Computer Game Pioneers ? ? ?
David Kwan
: I'm trying to compile a list of the "early pioneers" of computer gaming
: (esp. adventure and simulation games) -- creators, developers, promoters,
: entrepreneurs, etc. (NOT players!) I'd welcome your "nominations" to the
: "Leading Pioneers Wing" of the Computer Gaming Hall of Fame. Send names,
: summary of why you consider nominee worthy, and (if possible) where s/he
: is now.
: AeroPlus
Sounds like a thread to me. *grin* The pioneer for adventure games must
have been Scott Adams and Richard Garriot with Akalabeth. Adams came out
with great graphic adventures at the time and Garriot's Akalabeth paved
the way for the HUGE Ultima series.
As for simulators, I think Sublogic deserves top mention for their Flight
Simulator. Still going in its latest incarnation, this simulator was a
basis for other simulators during its time.
.........................................................................
David Kwan | M&M's melt in your mouth, not in your hands.
s81...@aix2.uottawa.ca | Ai Carumba! DOH! Cool man! Why you little...
University of Ottawa | I'm having a bad hair day...don't bug me! =P
.........................................................................
AEROPLUS
Don Macron
(David Kwan) wrote:
>
> Sounds like a thread to me. *grin* The pioneer for adventure games must
> have been Scott Adams and Richard Garriot with Akalabeth. Adams came out
> with great graphic adventures at the time and Garriot's Akalabeth paved
> the way for the HUGE Ultima series.
>
For REAL pioneers, you're forgetting the grandaddy of them all,
"Adventure" by Crawther & Woods.
Also, for those of us who remember the Great Underground Empire, we can
all thank Mark Blanc and the the other boys at MIT (like Dave Lebling).
When 'Zork" came out, it wasn't even called Zork, but the mainframe
version (and the first ones on the TRS-80 and Commodore PETs) had some
other name, which I cannot remember.
I believe that these games originally ran on PDP-10's -- when men were
men, and computers used punch-cards.
Christopher E. Forman
: >When 'Zork" came out, it wasn't even called Zork, but the mainframe
: >version (and the first ones on the TRS-80 and Commodore PETs) had some
: >other name, which I cannot remember.
It was simply called "Dungeon."
: I think I played an early version of pre-zork over the Arapnet on the
: MIT DM (Dynamic Modeling?) machine when I was in high school. This was
: maybe 1978. The only thing that I really remember was the princess
: room. Does anyone else remember a sequence something like this?
: Program: There is a beautiful princess chained to the wall here.
: User: Eat princess
: Program: She smiles and says "You can do better than that".
: User: Score
: Program: <a brief and not too graphic description of shared
: passion between user and princess, also 100 bonus
: points>
: Did that go out in the commercial version of Zork?
I think it resurfaced in Zork II, in the Dragon's cave. I never actually
tried either of the commands you have listed.
Bill Sudbrink
I think I played an early version of pre-zork over the Arapnet on the
MIT DM (Dynamic Modeling?) machine when I was in high school. This was
maybe 1978. The only thing that I really remember was the princess
room. Does anyone else remember a sequence something like this?
Program: There is a beautiful princess chained to the wall here.
User: Eat princess
Program: She smiles and says "You can do better than that".
User: Score
Program: <a brief and not too graphic description of shared
passion between user and princess, also 100 bonus
points>
Did that go out in the commercial version of Zork?
Bill
Dr. Cat
: As for simulators, I think Sublogic deserves top mention for their Flight
: Simulator. Still going in its latest incarnation, this simulator was a
: basis for other simulators during its time.
The name to attach to that one would be Bruce Artwick, the original author.
***********************************************************************
Dr. Cat / Dragons's Eye Productions ** Come play DragonSpires!
******************************************** ftp.eden.com pub/dspire
(Dragonspires is a graphic mud for PCs.) ** has everything you need!
Tim Ash
These guys are'nt considered pioneers now, but they will be in about
5 or 10 years:
John Romero and John Carmack (ID Software)
# Tim Ash - tim...@cyberstore.ca - IRC: TIMinator #
# "A clear statment is the strongest argument" - English Proverb #
# "The more human beings proceed by plan, the more effective they #
# may be hit by accident" - Friedrich Durrenmatt #
Alan Bowler
>men, and computers used punch-cards.
Almost. At the time, you used punch cards if you used any major system
except PDP-10's. (Okay or Multics but that was not nearly as
widespread as the PDP-10). Timesharing and terminals were the standard
mode for PDP-10's and the exception for other systems. There were
other good timesharing systems, (Gcos/TSS on the Honeywell 600/6000,
UTS on the Xerox (formerly SDS) Sigma systems), but these systems also
had batch card aspects, and users often ended up making some use of
cards, or card image files to do a significant portion of their work.
