<-- Meta Question: Games and Computer History -->
Zeke Koch
Hi, I'm looking for information/anecdotes connecting the history of gaming
and innovation in computer technology.
I'm looking for cases in which innovations in computer technology have
been made because of computer games.
An example of what I'm looking for is the story about how the precursor of
unix was written by Thompson so that he could play Spacewars.
It was also mentioned that the guy who worte Colony (the first rendered
game for the mac ???) went on to write an Archetectial 'VR' walkthrough
program using the same engine? Does anyone know anything about this?
E-mail replies would be preferred though posting's fine as well.
(Of course I'll summarize any info I get over e-mail)
Thanks,
-Zeke
--
Jeff Somers
business software.
Infocom, an very successful early 80s text adventure company, published
games in order to fund Cornerstone their database (I think) program.
Cornerstone flopped, and Infocom was eventually bought out by Activision
and dismantled.
The company which wrote Dark Castle, Dark Castle II, and a couple of
other Mac games eventually dropped doing these games in favor of
programming "serious" software. Silicon Beach, I think, was the company.
WinG, a graphics library for Windows, was written by Microsoft for the
game programming community. Not exactly innovative, though, but this is
a case where an operating system (Windows 95) will have game support built
in, in order to help sales.
You could look into computer chess, I'm sure research in that area has
spawned some comp. sci. innovations, since it was an early AI problem.
The game of Life, a cellular automata (?) simulation, has spawned
some research.
I'm not sure if this is quite what you're looking for, but I hope this
is helpful.
jeff s.
jso...@id.wing.net
jeff s.
jso...@id.wing.net
Jonathan Badger
>A couple of companies created and sold games in order to fund their
>business software.
[...]
>WinG, a graphics library for Windows, was written by Microsoft for the
>game programming community. Not exactly innovative, though, but this is
>a case where an operating system (Windows 95) will have game support built
>in, in order to help sales.
Well, much earlier than this Microsoft was into games. In the late
70's and early 80's when the Apple ][ was king and Microsoft produced
nothing but interpreters and compilers, Microsoft released several
games for the Apple ][. One of them, Microsoft Adventure, was a
version of the "Colossal Cave" game. Another was Microsoft Decathlon,
probably the first computer game with an Olympic theme and directly
inspired later games such as Epyx's Summer and Winter games.
Because Microsoft was so small then, no doubt these products provided
Keir Spilka (SysAdmin)
Winter games and summer games were the all time greatest games. Are their versions out there for the Mac? I'd love to get one.
Stewart Stremler
> A couple of companies created and sold games in order to fund their
> business software.
> Infocom, an very successful early 80s text adventure company, published
> games in order to fund Cornerstone their database (I think) program.
> Cornerstone flopped, and Infocom was eventually bought out by Activision
> and dismantled.
[snip]
Are you quite sure? I recall reading "The History of Zork", and that
claimed that infocom was founded to sell Zork (and other text-adventure
games). No mention was made of any other product....
Perhaps my memory is just going....
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"My penitent sinner shtick needs work." | stre...@rohan.sdsu.edu
-Calvin (_Calvin & Hobbes_) | Stewart Stremler
Paul Phillips
(Jonathan Badger) writes:
>Another was Microsoft Decathlon,
>probably the first computer game with an Olympic theme and directly
>inspired later games such as Epyx's Summer and Winter games.
An interesting side note about Microsoft Decathlon is that it
shortened keyboard life by 95-98%. The 400m dash event, when
played head to head, consisted of two people pounding on two keys
apiece as rapidly as possible, which inevitably was as hard as
possible. We killed at least two keyboards. Rumors that this
result was intentional are unfounded.
-PSP
--
"Larry Wall should be shot. Along with Bill Joy and Eric Allman."
-- Daniel Finster, comp.lang.lisp
"Why, just because you guys frittered away a 20-year headstart?"
-- Larry Wall, comp.lang.perl
>
>
>Well, much earlier than this Microsoft was into games. In the late
>70's and early 80's when the Apple ][ was king and Microsoft produced
>nothing but interpreters and compilers, Microsoft released several
>games for the Apple ][. One of them, Microsoft Adventure, was a
>version of the "Colossal Cave" game. Another was Microsoft Decathlon,
>probably the first computer game with an Olympic theme and directly
>inspired later games such as Epyx's Summer and Winter games.
>
>Because Microsoft was so small then, no doubt these products provided
Has everyone forgotten Flight Simulator?!
<grin>
I wonder how much of the early Microsoft's revenues depended upon that
program . . .
-------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins
rdob...@access.digex.net
Use 'finger' for PGP public key . . .
