[TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Gabriel Diaz]

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Hello,







Source code has been published of some early games.




Were those games playable on Unix machines at the time? What was your favourite game?







https://kryptonradio.com/2019/04/18/zork-source-code-presumed-lost-forever-has-been-uploaded-to-github/







Gabi












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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Steve Nickolas]

On Fri, 6 Dec 2019, Gabriel Diaz wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Source code has been published of some early games.
>
> Were those games playable on Unix machines at the time? What was your favourite game?
>
> https://kryptonradio.com/2019/04/18/zork-source-code-presumed-lost-forever-has-been-uploaded-to-github/
>
> Gabi

I've been following this for several months.

I don't think there was a Z-machine for any Unix at that time.  Nowadays 
there's Frotz, I think there's also JZip and a bunch of others too, but 
I'm not sure even one as primitive as InfoTaskForce would run on V7 or 
earlier.

-uso.

Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[A. P. Garcia]

On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 5:52 AM Gabriel Diaz <gdiaz@qswarm.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
>
> Source code has been published of some early games.
>
> Were those games playable on Unix machines at the time? What was your favourite game?
>
>
> https://kryptonradio.com/2019/04/18/zork-source-code-presumed-lost-forever-has-been-uploaded-to-github/
>
>
> Gabi

Ken Thompson has made a number of significant contributions to
computer chess, but I'm not familiar with chess programs that ran on
early Unix. The earliest and most influential game that originated on
Unix was probably rogue, which was included in 4.2 BSD. Another early
and influential game was Colossal Cave Adventure, but that didn't run
on Unix, AFAIK.

Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[A. P. Garcia]

On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 9:23 AM A. P. Garcia <a.phillip.garcia@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 5:52 AM Gabriel Diaz <gdiaz@qswarm.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> >
> > Source code has been published of some early games.
> >
> > Were those games playable on Unix machines at the time? What was your favourite game?
> >
> >
> > https://kryptonradio.com/2019/04/18/zork-source-code-presumed-lost-forever-has-been-uploaded-to-github/
> >
> >
> > Gabi
>
> Ken Thompson has made a number of significant contributions to
> computer chess, but I'm not familiar with chess programs that ran on
> early Unix. The earliest and most influential game that originated on
> Unix was probably rogue, which was included in 4.2 BSD. Another early
> and influential game was Colossal Cave Adventure, but that didn't run
> on Unix, AFAIK.

I just remembered another one called Hunt the Wumpus. From Wikipedia:
"A version in C, written in November 1973 by Ken Thompson, creator of
the Unix operating system, was released in 1974; a later C version can
still be found in the bsdgames package on modern BSD and Linux
operating systems."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt_the_Wumpus]

Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[arnold]

"A. P. Garcia" <a.phillip.garcia@gmail.com> wrote:

> The earliest and most influential game that originated on
> Unix was probably rogue, which was included in 4.2 BSD.

I'm pretty sure it was in 4.1.  It shipped as a binary only, IIRC.

Arnold

Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Clem Cole]

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On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 2:49 AM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:

> I'm pretty sure it was in 4.1.  It shipped as a binary only, IIRC.
>
That might be right.   At Tektronix, we had it one V7 on a PDP-11 in
the late 1970s (before we were running 4.1), and I know we had sources but
I have no memory of the provenance.   It was likely they came from a UCB
person working there in the summer (Mark Bales, Jim Kleckner or one of the
CAD folks would be the prime suspects).

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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[ron]

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We were big into “Adventure” when I first started on UNIX.    It wasn’t until someone handed me the Fortran source code did I find we had missed a few things in it (like the rusty rods with black stars).

 

Rogue was a popular one later.   

 

Later at BRL we got a copy of “Empire” from PSL.   The good thing about that game was that your amount of activity was limited to one hour a day and however many BTUs (Bureaucratic Time Units) your capital generated.    However, people would print maps near the end of their session and then spend hours planning the next day’s activity.   Finally, the lab management had us shutdown.

 

There was another multiplayer game called “Search” that would result around 4:30 in the afternoon someone yelling “Search Up” which was everybody’s cue to join in the game.

 

Then we got SGI workstations.   The flight simulator had a dogfight feature but it used some networking that didn’t work on our network (I think it was XNS broadcasts).   Fortunately, the source code was available so I hacked it to communicate via TCP/IP to a central server (which had its own “air traffic control” display for my own benefit).    At 4:30 everybody would head off to an SGI workstation and we’d have many people flying.

