suspense and the producer of radio's outstanding theater of thrills the master of mystery and adventure William and Robeson one of the greatest pleasures we find in this business of keeping you in suspense is the discovery of new talent and of unusual story twists and what you're about to hear we think we have combined both the twist you'll never guess it no matter how familiar you are with that mystical literary device the ventriloquist dummy and the new talent two young men Bob Jorn whose first radio play this is and DeForest Kelly a bright new luminary in the Hollywood firmament put them all together you have a strange half-hour ahead listen listen then as DeForest Kelly stars in Flesh Peddler which begins in exactly one minute it took mighty men to conquer mighty America and the men set before themselves even mightier heroes some real some not for instance there was the legendary Keele Boatman Mike Fink a let Mike tell you about himself I'm a salt river rower I'm a ring-tailed squealer I'm a regular screamer from the old Massasip whoop I'm the very infant that refused his milk before his eyes was open and called out for a bottle of old rye I love the women and I'm chock full of fat I'm half wild horse and half cock-eyed alligator I can hit like fourth-proof lightning and every liquor making the woods let's in an acre of sunshine I can outrun out jump out shoot out brag out drink and out fight any man from Pittsburgh to New Orleans and back again the St. Louis come on you flatters you bargers you milk white mechanics and see how tough I am to jaw I had a fight for two days and I'm spying for exercise folklore belongs to every nation's legendary past and I guess we Americans have our share of some tall ones and now mr. de Forest Kelly in flesh peddler a tale well calculated to keep you in I'm an agent a booking agent flesh peddlers we are sometimes unkindly called but I don't pedal flesh I saw a talent singers musicians nightclub acts and I'm pretty good at it I've got an instinct for talent when I find a new act it's really got it I go after it until it's mine only the ventriloquist team of Wilson and Oliver I wish I'd never heard of them then I could sleep better nights my wife and I were vacationing in the Catskills last summer and the night before we would do back in New York a carnival pulled into town I don't want to sound like a snob but to me the carnival is the lowest form of show business I hate them but my wife Gloria loves them since I love Gloria we went to the carnival Pete isn't it exciting it's just cheap noise oh I wish it had come to town sooner I wish it hadn't come till tomorrow oh come on Pete you might even find some new talent here why not freaks are for side shows honey not class spots you never can tell a bearded lady might go great at the cope I can tell right here for the wonder of the midway hey the one and only Alexander Wilson and his lovable little dummy pal Oliver hey you've seen Ben Phillip is before you say hey but you never seen anything to eat for Wilson the remarkable Wilson and Oliver you know passes by friends he can't go in but the triliquist a dime a dozen come on honey you've seen a hundred just like him or maybe he's one in a hundred all right all right we pushed through into the small tent and took our places on the hard uncomfortable benches Wilson was already seated on the platform a typical childishly dressed dummy on his lap he was a man in his 50s I'd say with the saddest face I've seen in 15 years of show business when the people were in he suddenly sprang the dummy to life you're sure Oliver sure but then say hello to the people hello to the people oh now come Oliver you can do better than that I can yeah well you ought to know the routine was awful dull time worn but for some reason this Wilson fascinated me he had a talent all right his handling of the dummy was amazingly accurate as the act went on I began to think that Wilson was even better than the Barker said he was and he was going over with the house Wilson had Oliver sing while he himself smoked a cigarette after a few more gag routines and a couple of neat tricks the performance is over and I knew I had to sign the act I parked glory on the merry-go-round and then went looking for Wilson I walked back of the midway through the maze of painted trailers that were home to Carney people suddenly the door to one of them flew open and a woman stepped out a neatly trimmed beard covering her chin what do you want I'm looking for Alexander Wilson Wilson why I'm a talent agent from New York I'd like to talk to him agent yes Peter Harris in Europe Bernice it's on the posters oh yes of course Bernice what do you want with Alexander Wilson I told you I was a Bernice talent agent never mind go back in agent I'm looking for Mr. Wilson oh well I'm Arthur you caught my knife act you know I could pin a flight to a penny of quiet don't mind him flesh peddler go away go home agents are no good for us leave Wilson alone and you know like I could put out a candle flame with a pen night at 30 feet agent man Arthur and go back in maybe he could sell my act go in white Wilson's in trailer 17 agent man hey if you ever need it shut up Arthur shut up get in there forget what he said Arthur is well he isn't quite bright you know what I mean yeah what's so wrong about seeing Wilson there are plenty acts like his you don't need him well you've got my curiosity going now Bernice I hadn't intended that but forget your curiosity and go home now why believe me flesh peddler you will thank me for this advice someday which is trailer 17 I couldn't see why Bernice was so healthy was none of her business anyway I roamed through the trailers with my cigarette lighter held high looking for number 17 finally I found it a small aluminum antiques set apart from the rest with the pre-war Chevy attached to it the trailer was completely dark mr. Wilson I'm Peter Harris I'd like to talk to you what do you want well I'm an agent mr. Wilson I'd like to see you just a minute yes I just caught your act mr. Wilson enjoyed it very much thank you I'd like to do business with you do business here's my card my office places acts on all four networks and all the principal nightclub I'm afraid it's out of the question I never played nightclubs but I never played nightclubs mr. Harris well could I come in for a moment explain my setup maybe when you know forgive me for appearing short but I I'm not interested in any offer you have to make begin with I can get you 200 a week excuse me 250 I'm very tired if you'll pardon me okay mr. Wilson but will you tell me why you want to stay with a two-bit freak show when you could make a small fortune working with me no no I'm afraid I can't tell you good night I suppose I should have forgotten all about it but I'm not used to the brush off like I say when I see an act I want I go after it until I get it and then there was something about Wilson's reluctance that wasn't somehow on the level as I walked back toward the bright lights the noise of the midway a figure step from behind one of the darkened trailers so you saw oh Bernice yes I saw him and are you satisfying not at all just more curious exactly only fools push their noses into other people's business flesh peddler um Harris is the name and only fools get themselves and other people into trouble trouble all I wanted was to offer him a nice fat job 250 a week and he slammed the door in my face Alexander Wilson cannot leave this carnival why you don't know mr. Harris and you're not going to know know what stop asking foolish questions your curiosity can do a great deal of harm Bernice where does the carnival go from here really mr. Harris you don't expect me to look I can ask any one of the barkers are set up men ask them then all right I will but remember flesh peddler if you follow us to pick up see how pockypsy very well now you know but if you follow us and try to see Wilson again you are a fool in just a moment we continue with one of the more colorful lumberjacks of the Midwest was a lad named whiskey jack sort of fellow who could single-handed lick an entire logging crew or swim one of the great lakes with one hand tied behind his back but as in all heroes lives there came a tender moment as legend recalls whiskey jack was not much for learning certainly couldn't write his name it was always the big X that he made on any slip of paper then one day he came in quiet like a little subdued and when they gave him his pay envelope he signed for it with great deliberation the clerk looked stopped and called out hey jack why the two X's whiskey jack replied my son I have just met me a lovely young lady in the next river town and we was hitched so I thought it only proper and fitting that a married man should change his name folklore belongs to every nation's legendary past and I guess we Americans have some good ones and now we continue with the second act of flesh peddler starring mr. de forest Kelly a tale well calculated to keep you in glory and I drove back to Manhattan the next morning and two days later I hopped to Poughkeepsie local out of Grand Central the more I thought about Wilson the more of a challenge he became I wanted him for my less but more than that I wanted to find out what was behind Bernice's strange attitude now I wish I'd forgotten about the whole thing and Poughkeepsie I checked into hotel took a cab to the carnival grounds at the edge of town it was late afternoon as I pulled up in front of the gaudy tents and booths waiting for the evening crowds I made my way through the cluttered midway looking for Wilson's aluminum trailer and hoping I wouldn't run into Bernice Asian man I hey Asian man hello hello remember me Arthur the knife thrower I can put a fly to a penny yes I remember you and you've come for me what's that you come always wait to get me for your agency well no I'm afraid not oh well that's all right I mean you know like I've been given it a lot of thought and I don't think I could go with you anyway I see so I couldn't leave Bernice in the carnival my sister says Carney folk should stay with Carney folk your sister Bernice oh Arthur why is Bernice so so close mouth about mr. Wilson she acts as though she's afraid of him I'll ask Carney folks stick together see like we don't like other people sticking their noses into our business Bernice said that yes Arthur where's mr. Wilson's trailer I don't know oh come now Arthur Bernice says you know I know Bernice says too much I don't know anything agent man well I have to go practice my knife so now I gotta practice every day you know you know well it was clear Bernice had given Arthur his instructions and no thanks to him I finally found Wilson's trailer set off from the rest mr. Wilson mr. Wilson the door to the trailer was unlocked and it swung open at my mouth Wilson obviously wasn't there but I didn't think he had mine if I went in and waited the inside of the trailer was dim and musty I left the door open to let in what little sunlight the day had left and sat in the lone chair in front of the makeup table I was just about to reach for a cigarette when I had the feeling that I wasn't alone I turned slowly in the chair in the back of my neck began to crawl there on a shabby army cot was Wilson's dummy propped up against the wall the steady unchanging expression of its face with the staring eyes and painted smile ran back at me it was weird and uncomfortable to be so close to this lifeless thing unmoving wooden it seems so real and alive on the platform in the tent I tried to ignore it but I couldn't I looked away but I could still feel it there grinning at me and the early evening dimness when I could stand it no longer I got up and walked out of the trailer and bump right into Bernice what did I tell you flesh peddler Bernice I what were you doing in there waiting for Wilson what did I tell you now look Bernice I don't like you or anyone else tell me what I can or can't do I want to see Wilson again I'm waiting here come with me please I must talk to you privately in my trailer sit down well what's on your mind Bernice I didn't really think you'd follow us I told you I'm not easily discouraged Mr. Harris I must warn you again to leave now without seeing Wilson I don't think you understand me I'm used to getting what I go after Mr. Harris I intend to see Wilson to try to talk him into signing a contract and you've said so far all that you've said is go away can you give me a good reason for not seeing him okay then why did you insist on dragging me in here Mr. Harris can you assure me your interest in Wilson does not go beyond signing him as a client