Holger Hoffstaette
>In article <badger.791043789@phylo> bad...@phylo.life.uiuc.edu
>(Jonathan Badger) writes:
>>Another was Microsoft Decathlon,
>>probably the first computer game with an Olympic theme and directly
>>inspired later games such as Epyx's Summer and Winter games.
>An interesting side note about Microsoft Decathlon is that it
>shortened keyboard life by 95-98%. The 400m dash event, when
>played head to head, consisted of two people pounding on two keys
>apiece as rapidly as possible, which inevitably was as hard as
>possible. We killed at least two keyboards. Rumors that this
>result was intentional are unfounded.
I might be showing my youth, but wasn't 'the' Decathlon written by
Activision, of Pitfall I & II fame? That's more the way I remember it.
Anyway, joysticks and keyboards were definitely killed by it, no need
to argue.
Q: How can you tell your school's computer nerds have been playing
Decathlon or PitStop II (wearing helmets :) the previous day?
A: They all have their hands or arms bandaged..
*sigh*..fond memories of a really 'interesting' youth.. :)
Holger
--
Holger Hoffstaette // [eMail sendTo: @"ho...@darmstadt.gmd.de" NeXTMail: YES];
Jonathan Badger
>Has everyone forgotten Flight Simulator?!
><grin>
>I wonder how much of the early Microsoft's revenues depended upon that
>program . . .
Well, no offense, but Flight Simulator is really quite recent,
relatively speaking, and was only marketed well after Microsoft became
the giant it is. As a side note, Microsoft Flight Simulator was
really just the PC port of Sublogic Flight Simulator (which was
available for the Apple ][, C64, and Atari 800). Even today, it is not
developed by Microsoft. The author, Bruce Artwick, has since left
Sublogic to start the Bruce Artwick Organization, where they develop
Flight Simulator and now Space Simulator, along with associated
accessories. Amazing but Pointless Fact: BAO's offices are less than a
mile from where I type this in Champaign, IL!
>
>In article <zeke-20019...@zeke.reed.edu>, ze...@reed.edu (Zeke Koch) says:
>>
>>
>>Hi, I'm looking for information/anecdotes connecting the history of gaming
>>and innovation in computer technology.
>>
>>I'm looking for cases in which innovations in computer technology have
>>been made because of computer games.
>>
>>An example of what I'm looking for is the story about how the precursor of
>>unix was written by Thompson so that he could play Spacewars.
>>
>>It was also mentioned that the guy who worte Colony (the first rendered
>>game for the mac ???) went on to write an Archetectial 'VR' walkthrough
>>program using the same engine? Does anyone know anything about this?
>>
>>E-mail replies would be preferred though posting's fine as well.
>>
>>(Of course I'll summarize any info I get over e-mail)
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>-Zeke
>>
>>--
>>
>> ze...@reed.edu
>> http://www.reed.edu/~zeke/
>
>jeff s.
>jso...@id.wing.net
Actually, the Spacewar genesis itself would be worthy of inclusion, I would
think.
What's the fellow's name who wrote it, Slug Russell?
He never got a dime out of it, but showing the (then) advanced graphics and
interactivity impressed a lot of visiting bigwigs who were influential in
securing funding for machines & research.
Levy does a good treatment of it in _Hackers_.
The direct linkage between modern computer viruses & Thompson et. al.'s past-
time of Core Wars would also be worth exploring, including his ACM speech
(much-decried) in (I think) 1983 which first really publicized the concept
of viruses and worms.
Another example of games being an impetus for technological advance would
be the current trend in affordable multimedia for home computers, especially
sound cards. Following the SoundBlaster and its successors would be some-
thing which I don't think has really been addressed in a scholarly manner.
James 'Emul' Sharman
SMEG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
COME ON EVERYBODY is this the mother of all cross postings or what - all
we need is for some prat to say something controversial with a crost post
list like this and there bring the smeging usenet to its knees!!!!
GET A LIFE - GET A BRAIN - GET SOME SENSE!
--[James E. Sharman]----------------------------------------------------------
Beavis: Wouldnt it be like cool if people on newsgroups just 68 Renny Road
like talked total hu- rubish, Fraton
Butthead: Cool, huh h h huh and like flamed people who said Portsmouth
something intelegent because like their to stupid PO1 5BA
to understand. . hey it is like that - shutup Beavis! England
Beavis: Huh h h hu - Fartnocker! sis...@sis.port.ac.uk
-------------------------------------------------[sis...@sis.port.ac.uk]-----
Jonathan Badger
>Jeff Somers (jso...@id.wing.net) wrote:
>> A couple of companies created and sold games in order to fund their
>> business software.