PDP-10 users did not even think in terms of card images.
Richard M. Alderson III
writes:
>In article <dmacron-0902...@quad668.resnet.upenn.edu>
>dma...@mail.sas.upenn.edu (Don Macron) writes:
>>For REAL pioneers, you're forgetting the grandaddy of them all, "Adventure"
>>by Crawther & Woods.
Willy Crowther. Original was done on a CDC-6600. Don Woods ported it to the
SAIL PDP-10 at Stanford, and the rest, as they say, is history.
>>Also, for those of us who remember the Great Underground Empire, we can all
>>thank Mark Blanc and the the other boys at MIT (like Dave Lebling). When
>>'Zork" came out, it wasn't even called Zork, but the mainframe version (and
>>the first ones on the TRS-80 and Commodore PETs) had some other name, which I
>>cannot remember.
It was ZORK on PDP-10s, although MADADV ("Mad Adventure") was an internal
synonym, and the executable was MADADV.SAV.
Funniest thing was that on MIT-MC in 1984, executing ZORK^K (or :ZORK) resulted
in a dialog like
I see no Zork here.
>[user typein of anything]
I see no Zork here.
>[plotka]
I see no Zork here.
>[plotka, yet again]
Game playing on overloaded machines is anti-social. Take it elsewhere.
The final message was three or four lines long and I've paraphrased.
>>I believe that these games originally ran on PDP-10's -- when men were men,
>>and computers used punch-cards.
Punch cards? We don't need no steenkin' punch cards...
I mean, sure, there was a card reader and punch available for the -10, but its
primary mission in life at most sites was as a timesharing system, with on-line
editing of batch-job files and so on.
>I think I played an early version of pre-zork over the Arapnet on the MIT DM
>(Dynamic Modeling?) machine when I was in high school. This was maybe 1978.
>The only thing that I really remember was the princess room. Does anyone else
>remember a sequence something like this?
That's about when I first saw it, from a tape that came to the University of
Chicago *direct from DEC EduServices*.
>Program: There is a beautiful princess chained to the wall here.
>User: Eat princess
>Program: She smiles and says "You can do better than that".
>User: Score
>Program: <a brief and not too graphic description of shared
passion between user and princess, also 100 bonus
points>
>Did that go out in the commercial version of Zork?
Not only did that not go out in the commercial version, it didn't even make it
into the version we got at UC!
--
Rich Alderson [Tolkien quote temporarily removed in favour of
alde...@netcom.com proselytizing comment below --rma]
Please support the creation of the humanities hierarchy of newsgroups!
Richard M. Alderson III
cef...@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Christopher E. Forman) writes:
>Bill Sudbrink (bi...@umsa7.umd.edu) wrote:
>: >When 'Zork" came out, it wasn't even called Zork, but the mainframe
>: >version (and the first ones on the TRS-80 and Commodore PETs) had some
>: >other name, which I cannot remember.
>It was simply called "Dungeon."
Oh, yeah. That's a re-implementation in Fortran by a DEC engineer, based on
the original Muddle (MDL) implementation.
>: Did that go out in the commercial version of Zork?
>I think it resurfaced in Zork II, in the Dragon's cave. I never actually
>tried either of the commands you have listed.
Hmm. I recently got the old Zorks for the Mac for Christmas. I'll have to
look for that one again...
Michael Hartman
Computing", who published a lot of BASIC programs for simple, and a few
not-so-simple, games. He compiled at least two collections of these, "101
BASIC Computer Games" and "More BASIC Computer Games", that certainly
served to get me interested in playing and writing computer games. You
could key these into any size computer (mainframe, mini, or micro) that
had a BASIC interpreter and play. The games included such chestnuts as
Hunt the Wumpus, and more involved things like decent versions of
Mastermind and Awari. In one volume a monstrous amount of code for the
original Star Trek game was included (you sought Klingons in a grid of
quadrants containing three digits for the Klingon, planet and starbase
count). Obviously, none of these involved fancy graphics or animation,
but I think their role was important.
Michael Hartman
Peter Simpson
>David Kwan (s81...@aix1.uottawa.ca) wrote:
>: As for simulators, I think Sublogic deserves top mention for their Flight
>: Simulator. Still going in its latest incarnation, this simulator was a
>: basis for other simulators during its time.
>
>The name to attach to that one would be Bruce Artwick, the original author.
>
ah...check the cumulative index! Interesting discussion of some of the
techniques Artwick used to deal with the many transformations involving sin
and cos. As I recall (it was several years ago), he used lookup tables.
Quite a nice programming job...