what do you mean your interest in Wilson wouldn't by chance be in his past his private life and not in his professional talent I never heard of him until I caught his act three days ago Mr. Harris I'd hoped I wouldn't have to tell you this I didn't realize you were so stubborn but yes well Alexander Wilson lost his mind many years ago that doesn't disturb you it might if I believe Japanese what I don't think Wilson's nuts apparently something's bothering him something big maybe but it's not insanity I suppose you know Wilson better than I do I didn't say that but a man in my business meets every kind of person there is the cheats the phone is the right guys the bum so so you develop an instinct about people and my instinct tells me Wilson is not insane you'll have to try something better to scare me off Mr. Harris Wilson thinks he's a murderer you are trying to scare me aren't you if that's necessary to protect you and us yes you think he might murder me too I don't mean that actually never murdered anyone look Bernice you don't make sense don't you understand no I said Alexander Wilson thinks he is a murderer he thinks he murdered a woman a long time ago he's lived with this thought for years nourished it until he really believes it it's driven him out of his mind Bernice do you expect me to believe a cockamamie story like that it's the truth so don't you see the only place for him is here in the carnival with his own kind we understand why hasn't anyone tried to help him to make him realize beyond that now but with us he's all right outside is disturb him you haven't scared me off Bernice you got to stay away from him why if anything you've told me is true it's only half the truth it's enough for you to know from you maybe perhaps Wilson will tell me the rest I've warned you I will not warn you again oh Bernice oh hello again agent man hi Arthur how's your throwing arm well I'm in Arthur mr. Harris is just leaving yes so long Bernice goodbye mr. Harris when the trailer door closed behind me I guess Bernice would start talking her fury out on Arthur so I moved around to the small window in the back of the trailer to see if I could learn anything more I don't care I don't even want you to say hello to him nothing understand well you know I just say hello don't hurt does it Bernice I don't want you to open your mouth in front of that man even to yawn I had to lie to him to get him away from here and I don't want you saying anything to bring him back all right Bernice just pray he goes back to his flex peddling in New York on that first break just as I thought Bernice had lied to me I was determined to get to the bottom of this double talk about Wilson more than ever this had become more important to me than signing him to the usual seven-year management contract when I got back to Wilson's trailer there was a light inside who's there it's Peter Harris again who Peter Harris I spoke to you a few days ago and what do you want I want to talk to you mr. Wilson go away but I've come all the way from New York I must ask you to leave at once look mr. Wilson I'm not a detective all I wanted when I first met you was to book you into the big time but now there's something more I think you need help you need help badly no you're mistaken and I come in and talk to you good heavens no well how about having a drink with me before the show you look like you could use one please leave me alone Wilson Wilson don't you see what these people are doing to you for some reason you're a haunted man and this carnival is the worst place in the world leave me now leave me please these people are all the help I need leave me alone I'll be at the hotel overnight if you change your mind Wilson call me I was mad if he wanted to rot there going with a carnival until it wasted away it was no business of mine I had a few drinks in my room at the hotel phone Gloria that I'd be home the next day went to bed yes Wilson right right away what time is it well I sure okay where are you calling from where is it okay it took me longer to wake the cab driver in front of the hotel than it did to get to the carnival grounds I told the cab to wait and made my way through the dark intense and trailers to number 17 come in what's the matter mr. Harris I've changed my mind I I want to leave with you tonight tonight well what's the mr. Harris you're the first person outside of the carnival I've talked to him more than two years you're the first person I've had the courage to approach go on I trust you mr. Harris I can't see why but I know you'll believe me and help me I can't live like this anymore sure now just taking no no no listen two years ago I killed a woman beautiful woman I loved her more than I've ever loved anything or anyone in my life when I tried to tell her how much I loved it she laughed at me I couldn't stand that laugh I understand Wilson but that isn't exactly justification she and her son she was divorced we're working in this very carnival when I first saw her back in my hometown in Illinois yes I fell in love oh you can call me a room anything but I was in love I quit my job and followed the carnival for months that's how much I loved her and she laughed at me so I shout her one night and then I wanted to die too and when I saw her lying there at my feet I I wanted them to hang me but they laughed at me they laughed at the law the police that they didn't believe I'd done anything they wouldn't let me give myself up where did you get this crazy idea will it isn't a crazy idea it's the truth look lots of people get lots of funny ideas they think about something they want to do and they think about it so much that they they really believe they've done it was real from the beginning I killed her I did but there was no evidence against me listen Wilson you're not making sense listen he destroyed every bit of evidence so he could punish me himself the police couldn't arrest or even suspect me who destroyed what evidence Wilson her son Oliver Oliver yes Mr. Harris he's referring to me a trick no Wilson was too upset to be tricky me I wheeled the sound of his voice and there in the doorway stood Wilson's dummy Oliver a small but capable pistol in his hand you are just as curious as Bernice said you were a Mr. Harris I love her Bernice told me a lot about you you had to know and now you do no you're not you're shocked to learn I'm a midget I must admit you gave me quite a start when you made yourself at home in the trailer this afternoon but that was it was me Mr. Harris fortunately I was already made up for the evening performance Mr. Harris hasn't done anything Oliver let him go that depends on you you see Mr. Harris Wilson is no ventriloquist I guess that's obvious now it is Wilson murdered my mother and I protected him from the police but why why so the law couldn't punish him what satisfaction will there been for me if they just hanged him he'd been dead at an instant is that enough punishment for a man who was murdered your mother no he deserved more and I've given it to him I've punished Alexander Wilson for years that's right Mr. Harris he's held us over my head ever since sitting on my lap at every performance reminding me nice and day well I've had as much as I can stand so go ahead Oliver shoot shoot Oliver be sensible if you pull that trigger there in a year they Bernice and Arthur and everyone else Bernice already knows and now I don't care if the others do I haven't said shoot me get it over with shoot me your monster shoot me with horror frozen on his face Wilson slid to the floor dead and Oliver turned on me pupils of his eyes tiny with madness and his frail little body trembling I'm afraid this is one act you can't book Mr. Harris Oliver you wanted to know everything Oliver and I'm really sorry for your sake he asked me to let you go but under the circumstances no I'm sorry mr. flash by my head and landed quivered in Oliver's chest a long gleaming knife blade and there was Arthur in the doorway of the trailer with Bernice his face like stone watching Oliver crumpled a little distance to the floor slowly the faces of the others appeared in the doorway silent the terror I was holding back was a physical pain I walked to the door and stood looking down at the little body lying awkwardly like a dummy now a lifeless thing and moving staring even with the traces of a painted smile grinning up at me this couldn't have gone on any longer I suppose the police will come now and at last there'll be an end to it go home flesh peddler and forget all about us I went home but I haven't forgotten and I'm afraid I never will suspense in which to forest Kelly starred in William and Robeson's production of flesh peddler written by Robert Jiren suspense has been brought to you through the worldwide facilities of the United States armed forces radio and television service


All right, Lou. This is your chance. Fight for the little guy. Let's talk kings, shall we? Have game ahead of the Lakers right now. So the whole trying to avoid that nine seed and all the goodness that comes with that, Lou, talk to me about the importance of that and why they can do it. Listen, it's probably the most important thing of their season so far. When it comes down to trying to win one game to eliminate Steph Curry from playoff contention, you don't want to be the team in the way of that. You don't want to be in the team in the way of a championship caliber group that knows what it takes to win big games like this. And so if I'm the Sacramento Kings, I'm avoiding this at all costs. We have a term in the NBA. Do your work early. They have an opportunity to do your work early so you're not in that position. So get it done now. So you won't put yourselves against the wall where you have to deal with a Steph Curry and a motivated Golden State Warriors basketball team. So I still like the Kings, but if they're smart, get it done before you put yourselves in this position now. I'm sure that's going to be the message coming from coach going into these last few games. I feel like we asked the same question at the end of last season, Chandler. And I know the injuries for the Kings that you can't predict that. It's just a bad luck part of the whole thing. But are they missing something, maybe one piece, two pieces to, for us to take them more seriously each year as a contender? Yeah, they are. And they know that they know as good as Fox and Subonis are and the stats they've put up this year, that they're still overlooked and they still don't compare to kind of these other duos in the league. They're just too elite. They're too good. And when you do have a guy like Monk and a guy like Kevin Herter and they go out at this point of the season, that's a huge blow to them. Especially as we're talking about the possible six man of the year and arguably their best outside shooter that aren't going to be available now in the most important time of the season. So this is the team that we're always going to overlook and they've had up and down the year. They had a great run last year and still we somehow believe more in the Warriors, right? And the Lakers and these big, the end of the bullies. And it's crazy, but the Kings are definitely, they're just missing something. And I love Murray. I think they try and do a move where they get off Harrison Barnes this year and kind of add that real third option to kind of put with Fox and Subbonus. But like Lou said, as much as the Lakers and they don't want to be in this play in the nine, 10 spot, the Kings definitely don't want to be in the nine, 10 spot. So when you look at the game tonight, I think this means more to them than it does to Oklahoma City. This game is huge. This is a season saving moment game for them to where if they can get this, then they're looking at like a New Orleans or Lakers. At least they get the two games in the play in. This is a huge game for the Kings tonight. So I actually, I don't know if they'll win, but if I had to bet, I'm definitely taking Kings plus five and a half because I think their positioning is more important right now than the Thunders, you know, one through three. Where is this game tonight? At Thunder. At Thunder. Does that matter to you? Yeah. No, it's hard. It's a little tougher than, yeah, a little tougher on the road. Who knows, but I still like, no, I'm sorry, I still like the Kings in this game. Like you said, highly motivated. OKC could move up in the standings. They can't go down. So like you said, it might get tricky with lineups with them, too, at this point of the season, trying to go into the postseason in one piece. So who knows? But I like the Kings in this one.