>> Infocom, an very successful early 80s text adventure company, published
>> games in order to fund Cornerstone their database (I think) program.
>> Cornerstone flopped, and Infocom was eventually bought out by Activision
>> and dismantled.
>[snip]
>Are you quite sure? I recall reading "The History of Zork", and that
>claimed that infocom was founded to sell Zork (and other text-adventure
>games). No mention was made of any other product....
>Perhaps my memory is just going....
No seriously, one of the founders of Infocom really wanted to push the
company into business software, and Cornerstone was the result. Don't
remember Cornerstone? Don't worry. It was to the database field what the
Apple /// was to computers :-). Anyway, it was the massive failure of
Cornerstone that really caused the real Infocom to wither and die. It
wasn't that their games weren't selling well.
This is in the rec.games.int-fiction FAQ, BTW.
Roger B Jones Jr
>Jeff Somers (jso...@id.wing.net) wrote:
>> A couple of companies created and sold games in order to fund their
>> business software.
>> Infocom, an very successful early 80s text adventure company, published
>> games in order to fund Cornerstone their database (I think) program.
>> Cornerstone flopped, and Infocom was eventually bought out by Activision
>> and dismantled.
>claimed that infocom was founded to sell Zork (and other text-adventure
>games). No mention was made of any other product....
Infocom was founded to give a bunch of friends from MIT a way to work
together and try to make some money after graduation. They decided to
port Zork to the then-new home computers, and were astonished when it took
off. A quote from Dave Lebling: "We wanted to have a software company, and
weren't quite sure of what it would do, but we thought Zork was a good
thing to start with..." (from "Interview at the end of the universe" by
Mike Gerrard, in ST User, May 1987.)
Another quote, this one from Tim Anderson: "[Infocom] was not founded to
sell Zork; rather, it was founded to give group members somewhere to go
from MIT." (From "The History of Zork", by Tim Anderson, in The New Zork
Times, vol. 4 no. 2, Spring 1985.)
Both of these articles are available from the Interactive Fiction Archive,
in the file <ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/infocom/articles/articles.zip>.
--
Brad Jones (rjo...@us.oracle.com)
In the unlikely event that Oracle has opinions, these aren't them.
"The line between good and evil, hope and despair, does not divide the world
between 'us' and 'them.' It runs down the middle of each one of us."
Gugge Törnquist
> rdob...@access.digex.net <Roland Dobbins> writes:
> >Has everyone forgotten Flight Simulator?!
> >program . . .
>
> Well, no offense, but Flight Simulator is really quite recent,
> relatively speaking, and was only marketed well after Microsoft became
> the giant it is.
You are probably right about Microsofts dependence of Flight Simulator,
but the program was of great importance for the early PC clone manufacturers since
almost every computer magazine in the early days of PCs used it for testing
the compatibility with the "true" IBM PC.
If a computer wouldn't run Flight Simulator, it wasn't good enough for
'seriuos' computing.
Gugge
Jeff M Lodoen
>Paul Phillips (pa...@nic.cerf.net) wrote:
>>In article <badger.791043789@phylo> bad...@phylo.life.uiuc.edu
>>(Jonathan Badger) writes:
>>>Another was Microsoft Decathlon,
>>>probably the first computer game with an Olympic theme and directly
>>>inspired later games such as Epyx's Summer and Winter games.
>I might be showing my youth, but wasn't 'the' Decathlon written by
>Activision, of Pitfall I & II fame? That's more the way I remember it.
>Anyway, joysticks and keyboards were definitely killed by it, no need
>to argue.
Different title, "Olympic Decathlon" by a guy named Smith. I remember
going to a computer store to buy the first game for my new Apple //e.
I recall seeing OD, just a standard MS box, beige with green stripes.
I didn't buy it.
Activision made "Decathlon" for the Atari 2600 VCS. It was ported to
the Atari 5200, Atari 400/800/XL, ColecoVision and others?
Alexander John Batyi
>In <badger.791043789@phylo>, bad...@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger) writes:
>>
>>Well, much earlier than this Microsoft was into games. In the late
>>70's and early 80's when the Apple ][ was king and Microsoft produced
>>Because Microsoft was so small then, no doubt these products provided
>>a large portion of Microsoft's income.
>Has everyone forgotten Flight Simulator?!
>I wonder how much of the early Microsoft's revenues depended upon that
>program . . .
Maybe I am remembering wrong but I almost positive that
the Ohio Scientific C2/4P I bought in 1974 had a
floppy disk based operating system written by Microsoft.
