Blast from the past - REALITY - YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING

[dick elleray]

Hi,

In trying to teach non graphic programming skills to under-adults  (using databasic),  I thought that I might delve into my past coding experience with Reality.

(i'm ex CMC / Microdata / MDIS / Northgate in Development/Tech/Support/Marketing)

During which, in 1980's/90's, I completed a port of the 'Adventure' text based game in DataBasic to Reality and it was pre-loaded onto the delivery OS tapes for 'testing purposes'.

YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING.
AROUND YOU IS A FOREST.  A SMALL STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND
DOWN A GULLY.

go south

YOU ARE IN A VALLEY IN THE FOREST BESIDE A STREAM TUMBLING ALONG A    
ROCKY BED.

It may have been in the ATP account - along with a P99 terminal testing program -  but normally in the  pre-compiled databasic system library.

The end-state of the game, and a few bits, weren't working as the original port intended.

Some people completed the quest in that decade.

But my line printer print out of the source (and obviously any backups) and the derived Adventure map,  have gone to recycling over the decades (I assume).

Does anyone (NIS-REALITY?)  have the source from their archives or its equivalent I wonder...

dick elleray

[TonyG Test]

Dick - Good luck in finding your code. I had a lot of fun with the Fortran version of Collosal Cave / Adventure on a PDP-11. This and other games like Star Trek (later implemented by Ken Simms in BASIC) helped to form my appreciation for computer sciences.

For teaching coding, these days I still think the best approach is through fun and games. But I'm torn between the power and simplicity of BASIC versus the practicality of modern languages. Today's student needs to be able to apply their newfound skills immediately to keep them fresh and to propel them on to other successes. For this reason I spent a lot of time with a project to teach coding to kids and adults using JavaScript to manipulate Minecraft. There is immediate visual gratification in a familiar environment - all of the right components for a good education, and the language and techniques are easily applied immediately to other projects. With huge changes to the Minecraft core, and changes in Java with the Nashorn engine for JavaScript, I backed away from that for a while. Now I'm considering Python for Minecraft for new learners - again, because Python seems to be up and coming and the new knowledge and skills are transferrable. I am on the fence about the options because Python is a server-only language while JavaScript is both client and server, so more bang for the buck. Rather than choosing between them, I think both of them should have equal standing for anyone who wishes to gravitate to either option. But the Minecraft integration fundamentally changes the approach from non-graphic to graphic, and I strongly believe that for kids this is more effective. For adults, the Minecraft skills allow them to interact with their kids more, so there is a huge social benefit derived which we don't get with Pick BASIC.

For the nerds in this audience, I've often thought about MVBASIC as a plugin language for Minecraft. I'd gladly make that happen if there was some way to cost-justify the effort. (Hello sponsorship from a MVDBMS provider?) There are challenges, one of which is that MVBASIC is not natively object-oriented in most MV platforms, and the object orientation that does exist (QM) is not very deep. MVBASIC would need a shim from Java to wrap a Minecraft library like Spigot, to facilitate polymorphism, and to ensure all events get handled in BASIC. Someone could suggest using recently developed MV/Python integrations with Minecraft, but I don't see the value of complicating Python+Minecraft with MV. Hey, that would be fine if someone wanted to create a mini game engine library in MV with data storage and analytics adding some value to the game. But again, without cost-justification, personally I couldn't take on that effort and I don't think anyone else would either.

Note that one could create a virtual world in Minecraft with stores in villages, where purchases, inventory updates, multi-tier product assemblies with make/buy, shipping/receiving, reports and reminders, and other in-game paradigms would integrate with a MV business application. We can simulate IoT with in-game player interaction, powered by MV. This could serve as a Marketing vehicle for a business app or even for a MVDBMS company to demonstrate the power of Python in MV. I actually did something like this with 3D/VRML and D3 at Pick Systems back around 1998 - still have the code. No one was interested then, and I doubt anyone would be any more interested now. BUT, and as I always say, MV _can_ do these things, and it's purely up to the will of stakeholders to decide if creations like this present any value to their businesses. I really hate to see companies leaving MV, thinking it's incapable, when I know it can do all of these things ... and indeed I've proven that it can. But with all of that enthusiasm for what's possible, I would still debate the value of using MV for open education, depending on the audience and objectives.