We had the problem of people hanging out around the runway (where new players appeared) and nailing people as soon as they showed up.   I wrote an automated “anti-aircraft gun” that shot at people who hung out around the airfield.

 

I was at a meeting (probably IETF) and the NASA AMES guys (who had tons of these workstations as well) found out about my work and made me FTP it to them right then and there.    There went NASA productivity.

 

BRL had a vector graphics system in the early days called a Vector General.   They were left over from a project with the Cyber mainframe that never worked.   The labs had three or four of these things, each a PDP-11/34 with the Vector General, a card reader, a printer, a DQ-11, and a 50K modem.   At a loss for what to do with them, we put UNIX on them.   Mike used the system to develop the BRL CAD package.    The printers got used for other purposes.   The card readers pretty much were trashed but we kept one to convert old COMGEOM decks.   We actually used the DQ-11/50K modem things to extend the BRLNet (and ultimately the BRL gateways).

One evening, Mike and I decided to write a game for the thing.    We decided to simulate the “Asterioids” arcade game.   Mike did the graphics work and I wrote the game logic.    We spent all night writing it and then went home in the morning leaving it running.     By the time we came in later in the day, several of the BRL researchers (physicists and aerodynamics guys) had hacked on the game logic to make it more realistic (conservation of momentum and all that).

 


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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Richard Salz]

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>
> There was another multiplayer game called “Search” that would result
> around 4:30 in the afternoon someone yelling “Search Up” which was
> everybody’s cue to join in the game.
>
>
> Was that "hunt" that came with BSD 4-something?

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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Dan Cross]

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On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 11:40 AM Richard Salz <rich.salz@gmail.com> wrote:

> There was another multiplayer game called “Search” that would result
>> around 4:30 in the afternoon someone yelling “Search Up” which was
>> everybody’s cue to join in the game.
>>
>

Was that "hunt" that came with BSD 4-something?
>

I remember playing hunt. It used some kind of UDP-based protocol, if I
recall correctly. There was a `huntd` you could run out of inetd that
people connected to.

For some reason, I'd thought that one player ran `hunt` in some special
"server" mode, but I guess I'm misremembering. But that led me to wonder
whether the person running in "server" mode had an advantage due to
(network) locality. IF there were similar games that behaved in such a
fashion, it would be a valid concern.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Space Travel.

        - Dan C.

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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Steve Johnson]

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I wrote a very simple game for my son -- go fish.   It was one of my
first C programs (that is evident by the fact that it contains several
goto's).  There is the source code in one of the BSD distributions,
dated 1980 (with a UCB copyright...).

The original game simply played cards at random from its hand, and was
pretty easy to beat.  Then I realized that there was a simple
strategy -- if the player asked the program for, e.g., a 5, the
program remembered that the player had a 5.   If it later drew a 5
it immediately asked for it.   This "pro" version was very hard to
beat, to the extent that nobody wanted to play it.  So I made the pro
version an option--the default was the dumb mode.

It didn't get a lot of hype, but I did face an irate user once at a
Usenix meeting who publicly accused me of cheating (since the program
did, in fact, know what the player's had was).  The pro option was
that good, but, unless somebody changed a copy of it, the user's hand
wasn't part of the strategy...

Looking at the code a couple of months ago, I found at least one bug
and one logical error.  The bug would have been caught by Lint, but
that program was many years in the future.

Steve 

----- Original Message -----
From:
 "Richard Salz" <rich.salz@gmail.com>

To:
<ron@ronnatalie.com>
Cc:
"TUHS main list" <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Sent:
Fri, 6 Dec 2019 11:39:42 -0500
Subject:
Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

	There was another multiplayer game called “Search” that would
result around 4:30 in the afternoon someone yelling “Search Up”
which was everybody’s cue to join in the game.

Was that "hunt" that came with BSD 4-something? 



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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Ken Thompson via TUHS]

in the early 70s, noone had seen a computer.
i had a terminal at home and we were giving
a dinner party. i wrote several games for the
party from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle
book.

the ones i remember:

moo (bulls + cows)
hunt the wumpus (move or shoot)
learning tic-tac-toe
i can guess your number (divide and conquer)
jealous husbands (similar to fox hen corn)
nim

i think there were more. they went over
pretty well at the party.

i think this was 1969 or 1970.