It's upstairs. Maybe I'll fire it up and check. This
thing didn't have sound. Back then personal computers
were usually hex-keypad/7segX6 terminal driven. :-)
--
This is the emergency holographic doctor speaking. I gave no permission
for anyone to be transported out of sick bay. Hello. Sickbay to bridge; {}.
I believe someone has failed to terminate my program. Please respond. {}.
rhaw...@iastate.edu
Gugge Törnquist <m-1...@mailbox.swipnet.se> wrote:
>You are probably right about Microsofts dependence of Flight Simulator,
>but the program was of great importance for the early PC clone
>manufacturers since
>almost every computer magazine in the early days of PCs used it for testing
>the compatibility with the "true" IBM PC.
It wasn't just the magazines using it; it was used by quality assurance
departments for testing hardware and operating system compatiblity. The
definition of a bug was not something wrong, but something that deviated
from what an ibm did. If flight simulator worked, so would almost
anything else.
More than once I brought up a bug to the deparment manager that crashed
the machine and was asked if the ibm did it. That made it a feature,
not a bug.
>If a computer wouldn't run Flight Simulator, it wasn't good enough for
>'seriuos' computing.
It was more than that; it wouldn't run game software, either. There was
simply no software base for a machine that deviated from big blue.
--
R E HAWKINS
rhaw...@iastate.edu
rhaw...@iastate.edu
Alexander John Batyi <b...@rescon.wells.com> wrote:
>Maybe I am remembering wrong but I almost positive that
>the Ohio Scientific C2/4P I bought in 1974 had a
>floppy disk based operating system written by Microsoft.
>It's upstairs. Maybe I'll fire it up and check.
It was common at the time to not so much have what we now call an
operating system but simply disk basic from microsoft. Microsoft basic
came in three versions: basic, extended, and Disk Basic. Disk Basic
would typically be an extension to the 8k basic or the extended basic.
(i just noticed that i don't seem to capitalize BASIC anymore). It
would be the microsoft copyright notice that came up on startup.
>This
>thing didn't have sound. Back then personal computers
>were usually hex-keypad/7segX6 terminal driven. :-)
>
>
>
>--
>This is the emergency holographic doctor speaking. I gave no permission
>for anyone to be transported out of sick bay. Hello. Sickbay to bridge; {}.
>I believe someone has failed to terminate my program. Please respond. {}.
BCSIS
think the number 1 reason why it failed as a database program was that
the data was kept in the RAM and was only flushed to the disk once the
program exited, a definite no-no for a DBMS.
I loved Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy best. Text-based
program at its best.
felix eng
singapore os/2 user group
Erik Hermansen
James 'Emul' Sharman <sis...@sis.port.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>SMEG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
>COME ON EVERYBODY is this the mother of all cross postings or what - all
>we need is for some prat to say something controversial with a crost post
>list like this and there bring the smeging usenet to its knees!!!!
>
>GET A LIFE - GET A BRAIN - GET SOME SENSE!
It could be a catastrophe of Dom Delouise proportions!
:>
Big threads will happen and have happened before. It's going to be okay.
--
-Erik Hermansen
JAI. Holtom
: I loved Infocom's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy best. Text-based
: program at its best.
Does anyone still publish this game - I have been after it for years...
James
Stu Galley
: Jeff Somers (jso...@id.wing.net) wrote:
: > A couple of companies created and sold games in order to fund their
: > business software.
:
: > Infocom, an very successful early 80s text adventure company, published
: > games in order to fund Cornerstone their database (I think) program.
: > Cornerstone flopped, and Infocom was eventually bought out by Activision
: > and dismantled.
: [snip]
:
: Are you quite sure? I recall reading "The History of Zork", and that
: claimed that infocom was founded to sell Zork (and other text-adventure
: games). No mention was made of any other product....
THE NEW ZORK TIMES - SUMMER 1985 - Vol. 4 Nr. 3
(c) 1985 Infocom, Inc.
The History of Zork -- The Final (?) Chapter: MIT, MDL, ZIL, ZIP
by Stu Galley
Special To The New Zork Times
The year: 1979. As Tim Anderson has recounted in previous
installments in this series, Zork was one large computer game, about a
megabyte in size -- as large as it could be and still fit in its
original home, a DECsystem-10. Marc Blank and Dave Lebling designed
and wrote the program, with the help of Bruce Daniels and Tim. They
had met and worked together in a research group at M.I.T., and now the
group was losing valuable talent through graduation and the lure of
"the real world." Several members of the group believed that they
could still produce outstanding computer-based products in almost any
category -- from programming languages like MDL (an important
influence on modern Lisp) to data bases, electronic mail and
artificially intelligent systems -- if only centrifugal force didn't
separate them.