Peter
---
Peter Simpson, KA1AXY Linux! Peter_...@3mail.3com.com
3Com Corporation The free Unix (508) 836-1719 voice
Northborough, MA 01532 for the 386 (508) 393-6934 fax
I speak only for myself...not 3Com...nor Canter & Siegel.
Eric Werme
>AeroPlus
Sigh. I was hoping someone else would do this for me, as I don't remember
all the names. I think they're mostly in Steven Levy's hackers.
The original video game by many accounts was Sapce War on the PDP-1 at MIT.
The Computer Museum in Boston fired up their PDP-1 for the 25th anniversary,
and that was several years ago. Oh dear, who collaborated on that? Hmm.
I can't remember *any* name off hand. Damn, and I even worked with one of
them.
Ah well. Space War clones were written for the PDP-6 at Stanford and the
Graphic Wonder at Carnegie-Mellon.
Some of the authors of the PDP-1 version have testified in court as
witnesses in patent disputes over prior art claims.
--
Eric (Ric) Werme | we...@zk3.dec.com
Digital Equipment Corp. | This space intentionally left blank.
Peter Coffin
: I'm trying to compile a list of the "early pioneers" of computer gaming
: (esp. adventure and simulation games) -- creators, developers, promoters,
: entrepreneurs, etc. (NOT players!) I'd welcome your "nominations" to the
: "Leading Pioneers Wing" of the Computer Gaming Hall of Fame. Send names,
: summary of why you consider nominee worthy, and (if possible) where s/he
: is now.
Bill Budge
----------
Author of Raster Blaster, Pinball Construction Set, and many more earlier
works.
Edward Rice
DW> From: jo...@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H
DW> MLH,3193350740,3193382879)
DW> Space War was not a video game! Video encoding of images involves a
DW> raster scan of the image, and space-war was always implemented on CRT
DW> displays employing a completely different display technology,
DW> random-access point plotting. In fact, purists have insisted on many
DW> occasions that the look and feel of spacewar can't be captured on a
DW> video display, even if you have 1024 by 1024 pixels in your raster.
DW>
DW> I've played spacewar on a DDP-224 computer.
I think your definition is far too narrow. By it, the original Asteroids is
not a video game, because the scope was a vector scope.
If it's a game, and it's on a video (CRT) tube, it's a video game. And I'll
bet, Doug, I've put more quarters in them than you. (Used to spend lunch hours
playing Missile Command -- would pay good money even today for an original
arcade game of it, with the /heavy/ trak-ball.)
Eric Werme
>PDP-10 users did not even think in terms of card images.
Sure we did. All the terminals we had at first (mostly Model 33 Teletrypes)
had 80 columns. We even had a card reader for people who wanted to bring
files from the 360 and 1108. (And, of course, a lot of us started out on
those or the Bendix G-21.)
Heck, I still measure program source size by thickness of card deck, though
with some of our Unix modules pushing 10 boxes of cards, it's getting a
little inappropriate. (A box of cards held 2000.)
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879
> jo...@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones) writes:
>>Space War was not a video game! Video encoding of images involves a raster
>>scan of the image, and space-war was always implemented on CRT displays
>>employing a completely different display technology, random-access point
>>plotting.
> I don't think I buy this at all. Excluding non-raster games from the
> category of "video games" means excluding a whole slew of brilliant
> games from the early Atari.
Exactly! I don't buy the idea of dubbing any game with a CRT a video game.
Perhaps I'm getting picky in my old age, but if you can't show me a video
signal that I could feed into my monitor's video-in jack to display the
same picture, it ain't video. I'm willing to accept composite video,
separate RGB, separate synch (4 coax cables), and nonstardard scan rates.
I'll even call it video if the raster runs top to bottom instead of side to
side, but that's my limit.
> Unless I misunderstood you, you are implying that Asteroids, Battlezone,
> and the rest of the vector-graphics games are not "video games".
They use vector graphics, not video technology. They're nifty additions
to a video arcade, and they get lumped in with legitimate video games
because, to a player, who cares what hardware technology goes behind the
screen, but they're not based on video technology! As far as I'm concerned,
it's not quite as bad as calling gravity and spring powered pinball games
video games, but after all, you generally find those in the same kind of
places also, so why not be generous with your use of terminology.
> I'm not familiar with the term "random-access point plotting", is it
> similar to the vector-graphics used by Atari (in games) and by some
> terminal manufacturers in the 70's?
Yup. Vector graphis is more sophisticated. There, you give the hardware
commands that are triplets (x, y, beam), and the hardware stears the
electron beam to coordinates (x, y). If beam=on, the hardware draws
a line from the current position to the new one. If beam=off, the hardware
just moves to the new point without drawing.