Nanotechnology is a rapidly growing field of pharmaceutical science that involves the use of particles at the nanoscale level. In recent years, the use of chemical compounds and physical techniques have been prevalent, but the recognition of their harmful effects on health and environment has led to a shift towards greener methods such as using plant extracts and metabolites to produce nanoparticles. Green synthesis is now the buzzword for combining nanoparticles with plants or their metabolites. This method is especially beneficial due to its reduced toxicity compared to conventional methods. In this review, we discussed the various perspectives of using green methods to produce nanoparticles from plants and their metabolites. Characterization methods are also discussed, as well as applications of these nanoparticles. This article was authored by Aman Gore and Narendra Kumar Jain.


What impresses me about Shepard is the very same thing that impresses me everywhere else. Like if I come somewhere and I'm impressed, it's the human weapon system. It's the airman, right? It's the five people we just gave coins to that I feel strongly we could have found, I don't know, have any more 100 more out there. I could find airmen like them at our other wings. Like they're there. They're doing different things on a daily basis, but they are why we win our nation's war. And so I'm continuously impressed by the people. They are our greatest resource and we have fewer of them than we've ever had. So we keep asking them to do more and more and we keep asking them to do it on a voluntary basis. Shepard fit into the bigger picture of AETC in the Air Force. And I say Shepard is the bigger picture of AETC in the Air Force. Shepard is like a microcosm of the entire Air Force. You got the 80 and 82. You got the NATO mission, the coalition here.  So you have the mob and the fob. And you have airmen who start here and come back here repeatedly. You have civilians and contractors. You have white jets. I mean, it's like what? So I say, what don't you have here? We fight our nation's wars as a unit. And unit cohesion is really hard. And the trust that is required for unit cohesion is hard to build over the Zoom screen or the CVR screen. There is no replacement for face-to-face and human contact and being able to go out and see it, do it, feel it and be energized by it. So what I've learned is you're never done learning. And there's always something right around the corner that I don't know that I need to learn, which is the value of being here.


Top Benefits of Knowing a Student's Native Language Experience with foreign language is beneficial for both the teacher and the student. If students know that their teacher has some prior knowledge of their native language, it will make early communication easier for both parties. While I feel learning the student's language is important for early communication, it shouldn't be used more than needed. The goal of the TEFL teacher is to assist students in the acquisition of the English language. It is possible that using the student's native language could present difficulties. I believe that committing a student on correctly completing a task in both English and their native language creates another learning opportunity for them. If the TEFL teacher has some experience with the student's native language, it makes first-class introductions more relaxed. While this isn't required, I feel it gives the students more opportunities to ask questions or ease into discussion if they are not yet able to do so in English. Helping Beginner Learners During the process of learning a second language personally, I found it extremely helpful to have the person, place, or thing being a reference spoken in English and the second language. I feel that this is reasonable to do with early learners as they begin their journey into the English language. As students begin to associate items with their English names, the teacher could slowly eliminate the use of the native language. This slow transition is especially helpful for young learners who may not have prior knowledge of English before taking the TEFL course. If students have prior knowledge of English before taking the course, it might become positive or negative depending on the English they have learned. If the English they learned is incorrect, it will be difficult to correct their mistakes. However, if they have learnt correct English, it could be very beneficial. It puts students with even a small amount of foreign language experience off to a good start. Helping the teacher to settle in her, his new country. When creating the initial lesson plans that involve peer work, it is important to place students with prior English experience with those who don't possess experience. This helps create a positive environment that elicits the use of English between peers. I feel that bearing students who have different levels of English is a great way to create opportunities for both parties to speak the language. Outside of the classroom, it's imperative that the teacher identifies with the native language. For a decent quality of life in a foreign country, it is necessary to possess a base understanding of the country's language you wish to work in. Even simple things such as ordering food, purchasing supplies, and getting directions require that you have adequate knowledge of the native language. If the teacher has experience in the local language, the transition will be easier. To conclude, having experience in the local language is very beneficial for a tough course. This applies to both the teacher and the student, but more importantly, the teacher. Having this experience will build rapport and make the class more enjoyable for both parties. Are you ready to teach English overseas? Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.


QuickBooks Online 2024 Comparative Profit and Loss P&L or Income Statement. Get ready and clear your mind because we don't overanalyze. We Intuit with Intuits. QuickBooks Online 2024 Here we are online in our browser searching for QuickBooks Online Test Drive looking for the result that has Intuit.com and the URL Intuit being the owner of QuickBooks selecting the United States version of the software and verifying that we're not a robot. Opening up our major financial statement reports like we do every time. Reports on the left hand side. We're in the favorites. Right clicking on that balance sheet. Open link in new tab. Right click on the profit and loss otherwise known as the income statement. Our point of focus in this presentation. Open the link in a new tab. Let's close this first tab. We don't need that. Back to the middle tab. Closing up the hamburger. We're going to change that range. Bringing it back to 2023. 010123 tab. 123123 tab. Run it to refresh it. Let's tab to the right and close up the hamburger and then change that range once again. Back in time. We're going back in time people. 010123 tab. 123123 tab. Run it to refresh it. There's our profit and loss otherwise known as the income statement sometimes abbreviated as the P&L report. We looked at last time the general comparison of the balance sheet income statement and the profit and loss general report as it is here. Like with the balance sheet now we could run multiple different formats of the profit and loss report. Remember that in future presentations as well we went through a lot of the formatting tools up top. We won't go through all of the different customization and formatting tools again because most of them will be very similar from report to report. However, we do want to point out that there's that difference between whether a report is a point in time report as the balance sheet is. Meaning it has one date being reported here compared to a report that has a range of time such as the profit and loss report that is reporting activity or performance over that time range. So now we're when we do these comparative reports for example you're going to notice some differences in that time range report versus the point in time report. Okay so if we did some comparative reports we can do a similar process as we did with the balance sheet we might say I want to compare or just see multiple periods. We might not call this a comparative report because that would indicate that we're subtracting out columns having two periods that we're comparing. Instead we're going to run the report by month or by a quarter. So that's the drop down here if I run it by month then I can say run and there we have it. So now it's broken out by month and if I go to the right of it it gets us this total column which isn't done on the balance sheet. That's one of the differences. If I go to the balance sheet and I was to say show me this by months then it's just going to give you 12 months no total. Why no total because the months are as of a point in time as of the end of the month. It makes sense to total up all the months on the balance sheet does make sense on the income statement because the income statement is basically like showing us how far we drove. This is my analogy you drive in your car and see how far you can go in a day or something like that. And then when you drive it the next day to compare to the last day you either reset the odometer or kind of count from that point going forward. That's what's happening with the profit and loss. We can give how far we went in this analogy on each of the months and we can total them up and see how far we went in the entire year would be the general the general idea. So we can also do that then by day we can do it by week we can do it by month we can do it by quarter quarters is quite common. So now we have the income they didn't have any data for the first two quarters and but we and we don't have much data in the third quarter. But we can compare the quarters so we can look at them at least side by side. Also note when we do these types of reports QuickBooks defaults to have the oldest period first reading like a book from left to right oldest to newest. And that's fine although sometimes you will see reports as we'll see shortly in the comparative reports where they put the current month first. That makes sense to some degree because the current month is the most important month generally because it's the one closest to us. If I could do it by year if I did it by year then it doesn't change anything here what puts a total on it but we would have to change the year to go back to two thousand twenty two right. If I went to the last two years there's nothing in twenty two but now you have the range expanding between the two years and then I can do it year by year. Let's bring it back up to two thousand twenty three and then we have the customers. Now this isn't this is kind of strange. They have it in the display columns area which you kind of think of as like timeframes but this is by customer. So if I run it by customer then I get the customers up top. This will be useful if you're using something like a job cost type of system. You might run a report like this so you can see the information that's happening on a customer by customer type of basis. We might touch on that a little bit here but a job cost system is a thing in and of itself. So we might have a specialty section or course on job cost systems in particular. You can do a similar thing by vendor which means that it has the vendors up top and it's breaking out the income and expenses by vendor. When you think about vendors most likely.