On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 4:14 PM Steve Johnson <scj@yaccman.com> wrote:
>
> I wrote a very simple game for my son -- go fish.   It was one of my first C programs (that is evident by the fact that it contains several goto's).  There is the source code in one of the BSD distributions, dated 1980 (with a UCB copyright...).
>
> The original game simply played cards at random from its hand, and was pretty easy to beat.  Then I realized that there was a simple strategy -- if the player asked the program for, e.g., a 5, the program remembered that the player had a 5.   If it later drew a 5 it immediately asked for it.   This "pro" version was very hard to beat, to the extent that nobody wanted to play it.  So I made the pro version an option--the default was the dumb mode.
>
> It didn't get a lot of hype, but I did face an irate user once at a Usenix meeting who publicly accused me of cheating (since the program did, in fact, know what the player's had was).  The pro option was that good, but, unless somebody changed a copy of it, the user's hand wasn't part of the strategy...
>
> Looking at the code a couple of months ago, I found at least one bug and one logical error.  The bug would have been caught by Lint, but that program was many years in the future.
>
> Steve
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Richard Salz" <rich.salz@gmail.com>
> To:<ron@ronnatalie.com>
> Cc:"TUHS main list" <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
> Sent:Fri, 6 Dec 2019 11:39:42 -0500
> Subject:Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix
>
>
>> There was another multiplayer game called “Search” that would result around 4:30 in the afternoon someone yelling “Search Up” which was everybody’s cue to join in the game.
>>
>>
> Was that "hunt" that came with BSD 4-something?

Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Adam Thornton]

> On Dec 8, 2019, at 5:35 PM, Ken Thompson via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> in the early 70s, noone had seen a computer.
> i had a terminal at home and we were giving
> a dinner party. i wrote several games for the
> party from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle
> book.
> 
> the ones i remember:
> 
> moo (bulls + cows)
> hunt the wumpus (move or shoot)
> learning tic-tac-toe
> i can guess your number (divide and conquer)
> jealous husbands (similar to fox hen corn)
> nim
> 
> i think there were more. they went over
> pretty well at the party.
> 
> i think this was 1969 or 1970.


Clarification, please.

Was “Hunt the Wumpus” from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle book?  I thought it was by Gregory Yob (per the Creative Computing BASIC Computer Games book—Wumpus may have been in More BASIC Computer Games), and, well, it’s about dodecahedronal geometry, which seems as if it would only have been found in a rather rarefied puzzle book, but does seem like the sort of Platonic solid a computer-programming nerd in the early 1970s would have known about.

Adam

Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Rob Pike]

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My favorite (other than Nuke the Smileys) was written at the UofT by Hugh
Redelmeier. It was a version of tic-tac-toe that played only a single line,
and would always win. If it didn't like your move, it changed it. If your
move was a good one, it would change its previous move. And it did this
with lovely little messages. It was fun watching people get upset at it.

I don't know where the source is nowadays. I may have it somewhere, or it
might be ferric dust long since swept up from a cupboard of failed 9-track
tapes.

-rob


On Mon, Dec 9, 2019 at 11:47 AM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> > On Dec 8, 2019, at 5:35 PM, Ken Thompson via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > in the early 70s, noone had seen a computer.
> > i had a terminal at home and we were giving
> > a dinner party. i wrote several games for the
> > party from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle
> > book.
> >
> > the ones i remember:
> >
> > moo (bulls + cows)
> > hunt the wumpus (move or shoot)
> > learning tic-tac-toe
> > i can guess your number (divide and conquer)
> > jealous husbands (similar to fox hen corn)
> > nim
> >
> > i think there were more. they went over
> > pretty well at the party.
> >
> > i think this was 1969 or 1970.
>
>
> Clarification, please.
>
> Was “Hunt the Wumpus” from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle book?  I
> thought it was by Gregory Yob (per the Creative Computing BASIC Computer
> Games book—Wumpus may have been in More BASIC Computer Games), and, well,
> it’s about dodecahedronal geometry, which seems as if it would only have
> been found in a rather rarefied puzzle book, but does seem like the sort of
> Platonic solid a computer-programming nerd in the early 1970s would have
> known about.
>
> Adam

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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Ken Thompson via TUHS]

my favorite is the original star wars on the pdp-1.
i think it came from lincoln labs, but i played it
in 1965-1966 at stanford.
a very good replica was done on unix by dmr.