The older technology was random-access point plotting. The output was in
the form (x, y), which would cause the hardware to move the beam to the
indicated position and then paint a dot. If you wanted a line, your
software would have to issue a series of plot commands for each point on
the line. Sounds pretty crummy, but that's the technology that brought us
spacewar and many other gems of 1960's era graphics. You'd be surprised
what a computer that can only do a third of a million integer add
instructions per second can accomplish!
Doug Jones
jo...@cs.uiowa.edu
Dave Brown
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879 <jo...@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu> wrote:
>They use vector graphics, not video technology. They're nifty additions
>to a video arcade, and they get lumped in with legitimate video games
>because, to a player, who cares what hardware technology goes behind the
>screen, but they're not based on video technology!
I suppose by your kind of thinking, pachinko isn't pinball either.
--Dave
--
http://armf18.dow.on.doe.ca:6700/~dbrown/ Dave Brown, sysadmin for
Environment Canada. I charge for any unsolicited advertising that
appears in any system I administrate, at the rate of $200/hr for my
time in dealing with the ad (min. 1/2 hr) and $100/kB for storage.
Richard M. Alderson III
writes:
>PDP-10 users did not even think in terms of card images.
Why do you use the past tense in this statement? I use a -10 every day to do
my job, and I *still* don't think in card images for it. ;->
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879
by dagb...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Dave Brown):
>
> I suppose by your kind of thinking, pachinko isn't pinball either.
Of course it is, even in the most narrow minded rigorous sense. There
are balls, there are pins to divert the balls from their trajectory.
I've built pinball games with lots of electric gizmos, solenoids on the
bumpers and whatnot, but it's easy to see that those are just bells and
whistles on the basic idea of balls, gravity, and something to get in
the way.
Doug Jones
jo...@cs.uiowa.edu
Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879
by edwar...@his.com (Edward Rice):
>
> I think your definition is far too narrow. By it, the original Asteroids is
> not a video game, because the scope was a vector scope.
>
> If it's a game, and it's on a video (CRT) tube, it's a video game.
But not all CRT's are video tubes! For that matter, the games I spent the
most time on used plasma display panels (I wrote a nice PLATO IV game called
Hi Volts), and nobody on the Plato project liked it when people called
Plato terminals "Video Display Terminals". There was nothing video about
them!
> And I'll bet, Doug, I've put more quarters in them than you.
Indeed, I think I've spent under a dollar on arcade games in my life. My
game experience comes from two sources: I built a pinball game when I was
in college (from surplus industrial parts plus plywood), and as I said, I
spent most of the 1970's working on PLATO IV, which was a hotbed of computer
(but not video) games.
Doug Jones
jo...@cs.uiowa.edu
Sean Furey
of the best space-adventure games of all time. They managed to get
fast, smooth 3-D animation and intelligent enemies out of the most
primitive (now) home computers.
I can't imagine the number of hours I wasted getting to Elite on
my Acorn BBC 128K (Now a proud owner of an SE/30 - wish I had my
parent's Quadra though...)
When is ELITE II coming out for the Mac, eh?
Cheers
ma...@dmrt-2.dmrt.nl
>My vote goes to David Brabham and Ian Bell who created ELITE, one
>of the best space-adventure games of all time. They managed to get
>fast, smooth 3-D animation and intelligent enemies out of the most
>primitive (now) home computers.
Seconded.
Marco.
--
Torbj|rn Andersson
> My vote goes to David Brabham and Ian Bell who created ELITE, one
> of the best space-adventure games of all time. They managed to get
> fast, smooth 3-D animation and intelligent enemies out of the most
> primitive (now) home computers.
That was a fun game, all right. I used to play it with a friend on
his MSX (I think that's what it was called, at least) until the
cassette player decided to eat that tape for breakfast. If I had ever
seen a version of it that would run on my Mac Plus (with wire-frame
graphics, naturally; call me silly, but I *like* wire-frame graphics),
I'd have bought it at once.
As for my vote for computer game pioneers that's tricky ... I'm not
old enough to remember much about computers before early 1980's, but
I guess my votes would go to the people at Infocom (who also managed
to get intelligent enemies out of some of the most primitive home
computers :-), or maybe to Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle, who created
the original MUD back in 1979-1980.
Torbj|rn Andersson
Matt G. Newmark
are out of buisness, but on the original C-64 there were two games. Alternate
Reality The City, and AR The Dungeon. City was Ehhh, But Dungeon was an
excellent game WAY ahead of it's time in 3D engine, not to mention lots of fun.
There were also plans (And spaces in the game for) several other episodes
(Palace, Wilderness, etc) but the games never came out. Too bad too, if that
company was still in buisness today they would be way ahead of the competition.
