The Halcyon is an unreleased home video game console produced by RDI Video Systems. The system was planned to be released in January 1985, with the initial retail price for the system being US$2,500 (equivalent to $7,082in 2023).[1] Fewer than a dozen units are known to exist and it never reached retailers because of a lack of affordable disc players.[2][3] The design featured a LaserDisc player[4] and an attached computer, each the size of an early-model VCR. Of the six games planned,[5] only two games were released: Thayer's Quest and NFL Football LA Raiders vs SD Chargers. RDI Video Systems claimed that the system would be entirely voice-activated, and would have an artificial intelligence akin to HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.[6]
Rick Dyer was one of the many fans of the interactive fiction game, Adventure, and wanted to develop his own game, Shadoan, which was an expansive fantasy game inspired by The Lord of the Rings.[7] System costs were intended to range from $1,800 to $2,100 (equivalent to $5,099 to $5,949 in 2023),[1] depending on the model.[8]
Technical details
Hardware
Halcyon was based around the Z80 microprocessor, with its 64K memory partitioned out to ROM and RAM. A separate speech recognition computer provided the additional power needed to recognize human speech. Its firmware was proprietary, and its chief communications with the Z80 were indications of what word it had recognized, and what probability of confidence it calculated for the match. Other functions this subsystem provided were non-volatile memory storage, and speech recognition training.
Video content existed on a special computer-controlled CED player provided by RCA. Because of video encoding and stylus positioning constraints inherent in this technology, still frames (where action would be suspended pending player input) had to be encoded as a repeat of 2 or 3 seconds of video. Late in its development, Halcyon had to be re-designed to use Laserdisc players because CED units were put out of production by RCA. The Laserdisc player used by Halcyon was an unbadged unit made by Pioneer Corporation.[9]
Speech synthesis was produced using a licensed text-to-speechalgorithm included as part of the base Halcyon Operating System, including a special English vocabulary which would correctly pronounce hundreds of proper names. The phonetic output of this algorithm was fed into a Votrax chip.
Software
Firmware unique to the game being played existed as a removable ROM cartridge containing 16K memory, including the entire game node layout, vocabulary of the game (both for the speech synthesizer and speech recognizer), inventory data (both for gameplay as well as video still frames depicting items), and certain executable data sections to assist in the processing of game flow.
Save for the words "Yes" and "No", Halcyon required each player to train it to recognize their voice. The words "Yes" and "No" existed as four samples of human voices pre-loaded into memory, two female and two male. Each voice was selected for their unique pitch and timbre properties. These four gave a high probability match for Halcyon to recognize from any given English speaker.
Speech recognition was discontiguous, meaning the player had only a few seconds to speak into a headset when prompted. This headset was equipped with a noise-canceling microphone to help isolate speech from any other sounds. Speech samples would be compared against allowed responses, and a match, along with probability of accuracy, would be sent to the Halcyon main processor.
To acknowledge voice commands, Halcyon would reiterate what it believed it "heard" the player say. This sometimes resulted in incorrect actions taken, especially if the player had a significantly different inflection or spoke something different from the choices expected. Probability ranking could trigger Halcyon to ask the player to repeat their choice when it received a poor match to all expected responses. Mis-recognitions were chiefly the result of a sample of speech given sufficient probability to match one of the anticipated words or phrases.
Halcyon was intended to have a voice much like the Hal 9000, but memory constraints prohibited the use of tailored speech parameters for the Votrax synthesizer that was built into the console. The compromise was to use a licensed text-to-speech algorithm that had several built-in rules for pronouncing English text properly. Modified spellings were also used where needed to correct pronunciation issues, though this did not apply to words such as user names typed by the player.
A video game would follow a general design of "nodes", which interconnected based on responses and lack of responses from a player. Certain triggers, such as a real-time constraint under which the game would be interrupted if its associated event did not occur, were also part of the game's dynamic.