On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 6:03 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My favorite (other than Nuke the Smileys) was written at the UofT by Hugh Redelmeier. It was a version of tic-tac-toe that played only a single line, and would always win. If it didn't like your move, it changed it. If your move was a good one, it would change its previous move. And it did this with lovely little messages. It was fun watching people get upset at it.
>
> I don't know where the source is nowadays. I may have it somewhere, or it might be ferric dust long since swept up from a cupboard of failed 9-track tapes.
>
> -rob
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 9, 2019 at 11:47 AM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Dec 8, 2019, at 5:35 PM, Ken Thompson via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > in the early 70s, noone had seen a computer.
>> > i had a terminal at home and we were giving
>> > a dinner party. i wrote several games for the
>> > party from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle
>> > book.
>> >
>> > the ones i remember:
>> >
>> > moo (bulls + cows)
>> > hunt the wumpus (move or shoot)
>> > learning tic-tac-toe
>> > i can guess your number (divide and conquer)
>> > jealous husbands (similar to fox hen corn)
>> > nim
>> >
>> > i think there were more. they went over
>> > pretty well at the party.
>> >
>> > i think this was 1969 or 1970.
>>
>>
>> Clarification, please.
>>
>> Was “Hunt the Wumpus” from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle book?  I thought it was by Gregory Yob (per the Creative Computing BASIC Computer Games book—Wumpus may have been in More BASIC Computer Games), and, well, it’s about dodecahedronal geometry, which seems as if it would only have been found in a rather rarefied puzzle book, but does seem like the sort of Platonic solid a computer-programming nerd in the early 1970s would have known about.
>>
>> Adam

Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Rob Pike]

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Space war?

-rob


On Mon, Dec 9, 2019 at 1:11 PM Ken Thompson <ken@google.com> wrote:

> my favorite is the original star wars on the pdp-1.
> i think it came from lincoln labs, but i played it
> in 1965-1966 at stanford.
> a very good replica was done on unix by dmr.
>
> On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 6:03 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > My favorite (other than Nuke the Smileys) was written at the UofT by
> Hugh Redelmeier. It was a version of tic-tac-toe that played only a single
> line, and would always win. If it didn't like your move, it changed it. If
> your move was a good one, it would change its previous move. And it did
> this with lovely little messages. It was fun watching people get upset at
> it.
> >
> > I don't know where the source is nowadays. I may have it somewhere, or
> it might be ferric dust long since swept up from a cupboard of failed
> 9-track tapes.
> >
> > -rob
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Dec 9, 2019 at 11:47 AM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> > On Dec 8, 2019, at 5:35 PM, Ken Thompson via TUHS <
> tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > in the early 70s, noone had seen a computer.
> >> > i had a terminal at home and we were giving
> >> > a dinner party. i wrote several games for the
> >> > party from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle
> >> > book.
> >> >
> >> > the ones i remember:
> >> >
> >> > moo (bulls + cows)
> >> > hunt the wumpus (move or shoot)
> >> > learning tic-tac-toe
> >> > i can guess your number (divide and conquer)
> >> > jealous husbands (similar to fox hen corn)
> >> > nim
> >> >
> >> > i think there were more. they went over
> >> > pretty well at the party.
> >> >
> >> > i think this was 1969 or 1970.
> >>
> >>
> >> Clarification, please.
> >>
> >> Was “Hunt the Wumpus” from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle book?  I
> thought it was by Gregory Yob (per the Creative Computing BASIC Computer
> Games book—Wumpus may have been in More BASIC Computer Games), and, well,
> it’s about dodecahedronal geometry, which seems as if it would only have
> been found in a rather rarefied puzzle book, but does seem like the sort of
> Platonic solid a computer-programming nerd in the early 1970s would have
> known about.
> >>
> >> Adam
>

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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Ken Thompson via TUHS]

space war. (old age)