--
Duke Matius V - Guardian of Life mgn...@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu
Sysop - The Realm of The Living (309)-862-0372 in Normal Illinois
Started using Internet on 1/28/95 and Learnin REAL fast hehehehe...
COME and see me as Rassilon in IRC #Starwars
Eric William King
mgn...@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Matt G. Newmark) wrote:
: Hmm. I don't remember the name of the software compnay, and I think they
: are out of buisness, but on the original C-64 there were two games. Alternate
: Reality The City, and AR The Dungeon. City was Ehhh, But Dungeon was an
: excellent game WAY ahead of it's time in 3D engine, not to mention lots
of fun.
Ah a fellow Dungeon fan! AR The Dungeon, was probably one of the *best*
games of all time. It was just plain fun and had more playability than 95%
of the cruft that gets released today. The game was distributed by
Activision, but I think the developers of it (Datasoft?) have long since
scattered to the winds.
: There were also plans (And spaces in the game for) several other episodes
: (Palace, Wilderness, etc) but the games never came out. Too bad too, if that
: company was still in buisness today they would be way ahead of the
competition.
: --
Whenever I think about writing a game, The Dungeon *always* pops into
my head as an ideal model (So does the Eternal Dagger by SSI) The Dungeon
had everything you wanted in an RPG: a cool plot that was *not* confining,
but forced one to explore, cool weapons and monsters (Except for the
Devourer) great character development and magic/stat system, plus it had
the ability (Though never taken advantage of) to explore new scnearios
like the Arena and Wilderness. The only Dungeon Crawl that was comparable
was Dungeon Master, and with any luck we should be seeing a sequel to that
soon.
-Eric
David Wareing
[claims that Space War was not a video game]
>> I don't think I buy this at all. Excluding non-raster games from the
>> category of "video games" means excluding a whole slew of brilliant
>> games from the early Atari.
>Exactly! I don't buy the idea of dubbing any game with a CRT a video game.
>Perhaps I'm getting picky in my old age, but if you can't show me a video
>signal that I could feed into my monitor's video-in jack to display the
>same picture, it ain't video. I'm willing to accept composite video,
>separate RGB, separate synch (4 coax cables), and nonstardard scan rates.
>I'll even call it video if the raster runs top to bottom instead of side to
>side, but that's my limit.
Sorry, you don't win any pedant points today. :) You may have exacting
rules on what constitutes a "Video game", but to the vast majority
of people, a "Video game" means any game played on a screen,
differentiating it from the mechanical amusements like Pinball or
"Love Tester" machines.
Space War, Pong, Space Invaders, Tempest, Star Wars, Donkey Kong
and Virtual Fighter II are all video games, irrespective of the
display technology.
>> Unless I misunderstood you, you are implying that Asteroids, Battlezone,
>> and the rest of the vector-graphics games are not "video games".
>They use vector graphics, not video technology. They're nifty additions
>to a video arcade, and they get lumped in with legitimate video games
>because, to a player, who cares what hardware technology goes behind the
>screen, but they're not based on video technology! As far as I'm concerned,
They *are* legitimate video games. And they were some of the best
video games of their time, responsible for much of the early
business in "video arcades". If you had told a kid in an arcade
around 1982 that Asteroids was not a video game, he would have
looked at you rather suspiciously and thought you a weirdo. The
game used vector graphics (although that's a debate in itself)
but is still what anyone would call a video game.
>it's not quite as bad as calling gravity and spring powered pinball games
>video games, but after all, you generally find those in the same kind of
>places also, so why not be generous with your use of terminology.
Pinball games are a completely different kettle of fish. They are,
for the most part, mechanical devices. The goal is to manipulate
a solid, tangible object on a physical board. With any video game,
be it Space War or Raiden, the goal is to manipulate an image that
is presented on a screen or other device (including "holographic"
back images).
--
David Wareing dwar...@apanix.apana.org.au
Adelaide, South Australia
Macintosh Games & Multimedia Programming
--------------------------------------------------------------
May you live in interesting times
Malcolm Ross Kinsella Ryan
>In article <1995Feb19.1...@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>,
>mgn...@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Matt G. Newmark) wrote:
>
>: Hmm. I don't remember the name of the software compnay, and I think they
>: are out of buisness, but on the original C-64 there were two games. Alternate
>: Reality The City, and AR The Dungeon. City was Ehhh, But Dungeon was an
>: excellent game WAY ahead of it's time in 3D engine, not to mention lots
>of fun.
>
> Ah a fellow Dungeon fan! AR The Dungeon, was probably one of the *best*
>games of all time. It was just plain fun and had more playability than 95%
>of the cruft that gets released today. The game was distributed by
>Activision, but I think the developers of it (Datasoft?) have long since
>scattered to the winds.