The problem: What sort of product could the group work on together,
and to whom could they sell it? As early as 1976, they had discussed
the potential marketability of various computer games that had been
designed or implemented by group members just for fun. Now their
attention was focused on various potential products based on
mini-computers, some involving custom hardware as well as software.
The group was ignoring the potential of a mass market for
micro-computers, not only from lack of experience with them (the
group's unofficial motto is "We hate micros!") but also from serious
concerns about software piracy.
[...]
Meanwhile, the group at M.I.T. was in the process of forming a
corporation -- choosing "Infocom" as the name least offensive to
everyone -- and searching for a project that would quickly produce a
product to start generating income for the company. Among the
projects they considered were systems for keeping track of documents,
handling electronic correspondence, and processing text. When Zork
was added to the list of possibilities, Joel [Berez] and Marc [Blank]
worked intensively during the summer and autumn creating the
programming tools for their design....
Petteri Sulonen
> Does anyone still publish this game - I have been after it for years...
It's on a CD titled _The Lost Treasures of Infocom_.
-- Petteri
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Adam Williamson
ho...@darmstadt.gmd.de "Holger Hoffstaette" writes:
Anyone remember paddles? You used them in the shotput. Sort of wheels
on mice bases that you twisted. Weird.
--
---
_________________________________________
|Adam Williamson |Maintainer of the |
|ad...@scss.demon.co.uk|Wolfenstein 3D FAQ,|
|"The views expressed |and total computer |
|here do not represent|nut. "Computers |
|those of my pet |forever! Pass me |
|lemming." |those pills! |
|_____________________|___________________|
Adam Williamson
stre...@ucssun1.sdsu.edu "Stewart Stremler" writes:
No, he's wrong. Infocom _was_ founded on text adventures, THEN moved
into the business market with Corner Stone, which was immediately nicknamed
Gravestone.
Jonathan Badger
>Um... what does 'a few years ago' mean in this context? I had MS
>Flight Simulator for the Apple IIe... um... let's see. 1983? 1983 if
>not before.
>And I think Sublogic wasn't connected with the Apple version, although
>I could be wrong.
You are. The Apple ][, Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Amiga versions of
Flight Simulator were *never* sold under the Microsoft label. The only
versions of the program that have been marketed by Microsoft are the PC
and Macintosh versions. All the other versions were marketed by Sublogic.
Steve Metke
Unfortunatly I lack a CD-ROM so I had to get a freind to put it on disk
and he kept the CD :(
>James
Roger B Jones Jr
Get a copy of "Lost Treasures of Infocom, Volume I", available for MS-DOS,
Macintosh, Apple IIgs, or Amiga, or as a Mac/MS-DOS combined CD-ROM. 20
Infocom games, with maps and hints, for $39.95.
Check out rec.games.int-fiction for more info. The r.g.i-f FAQ contains
info on LToI 1 and 2, as well as running the games on other computers and
lots more info on Infocom. Followups redirected.
--
Brad Jones (rjo...@us.oracle.com), Oracle Toolkit Development Tools
In the unlikely event that Oracle has opinions, these aren't them.
"Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy."
-- Joseph Campbell
Adam Williamson
po...@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu "Polus Timothy Daniel" writes:
> >>>
> >>>Hi, I'm looking for information/anecdotes connecting the history of gaming
> >>>and innovation in computer technology.
> >>>
> >>>I'm looking for cases in which innovations in computer technology have
> >>>been made because of computer games.
> >>>
> >>>An example of what I'm looking for is the story about how the precursor of
> >>>unix was written by Thompson so that he could play Spacewars.
> >>>
> >>>It was also mentioned that the guy who worte Colony (the first rendered
> >>>game for the mac ???) went on to write an Archetectial 'VR' walkthrough
> >>>program using the same engine? Does anyone know anything about this?
> >>>
> >>>E-mail replies would be preferred though posting's fine as well.
> >>>
> >>>(Of course I'll summarize any info I get over e-mail)
> >>>
> >>>Thanks,
> >>>
> >>>-Zeke
>
> I forget the company, but someone a while back put out some games with
> "Real Sound" or something like that. It was pre-sound blaster, and used
> the pc speaker, to give almost sound card quality. The whole thing was
> designed for games, but I seem to remember cranking up a game and geting
> a really bad ringing my ears do to something about the wavelengths they
> used. It was pretty cool though, even though no one really did anything
> from there...