Scenes existed as two or more scripts: One for the "normal" or first encounter with the scene, one for subsequent visits, and optionally one or two for where certain actions required the scene animation or graphics to deviate, usually where an item has been removed or used.
A scene had to be identical in animation and graphics between its normal and subsequent visit, differing only in the audio track used. For this reason, lip sync typically could not be used, often resulting in speaking characters having their mouths obscured or speaking with their backs turned.
A scene with an item used or removed would have separate animation and graphics, allowing for 2 additional audio tracks, again without lip sync.
Audio tracks were encoded into the left and right channels of a stereo encoding; therefore, only monaural audio would be played from any given instance of a scene.
Almost all scenes in a game would have some information revealed that would contribute to solving the puzzle of obtaining the final goal of the game. Since Halcyon needed to keep track of first versus subsequent visits, a count of visits (up to a maximum of 15) would be used to trigger its speech synthesized hints and comments. One example from Thayer's Quest would be the direct instruction to take the right door when the wrong door (leading to instant death) was chosen more than once.
To break up the monotony of robotic speech, Halcyon was given prompt and response phrases that had markers that would include interchangeable words and phrases, along with the player's name, which it would include occasionally. "Enter your name on my keyboard" and "Please spell your name" would be two examples of phrases it would use to prompt the player.
Halcyon's game authoring method would easily accommodate playing Dragon's Lair, except for the restraint that speech recognition would take too long to process each move before the time allowed would expire, limiting it to keyboard-only use. This game's inclusion was not considered for this reason as well as license restrictions.
Each player's game record was represented in non-volatile memory as the set of items they had in their inventory, the visit counters of all possible nodes in the game (unvisited nodes having a count of zero), the scene toggle information (item used / taken / etc.), applicable timers (real-time events would suspend when games were saved), and their trained speech sampled data. To resume play, all one had to do was speak their name when asked to do so by Halcyon.
Related Research Articles
The Magnavox Odyssey 2, also known as Philips Odyssey 2, is a second generation home video game console that was released in 1978. It was sold in Europe as the Philips Videopac G7000, in Brazil and Peru as the Philips Odyssey and in Japan as Odyssey2. The Odyssey 2 was one of the five major home consoles prior to the 1983 video game market crash, along with Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Intellivision and ColecoVision.
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into speech; other systems render symbolic linguistic representations like phonetic transcriptions into speech. The reverse process is speech recognition.
Recall in memory refers to the mental process of retrieval of information from the past. Along with encoding and storage, it is one of the three core processes of memory. There are three main types of recall: free recall, cued recall and serial recall. Psychologists test these forms of recall as a way to study the memory processes of humans and animals. Two main theories of the process of recall are the two-stage theory and the theory of encoding specificity.
The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in the United States in 1978. Its diameter typically spans 30 cm (12 in). Unlike most optical-disc standards, LaserDisc is not fully digital, and instead requires the use of analog video signals.
The Aspen Movie Map was a hypermedia system developed at MIT that enabled the user to take a virtual tour through the city of Aspen, Colorado. It was developed by a team working with Andrew Lippman in 1978 with funding from ARPA.
Full-motion video (FMV) is a video game narration technique that relies upon pre-recorded video files to display action in the game. While many games feature FMVs as a way to present information during cutscenes, games that are primarily presented through FMVs are referred to as full-motion video games or interactive movies.
Semantic memory refers to general world knowledge that humans have accumulated throughout their lives. This general knowledge is intertwined in experience and dependent on culture. New concepts are learned by applying knowledge learned from things in the past.
2.5D perspective refers to gameplay or movement in a video game or virtual reality environment that is restricted to a two-dimensional (2D) plane with little or no access to a third dimension in a space that otherwise appears to be three-dimensional and is often simulated and rendered in a 3D digital environment.
Space Ace is a LaserDisc video game produced by Bluth Group, Cinematronics and Advanced Microcomputer Systems. It was unveiled in October 1983, just four months after the Dragon's Lair game, followed by a limited release in December 1983 and then a wide release in Spring 1984. Like its predecessor, it featured film-quality animation played back from a LaserDisc.
In cognitive psychology, chunking is a process by which small individual pieces of a set of information are bound together to create a meaningful whole later on in memory. The chunks, by which the information is grouped, are meant to improve short-term retention of the material, thus bypassing the limited capacity of working memory and allowing the working memory to be more efficient. A chunk is a collection of basic units that are strongly associated with one another, and have been grouped together and stored in a person's memory. These chunks can be retrieved easily due to their coherent grouping. It is believed that individuals create higher-order cognitive representations of the items within the chunk. The items are more easily remembered as a group than as the individual items themselves. These chunks can be highly subjective because they rely on an individual's perceptions and past experiences, which are linked to the information set. The size of the chunks generally ranges from two to six items but often differs based on language and culture.
RDI Video Systems was a video game company founded by Rick Dyer originally as Advanced Microcomputer Systems, and was well known for its Laserdisc video games, beginning with the immensely popular Dragon's Lair. The company went bankrupt shortly after completing, but before releasing, the Halcyon gaming console.
An interactive film is a video game or other interactive media that has characteristics of a cinematic film. In the video game industry, the term refers to a movie game, a video game that presents its gameplay in a cinematic, scripted manner, often through the use of full-motion video of either animated or live-action footage.
Thayer's Quest is a LaserDisc video game initially developed by RDI Video Systems in 1984 for their unreleased Halcyon console, and later released in arcades as a conversion kit for Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. In 1995 it was ported to home consoles and PC under the title Kingdom: The Far Reaches. The arcade machine had a membrane keypad for controls instead of a joystick. To help players learn the daunting—for an arcade game—controls, a small holder containing instructional leaflets was attached to the cabinet. A sequel, Kingdom II: Shadoan, was released in 1996.
Speech segmentation is the process of identifying the boundaries between words, syllables, or phonemes in spoken natural languages. The term applies both to the mental processes used by humans, and to artificial processes of natural language processing.
The Intellivoice Voice Synthesis Module, commonly abbreviated as Intellivoice, is an adapter for the Intellivision, Mattel's home video game console, that utilizes a voice synthesizer to generate audible speech. The Intellivoice is a large, brown cartridge that plugs into the Intellivision's side-mounted cartridge slot; games specifically designed for the device can then be inserted into a slot provided on the right-hand side of the module.
In video games, a quick time event (QTE) is a method of context-sensitive gameplay in which the player performs actions on the control device shortly after the appearance of an on-screen instruction/prompt. It allows for limited control of the game character during cut scenes or cinematic sequences in the game. Performing the wrong prompt, mistiming the action, or not performing any action at all results in the character's failure at their task, resulting in a death/failure animation and often an immediate game over or the loss of a life, with some games providing a lesser but significant penalty of sorts instead.
LV-ROM is an optical disc format developed by Philips Electronics to integrate analog video and computer software for interactive multimedia. The LV-ROM is a specialized variation of the CAV Laserdisc. LV-ROM is an initialism for "LaserVision Read-Only Memory".
Dragon's Lair is an interactive film LaserDisc video game developed by Advanced Microcomputer Systems and published by Cinematronics in 1983, as the first game in the Dragon's Lair series. In the game, the protagonist Dirk the Daring is a knight attempting to rescue Princess Daphne from the evil dragon Singe who has locked the princess in the foul wizard Mordroc's castle. It featured animation by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth.
Dragon's Lair is a video game franchise created by Rick Dyer. The series is notable for its Western animation-style graphics and complex decades-long history of being ported to many platforms. It has been adapted into television and comic book series.
Rick Dyer is an American video game designer and writer best known for creating Dragon's Lair. He founded RDI Video Systems, the developer of Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, and also Thayer's Quest, which was a conversion kit for Dragon's Lair.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