That's awesome All right guys welcome back to another video. This is a part two of that one hot technically I didn't probably call it part two But I already shot my limit and you can see that video was amazing hot with my 20-year-gauge quick limit And everything was in the decoys. I almost was afraid he was getting limp tail He looked like he was hurting a little bit or swimmers tell they call it too So I'm just gonna give him the day off. He can be out here with us. Stay dry.  That's enough. But anyways Thomas is there. He's already got three drinks Mel's down. I got the GoPro on his head. No, let's see what happens I might I might pivot I might pivot just a touch to the right seems like they're all kind of on the right now That's awesome sick, I got to see the whole thing beautiful spring.  I don't think I'll show and look like that poor It's kind of frustrating. Hey when switch again He was cooking First shot was close, but it's I'm gonna hit the third. That was always way All right, so that's four miles and a pintel for me. I would have shot into that four-pack of miles Might be done Found the spot or something. I know you're gonna watch this when we get home The water is dead calm right now The water is dead calm Some has to be why do they do that also? Is it someone flushes them? Those are all look at those cans. It's got a canvas back time There's some alerts There's been to It's right so many pentails are saying that it's diving on him Do that one cup from the heavens right in there Boom, baby Bacon and mallards bacon and mallards. Yes, sir. It was awesome. That was cool to see that whole thing It's why I love you. That was cool. It's nice bird to get them out Yeah, that was crazy that almost be cool to mount it just for the story. I know it's coming back at the bird Do that came around we even if this is what I'm talking about I was right in the decoys. I thought he was flaring up, huh? I thought he was firing up I know I personally just turn right in Can't help himself and the wind's perfect to smell the bacon Got any more of those Papa bears Come on bud, let's go. Hey go duck hunt. Come on. Let's go. You know You know Hey guys going light might not even eat it with this wind but motion ducks for decoys On it. That's all you need.  I didn't get to get my GoPro on To penthouse just come right around in a drink what in the world compliments of the house Hey, I said I'm buying good boy. I almost thought I underled him for a second Yes, I think that might be my Nice shot sit Rocky had a boy Jake Sit Rocky had a way to clean that Let's go. Don't need to walk. I can't wait for you to shoot. I think it might hear Here oh Leave good boy. Can I can I go? Rocky over. I think he sees our smell that one. Come on. Bye Good boy Another super skittish, huh? Sit sit good boy and trouble is cleaning up again. Good boy Leave good dog Leave looking for bands, baby Mosquitoes are coming out full force.   I like to shoot the drinks But didn't really not many drinks presented the opportunity and shoot times over. We're cleaning up mosquitoes are literally tearing us up I just got to the off and Rocky made some good retrieves again today. So thankful for that


I'm rim. I'm Scott and we are the hosts of Geeknives. It is a podcast. It's online You can use Google to find this thing But if you enjoy anything that happens in the next hour while we talk about Atari game design Then I encourage you to type that word into Google and you'll find all our biz including a lot of videos of Other panels we've done at PAX's for the last decade plus But we're here today to talk about Atari game design now What do we mean by that or more importantly? Why Atari? Now on one hand the Atari was not the first Console to make it into houses. There was Pong. There were other things before that But Atari was one of the biggest in those early days It was almost the first really big one at least you know in the United States, right? Arguably it might have been the minimum viable console to reach a mass market There were so many Atari's out there It became the first console that a lot of people had and a lot of people were using and you could count on friends Having them there was a user base. You could sell games for it, but Minimum means minimum so the Atari was an extremely limited console And if you're younger than us you might not quite understand how limiting the Atari was compared to even an old Nintendo so uh, you know it came out at a time where you know a personal computer, right? You could buy which very very expensive, right? And sure enough would be more powerful than the Atari 2600 But the price made it prohibitive for like anyone, right? The Atari 2600 was you know the best electronics You could get at a time for a price that you know Someone might be able to buy as like a kid's toy only that didn't that didn't have any other use like a Computer would have yep because while there were productivity like learn basic programs on the Atari 2600 They were not they were not things you would actually want to use But to really drive this home, I'm not encouraging that you pirate software the screenshot is just to illustrate a point this is every Atari 2600 game Every single one including a bunch of things that were never released And I want you to look at those file now those those file sizes because that's a K not an M That is five five hundred and eighty two kilobytes is every set the all the entirety of every Atari game Starting with numbers through the letter E that was ever made in human history I can fit you could you could take an MP a single MP3 All right, or maybe a couple of them or maybe like a few photos Maybe even just one photo from your high-resolution digital camera And that would take up as much storage space as every Atari game Atari 2600 game ever made and released I was I was about to say I could fit these on two floppy disks, maybe three, but that also dates us quite a bit yep so Why are we talking about this really a lot of you are here at PAX because you play games some of you want to make games Many of you probably have very strong opinions about games, but a thing about game design That's pretty universal is that Generally when you're put under limitations when there are constraints on what you can do in a game or what you can do Making a game that's where creativity tends to flourish I mean that you know, it's not a Like a set rule for the entire universe, but in general, you know When you give most people like a task right to create something right, you know, and it can and if you just say it can be Whatever right no rules do whatever you want just a big white sheet of paper They'll people stare at a white sheet of paper and they don't know what the heck to do with it, right? Yeah, hey Scott.  Oh, that's a cloud. I guess Lumpy space princess you whatever right so much in that same way if you're making games if you just start with some lines Already drawn it has to fit in this small space of the Atari 2600 You only have this many colors to work with you only have this frame rate to work with You only have this controller to work with right that really can help get your mind going and It help your design process go a lot faster and also push you into areas You would might not have gone given the blank white sheet of paper Yep now of course there are giant triple a games that take five plus years to make and an army of developers and those are great games we're Not saying that every limitation is necessary in all cases and many limitations Actually, you know creativity in some ways. Yeah, and a lot of those triple a games didn't start with a white sheet of paper I mean they don't have techno lot the technological limitations the tarry 2600 games had But a lot of them are just like all right, we're gonna make an FPS like That's their pre-drawn line right is what they've decided before there they get going yep But that's really this is one of the things we want you to think about while we play some of these Atari games Don't worry. We're gonna play a bunch of Atari games later on in this panel But think about limitations think about distilling games down to their essence This is one of the most important skills You can have as a player as a designer as a critic anything in the game world is Understanding what a game is at its core So can you take some cowboys? Problematic themes around what cowboys were really like a side But some cowboys are gonna shoot each other and that amazing box art I cannot stress enough how good the box art was on all the tarry games Like if you want an aesthetic that speaks to me personally it is that aesthetic But well, I think the Atari games because the games themselves were so limited right? I think that they intentionally, you know put a lot of effort into the box art Not just as a way to sell the game right because it might be hard to sell it if people saw the actual screenshots right They were on the back of the box so then the front of the box They might not impress right but also to stoke the imagination of the player, right? You know, it's like if you play Super Breakout and you've only ever seen the game itself It's it's you know, but if you play Super Breakout and you're like thinking about that amazing box art with the with the space people Right the astronauts on it. It's like damn right it can maybe you know It adds to the game even though it's not part of you know the actual software But it also forces you especially as a designer to really think about what is this game about? What is the actual core gameplay core mechanic core feeling you want the players to experience? What is the the bare minimum the thing that you're trying to do and you can start there and Build up from that or in the case of the tarry start there And that's about as far as you can get but the fact that it forces you to interrogate that a lot of games Have trouble where they try to do too many things at once They try to have too many cool mechanics You've all played a game that has a bunch of mechanics and even like role-playing games Look at old advanced Dungeons and Dragons how many rules were in that book that nobody read that nobody touched nobody dealt with those weird systems So war why were they even there? What were they doing? Are they just confusing the game if you can distill a game down because what I've got on the screen? That's not the entire sprite sheet for outlaw, but that is 90% of the sprite sheet for outlaw You sprite is very loosely. Yeah, I mean the Atari. I want to say five Sprites could be moving on-screen in an Atari. I don't know the exact number So distilling a game to his essence is Also useful was more useful back when arcades existed But a thing that was happening in the Atari world that was very interesting is that Previously most people had only ever experienced video games in arcades. These were buildings people would go to To play Consoles that were bespoke There would be a whole console in a giant cabinet like the size of a refrigerator And that console played one game and people would pay money to play that game You have to understand that we are very old But when the Atari came out one of the big selling points was hey You could have those games at home But as we just talked about the Atari 2600 could not do the things that those arcade machines could do in fact Consoles couldn't really do what arcade machines did until well after the n64 era at best It's well, you know all the arcade machines themselves are also advancing, right? But you know you could have an authentic pac-man, right on your home You know device as soon as you had like I don't know maybe a 486 computer I want to say right like a windows 95 kind of you know situation But the Atari was a decade before that So There was a lot the Atari world had a really unique and interesting problem of trying to take a game That was very popular in arcades that millions of people had played they already Liked this game and they wanted to play it at home Can you distill that game down to fit on a very weak console and yet? Maintain that core that the people actually liked and not anger them by giving them something That is different and not as fun and not as good. Can you do it?  