>
> Timothy
Yeah, it was used in World Class Leaderboard (golf game). "From _my_
vantage point it looks straight up the fairway". Ahhh, those were the days...
axl119
lib...@netcom.com (David Librik) writes:
> rdob...@access.digex.net <Roland Dobbins> writes:
>
> >In <badger.791043789@phylo>, bad...@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger) writes:
> >>Because Microsoft was so small then, no doubt these products provided
> >>a large portion of Microsoft's income.
>
> >Has everyone forgotten Flight Simulator?!
> ><grin>
>
> >I wonder how much of the early Microsoft's revenues depended upon that
> >program . . .
>
> None, because Microsoft didn't do Flight Simulator. A few years ago
> they bought the rights to market Sublogic Flight Simulator, which was
> already a big success. Sublogic (and now BAO) continues to make Flight
> Simulator, and Microsoft continues to put it in boxes and sell it.
Um... what does 'a few years ago' mean in this context? I had MS
Flight Simulator for the Apple IIe... um... let's see. 1983? 1983 if
not before.
And I think Sublogic wasn't connected with the Apple version, although
I could be wrong.
--Adam Lang
---------
Adam Lang tha...@cs.pdx.edu (axl...@psu.edu, tha...@eecs.cs.pdx.edu)
LAP Technologies 100-1 Cherry Ln, State College, Pa 16802 (814)
867-7138
What's the difference between Jurassic Park and Microsoft? Well, one
is a
high-tech theme park dominated by nasty, predatory monsters who will
destroy
anything they can get their teeth into, and the other is just a movie.
Jeff M Lodoen
>In article <librikD3...@netcom.com>
>lib...@netcom.com (David Librik) writes:
>>
>> None, because Microsoft didn't do Flight Simulator. A few years ago
>> they bought the rights to market Sublogic Flight Simulator, which was
>> already a big success. Sublogic (and now BAO) continues to make Flight
>> Simulator, and Microsoft continues to put it in boxes and sell it.
>Um... what does 'a few years ago' mean in this context? I had MS
>Flight Simulator for the Apple IIe... um... let's see. 1983? 1983 if
>not before.
>And I think Sublogic wasn't connected with the Apple version, although
>I could be wrong.
I'm afraid you are. Flight Simulator came out for the Apple II from
subLogic in the late '70s. This used wire-frame monochrome graphics.
Later Flight Simulator II was released, with color graphics for Apple II,
Atari and Commodore (and others). Other subLogic titles were Night Mission
(pinball) and Jet (F-16/F-18 sim).
I believe MicroSoft handled sales of the IBM PC and Macintosh versions.
Peter Coffin
: In article <librikD3...@netcom.com>
: lib...@netcom.com (David Librik) writes:
: > rdob...@access.digex.net <Roland Dobbins> writes:
: >
: > >In <badger.791043789@phylo>, bad...@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger) writes:
: > >>Because Microsoft was so small then, no doubt these products provided
: > >>a large portion of Microsoft's income.
: >
: > >Has everyone forgotten Flight Simulator?!
: > ><grin>
: >
: > >I wonder how much of the early Microsoft's revenues depended upon that
: > >program . . .
: >
: > None, because Microsoft didn't do Flight Simulator. A few years ago
: > they bought the rights to market Sublogic Flight Simulator, which was
: > already a big success. Sublogic (and now BAO) continues to make Flight
: > Simulator, and Microsoft continues to put it in boxes and sell it.
: Um... what does 'a few years ago' mean in this context? I had MS
: Flight Simulator for the Apple IIe... um... let's see. 1983? 1983 if
: not before.
: And I think Sublogic wasn't connected with the Apple version, although
: I could be wrong.
SubLogic had two major releases of Flight Simulator for the Apple ][
bfore passing things over to MS. AP-FS2 looked pretty much the way that
Flight Sim looks now, within the limits of the Apple ][ display. It did
want 64k or RAM. AP-FS1 ran quite nicely in (I think) 32k, but wanted 48
for the WWI dogfight. I do also remember that you had a *chance* of
hitting the enemy plane whenever they were on the screen, odds roughly
proportional to the proximity of the enemy dot (no images, just a pixel)
to the center of the screen.
There was a version of FS2 for the Atari 800 also.
Kevin Haskel Rubin
>In article <librikD3...@netcom.com>
>lib...@netcom.com (David Librik) writes:
>Um... what does 'a few years ago' mean in this context? I had MS
>Flight Simulator for the Apple IIe... um... let's see. 1983? 1983 if
>not before.
>And I think Sublogic wasn't connected with the Apple version, although
>I could be wrong.
Yes, you could be.