>
Aha! I can't tell you how glad I am to find someone else who has actually
heard of this game. A year or two ago I set out to find out whatever
happened to it, and all I met were blank looks from all over the net.
I heard rumour that there was a Mac version released, long ago. Anyone
know for sure?
I loved the freedom this game offered to pursue your own goals, rather
than the traditional "get the key to unlock the door to get the sword to ..."
Did anyone solve the Dungeon? I could never get across the river Styx, if
I remember rightly. Did anyone solve the City? Was there actually a point
to that game? I found it awfully hard just to stay alive.
I sometimes dream of rewriting that game with DOOM-esque graphics. For a
long time I struggled with writing such a graphical engine for that very
purpose, but I really have no idea how to do it. Sigh.
Malcolm
John Hawksley
: I completely agree, Elite is the best game for the C64 I've
: ever seen...
: s - up, x - down, <,> - roll left and right, a - laser :)
Did anyone ever play this on the BBC 8-bit range? What about Revs?
Ah -- this takes me back... I still have the old BBC Master knocking
about somewhere.. :*)
*sigh*
And I still use the old Citizen 120D it came with on my PC. :*)
Great days, great days...
John
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Hawksley | All the opinions herein are my own. Staffordshire
Staffordshire University | University doesn't have opinions; and if it did it
cm3b...@staffs.ac.uk | wouldn't tell us anyway. PGP Public Key avail.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A.G. Ponitz
> aero...@aol.com (AEROPLUS) wrote:
> >
> > I'm trying to compile a list of the "early pioneers" of computer gaming
> > (esp. adventure and simulation games) -- creators, developers, promoters,
> > entrepreneurs, etc.
> >
> of the best space-adventure games of all time. They managed to get
> fast, smooth 3-D animation and intelligent enemies out of the most
> primitive (now) home computers.
I completely agree, Elite is the best game for the C64 I've
ever seen...
s - up, x - down, <,> - roll left and right, a - laser :)
Andre'
Eric J. Korpela
For those of us in the DOS world Elite/Plus and Elite II-Frontier are
still occasionally seen in some software stores. Trust me, Elite II
does for low-end 386 graphics what Elite did for C-64 graphics. The
texture mapped polygon space stations (and ground stations) are great.
The game play is just like the original, except the universe is bigger.
It flies like MS space simulator should have.
Eric
--
Eric Korpela | New ERIC 2.0 offers increased
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Nick Vargish
[ re: Elite II ]
>The game play is just like the original, except the universe is bigger.
I must disagree here. The combat in Elite II was really lame compared
to the dogfighting in Elite. It had all the fun and excitement of
combat in MANTIS(*), but with more frustration.
If it wasn't for the combat being such a letdown, I'd probably still
be playing Elite II -- the size of the universe and the detail of the
solar systems, well, that was wonderful. And I did like the graphics,
and zooming around planets...
>It flies like MS space simulator should have.
I can't comment on this.
Nick
(*) For those who never played Mantis, in a word: BORING.
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Kip Crosby
>The original video game by many accounts was Sapce War on the PDP-1 at MIT.
>The Computer Museum in Boston fired up their PDP-1 for the 25th anniversary,
>and that was several years ago. Oh dear, who collaborated on that? Hmm.
>I can't remember *any* name off hand. Damn, and I even worked with one of
>them.
Well -- Slug Russell, for one.
-- Kip "used to play Spacewar on the PDP-1 at BBN" Crosby
Mr CJ HOLGATE
>In article <021995000...@dmrt-2.dmrt.nl>, <ma...@dmrt-2.dmrt.nl> wrote:
>>Sean Furey <S.F...@uea.ac.uk> writes:
>>
>>>My vote goes to David Brabham and Ian Bell who created ELITE, one
>>>of the best space-adventure games of all time. They managed to get
>>>fast, smooth 3-D animation and intelligent enemies out of the most
>>>primitive (now) home computers.
>>
>
>does for low-end 386 graphics what Elite did for C-64 graphics.
Surely you mean BBC B graphics. That was the original Elite platform, after
all. I'm amazed that they managed to fit the whole code and screen memory
for Elite into a meagre 32K. I thought one of the cleverest tricks was the
way that they managed to change the screen resolution and colour depth 3/4
of the way down the screen, so that the 'view' was medium resolution mono
and the console was 4 colour low resolution. Talk about low level hackery,
these guys should be an inspiration to us all !
Chris (who never tried hacking the Beeb's ULA and admires others who did)
John Hawksley
: In article <vargish....@molecule.sura.net>, var...@sura.net wrote:
: My vote also goes to david braben. You have to consider what was around at
: the time when elite first came, jet set willy et al idf i remember
: correctly. At the time Elite was the only game that offered a real 3d
: world. The dogfighting was amazing for it's time. Right now no game has
: been released that has been such a jump forward. WC3 is the only game i
: can think of that has produced some inovaion, namely it has shown oncel
: and for all that it is possible for cds to be used in action games,
: although the shite programming meant waiting for ages etc.