You know you but what they did make was not good enough. Yep And it comes down to and for Atari 2600 You know it it had some of the aspects. It looks like a pac-man, right? There's a little pac-man there There's ghost. There's a ghost. There's pellets. There's two power pellets like it has all the same verbs and nouns as the original real pac-man, but Arguably and when we play it, you'll see if you're too young to have ever experienced the satari pac-man the MVP The minimum viable pac-man Probably was the one that was in the arcade Having multiple ghosts having like the map be that size those actually were critical to making pac-man fun So having ghost pellet and power pellet and maze without enough ghosts enough power pellets enough Etc enough interesting behavior was not enough that game was unplayable garbage. We're gonna play it today and You'll see I do remember hearing that someone made a better Atari 2600 pac-man at some point But I'd have to Google it to find out Now one thing we're not gonna get into in this talk at least is the programming aspects of the Atari 2600 But I don't want to make a point here This is an interesting space because programming is both an engineering discipline, but also it's a creative discipline and the challenges of Making a game on the Atari are fascinating and interesting challenges You can have a lot of fun trying to make an actual game that would run on an actual Atari 2600 But those are not the kinds of challenges. We want to talk about today We're really focused more on the game design aspects What could the Atari do on the screen and what could and what kinds of games can you make within those limitations? Yeah, the rules of the game right the you know the inputs of the game all these sorts of things right not the You know how they made it work technologically speaking even though I have a computer science degree Never programmed anything for an Atari Just because why would I yep time for that? But to distill that conversation down ideas without execution or nothing We all I have we all everybody you in this room but this virtual room you're you're in a packs you probably have a lot of my cool ideas for games and Someone else at some point probably made your idea because it turns out having a good idea for a game. It's worth Basically nothing I can tell you about my for anything is basically nothing. Yep We've all got great ideas, but execution the programming part to make that Atari game That is incredibly valuable and important important, but we're not focusing on that this panel is about the opposite Execution without ideas. I mean I guess making a clone of Microsoft Excel Like that type of programming That's not interesting the interesting part of game design that we're gonna talk about is the idea itself What is the idea with the constraints of the Atari? And if you're interested in the execution side of Atari, well, I have good news for you The internet has a huge number of resources Go watch interviews with David Crane learn about how he made pitfall work because sometimes execution begets ideas pitfall Basically was made because David Crane I'm paraphrasing a lot here and come up with a way to make a little man run smoothly and jump and do stuff on an Atari and Then the question was what kind of game could I make with this technology and pitball pitfall Arguably the first platformer one of the first games in this like mega genre pitfall appeared from that Technological advancement the ability to make a little dude on a screen run left and right and jump a little bit and put Some stuff on the screen and make it all work but and There's a documentary called what racing the beam that gets into Fantastic detail on the ridiculously clever crap that Atari programmers had to do things like programming game logic into The like cycle of writing images to the screen While those images were not visible like before you get to the point where it would appear on the screen putting game logic There you ever play an old Atari game and you see like the screen goes crazy with a bunch of flashing colors a lot of times That's because the game is using all all of the Atari's processing power To calculate something to figure out the next chess mover generate a map or something and all that noise on the screen is Basically just visual artifacts of the actual logic that is making that thing happen It is ridiculous nonsense that one is way out of scope for this panel to other people way smarter than us You know a lot more about this than us have covered this to a depth that we never would and three we only have an hour with you today So let's play some Atari games I think if we actually play some of these games and talk about the game design what's work what works what doesn't what's good What's bad etc playing games is the best way to understand games as long as you play games and think about them Think about what you enjoy It's the theme we talk about a lot in our panels don't just play games because they're fun Understand what you find fun about them even if you never want to make a game Everything we're talking about in this a panel in this panel applies to you because if you understand What exactly you find fun about games you will have a lot more fun with games So while you're playing an Atari game and this is sort of the framework We're gonna use as we play each one of these games to understand it to interrogate it Think about these things when you're playing a game. What are the main mechanics? What can I do as a player? What is the game doing? These are Atari games. There's a finite number of them We'll be able to discover them pretty quickly just by clicking buttons. Did you know the Atari has one button? We've got one button and a joystick. That's what we got to work with and a couple of player Player two has a button and this switch this switch is on the Atari There are two switches physical switches You go up to the Atari and flick some games like that terrible Ghostbusters game You got to like run over to the Atari and flick the switch at the right moment to do things Yeah, open the trap. Yeah, exactly. No, it's you only do it to catch the marshmallow man on the Atari remake But then for this finite number of mechanics What would it take to make this mechanic better because even if you have a very distilled game You might very rightly think I could make this mechanic more fun more interesting more engaging But think about what would that take what would what is the full extent of what you would have to add to make this Mechanic better and then compare that with a very important question. Does that mechanic need to be better? Just because you can make something better doesn't mean it will make your game better You've got to think about not only what'll it take, but do I need this does this expand my game too much? Usually you'll do better by simplifying rather than adding complexity And then last at all moments actually when you have to remove Yeah on the Atari adding anything will come at a terrifying cost But last even when your game is so distilled even if you've designed the perfect board game You think everything is perfect. This game is perfect. You're gonna ship it. You should still ask yourself Could I remove something without compromising the core of this game? This game is about X could I remove something and the game is still satisfyingly about X The answers to these questions are difficult Asking these questions, especially if you made a game can be terrifying It's very hard to look at something that you made and you love and force yourself to think Could I remove something that I spent tears and blood and hours on? The answer is usually yes, and the more you're able to identify those things and say yes to removing things Generally the better you might do So berserk was a pretty popular arcade game I know there are a lot of ports of it, but this is the Atari 2600 port One thing you got to know about these Atari games It has a million million modes and the only way to know what each one of these modes is is to look in the manual Yeah, these me, you know considering that the games definitely couldn't have tutorials or anything of that sort You know even on the NES and SNES for that matter, right? It was expected that if you're playing a game you had the manual and you read it beforehand Because if you don't the games become sort of incomprehensible and as a result to give you the the viewer You know a good assessment of what these games, you know have going on We sort of need to explain to you some of the information from the manual Or at least some backstory But I remember as a kid like whenever we got a new Atari game or a new NES game even SNES First thing you did is you made my brother we'd fight over who got to read the manual Well because you'd be in the yard you would you wouldn't be downloading anything or having something shipped to your house You download was being stuck in the car trying to get home from Toys R Us You went to a toy store and bought the game you open it in the car and start reading it That's what you know on the ride home, and then you get home, and then you play so anyways So Berserk, you know followed much later a few years later by Robotron, right a very similar game is You know a game where you're a guy in a room and there's bad guys robots in the room And you're trying to kill them all and not get killed and you you beat the level by killing all the robots and then you go to the next room and An Atari game and an arcade game, so there's no winning like nothing We're talking about has a winning condition You just play it got a high score, and I only get score if I kill the robots Now the arcade version you played with the joystick and a button to shoot which is pretty much exactly what the Atari 2600 version had Robotron improved on this formula a thousand fold by having you play with two joysticks one controlling your you know Movement and one I gotta both walk into the wall Yeah, the other one controlling your shootings that way you could for example move right and shoot left You cannot do that in Berserk if you can only move in the one in the one direction at a time So look at this this game is so simple. Look there's robots There's my little dude, and there's electric walls, and there's pretty much nothing else, but already Look at all this behavior we can get from these simple mechanics So one the robots clearly get faster and more powerful like they didn't shoot before they can shoot each other Maybe I can trick them into shooting each other I can definitely trick them into walking into the walls and if things look dicey. I Can just bail Yep, so no if I bail they get harder Yeah, so in a way, this is actually taking advantage of the weakness of the Yeah, so that's that's a problem that one But so it's taking advantage of the weakness is that they don't have the processing power to make good robot AI Right, there's no way they can make smart robots that like literally lost Good job That you know somewhat intelligently hunt you down in a fun and clever way, right? But the robots being unintelligent actually is a is a positive aspect of the gameplay, right? In that you can you know their simple rules that they follow a Makes it sort of possible to even play this game in the first place, right?  