Plugh / XYZZY

-- TG the villager

On Monday, June 17, 2019 at 9:12:13 AM UTC-7, dick elleray wrote:

In trying to teach non graphic programming skills to under-adults  (using databasic),...

[Ed Clark]

I have a BASIC version of ADVENT.  I don’t recall who gave it to me. From the readme I believe that it was put together by David Ruggiero, though he didn’t originate it. From the readme:

caveat: NO part of the program(s) included here should be taken as an example of how to

   properly code Pick BASIC in any way, shape, or form - in fact, the opposite is more likely

   true. Remember that this beastie started as 1970's-era FORTRAN, was translated pretty literally

   by person or persons unknown into Pick BASIC, then passed through who knows how many other

   hands before it got to me in 1985, at which point I did some "lipstick on a pig" cleanups and

   streamlining (including encrypting the text against prying eyes). I'm certain that the code

   could be cut in half with some hard staring and targeted changes in data structures, but

   everything there now is _way_ too convoluted and fragile for me to even think about doing that.

   I'd suggest just treating it as a black box; you don't want to open the hood too far.

Problems? Questions? Fixes? Email: David Ruggiero <jdavid /at/ farfalle /dot/ com>

(If you just need game hints, shame on you...but Google will get you everything you need and more.)

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[Darren W]

Hi Dick,

I'll ask the question of the 'surviving' Northgate Reality Engineers later this week when I next speak to them and see if they still have something.  A lot of old stuff was however destroyed in the Hemel Hempstead Buncefield Fuel Depot explosion/disaster of December 2005 ...but you never know what personal backups might have existed off-site!

Whilst working for a UK Reality VAR prior to joining the Reality USA VAR, I had a similar task of trying to enthuse modern 'Windoze' focused youngsters into programming 'green screen' Reality Data/Basic.  One of my more adventurous trainees managed to write a pretty decent Reality 'space invaders' and 'Tetris'... totally by surprise, I might add - I'd not set it as an exercise/task.  Apparently it was a secret lunchtime project (if you believe that) but I was pretty impressed with what he managed to create regardless of when the hours were put in.  I must ask him if he still has the source...

I'll let you know how I get on regarding the Northgate/Reality 'text adventure' too.  When I was learning 'BASIC' in the mid 1980s, there were lots of programming books focused on the subject of writing text adventures so I am not surprised there was a Reality one too!

In the meantime, I guess we only have CHOO-CHOO ...

Cheers!

Darren

Technical Support Consultant - Reality USA

[TonyG Test]

Ed referenced Dave Ruggiero and I just received this positive note from Dave:

====================

Hi - Dawn Wolthius forwarded me a posting today about ADVENT, the Colossal Cave Adventure for MV. I'm the David that Ed Clark mentioned, and I'm happy to report you can still download the original self-installing source package here:    http://upcyclenw.com/adventv90.zip

The readme.1st file that Ed Clark quoted pretty much has it correctly....I somehow was forwarded, unattributed, what I now assume was your original port of the game, back in late 1984 or so. Having wasted many hours in college on this particular gem, I waxed nostalgic, and so took it on myself to clean it up, add a few features (the BEAM! command that magically teleports you to a location :), translate all the text to proper case, and then release it with the soon-to-be-defunct IBM Series 1 port of Pick in the GAMES account. That would have been in early 1985-ish.

I think I must have posted it at some point (2006-ish) to comp.databases.pick as well, which is why it's out in the wild. Have fun and watch out for the dwarves.

 

David

Multivalue Technical Services

====================

I publicly thank Dick and Dave, have just downloaded the zip, and will be very anxious to spend some time with this classic.