: Secondly also consider that these games where programmed in 20K of
: mememory (on the BBC) when you consider wc3 (4*CDs = nearly 2.5 gigs) have
: we had such an improvement.
: I also want to nominate Exile, also for the beeb wich again should that
: gameplay was the most impotant thing. It also produced good graphics, for
: its time, and was one massive game, bigger the both dooms put togeather,
: and again only in 16K.
: Prehaps we've lost something as programers switch from machine code to C++
: or the other shite programming languages.
i
Did Braben do Revs too? I think so. Exile *was* good.
Puzzle solving, good graphics, sound, excellent gameplay.
Reasonable novella etc. Even had digitized speech on the old
Master 128. I loved this game.
Come to think of it, most Superior Software productions were
good.
Mr Nadeem Akhtar
My vote also goes to david braben. You have to consider what was around at
Mr Nadeem Akhtar
My vote also goes to david braben. You have to consider what was around at
Dave Brown
Alistair Brown <A.D....@bradford.ac.uk> wrote:
>Besides which... wouldn't you feel really cheated if you paid 39 pounds
>for a game and then found it took up about 16K of your hard disk space? ;-)
No I bloody wouldn't. I do feel cheated, however, by games which work
out to essentially _Elite_, but don't have the gameplay and do have
lots of nice long movies for you to stare at while you're not playing,
and take up 40M of hard drive space.
Look at Microsoft's version of _Space Invaders_ for instance....
--Dave
--
http://armf18.dow.on.doe.ca:6700/~dbrown/ Dave Brown, sysadmin for
Environment Canada. I charge for any unsolicited advertising that
appears in any system I administer, at the rate of $200/hr for my
Aidan Weatherill
go on you know you want to:-)
Aidan
--
E.mail zcb...@ucl.ac.uk
Bernie Cosell
} In article <werme.7...@alingo.zk3.dec.com> we...@alingo.zk3.dec.com (Eric Werme) writes:
} >The original video game by many accounts was Sapce War on the PDP-1 at MIT.
} >The Computer Museum in Boston fired up their PDP-1 for the 25th anniversary,
} >and that was several years ago. Oh dear, who collaborated on that? Hmm.
} >I can't remember *any* name off hand. Damn, and I even worked with one of
} >them.
}
} Well -- Slug Russell, for one.
He was the original author, as far as I know. After his original opus,
many generations of hackers at the RLE at MIT pounded away on the program.
From there, it wandered to the PDP-6s at the AI lab at MIT [there was
even a PDP-1 up there with a neat console... was that system ever used
for *anything* other than playing spacewar?]
} -- Kip "used to play Spacewar on the PDP-1 at BBN" Crosby
Indeed, probably a copy I brought over. I also have the dubious
distinction of having a *LISTING* of the damn thing [in fact, of
the version we were playing with at BBN] -- about the only use
I made of it was to get the addresses of all the magic variables
at the beginning of the program you could tweak [a little creative
depositing and you could have infinite torpedoes, or a 90% chance of
blowing up in hyperspace, etc]. You may not have noticed, but that was
the first version of SpaceWar to include Peter Samson's astounding
starfield hackery... if you played the game a LONG time and were very
observant, you might notice (1) that the background starfield was the
*real* starfield and (2) it moved at (I think) the correct rate, so
that it'd cycle in 24 hours.
/Bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell ber...@fantasyfarm.com
Fantasy Farm Fibers, Pearisburg, VA (703) 921-2358
--->>> Too many people; too few sheep <<<---
Jeff M Lodoen
>Look at Microsoft's version of _Space Invaders_ for instance....
What version? You don't mean MicroSoft Arcade do you? No _SI_
but 5 other games and uses 2.2MB (mostly sound). Comes on a
1.44 3.5" disk.
And watch for the 2600 Action Pack. An emulator plus fifteen
games, ranging from 2K to 8K in size each. Available on CD-ROM.
Don't think they filled it, just another form of distribution.
Bill Sudbrink
Watch where?? Will it come out in the retail channels, Egghead,
CompUSA, etc??
Thanks
Bill
>
>
Russell Morgan
C'mon, somebody code the game (and make it PPC native too).
Wasn't there an ELITE supreme released for IBM platforms a few years ago?
Russell.