I have SubLogic Flight Simulator II at home, for the Apple ][. I recently
dug it out of the closet, when I finally got another Apple to replace the
one I sold years ago. Flight Simulator is one of the games I bought when I
first had one, and I kept it even after selling my Apple, on the hopes that
Sublogic would let me trade it in for an IBM version.
-kevin
--
gn...@teleport.com Kevin Rubin
Jeffrey John Heinen
came out. It was packaged in a ziplock bag and the manual looked as
though it was handmade. I remember how impressed I was with it. I played
that game for HOURS. It's hard to believe how far things have
progressed.
-Jeff
--
+----------------------------------------------------+
| Jeff Heinen | "Necessitas non |
| | habet legem." -St. Augustine |
+----------------------------------------------------+
Ron Hunsinger
>of gaming and innovation in computer technology.
>
>I'm looking for cases in which innovations in computer technology >have been
made because of computer games.
>
>An example of what I'm looking for is the story about how the
>precursor of unix was written by Thompson so that he could play
>Spacewars.
It is reputed that A.L.Samuel, the designer of the IBM 70x series of
computers, designed them to have a 36-bit word because he was also
interested in checkers, and had figured out a way to represent a
board position using 36-bit words that would allow the sets of all
possible moves to be generated extremely quickly.
Whatever his real reason for choosing a 36-bit word size, it is
most certainly true that Samuel went on to write a checker-playing
program for these machines, that the program did use a very clever
representation of a board in 36 bits, and that for this and other
reasons the program went on to become one of the shining stars of
artificial intelligence. In 1962, running on a 7090, it defeated
Mr. Robert W. Nealey, described in the IBM Research News as "a
former Connecticut checkers champion, and one of the nation's
foremost players." After the game, Mr. Nealey commented:
"Our game...did have its points. Up to the 31st move, all of our
play had been previously published, except where I evaded "the
book" several times in a vain effort to throw the computer's
timing off. At the 32-37 ooser and onwards, all the play is
original with us, so far as I have been able to find. It is very
interesting to me to note that the computer had to make several
star moves in order to get the win, and that I had several
opportunities to draw otherwise. That is why I kept the game
going. The machine, therefore, played a perfect ending without
one misstep. In the matter of the end game, I have not had such
competition from any human being since 1954, when I lost my last
game."
(As quoted in "Computers and Thought", Feigenbaum and Feldman,
1963. No ISBN number available.)
This program proved such a strong competitor in the checkers world
that the AI community expected it to be followed soon by a similar
virtuoso in chess, and that human-level intelligence was just
around the corner. Alas, it was not to be. This program is
probably the last great success in AI. (So far! We're still
optimistic.)
-Ron Hunsinger
Jeff Somers
only did games in order to raise money. Well, I was wrong. Not only was
I corrected by Stu Galley and a number of other posters, but when I went
back and read the article I based my info on, it turns out that I had
misremembered what was written there. The article was a history of
computer games published a few years ago by Computer Gaming World on their
tenth anniversary. The Infocom sections of that article follow. It has
some neat tidbits, especially at the end where it describes Activision's
buyout of Infocom.
jeff s
jso...@id.wing.net
-------------------
A History of Computer Games, by Johnny Wilson
Computer Gaming World, November 1991
(c) Golden Empire Publications, 1991
[Text about Adventure and its inspiration of Roberta Williams deleted.]
In addition, a group of M.I.T. hackers (including Marc Blanc[sic], Joel Berez
and others) began to create a text adventure called Zork which owed its
original inspiration to Adventure and went its mentor one better by creating a
parser that could understand complete sentences. Zork was not actually
available on a home computer until 1981 when the hackers' new company, Infocom,
released the game for the Apple II.
[text deleted]
Although Zork did not arrive on the Apple II until 1981, its birth was more
properly part of the '70s. In the mid-1970s, Infocom's eventual braintrust
(Marc Blank, Joel Berez and Dave Lebling) met at M.I.T.'s Laboratory of
Computer Science. Inspired by the original Adventure, Blank and Lebling
designed a mainframe adventure game.
It wasn't just any adventure game, however. The goal of the game's
designers was to allow the computer to understand more typical English
sentences than the simplistic and often infuriating two-word parser of
previous adventure games. So, Marc Blank applied his artificial intelligence
work and created ZIL (Zork Interactive Language), a "parser" which allowed
the program to find associations between sentences and, hence, better
understand what the player wanted to do.
Students at M.I.T. responded so favorably to the mainframe version of Zork
that a professor at the institute, Al Vezza, encouraged the group to form a
corporation. On June 22, 1979, the professor and his star pupils (Berez,
Blank and Lebling) formed Infocom for the express purpose of developing Zork
for the personal computer market. Its success was followed by Starcross (a
science fiction adventure which came packaged in its own flying saucer) and
two Zork sequels (Zork II and Zork III).