Me to bump into the wall. Yeah, sometimes you don't have to trick them. They just do it on the road What's going on with your smiley face there? So this game has a lot of modes and one of the modes There's one more element that can appear if you stay in a level too long This bouncing smiley face appears and eventually kills you It's depending on the mode it is invulnerable and that is a basically a way to increase challenge If I keep going through the game The robots will get slightly smarter slightly more aggressive. I well, they don't actually get smarter They just get more aggressive like see how they just slowly start walking toward me that other one They'll eventually keep converging on my position. They're not smarter about that as the game goes on They just get faster at doing it and they shoot faster So if I just keep going through the game, they're just gonna get faster and faster and faster and faster and faster But it's an Atari. There's an upper limit to how fast they can be So these other modes will do things like Introduce that smiley face to put me under even more pressure and make the game even more difficult Because the only way without this without the smiley face the game could even become so trivially simple In that yeah, oh That was a close one It's like without the smiley face if you just take your sweet time It's like are you really gonna die if you're really careful and you really concentrate? You know, it's like I don't think so which is a need that common Failing of a lot of these early arcade games is the game will Literally never get more difficult after a certain point and then the game is just how long are you willing to sit here? So so we go way back with dig dug dig dug is one of my favorite arcade games I would play it in the arcade Contemporary to when it was in actual arcades putting real quarters into it Yep, now, I'll admit until this panel I had never played the Atari 2600 dig dug because I had I played it briefly because I had the Atari 7800 at home which had a much better Implementation of dig dug the Atari 7800 was actually comparable to the original Nintendo entertainment system in terms of its power Until the bill was memory management chips and some advanced things appeared in the NES It was comparable to the 7800, but anyway this memory talked about Pac-Man This is a de-make of a very popular Moderately complex game and we're gonna see if dig dug on the Atari Actually is able to capture the essence of dig dug on the arcade The fact that they've got that correct, so right so clearly graphically It's nowhere near dig dug arcade. The resolution is clearly lower. Yep But they've managed to get most of the colors, right? It's you know, puka is red-ish You know the dirt has the different layers of color The figars green. Oh and that music listen to that that sounds like the actual arcade sound That's kind of crazy. Yeah, it's not identical, but it's you know, it's clearly the same song You know the mechanics seem to be the same, right? Oh, I can even do the little like double kite Yeah, he can pop the guys All right, let's drop one of these boulders Well the fruit appear I saw the fruit. I know the fruit's gonna appear Come on. Come on. Let me give me the fruit Nope should have dropped the boulders before killing the guys if you wanted the fruit Let's see let's see if the rules of dig dug are the same on the 2600 as they are if they are then oh crap The bad guys do seem to be a little bit more aggressive and faster Yeah, the bad guys are coming at me faster than what I'm used to yeah And the arcade that you have a little time at least especially in level one or two That was my fault. That was that was I just failed at that Actually, this is while this looks pretty bad I got to say this feels a lot like real dig dug like this actually feels alright So the bad guy didn't get me he died when the rock fell on him, but he thought the fruit appeared Yeah, the fruit was just a green Shape of some kind it didn't like look like a fruit, but this is a in terms of the gameplay This feels 90% like real dig dug it looks weird. Well. Yeah, I think the most impressive thing really is just the frame rate Right, it's like you see it's not lagging or slowing down or anything like it's moving You know the bad guys are moving quick. Yep when I'm horizontal So look at this when I'm directly horizontal with an enemy and I'm moving toward them. They'll blank out Depending on what else is in that same row so that every now and then there's invisible monsters The bad guy intelligently moved away from the falling rock just like real dig dug Actually other than being slightly more aggressive the bad guy logic feels very close to the original dig dug to it's close I think there are some there's some minor Things that I haven't seen like can you pump the through it through a tiny wall? Yes. Oh, yes, you can pump through a tiny wall Can the back and I assume the fire guard can breathe through a tiny a tiny wall I don't know if I can engineer that experience Yeah The flowers when you showing you what your current level is are not appearing on the top So that's that's missing but it's interesting because the things that are missing like the flowers that would show up at the top there Are not core to the game. They are things that could have been removed. They were just nice to have Yeah That was just the thing that would indicate well all the flowers did was tell you what level you're in right? So you didn't it's not you can still play dig dug without those you just won't know what level you're in, right? You'll just know your score and that's it and you're live Yep, the visual artifacting isn't even getting in my way that much I would say this is a minimum viable dig dug dig dug on the Atari 2600 is Pretty much as fun and is doing the same thing for me as the actual dig dug now Of course, I would prefer the actual dig dug because it looks better I mean the actual dig dug does have advantages over this But it's like this is not something you're gonna like be upset about and be like You know, oh, this isn't dig dug.  I'm earnestly impressed by this you can play this in your house in 1980 Well, whatever I would say I'll say even had to put the even had to puke us on top of each other And look remember that thing we said on berserk when a game might like a lot of dangers of these old games are very simple games That they never get harder. This game is getting harder. I'm sweating here. Just like I would in real dig dug about this point Yeah, and real dig dug, you know, it's like they start adding more bad guys Look, they added managed to add all these figars and the frame rate is not going down Hey, it's still it's still going at a pretty good clip. The some of the bad guys are blinking, you know But yeah, it's look they got a puka and a figar on top of each other. I Think it might hit a limit Yep, I feel like this there will be a point where this will not get harder enough, but so far. This is feeling pretty good Alright, so pitfall else hit start. So pitfall is Like we said first of all you go left or right. Uh, so as a kid. I always wanted to go left Because left when you die check this out. Oh, no, I died.  Oh look the logs are rolling away from me. Yep It's pretty much I forget what the optimal I missed it the optimal way to go is but If you're going for the perfect score, but as a kid, I always went left I don't trust that empty space and I was right not to trust it. Yep So yeah pitfall is a game where you walk left or right, you know, you could pick either way So that's actually somewhat interesting in that, you know You can get some variations on gameplay to reduce, you know, because it's the same thing every time. It's not random, right?  You just go to the same screens at the time. Yep They also give you the downstairs, right the enticing downstairs area So that you get it's like you can go through on the upper level But if you find a ladder you can go through on the lower level and that also gives you more varied gameplay It's like, oh, I can just you know, go down. You know go down. Yep though in here Let's see this you're going the is a brick wall.  What you can do for more excitement. All right. Yeah, we'll go down. Oh, yeah down here Yeah, so you got to worry about scorpions down here instead of logs, you know and holes and that sort of thing But scorpions are kind of nasty. So yep because they're moving it's kind of easy to get hit by him if you're not paying attention It's literally pick your poison. I Don't remember the map but a big part of this game is the map is the same map every time but as a kid I was like charting out. What's where? Oh, it was a dead end Yep Can't get through there. Well all the way back Yep, and a died and now the problem for going left God damn it.  I think I'm dead time to start over. Let's go right go right go right this time So you can also see that going right or left since the logs always spawn on the right side of the screen, right? I'm having trouble with the lodge. Yeah playing the left or right direction gives you a different challenge entirely Right in terms of you know, if you're going if you're playing a going going left run Yeah, you just you can just keep running left and you get behind the logs oops I'm bad at this. I was never good at this game. I Think you can stop I messed it up.    Will you go to the bottom?  