On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 6:15 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Space war?
>
> -rob
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 9, 2019 at 1:11 PM Ken Thompson <ken@google.com> wrote:
>>
>> my favorite is the original star wars on the pdp-1.
>> i think it came from lincoln labs, but i played it
>> in 1965-1966 at stanford.
>> a very good replica was done on unix by dmr.
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 6:03 PM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > My favorite (other than Nuke the Smileys) was written at the UofT by Hugh Redelmeier. It was a version of tic-tac-toe that played only a single line, and would always win. If it didn't like your move, it changed it. If your move was a good one, it would change its previous move. And it did this with lovely little messages. It was fun watching people get upset at it.
>> >
>> > I don't know where the source is nowadays. I may have it somewhere, or it might be ferric dust long since swept up from a cupboard of failed 9-track tapes.
>> >
>> > -rob
>> >
>> >
>> > On Mon, Dec 9, 2019 at 11:47 AM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> > On Dec 8, 2019, at 5:35 PM, Ken Thompson via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> > in the early 70s, noone had seen a computer.
>> >> > i had a terminal at home and we were giving
>> >> > a dinner party. i wrote several games for the
>> >> > party from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle
>> >> > book.
>> >> >
>> >> > the ones i remember:
>> >> >
>> >> > moo (bulls + cows)
>> >> > hunt the wumpus (move or shoot)
>> >> > learning tic-tac-toe
>> >> > i can guess your number (divide and conquer)
>> >> > jealous husbands (similar to fox hen corn)
>> >> > nim
>> >> >
>> >> > i think there were more. they went over
>> >> > pretty well at the party.
>> >> >
>> >> > i think this was 1969 or 1970.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Clarification, please.
>> >>
>> >> Was “Hunt the Wumpus” from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle book?  I thought it was by Gregory Yob (per the Creative Computing BASIC Computer Games book—Wumpus may have been in More BASIC Computer Games), and, well, it’s about dodecahedronal geometry, which seems as if it would only have been found in a rather rarefied puzzle book, but does seem like the sort of Platonic solid a computer-programming nerd in the early 1970s would have known about.
>> >>
>> >> Adam

Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Gabriel Diaz]

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Than you all!

I've found a game demo on youtube on a working PDP-1 at the computer history museum. 


Spacewars demo https://youtu.be/1EWQYAfuMYw?t=838
Video from the start https://youtu.be/1EWQYAfuMYw

The whole video show a music program, the display adapter, the spacewars demo and the light-pen.
Pretty amazing machine.

Gabi



‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
El lunes, diciembre 9, 2019 3:19 AM, Ken Thompson via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> escribió:

> space war. (old age)
> 

> On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 6:15 PM Rob Pike robpike@gmail.com wrote:
> 

> > Space war?
> > -rob
> > On Mon, Dec 9, 2019 at 1:11 PM Ken Thompson ken@google.com wrote:
> > 

> > > my favorite is the original star wars on the pdp-1.
> > > i think it came from lincoln labs, but i played it
> > > in 1965-1966 at stanford.
> > > a very good replica was done on unix by dmr.
> > > On Sun, Dec 8, 2019 at 6:03 PM Rob Pike robpike@gmail.com wrote:
> > > 

> > > > My favorite (other than Nuke the Smileys) was written at the UofT by Hugh Redelmeier. It was a version of tic-tac-toe that played only a single line, and would always win. If it didn't like your move, it changed it. If your move was a good one, it would change its previous move. And it did this with lovely little messages. It was fun watching people get upset at it.
> > > > I don't know where the source is nowadays. I may have it somewhere, or it might be ferric dust long since swept up from a cupboard of failed 9-track tapes.
> > > > -rob
> > > > On Mon, Dec 9, 2019 at 11:47 AM Adam Thornton athornton@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > 

> > > > > > On Dec 8, 2019, at 5:35 PM, Ken Thompson via TUHS tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org wrote:
> > > > > > in the early 70s, noone had seen a computer.
> > > > > > i had a terminal at home and we were giving
> > > > > > a dinner party. i wrote several games for the
> > > > > > party from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle
> > > > > > book.
> > > > > > the ones i remember:
> > > > > > moo (bulls + cows)
> > > > > > hunt the wumpus (move or shoot)
> > > > > > learning tic-tac-toe
> > > > > > i can guess your number (divide and conquer)
> > > > > > jealous husbands (similar to fox hen corn)
> > > > > > nim
> > > > > > i think there were more. they went over
> > > > > > pretty well at the party.
> > > > > > i think this was 1969 or 1970.
> > > > > 

> > > > > Clarification, please.
> > > > > Was “Hunt the Wumpus” from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle book? I thought it was by Gregory Yob (per the Creative Computing BASIC Computer Games book—Wumpus may have been in More BASIC Computer Games), and, well, it’s about dodecahedronal geometry, which seems as if it would only have been found in a rather rarefied puzzle book, but does seem like the sort of Platonic solid a computer-programming nerd in the early 1970s would have known about.
> > > > > Adam


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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Angelo Papenhoff]

On 08/12/19, Ken Thompson via TUHS wrote:
> my favorite is the original star wars on the pdp-1.
> i think it came from lincoln labs, but i played it
> in 1965-1966 at stanford.
> a very good replica was done on unix by dmr.