At first, the company seemed very focused on producing quality interactive
fiction and designers like Stu Galley, Steve Meretzky and Brian Moriarty
were added to the cast. Games like Deadline, Planetfall, Suspended and
Witness followed (1983). Yet, Blank, Berez and Vezza had a hidden agenda
that was already beginning to foreshadow changes at the company. Their goal
was to move from games to productivity tools.
Actually, many people do not realize that the founders of Infocom were not
entirely interested in computer games. Most did not even like personal
computers. Instead, they were business-oriented and hoped to "make it big"
like their friends and classmates who founded Lotus Development. The idea of
producing a business-oriented database became an obsession, as did the later
move to luxury accommodations in Cambridge. Vezza was determined to out-Lotus
Lotus. What this obsession did to Infocom in the latter part of the '80s can
be read later in this article.
[text deleted]
Infocomplications
1986 also brought the red ink of Cornerstone, the only Infocom product without
a plot. Cornerstone was a database that rocked the corporate structure of
Infocom rather than bringing the desired stability. Instead, it brought
trouble.
Of course, it didn't look like trouble, at first. It looked (as it does in
many corporate acquisitions) like a "White Knight" riding to the rescue.
James Levy, (then) CEO of (then) Activision, was a true fan of Infocom games.
He perceived the corporate weakness brought about by Cornerstone as an
opportunity to acquire a software jewel and began putting the deal in motion
that was finalized on Feb. 19, 1986.
Activision purchased Infocom for $7.5 million (although much of the settlement
price was in Activision common stock and may have had a different value by the
final payment on June 13, 1986). This meant that Marc Blanc[sic] lost his bet
with Cornerstone co-author Brian "Spike" Berkowitz that Infocom stock would top
$20.00 per share by '87 or Blanc[sic] would buy Spike dinner in Paris. Infocom
sold for much less than $20 per share and the last CGW heard, the bet had
still not been paid off and Blanc[sic] was trying to change the venue to Tokyo.
The acquisition was not received well at Infocom. The company newsletter, once
known as the New Zork Times but soon to be known as The Status Line, joked about
graphics in interactive fiction stories and better parsers in Little Computer
People (one of Activision's big hits of the era), but printed one phrase that,
in retrospect, offers a melancholic ring: "We'll still be the Infocom you know
and love." At first, it looked like this might be true. From 1985's low of
three interactive fiction titles, 1986 saw five new titles.
The humor at Infocom never really stopped until the latter days. When the New
York Times complained about their newsletter's original name (New Zork Times),
they ran a contest to rename the publication and first prize was a subscription
to the New York Times. Their in-house (great underground?) paper InfoDope
joked that Levy wanted them to do simulations, cynically suggesting titles
like Tugboat Simulator and Empire State Elevator Operator. Less-than-kind
remarks accused Activision superstar Steve Cartwright (designer of Alien and
Ghostbusters) of being able to turn out action games in an afternoon.
Yet harmless jokes about Levy turned to cynical anger at Levy's successor,
Bruce Davis. Insiders claim Activision's new CEO had been against the Infocom
buyout from the start and that he immediaitely raised the ante on some
anticipated losses that were to have been indemnified by Infocom shareholders
from $300,00 to $900,000 with no accounting. The shareholders filed a
preemptive suit and managed to stave off the "required" payment.
Morale began to deteriorate, with Infocom personnel feeling like Davis was
foisting off all the programs which should have been still-born in development
onto Infocom. They detested Infocomics, the Tom Snyder Productions attempt
to use the computer as an interactive comic book (the idea was to produce $12
products in a continuing series that would appeal to the comics crowd), never
believing in the concept but noting that all the development costs were being
charged against their budget. A brutal (underground) memo urged Infocommies
to join the "Bruce Youth" movement, casting the CEO in a classic bad guy role
as he requested Infocom personnel to "turn in" their fellow employees
whenever said Infocommies would murmur "a discouraging word."
Activision gradually dismantled Infocom. First, sales and manufacturing were
absorbed. This seemed logical, but by the time the great Infocomics
experiment failed in 1988, public relations and customer support were also
absorbed. In 1989, development was moved to the West Coast, but those who
built the Great Underground Empire elected not to move or were not invited
to do so. As Arthur, BattleTech, Journey and Shogun reached the market,
Infocom was no longer a distinctive publisher, it was only a label.
[no furthur Infocom tidbits in article]