From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: clemc@ccc.com (Clem Cole) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2017 10:54:05 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm! In-Reply-To: <23387.1510797367@cesium.clock.org> References: <8780.1510781813@cesium.clock.org> <18182610-65cd-55eb-3346-c0526b40a2a0@gmail.com> <23387.1510797367@cesium.clock.org> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 15, 2017 at 8:56 PM, Erik E. Fair wrote: > Sorry, "psl" is Peter S. Langston, so: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_(1972_video_game) > > http://www.langston.com > > That Wikipedia entry should describe it as a "computer game" (or > "simulation") rather than as a "video game", given the common understanding > of those phrases. PSL's "empire" was a multiplayer game similar (sort of) > to the board game "Risk" and the "graphics" were ASCII-maps. > > I played that game at some length after leaving UCB - it was "guaranteed > to drop your GPA two points" (addictive as hell). Another way to parboil > your brain with it was to set the "update interval" to 5 seconds (a.k.a. a > "flash" game) and have a several hour (instead of the more typical several > month) gaming session with like-minded crazies ... I mean, "players" ... in > a terminal room. > > I recall one such evening up at LBL with Craig Leres and Jef Poskanzer, > among others ... > > Anyway, the Dave Pare mentioned in the Wikipedia entry is the same one who > worked on decompiling the Morris worm, with the aforementioned tools he'd > developed (he liked playing empire and wanted to fix bugs and extend the > game, but psl was only supplying binaries ...). > > It's funny where tools come from sometimes. > > Erik > Indeed - this is a solid bit of UNIX history. We should put a PSL Games Tape into Warren's library. And Empire was more additive then Adventure when it came out :-) Fortunately, I only got mildly sucked in. If I recall, Ward Cunningham, Steve Glaser and Charlie Perkins were pretty heavily caught up. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: