.

Claims

1. In a video display system having a raster scan display monitor, a processor, means for generating a raster scan video signal for display on the monitor, the raster scan video signal comprised of a plurality of video scan lines, means for expanding each scan line and for transmitting only a portion of such expanded scan line to the display monitor.

2. The system of claim 1 including scrolling means for selecting the portion of said expanded scan line to be displayed on said display monitor, whereby apparent motion with respect to the video picture is obtained by changing the relative location of said displayed portion.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the expanding means includes read/write memory means for storing at least selected portions of the video signal from the generating means and for outputting said selected portions to the video monitor;

means for periodically sampling the video signal from the generating means, first clock means for writing the video signal samples into the read/write memory means, second clock means for reading the video samples from memory, the frequency of the first clock means being greater than the frequency of the second clock means whereby only a portion of each video scan line from the generating means is read to the raster scan monitor during each scan of the monitor.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein the expanding means includes first and second read/write memory means each for storing a selected portion of a video scan line, means for alternately writing the selected portion of sequential scan lines to the first and second memory means, means for alternately reading the selected portion of the video scan lines stored in the first and second memory means to the display monitor, the means for reading and writing being synchronized such that writing to the first and second memory means occurs during reading of the second and first memory means respectively.

5. The system of claim 4 wherein the means for reading the video scan lines stored in the memory means to the video monitor occurs at a rate slower than the corresponding writing of the video scan lines into the memory thereby resulting in the video picture from the video generator means being displayed on the monitor in an expanded form with respect to the axis of the scan lines.

6. The system of claim 4 wherein the means for reading the video scan lines stored in the memory means to the video monitor occurs at a rate greater than the corresponding writing of the video scan lines into the memory thereby resulting in the video picture from the video generator means being displayed on the monitor in a compressed form with respect to the axis of the scan lines.

7. The system of claim 4 or 5 including a scrolling means for selecting said portion of the video scan lines to be stored in the memory means and displayed on the monitor means.

8. The system of claim 7 including a read address counter and a write address counter operatively connected to the memory means whereby each scan line is defined by a plurality of video picture elements stored in sequential addresses of the memory means.

9. The video game of claim 8 including scrolling start address latch operatively connected to the game processor and to the write address counter, the scrolling start address being preset into the write address counter at the beginning of each scan line;

write inhibit means operatively connected to the write address counter, writing from the video generator means to the memory means being inhibited until the write address counter reaches the zero state thereby defining the start address of said selected portion of the video scan line from the video generator means.