I wonder if this unix spacewar is still around. What was used as the
display?

Last month I got spacewar to run on my FPGA PDP-6 and PDP-10. There's
still some work needed on the CRT simulation, but it's already looking
quite good.

The PDP-1 version can be played here (from where i stole the CRT
simulation): https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/

aap

Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Naveen Nathan]

On Mon, 9 Dec 2019, at 11:35 AM, Ken Thompson via TUHS wrote:
> in the early 70s, noone had seen a computer.
> i had a terminal at home and we were giving
> a dinner party. i wrote several games for the
> party from the back of an off-the-shelf puzzle
> book.

Hi Ken,

I might be too young to understand the communication
technologies that existed in the 70s.

How did the terminal connect back to the main computer?

Did you have a fixed line or did you dial-in over POTS (plain old telephone service)?

Thanks,
Naveen

Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Arthur Krewat]

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On 12/6/2019 11:19 AM, ron@ronnatalie.com wrote:
>
> Later at BRL we got a copy of “Empire” from PSL.   The good thing 
> about that game was that your amount of activity was limited to one 
> hour a day and however many BTUs (Bureaucratic Time Units) your 
> capital generated.    However, people would print maps near the end of 
> their session and then spend hours planning the next day’s activity.   
> Finally, the lab management had us shutdown.
>

I once took the EMPIRE source code for VAX, and translated it to MSDOS 
using IBM Personal Computer FORTRAN version 2.00. And even added color. 
I broke EMPIRE.FOR into 9 different chunks, I think there was some 
limitation of the compiler, but I'm not sure.

The original EMPIRE.FOR:

         PROGRAM EMPIRE
C
C This program is a war game simulation for video terminals.
C The game was originally written outside of Digital, probably a university.
C This version of the game was made runnable on Digital Equipment VAX/VMS
C FORTRAN by conversion from the TOPS-10/20 sources available around 
fall 1979.
C After debugging it, numerous changes have been made.
C
C Now that you are the proud owner of the source and you are all gung ho
C to do things right, there are a few things you should be aware of.
C Unfortunately, there are many magic numbers controlling how many different
C kinds of units can exist and how many of each, so think well before you
C attempt to add another unit type. Also, "slight changes" to the way 
the units
C work will typically have a fairly devastating affect on the computers
C strategy.  If you are interested in really hacking this, there is a plenty
C of room for enhanced computer strategy.  As you'll see, there are some
C very good debugging tools tucked inside, and you will soon discover weak
C points and bugs, that up until you, have remained problems (all the 
previous
C programmers got lazy or lost interest).  Finally, please be careful with
C the version number and identification at start up to avoid confusion of
C ongoing versions with private copies.  If you make a change don't remove
C the major version id, but rather add something like (V4.0 site.1 
20-JUL-80).
C



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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Dr Iain Maoileoin]

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> On 6 Dec 2019, at 16:19, <ron@ronnatalie.com> <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> There was another multiplayer game called “Search” that would result around 4:30 in the afternoon someone yelling “Search Up” which was everybody’s cue to join in the game.
>  

Ron (all) I have been trying to track down search for years.  We ran a modified copy at the Universirt of Strathclyde Computer Department - it would be good to get a copy for the next reunion.

I have been totally unsuccessful over a decade trying to locate the source.  (try a google search for search! [and a million other attempts]) 

Any ideas if it still exists?
Iain


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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[ron]

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It might be in a BRL archive somewhere (alas I do not have it).  You might ask if Doug Gwyn has one squirrelled away.

 

 

From: Dr Iain Maoileoin <iain@csp-partnership.co.uk> 
Sent: Friday, December 6, 2019 12:58 PM
To: ron@ronnatalie.com
Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

 

 

On 6 Dec 2019, at 16:19, <ron@ronnatalie.com <mailto:ron@ronnatalie.com> > <ron@ronnatalie.com <mailto:ron@ronnatalie.com> > wrote:

 

 

There was another multiplayer game called “Search” that would result around 4:30 in the afternoon someone yelling “Search Up” which was everybody’s cue to join in the game.