That's a tar pit You'll just you'll just dies a tar pit. Okay So what's this quote the game the core game loop is real simple explore the map Find treasure and the fact that it's time-limited is actually very interesting because the game becomes learn the map and the game also Becomes optimize your path through the map learn how to get through these obstacles quickly I can do it the slow cautious way or I can do it the fast way The game gives you if you do it the slow cautious way Even if you manage to never get hit by any log or any bad guy ever You probably won't be going fast enough to get all the treasures in the whole map before time runs out and talk about early E-sports or early not speed runs necessarily this game is not a speed run It is possible to get a perfect run how many how much how long it takes to get all the treasure Well, there's a perfect score You can get in this game of get every treasure in the whole map without at any point losing points or die But you can you can also see who can do that the fastest Yep, I'm pretty sure the world record is set and there's no way to make it better I'm maybe I haven't checked. I'm not an yeah I'm not an expert. So the other thing is going on in pitfall is you know, the simple Atari can't do too much So they've only made a few different things, right?  Yeah, our pit Fire and snake are basically the same. There's just something you jump fire and snake are the same, right? So but though with those simple elements by combining a ladder, right up brick wall brick wall We just it's an it's it's not it's not that few elements But with just a very small number of elements each screen Combines those elements in different ways, right? Oh a treasure. That was a trap. There it is Yep Combines those elements in different ways to keep things interesting, right? It's like yeah We got a scorpion some water that doesn't go away and a log and a rope now We got water that does go away and a log got a time this right Every screen can be unique Combining this palette of obstacles Yeah, and you know you learn once you learn how to deal with one ops, you know like once you learn how to swing On the rope properly. It's like okay, I just jumped right into that mouth You did you know how to swing on the rope congrats, you know, you know But now swing on a rope when there's a snake on the other now swing on a rope when there's alligators underneath now I'm gonna rope when the hole opens and closes. Oh if the hole closes with a good time I could get off the rope quicker and I won't fall, you know because I'm not crossing anything dangerous Oh, but if I get off the rope quicker here, there's an alligator I don't want to get off. Yep, or eventually I learned the map and I learned that this is the part where you Want to go underground because it's faster Yep Yeah, you know it manages to stay interesting With very very few pieces to play with and the controls right all you have is a joystick and a button Yep, the button jump. That's it. That's all you that's all you need You don't need anything else right because anything you interact with is by jumping or either jumping over an obstacle And you grab the rope automatically you do have to drop off the rope by hitting down You choose when you want to drop off you press down to get off the rope and you can get off the rope at any time Right so think about just the ability to get off the rope at any time is in itself sort of an interesting mechanic like yeah It's like okay. You got one button you have a lot of options there, right? You could possibly like drop off the rope and land on the alligator's eye if you needed to on a particular screen, right? Oh timing is really good You know so the core gameplay loop explore the map don't die find treasure like it's pretty straightforward There is an interesting and unique pat like a palette of all these different challenges this game is Extremely elegant and has I think Maximized it's Coraloo. It's treasure nice treasure wasn't as good as the diamond ring Nobody even the treasures look different right and that's that could be exciting and more fun, too It's like you grab. Oh look at that right He was about to fall on the pit as it was opening, but he was able to grab the rope on the backswing Right, you know, you there isn't just one right, you know, there isn't just one way to swing on the rope There isn't just one way to you know, jump over a hole with that one jumping button and the rope right so much variation and different things can happen So yeah, this game I would hesitate to say that there's anything any mechanic that needs to be better This game fully realizes its core vision with a very minimal set I guess you could remove either the snake or the campfire because they are in effect the exact same thing Same thing, however, it does add more interest and you know Excitement, you know visually right if every treasure was the same it would be a little bit more boring It's kind of exciting. It's like you already got the money bag. Well, if you find the diamond ring It's like oh, yeah, look at that right there. How do you did you know it was there? Did you know it was on the next screen because I did not I literally But it's like ooh, right? It's it's a little more fun to find different looking treasures than to find the same one Well case in point two look at the above here like those trees in the background not strictly necessary You could make this game more minimal you can even make this game in black and white But that's all polished just because you're distilling a game down to its essence Doesn't mean you should remove everything that is pure style and doesn't do anything for the actual gameplay itself style Aesthetics, there's a reason video games look good It's also really fun that when you swing on the rope it goes do do do do do do which is which is reminiscent of like You know a Tarzan caricature going. Oh, right? Yeah, it's definitely what they were mimicking with the sound and you with the limited audio capabilities of the Atari 2600 they managed to pull it off to where you recognize it for what it is, right? If you have the appropriate, you know cultural references to go by So yeah, you wouldn't think this game could get any better Oh pitfall 2 So I have never played pitfall 2 in my life. I didn't have it as a kid. Nope So it's also worth noting that both of these pitfalls were games that Much like et were made for the Atari they weren't arcade ports, right? I don't know if I've seen an arcade pitfall machine There may be one but this was definitely first made for Atari 2600. So notable one It's playing this song. It is playing just music that is Interesting that is not something the original pitfall did and two Uh already I see multiple different enemies that are doing different behaviors You can also see oh, look at that.  Look at this. Yeah. There's some there's some vertical action, right?  Look at that rat. Look at that rat.  I can't get past this rat Can you I don't know if I can I don't think you can. I wonder if I need something. There's only one button. So, uh But yeah, they the gradients right add a lot more visual interest And contrast to a lot of the objects in the game, right, especially in the sky And they're also reminiscent of the art, right? You know and they also indicate motion as is the case of that waterfall I'm getting boy in his blob feelings. This is a large map. Look at this Look at all the interesting places. I've encountered already an electric eel, right? Yep, just a thing that blinks black and white, but you can just tell from that little abstract wonder if it kills me Yeah, that's an electric. It's electric eel. It hurts Where does it send you? So It's gonna take me back to the last checkpoint Mm-hmm Oh, that's a checkpoint. Is it yeah, what's that what's that wiggly thing with the leg? That looks like a dog or a hyena or something. I see that frog down there Oh, it's a frog but the thing that's wiggling that could be like a hostage. You need to rescue or I don't know what that is I'm sure the manual would tell me I'm sure it would um, but also, you know You know atari game boxes in general featured a lot of gradients But the activision ones in particular all had this same graphical style with this sort of like stripey rainbow Kind of shape with colors that match the color scheme of the game And you can also see here how they put the rainbow behind the activision at the bottom. That's very fancy looking all right, so uh basically What's interesting here like the something to take away because you can buy do a whole panel just play in this game Can you go left? Nope. You cannot go left pitfall the original pitfall as we just discussed Was kind of an mvp game like it was good enough It was to still do his essence. It was designed well pitfall 2 did more But it does not replace or obviate the success of pitfall 1 Hardly it seems like more creative programming techniques opened up more possibilities on the atari Which is a thing you can look at to they added more mechanics that expanded on the core of the game Without compromising on the game being fun atari atari et added all these extra mechanics I'm real bad at this, but those extra mechanics Came at the expense of the core game loop This game all this extra stuff did not come at the expense of the core game loop They found clever technological ways to do more around that core game loop Yeah, it's like hey, we'll add more levels, right? It's three or four levels deep, right? They added the swimming more animations Uh, they added more enemies more different treasures Right, it's just it's the same thing, right? It's not they didn't mess it up. It's still that same pitfall game Uh, it's all fun for the same reasons. You're doing the same things But they just made it more exciting with more stuff going on so you get bored You know after a lot it takes longer to get bored Yep So, you know when you played a a Metroidvania like symphony of the night or portrait of ruin Or even a Metroid game and all you thought was you know what that core loop that gameplay Just give me more of that forever Here we go. This is just pitfall too. Oh, you like pitfall. Here's more pitfall. We added more stuff Yeah, too many games these days. I think don't learn that lesson, right? It's like I you know, you made a game That's so good You don't need to go and like make something new or different or change what you were about people liked what you were Just make more of what you were right now. That's not to say we should never make anything new Um, but I think that there are a lot of cases where sometimes people are not making anything new at all Right, they carry on with the same boring thing forever Uh, they're not expanding the way pitfall 2 expands it on pitfall 1 while staying the same They're literally just releasing pitfall 1 pitfall 1 pitfall 1. That's no good, right? But releasing pitfall 1 and then coming out with pitfall 2 that looks nothing like pitfall 1 That's also not good, right? This is exactly what you want to do when you make a sequel or an expansion, right? Don't change what you are about right that core thing that you are Embrace whatever that is just more of it Right. Yep. What did players like about your game? Yeah game one if game one is chocolate chip chocolate chip cookie, right game two Can't be oatmeal cookie, right? It could be it could be chocolate chip cookie with nuts. It could be bigger chocolate chip cookie It could be bigger chocolate chip cookie with nuts But it shouldn't be you know plain old sugar cookie. Is this the first game that has checkpoints? I don't know, but it's definitely an older game that does have checkpoints I presume if you die, you're gonna go back to that checkpoint. I just presume I am as well Also, this map is looking bigger and bigger and bigger at the deeper I go Yep, look how deep it goes Are you gonna die from falling down?  