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From: Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>
To: TUHS main list <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: Unix game origins - stories similar to Crowther's Adventure
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2023 15:21:42 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKH6PiU1aLmUq585mBMmMmZfpuwSAE3sx-UQoj=dn5-pb-w5DA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)

> In the annals of UNIX gaming, have there ever been notable games that have operated as multiple processes, perhaps using formal IPC or even just pipes or shared files for communication between separate processes

I don't know any Unix examples, but DTSS (Dartmouth Time Sharing
System) "communication files" were used for the purpose. For a fuller
story see https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/DTSS/commfiles.pdf

> This is probably a bit more Plan 9-ish than UNIX-ish

So it was with communication files, which allowed IO system calls to
be handled in userland. Unfortunately, communication files were
complicated and turned out to be an evolutionary dead end. They had
had no ancestral connection to successors like pipes and Plan 9.
Equally unfortunately, 9P, the very foundation of Plan 9, seems to
have met the same fate.

Doug

             reply	other threads:[~2023-02-01 20:23 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 22+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-02-01 20:21 Douglas McIlroy [this message]
2023-02-01 20:41 ` A. P. Garcia
2023-02-01 20:47   ` ron minnich
2023-02-01 23:31     ` Douglas McIlroy
2023-02-02  7:30       ` [TUHS] 9P Lives. (Was: Unix game origins - stories similar to Crowther's Adventure) Ralph Corderoy
2023-02-01 23:24 ` [TUHS] Re: Unix game origins - stories similar to Crowther's Adventure Dan Cross
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2023-02-02  0:43 Noel Chiappa
2023-02-01  2:30 [TUHS] " Will Senn
2023-02-01  2:58 ` [TUHS] " Clem Cole
2023-02-01  4:50   ` Douglas McIlroy
2023-02-01  5:36     ` Rob Pike
2023-02-01 20:23       ` Dave Horsfall
2023-02-02 15:35         ` Marc Donner
2023-02-03  2:15           ` Adam Thornton
2023-02-01  6:27     ` Jonathan Gray
2023-02-01  7:09       ` Jonathan Gray
2023-02-01 14:41 ` Rich Salz
2023-02-01 15:22   ` Will Senn
2023-02-01 17:34     ` Rich Salz
2023-02-01 17:52 ` Henry Bent
2023-02-01 18:33   ` segaloco via TUHS
2023-02-01 19:09     ` Rich Salz
2023-02-01 19:16       ` Dan Cross

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