Re: Space Wars Options

>>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
Received on Thu Oct 28 18:42:34 1999