Mr Nadeem Akhtar
(Alistair Brown) wrote:
> rmh...@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Nadeem Akhtar) writes:
> >My vote also goes to david braben. You have to consider what was around at
> >the time when elite first came, jet set willy et al idf i remember
> >correctly. At the time Elite was the only game that offered a real 3d
> >world. The dogfighting was amazing for it's time. Right now no game has
> >been released that has been such a jump forward. WC3 is the only game i
> >can think of that has produced some inovaion, namely it has shown oncel
> >and for all that it is possible for cds to be used in action games,
> >although the shite programming meant waiting for ages etc.
> >Secondly also consider that these games where programmed in 20K of
> >mememory (on the BBC) when you consider wc3 (4*CDs = nearly 2.5 gigs) have
> >we had such an improvement.
>
> Yes, we have. Maybe not in all areas, but:
>
> 1) I don't remember cinematic video in Elite.
> 2) Elite didn't have much of a storyline.
> 3) Dogfighting wasn't as tension filled. (Although I'd nominate tie
> fighter for the best dogfighting yet).
>
> It's very easy to go misty eyed about the 'good old days' and think that
> everything was great back then. When it comes down to it there were bad
> and good games - just as there are bad and good games now.
>
> >I also want to nominate Exile, also for the beeb wich again should that
> >gameplay was the most impotant thing. It also produced good graphics, for
> >its time, and was one massive game, bigger the both dooms put togeather,
> >and again only in 16K.
> >Prehaps we've lost something as programers switch from machine code to C++
> >or the other shite programming languages.
>
> Yes, we have lost something - bad coding. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
> saying that there weren't programs that were increadible feats of
> optimisation and skill... but maintainance must have been an increadible
> feat too.
>
> If you really think that pure machine code or assembly is the way to make
> great games then you've missed out on a lot of the advancements of the last
> ten or so years. Games may not be as fast (although, with assembly coding
> in just the right places, they can be almost as fast), but they are far,
> far superior technically.
>
> Besides which... wouldn't you feel really cheated if you paid 39 pounds
> for a game and then found it took up about 16K of your hard disk space? ;-)
>
> Alistair
> --
I think the point is that those were great games and took up minisicel
memory compred to the todays memory requirement and were tremendously
playable on computer whose speed is pathetic when compared to todays
computer. Yet if you consider todays technology have we had such a
significant increase in gameplay.
Graphics aren't everything. THey and sound are the only thing that have
improved. Ithink the comments on machine code are related to the fact that
scrolling isn't as fast on todays machines as it should be. And
programmers are far to lax at this point. Bad programming can turn what
should be a phenonenal game ito a losy one if the frame rates are slow
enough. In the old days you had programmers who designs and played there
games as well. Now you have designers who desisgn and programmers who
program lit bits of the code and, i may be mistaked in this, it appears to
me that the interaction between the two is limited such that many of the
games today dont live up to there potential either because of bad design
or more commaonly the multitude of programmers thatare used resulting in
games that are loos at the edges and looking as if they are rushed. Why is
it that even with the 100 MgHz pents that are available many of today
flight simm are jerky in Svga mode even with accelerated graphics
adapters. surely todays computers should be able to handle the graphics
info if programmed properly. And why do many of todays palyers who have
grown up as seeing the development of gaming from its infancy complain. We
the older dare i say maturer players are a significant population of the
playing community yet we complain perhapls we have a reason. I think games
dont have the depth they did or the longevity that was found in the day of
te good old speccy CBM and beeb. I think that with the the ooddles of HD
space and Cd-rom much room could be done with games (perhaps the software
houses aren't ambitious enough or are scared of losing money). Yet there
is light at the end of the tunnel. WC3 showed the way with presentation,
gameplay needed a great over haul. With the upcoming Cd rom titles and
software houses at last looking to spend big bucks on games developement
(phantasmagora looks great but will it play great) perhaps we will shut up
but somehow i doubt is as we've been let down to much. What do you say
rmhanar @ucl.ac.uk
Glenn Saunders
: (Alistair Brown) wrote:
: > rmh...@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Nadeem Akhtar) writes:
: > >My vote also goes to david braben. You have to consider what was around at
: > >the time when elite first came, jet set willy et al idf i remember
: > >correctly. At the time Elite was the only game that offered a real 3d
: > >world. The dogfighting was amazing for it's time. Right now no game has
: > >been released that has been such a jump forward. WC3 is the only game i
: > >can think of that has produced some inovaion, namely it has shown oncel
: > >and for all that it is possible for cds to be used in action games,
: > >although the shite programming meant waiting for ages etc.
: > >Secondly also consider that these games where programmed in 20K of
: > >mememory (on the BBC) when you consider wc3 (4*CDs = nearly 2.5 gigs) have
: > >we had such an improvement.
Elite (at least for the Apple II) was slow wireframes and overall not as
enjoyable as Star Raiders.