 

 

Ron (all) I have been trying to track down search for years.  We ran a modified copy at the Universirt of Strathclyde Computer Department - it would be good to get a copy for the next reunion.

 

I have been totally unsuccessful over a decade trying to locate the source.  (try a google search for search! [and a million other attempts]) 

 

Any ideas if it still exists?

Iain

 


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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Rob Pike]

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And then there was Nuke the Smileys.

-rob


On Sat, Dec 7, 2019 at 9:13 AM <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:

> It might be in a BRL archive somewhere (alas I do not have it).  You might
> ask if Doug Gwyn has one squirrelled away.
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Dr Iain Maoileoin <iain@csp-partnership.co.uk>
> *Sent:* Friday, December 6, 2019 12:58 PM
> *To:* ron@ronnatalie.com
> *Cc:* tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
> *Subject:* Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix
>
>
>
>
>
> On 6 Dec 2019, at 16:19, <ron@ronnatalie.com> <ron@ronnatalie.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> There was another multiplayer game called “Search” that would result
> around 4:30 in the afternoon someone yelling “Search Up” which was
> everybody’s cue to join in the game.
>
>
>
>
>
> Ron (all) I have been trying to track down search for years.  We ran a
> modified copy at the Universirt of Strathclyde Computer Department - it
> would be good to get a copy for the next reunion.
>
>
>
> I have been totally unsuccessful over a decade trying to locate the
> source.  (try a google search for search! [and a million other attempts])
>
>
>
> Any ideas if it still exists?
>
> Iain
>
>
>

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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Adam Thornton]

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There was not a Z-Machine interpreter for Unix machines, as far as I know,
until the release of the ITF interpreter in the early 90s.

However....

Zork was developed under ITS (when it was "mainframe Zork" and an MIT
student project), and the later Infocom games were developed under TOPS-20.

As it happens, I've fairly recently ported the "Frotz" Z-Machine
interpreter to TOPS-20.  https://github.com/athornton/tops20-frotz and
https://github.com/athornton/gnusto-frotz-tops20

This was not all _that_ hard.  KCC on TOPS-20 is an ANSI C compiler, so
there were basically two classes of problems to solve.

The first one is that the linker requires all symbols that are linked
between modules to be six characters or shorter (and case is folded), so I
wrote a transmogrifier (gnusto-frotz) to extract those symbols and create a
mapping for them so that the object code would link.

The second problem was that the Frotz source assumes 8-bit bytes and that
your word length is a multiple of 8 bits.  Since the Z-machine is a 16-bit
virtual machine, that meant there was a whole lot of bit masking necessary
in the opcodes and memory references in order to represent the Z-machine
memory correctly within the TOPS-20 address space.  That's done with stuff
like:

https://github.com/athornton/tops20-frotz/blob/0130a67fc44e0c7de1faa8f882cbc28faee76756/frotz.h#L488

So the idea is, gnusto-frotz-tops20 is semantically equivalent to regular
Frotz, but with macros changed so if you build it with -DWEIRD_WORDSIZE it
would build on a 36-bit system.  Then once you've modified the source, you
run it through the transmogrifier (which really just generates a sed
script) to get something that will _link_ on a 36-bit system.

I have vague plans to port Frotz to ITS but the problem there is that the C
compiler is pre-K&R rather than ANSI, so there's a lot of deprotoization
work to be done, and _then_ I need to fix the things like += being =+ and
so forth, and I think I have to chop another character off the symbols,
which may mean I need smarter collision detection.  So it's nontrivial.

Maybe a good first step would be unprotoizing Frotz and getting it to build
on v7 or so...

Adam

On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 3:52 AM Gabriel Diaz <gdiaz@qswarm.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
>
> Source code has been published of some early games.
>
> Were those games playable on Unix machines at the time? What was your
> favourite game?
>
>
>
> https://kryptonradio.com/2019/04/18/zork-source-code-presumed-lost-forever-has-been-uploaded-to-github/
>
>
> Gabi
>
>
>
>
>

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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Adam Thornton]

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Well, OK, there's one other wrinkle.  Building Frotz on 4.3BSD (or
whatever) on a VAX would be easy, because you have a 32-bit address space.
But the Z-machine can address 64Kwords (plus some trickiness for access
strings in high memory) so you'd have to actually implement a segmented
memory model or overlays or something to squeeze it into a PDP-11.  Which
is obviously doable--after all, the Z-machine was designed to be
implemented on 8-bit micros!--but means that porting Frotz might be more
work than just writing a new interpreter, and supporting the later, larger
games (Infocom used the v5 format, which doubled the size and required 128K
even on 8-bit systems, and a lot of the post-Infocom community work--before
the community went to Glulx, which is a
32-bit-inspired-by-the-z-machine-virtual-machine-for-text-adventures--used
z8, which doubled the size again) is going to be harder.

