Re: Space Wars Options

On Thu, 28 Oct 1999 19:42:16 -0400, you wrote:

>>>I was refering to the original original space wars (If I remember what I
>>>read, I think the shots would also go "through" the sun)
>
>>>There were so many "original" Space Wars, it's hard to tell just what
>>>the original did.
>
>>Maybe the "Very original" 1963(I think?) version had no effect on
>>bullets, but it also had no star field, negative gravity, etc, it was
>>quickly hacked to add features galore.
>
>>In one version I read there was up to six players. In another article
>>I believe there was strategy based on bullets being deflected by the
>>sun, so one version must have had gravity affecting the bullets.
>
>>It be interesting to know whether the version Larry Rosenthal was
>>playing, when he designed Space War, had bullets influenced by
>>gravity.
>
>>-Zonn
>
>
From Wired Magazine-
> Marketed in 1959 as an interactive computer, with it's cathode-ray tube,
>light pen, modified IBM typewriter, "real time" processing power, and
>multiuser capabilities, Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-1 encouraged
>play. With 24-hour access to the PDP-1, a group of MIT staff and former
>students, including Wayne Witanen, J. Martin Graetz, Peter Samson, Dan
>Edwards, and Stephen "Slug" Russell, dedicated themselves to creating an
>ideal demo program for the computer, which was donated by DEC founder Kel
>Olsen.
> Inspired by E.E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark and Lensman science fiction novels,
>the group conceived what was arguably the first videogame. Spacewar!
>consisted of two spaceships firing on each other as they zoomed through
>constellations of dots on the CRT. Panel switches on the PDP-1 served as
>the operation controls until hackers, now proliferating around the project,
>fashioned wood-and-Bakelite "gamepads."
> After being ported as freeware to university computers around the globe,
>Spacewar! was finally marketed to the masses in 1971 by Nutting Associates
>as a stand-alone arcade game called Computer Space. Nolan Bushnell licensed
>the game, a financial flop, before founding Atari.
> In 1987, the 25th anniversary of Spacewar!, a PDP-1 was reactivated by a
>group of the original programmers eager to play with their old toy and
>challenge a new generation of screenagers to a match.
> "Spacewar! itself has bred a race of noisy, garishly colored monsters that
>lurk in dark caverns and infest pizza parlors, eating quarters and offering
>degenerate pleasures," Graetz wrote in Creative Computing magazine in 1981.
>"I think I know a few former hackers who aren't the slightest bit
>surprised."
>
>I don't know how acurate Wired's account is, but it seemed like it pertained
>to the conversation.
>
>Jeff

For a lot more info on the original game checkout:

http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/

Be sure to click on the rolling stone article, it talks about a later
generation version running on a PDP-10 where they type in 5 users.
Cool!

I also found the emulator:

http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/groups/el/projects/spacewar/

This is the original PDP-1 emulation, and the bullets are not effected
by gravity (kinda boring!) Check out the size of those ships! (The
readme says they were increased in size for the Java version.)

The say the source is available if anyone wants to write a REAL PDP-1
emulator. (Java hah!)

-Zonn
Received on Thu Oct 28 19:11:45 1999