Yep checkpoint worked. You know what I appreciate though notice Pitfall 1 had lives lives were something that a lot of games had Especially arcade games because that's how you're right out of lives got to continue pay a quarter And you and you would buy lives with your with your money. Yep, this game. No lives I'm losing points, but I could just keep exploring the checkpoints just at the deeper I go the more checkpoints even though I suck at this and I keep dying Who cares? I can just keep playing. I'm not forced to always start over That's also how gauntlet worked right in gauntlet and you would have life Which should be your points, right? And you know money and to get more life And then when you got hit you would lose like and you're also constantly losing a lot of All right, so many of you have probably played rampage at least rampage has been released in various forms in a lot of places but uh Play rampage on the Atari 2600 This is another game where It's an arcade game. So anyone who would play this has a lot of expectations about what this game is Yeah, you've already played the arcade version. You already understand, you know the mechanics, right? So if you haven't played the arcade version, then a lot of what's going on here Right might not make too much sense You know, you might not understand that like that blinking thing that was just a rectangle that you punched at the start That was supposed to be like a sign. Yeah, it's like eat it. Eat it joes or whatever And I hit it at the wrong times. It was electrified. So check this out. This is actually Getting the core loops. I'm destroying this building and look I can attack the building across from me I can hit forward. I can hit down I can really mess this all the same attacks in the arcade are available at home. Yep Visually, you know, you're not seeing the things that are like partially damaged, right? It's literally just making rectangles go away um But so far all the elements of the arcade version are here in a diminished form uh Yep, the controls at least uh, I I can't oh here goes the building. Yeah But uh, it feels pretty tight. It actually feels very responsive and satisfying and I'm kind of having fun Oh, let me jump up. Oh It's doing everything I expect a rampage game to do so far Yeah, it's not as there's not as much stuff on this is only level one Um, but you know the original rampage did have more things happening on the screen I think I can get those helicopters, which was a big part of rampage Yeah, take that now. Can I eat that dude?  That's good Yes, it's like they went down the checklist of every single thing in the arcade rampage They put them all in here and just they're a lot simpler looking especially the graphics are vastly vastly inferior to the original arcade game It's definitely taking some imagination. Like we can tell these are buildings, but there's not a lot going on in terms of what I'm destroying Yeah, all right. So this is spider-man for the Atari 2600. I had this game as a kid. I played it a lot So I'll just start so I never was clear if those people are villains or not But check this out. I'm a little spider-man. I can throw a web And I can swing around if you're making a spider-man game You better let me throw web and swing around if I can't do that the hell kind of game is it? That is pretty great. Uh, so yeah, this is actually the very first uh video game Uh to feature spider-man and also the first marvel comics video games So there were a lot of marvel games in the arcade. They all came after this one This is literally the first marvel game and the first spider-man game ever It was actually made by parker brothers. It wasn't made by like Atari or You know some other activision or anyone like that, right? um So yeah, they were definitely treating it as like, you know parker brothers who made board games, right? You know, they were definitely, you know treating it as like a uh, oof, you know, that's a brutal fall Right, they're approaching it from that angle and not from the video game angle Uh, and also they didn't have any game to model it on, right? Yeah, they had them They were just saying all right. What does spider-man do right? Well, he webs around, right? So that's the co-web around and hit people But basically I also get points check out these bombs. They start black They turn pink when they're about to blow up and if I touch them I can disarm them. That's clear. Look. That's very low res. That's clearly the green goblin up there All right, let me go get that green goblin now. I don't think I can fight the green goblin I think what I have to do is get to the top and disarm the bomb he's put on top of this building I guess those little bombs are just to hurt me as spider-man. Yeah, those are bombs. The green goblin is throwing at you Uh, I'm bad at this or the hobgoblin through the pumpkin bombs and the green goblin. Yeah, hobgoblin was pumping pumpkin bombs Oh, look if I get a person I don't even know if hobgoblin the character existed in the comic books when this came out Maybe they did There's no timer in this game, but see that red thing that's how much web juice I got so I gotta be economical with my web juice That's accurate to the comics where spider-man's web shooters were you know mechanical things that he made Um, you know, but control-wise It looks kind of great, especially for an Atari thing like the way spider-man swings. Yep. It feels good It's difficult like this is hard, but it's not all right. Let's get past you Oh god, I'm so bad at this green goblin screw you Yes, I disarmed that I assume is a bomb Yeah, spider-man is trying to touch the checkerboard thingy And the game just escalates in difficulty from there Yeah, this is one of those games where the goal is the core gameplay loop is very simple and very arcade-like It is get better at the core gameplay loop Yeah, I mean even Donkey Kong you had, you know, four different a few different levels, right? It wasn't just the same, you know, Donkey Kong thing over and over, right?  No, this is a solid distillation Like I would encourage you to play this game to see how good these controls feel considering how Outerly limited they are Yeah, and going with our theme of you know to make your game, you know figure out the one fun thing Like this is literally it. This is you know, this is not an example of a good complete game But this is a great example of like, hey, they had the one thing, right do that one thing That's fun, right and get that thing worked out Uh, you shouldn't release your game at that point like this game did But they found right the good the fun thing swing it around on a web and they they made that part perfect They got it just right And that's like a perfect foundation Right your proof of concept your prototype for saying yes, there is a fun game here that involves swinging on the web We've we've perfected the swinging on the web No, then you need to just build more game around it than what is available here So what was the point of this whole hour? I love to use this slide I think I've used this in at least 20 or 30 panels over the years I even had to make a widescreen version of it, but uh We went in a lot of directions. We played a bunch of Atari games part of this was scott Just making fun of me for failing at certain Atari games, but uh number one Designed simply like a lot of these Atari games a lot of early games Are designed on paper first if you can't fit the at the core of what you want your game to be On a few pieces of paper You're probably starting too complex. You're starting at too high a level.  Well, also, you know, if you're just programming even on a modern system where you can develop things more rapidly than you could in the The past right it still takes a long time You know, if you're doing something on paper, you can make it test it, you know, sort of try it out a little bit You know to some extent quickly and figure out if it's good or bad You know without having to wait, you know, it's spend a few days programming and then you find out it was a bad idea Right. Yeah, if you uh on paper if you lay out your core mechanics and realize that they don't line up that well You'll save yourself three or four years of building a prototype that then fails when you show it off at an indie showcase somewhere And again those constraints it forces you to really really just understand and internalize What is my game about? Really focus on that core essence of your game. What's going on here in this uh diagram? Might be making some delicious poison. It's some some delicious essence of poison This is a stock image. I purpose of distillation All right. Well, uh, you know But think about any large successful popular game or any game you like Can you describe what this game is about in no more than one sentence?  Well now you know that it's worth spending the time to go work on it fully You know and make a real thing and not just a little sample thing Yeah And that's really the the the core of this panel to ceiling this panel down to its essence A lot of you probably want to make games That's just that's how games are people play games. They like games They got opinions about games and then they want to make games If you want to make games and you're not sure where to start just make one fun thing However, you do it just make one make one thing and make it fun If you can do that you've taken the first step It doesn't even had to be a new fun thing. It could be an existing fun thing like jumping on people, right? You know Of course You know, just do a fun thing that games already do that's already fun and just make that You don't have to make something Brett, you know, that's never been done before You look at most of the games that come out and make most of the money are not new They're just old ideas made again. Yep. Make one fun thing and make that one thing fun I hope this was enjoyable Uh that qr code. I uh hope it's been a while since I've used this slide We'll take you to our website or our youtube channel or something, but uh, that'll take you somewhere If you enjoyed this, I highly recommend you check us out We've got like 50 of our previous packs talks and other gaming convention talks on youtube free Uh, we've been doing a podcast for like 15 years. There's about 1500 For some reason you like hearing us talk That's a thing that you can do for many many many hours There are just mp3s of us talking on the internet that are freely downloadable with no ads no nonsense You can just listen to our voice in your ear Dear hearts content. I recommend doing that for zero minutes But you can do it for the number of minutes of your choose and I can't stop you So enjoy the rest of packs online or packs east online or camp packs and uh, we'll see you in the discord