Regards to all,

T

On Monday, June 17, 2019 at 12:09:03 PM UTC-7, Ed Clark wrote:

I have a BASIC version of ADVENT.  I don’t recall who gave it to me. From the readme I believe that it was put together by David Ruggiero, though he didn’t originate it. ...

[Chris Long]

In the meantime, I guess we only have CHOO-CHOO ...

 

Cheers!

Darren

 

Don’t forget MYCROFT, TETRIS, WUMPUS and others.

 

Chris Long

[dick elleray]

ed

that's the right sort of  time frame; David was around Microdata then.so may have contributed or filched it  :-). I'm not sure that I remember Ken Simms in the credits tho ..

The source was in the MDIS/Microdata development arena but not in the public domain (just the databasic runtime )

feel free to pm me the code so I can see if it's what I worked on or was then developed from ..

thanks for your prompt response.

d

 

[Ed Clark]

Did you see Tony’s post? It’s available at http://upcyclenw.com/adventv90.zip

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[Tony Gravagno]

Darren, you remind me of a set of programs that I wrote when I was at Pick Systems. I called them "ZAPs" for no reason other than they were named zap01, zap02, etc. I actually wrote them to impress the woman who soon became my wife of now 23 years. (Yeah, this is nerdy.) These were animations of ASCII-art that were plotted on the green screen just like cartoons get animated, one frame after another - but in this case with a lot of code re-use and loops. One zap had a Klingon warbird coming up from the bottom of the screen. The USS Enterprise would then come up after it and fire a torpedo. The warbird exploded and the Enterprise then sank below the bottom of the screen. I would use the TCL command to send this action to another terminal, so out of nowhere the recipient would have this little battle appear on their screen. One of the zaps had two dogs humping - yeah, animated ASCII dogs. That one was seen by the IT Manager who then had all of the zaps deleted. SIGH, no code survived I'm afraid, and no, these never made it into D3. But yes, another testament to the power of Pick! :)

T

[Darren W]

Hey Chris, I'd totally forgotten about them, it seemed like so long ago that I saw them last that I assumed it was from my D3 days, pre-Reality, but it would seem not.

I've just found the games again in Reality... in SYSPROG account within the BP file! 

There's LOADS of them too - all still there in Reality V15.2

Thanks

Darren

[Arthur Martz]

Writing code would never have impressed my wife.....   

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[Mark Brown]

In 1977 I was working in California. The top LA radio station at the time was KMET and one of their top DJs was Frasier Smith. The computer operator and I built an Adventure database for a place we called Frasier Mountain and then we peppered the map with references from the day. The database had a room descriptions for first time entry and reentry, live and dead threat descriptions, and a self expanding lexicon of things you could say and do. It never went anywhere but we had fun coming up with the threats and ways out.

On Monday, June 17, 2019 at 9:12:13 AM UTC-7, dick elleray wrote:

[dick elleray]

Barren

that's great.

Maybe that's where the Adventure Databasic Program was put by me - only for test purposes obviously. Then compiled and  left for others.

Who knows ?

Is  Reality V15.2  the downloadable NIS reality version ?

dick

ps is the Chris Long in the thread below  the MDIS comms guru I wonder?

[dick elleray]

On Tuesday, 18 June 2019 15:33:02 UTC+1, Arthur Martz wrote:

Writing code would never have impressed my wife....

unless it was hard coded perhaps ? 

[Will Johnson]

I wrote a very simple version of Robotron for Universe on Unix, twenty years ago.

The cool thing was I didn't even have to speed it up, as you killed the robots, the system sped it up automatically because it had less and less work to do to move the robots around the screen.

[Chris Long]

>ps is the Chris Long in the thread below  the MDIS comms guru I wonder?

Around 20 years ago a guy from Northgate came to our office to train us for a week.  I think his name was Robin.  He used words like “stonking”, and “brilliant”.  I asked him when Reality would supply a GUI debugger.  His answer was, “Write better code.”

 

I wasn’t a guru then, and I’m still not one now.