Jimmy Maher has just been talking about the evolution of the Z-machine over
on filfre.net.  It's well worth reading.

Adam

On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 6:22 PM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote:

> There was not a Z-Machine interpreter for Unix machines, as far as I know,
> until the release of the ITF interpreter in the early 90s.
>
> However....
>
> Zork was developed under ITS (when it was "mainframe Zork" and an MIT
> student project), and the later Infocom games were developed under TOPS-20.
>
> As it happens, I've fairly recently ported the "Frotz" Z-Machine
> interpreter to TOPS-20.  https://github.com/athornton/tops20-frotz and
> https://github.com/athornton/gnusto-frotz-tops20
>
> This was not all _that_ hard.  KCC on TOPS-20 is an ANSI C compiler, so
> there were basically two classes of problems to solve.
>
> The first one is that the linker requires all symbols that are linked
> between modules to be six characters or shorter (and case is folded), so I
> wrote a transmogrifier (gnusto-frotz) to extract those symbols and create a
> mapping for them so that the object code would link.
>
> The second problem was that the Frotz source assumes 8-bit bytes and that
> your word length is a multiple of 8 bits.  Since the Z-machine is a 16-bit
> virtual machine, that meant there was a whole lot of bit masking necessary
> in the opcodes and memory references in order to represent the Z-machine
> memory correctly within the TOPS-20 address space.  That's done with stuff
> like:
>
>
> https://github.com/athornton/tops20-frotz/blob/0130a67fc44e0c7de1faa8f882cbc28faee76756/frotz.h#L488
>
> So the idea is, gnusto-frotz-tops20 is semantically equivalent to regular
> Frotz, but with macros changed so if you build it with -DWEIRD_WORDSIZE it
> would build on a 36-bit system.  Then once you've modified the source, you
> run it through the transmogrifier (which really just generates a sed
> script) to get something that will _link_ on a 36-bit system.
>
> I have vague plans to port Frotz to ITS but the problem there is that the
> C compiler is pre-K&R rather than ANSI, so there's a lot of deprotoization
> work to be done, and _then_ I need to fix the things like += being =+ and
> so forth, and I think I have to chop another character off the symbols,
> which may mean I need smarter collision detection.  So it's nontrivial.
>
> Maybe a good first step would be unprotoizing Frotz and getting it to
> build on v7 or so...
>
> Adam
>
> On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 3:52 AM Gabriel Diaz <gdiaz@qswarm.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>>
>> Source code has been published of some early games.
>>
>> Were those games playable on Unix machines at the time? What was your
>> favourite game?
>>
>>
>>
>> https://kryptonradio.com/2019/04/18/zork-source-code-presumed-lost-forever-has-been-uploaded-to-github/
>>
>>
>> Gabi
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>

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Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Doug McIlroy]

Moo and hunt-the-wumpus got quite a lot of play
both in the lab and at home. Wump was an instant
hit with my son who was 4 or 5 years old at the
time.

Amusingly, I speculated on how to generate degree-3
graphs for wump, but obviously not very deeply. It
was only much later that I realized the graph
always had the same topology--a dodecahedron.

Doug\

Re: [TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Adam Thornton]

> On Dec 9, 2019, at 5:30 PM, Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
> Moo and hunt-the-wumpus got quite a lot of play
> both in the lab and at home. Wump was an instant
> hit with my son who was 4 or 5 years old at the
> time.
> 
> Amusingly, I speculated on how to generate degree-3
> graphs for wump, but obviously not very deeply. It
> was only much later that I realized the graph
> always had the same topology--a dodecahedron.


You know, maybe we’ve been looking at this wrong the whole time (I blame Yob).

Maybe the caves aren’t the vertices of a dodecahedron.  Maybe they’re the faces of an icosahedron.

Adam