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Dave Dyer

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Feb 22, 2022, 8:18:07 PM2/22/22
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This morning I got a surprise email, saying that my account had been migrated to the new toad-2 at sdf.org. I succeeded in logging in, but never was much of a twenex user. I don't remember the syntax for running games, and the help file doesn't list it.

anyway, http://www.twenex.org/ is at least partially functional, you can definitely run systat. I'd love to give advenure or zork a spin if someone
can reveal the right command line.

Lars Brinkhoff

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Feb 25, 2022, 1:31:04 AM2/25/22
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> I don't remember the syntax for running games, and the help file
> doesn't list it.

They are in <GAMES>. Adventure seems to work:

[KANKAN] PUBLIC:<~>@ <GAMES>ADVENT
This is "Version II" of Adventure. Top score is now 430 points.
Welcome to Adventure!! Would you like instructions?

But ZORK complains that SYS:ZORK.SAV is missing.

Stephen M. Jones

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Feb 26, 2022, 11:31:36 PM2/26/22
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ZORK needed MDL as well as the SAV file copied over from Panda. There
are also a few others games such as HAUNT, VTTREK, MANHUNT, CAVE and
the ITS BYE / fortune lins stuff which are now available. 'HELP GAMES' for
updates. There are a number of GIGI games and displays if anyone is
interested as well as a decent PACMAN that was a big hit. I'm collecting
score files from various sites thinking it would be fun to combine them into
one big leader board.

(PACMAN was popular on a DEC-20 named VERA. You remember VERA, doncha kid?)

BBOARD is also migrated including a read only archive of the ANIME and
URUSEI-YATSURA mailing lists.

With the buzz around WORDL Ralph remembered a more challenging word game
called JOTTO (Mike Beeler). There is a possibility that it could be
made available soon.

Dave Dyer

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Feb 28, 2022, 10:48:18 PM2/28/22
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> With the buzz around WORDL Ralph remembered a more challenging word game
> called JOTTO (Mike Beeler). There is a possibility that it could be
> made available soon.

Just as I was thinking - I wrote a PDP10 version of Jotto in (about) 1975 and it might be revivable.

Adam Sampson

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Mar 1, 2022, 1:00:03 PM3/1/22
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"Stephen M. Jones" <s...@ma.sdf.org> writes:

> With the buzz around WORDL Ralph remembered a more challenging word
> game called JOTTO (Mike Beeler). There is a possibility that it could
> be made available soon.

MIT's 1969-ish version of JOTTO was ported to SAIL with minor
modifications for I/O. The source and dictionary file are here:
https://www.saildart.org/JOTTO[CSP,SYS]
https://www.saildart.org/JOTTO.DIC[CSP,SYS]

An ITS binary survived, so we were able to reconstruct the MIDAS source
based on the SAIL copy in 2018:
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/jotto.101
https://github.com/PDP-10/its/blob/master/src/games/jotto.dict

The I/O code is pretty simple, so it should be easy enough to port to
other PDP-10 OSs.

Michael Beeler's AIM-218 memo describes how it works:
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-218.pdf

Cheers,

--
Adam Sampson <a...@offog.org> <http://offog.org/>
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