 

And I’ve never played in the NFL.

 

Chris Long

RA Services IT

 

[geneb]

Completely unrelated to Pick, but that's how the original version of Space
Invaders worked too. It sped up as you killed the invaders because it had
fewer to draw. :)

g.

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Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies.

ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment
A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes.
http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

[Darren Wragg]

Hi Dick,

There is a 3 users 3 hour timeout Reality evaluation version downloadable which gives you V15.1 and then service packs can be applied to make V15.2.  Current service pack is SP#370 which is the latest service pack released last month.  The vanilla V15.1 install will be all you would need to access the "hidden" games.

The evaluation serial number /evaluation licence key that comes as part of the download ISO has expired but a current valid one is available as a separate download.

Cheers

Darren 

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[Darren W]

Chris (sorry briefly o/t)

A GUI debugger has been recently added as a licence key enabled extra in Reality's RealEdit (version 2). It is still in test but I have an early copy to test in parallel with the NPS guys internal QA. I have not had chance look at it yet but assuming all goes well there could be something customer ready in the next few months. My understanding is the licence feature key for the GUI debugger feature could be distributed to a few customers free of charge for maybe 6 months on a trial basis prior to deciding whether or not you want to keep it (and pay for it). I was hoping it would be free but it's out of my hands...

If this is something of interest I can let you know (offline) when it's customer ready. I am tied up with various other things right now but GUI debugger testing is on my ToDo list ...somewhere

Cheers
Darren

[Chris Long]

Darren,

I am interested. Thanks.

Chris Long
RA Services IT

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[dick elleray]

Darren

 

Many thanks for this I guess that I will have to get the Reality IISO download if NIS will allow me...

and explore !!! 

d 

[Adt]

Dick,
The download is at: http://www.nps-reality.com/request-evaluation - there’s details of how to load and use the demo.
It’s, hopefully, still an automatic response form with links instantly provided to the ISO file that I put in place a couple of years ago before I became ‘discarded for various reasons’ by new NPS management :-(
It was also agreed back then to provide a perpetual 3-user licence that Darren mentioned, this is still there at: http://download.northgateps.com/reality/Demo/eval.ryk
Further demo help is at: http://www.nps-reality.com/install - General help with Reality installation…

Good luck with it, Reality is still one fine database, programming and operating environment - wish I still worked on it...
Further current product info at: http://www.nps-reality.com/product_info

[dick elleray]

darren

I got your email and can confirm the email id (incoming only)

dick

[dick elleray]

alan T

another blast from the Reality UK past ..

I haven't worked with Reality since 2000 when I was also 'discarded.'. I noticed that Andrew Barkus' name for the Unix port  CORA is still embedded in file names :-)

I did a eval request and have it (but didn't notice that it only runs on win10 64 bit and I have 32bit for historic app.. install fails doing Java bits so now trying another PC...)

cheers

dick

[Charlie Noah]

In 1987, I wrote a 3D Sub Search game, complete with voice and sound effects, in RevG. RevG was text only, so I did the best I could with what I had. You played against the computer and it was great fun. I had close to a 50% win rate. I toyed with the idea of setting it up for multi-user play, but never did it. I still have the source, but it's on an old DOS machine that I don't even know if I can boot anymore. Since there's a lot of stuff (including an Advanced Pick partition) I'd sure like to get it running again. It has a BIOS run by a replaceable battery. If the battery is dead, I won't know the disk parameters (IDE I think).

Charlie

[jes]

On Monday, June 17, 2019 at 12:12:13 PM UTC-4, dick elleray wrote:

During which, in 1980's/90's, I completed a port of the 'Adventure' text based game in DataBasic to Reality and it was pre-loaded onto the delivery OS tapes for 'testing purposes'.

This game had a profound effect on Tech Support at Microdata.

It all but shut us down for a couple weeks while everyone played it.

In deep archives I may still have an 80-page (give or take) map

of every location and the commands you could use there.

Each location was numbered, so you could use the magic break key,

change the value of /LOC and presto, you were in that spot.

The seemingly endless loop of "you're in a maze of twisty little 

passages all alike" was not an issue when you possessed the 

magic break key and the map. You could do the whole adventure

in an hour with coffee breaks. 

j.

jes.com

jonsisk.com

p.s. I have not heard of the P-99 since about 1981. We managed

to cobble one together and get it working by cannibalizing 4 or 5 of

them for parts. Naturally, that unit was appropriated as the "demo"

model.

[Darren W]

Hi Dick,

Reality should work on 32bit Windoze ... all patch/service pack releases have two windoze versions cut...one for 64 bit and the other for 32bit in addition to the Unix patch. Windoze XP certainly used to work and definitely Windoze 7 although our customers tend to use 2008/2012 and more recently 2016...you can get 180 day evaluation versions of Windows 2012 and 2016 server from Microsoft web site and Reality will install next>next>next from a vanilla 2012R2 install without any manual prerequisites.

Let us know how you get on or if you need any help and I will do my best to assist (in my free time, not during UK business hours where I am busy with paying customers!)

Cheers,

[chandru murthi]

Do you or anyone perchance remember the Game of Life (in BASIC?) or does anyone have a copy? In the antediluvian year of 1977, I reprogrammed this is assembler because it would take, like, 10 seconds to make a move in the BASIC version. Game of Life is the purest waste of time while you watch a bunch of dots evolving according to three rules of birth, survivorship and death.

Chandru

[frosty]

Yes, I remember it; No, I don't have a copy. Or maybe I do, on a cartridge tape in a box in the tack shed, that I don't have the H/W to read nor the S/W to file restore. But it's not much code, and would not take long to write.

[Rob Allen]

Not familiar with this Game of Life but our Reality systems have a program called UNPACK.LIFE.FORMS - is it related?

In the mid-80s I ported a version of Othello (aka Reversi) to Reality. It had player vs. player or player vs. program options. I used to play it with a co-worker who was a Master-level chess player. I'm not a chess player but we were evenly matched in Othello.

Rob

[Dick Thiot]

As long as we are reminiscing, when I was first exposed to a Microdata and found the GAMES account, I converted the HORSE RACE game to a TRS-80 Model 1 (Trash-80) then enhanced the horses to run based on odds as well as "pay off" according to those odds to win, place or show.  I think that had a lot to do with the first job offer that I received from a Microdata VAR and a year and half later I went to work for them as my first job in MultiValue with that VAR.

Good times.

Dick

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[chandru murthi]

Not sure. Game of Life was a non-interactive game. A grid ... 20x20 say ... had some cells filled with the starting life pattern. On each cycle, the rules of death (1-2 "neighbors",) survivorship (4-8), and birth (3 neighbors, not 2, go figure,) would determine the next pattern. With a reasonably fast speed, the pattern would grow, pulsate and shrink as these rules were applied. You'd have to slow it down by SLEEPS on modenr machines else it would be a blur.

Why am I blathering on about this? ....

Chandru

[Tony Gravagno]

Follow-up: Last month I published here a link to Dave Ruggiero's version of the Adventure game. At that time both of us were neck deep in other activities. But Dave felt compelled to spend some time to do a little cleanup of the code. We plan to post the latest version on GitHub soon. Contributions will be welcome.

I'm thinking wiki info would be an obvious help, about code and the gameplay. But I think it would be fun to have a branch with more rooms, more items, more ... Adventure.

I can also make this available to play through Slack. I've also been thinking about making it available for remote play from TCL. That is, with a small install, you can play the game from TCL on your system with everything actually running in a remote cloud server. All of this as just another example of extended MV usage.

With the code in GitHub it will be easy for anyone to get updates, just like every single other GitHub repo. Documentation of this process should also be instructive for anyone who wishes to host code remotely for end-user updates.

If there are other packages that you feel deserve the same sort of curation, please contact me off-list. Thanks.

Let the fun begin!

TG is @

nebula-rnd

dot this, com that