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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 198 responses total. |
tpryan
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response 150 of 198:
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Dec 13 17:26 UTC 2000 |
Another of the first computer games was to write code such that
the CDC drive would jump, incrementally in one direction, until it
pulled out it's own cord. That's when hard drives where the size and
shape of washing machines.
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gelinas
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response 151 of 198:
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Dec 13 18:00 UTC 2000 |
Unix was written so its authors could continue playing a game that had been
written for another operating system (Multics?).
In 1975, I played Risk on one of MTU's mainframes.
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ea
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response 152 of 198:
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Dec 13 19:59 UTC 2000 |
This may actually be somewhat "late" in the development of computer
games, but I always liked QBasic Nibbles or QBasic Gorilla.
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keesan
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response 153 of 198:
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Dec 13 20:09 UTC 2000 |
(I thought this question might bring a few readers out of the woodwork).
Jim has a copy of Gorilla, the only game he finds interesting. What other
classics are there?
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ashke
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response 154 of 198:
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Dec 13 20:54 UTC 2000 |
OH I LOVED NIBBLES! Sammy the snake. I used to play that a lot in Dos 5,
I think it was....
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tpryan
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response 155 of 198:
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Dec 13 22:16 UTC 2000 |
re 151: In the Fisher Hall Stimulation Laboratory?
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jp2
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response 156 of 198:
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Dec 13 22:20 UTC 2000 |
This response has been erased.
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remmers
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response 157 of 198:
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Dec 13 23:13 UTC 2000 |
Right. It was written so that he could play Space Wars.
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mdw
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response 158 of 198:
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Dec 13 23:20 UTC 2000 |
Keesan might not have realized there's a chess program (text based)
right here on grex.
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keesan
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response 159 of 198:
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Dec 13 23:44 UTC 2000 |
Presumably it cannot be played with a mouse? I will check it out anyway.
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keesan
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response 160 of 198:
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Dec 13 23:47 UTC 2000 |
No instructions, only the letter-names of the pieces, a simulated board, and
numbers to the left. What next? I am not an avid chess player.
At least it would not crash his computer to exit improperly.
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goose
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response 161 of 198:
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Dec 14 01:37 UTC 2000 |
There are instructions. Try !man chess.
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keesan
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response 162 of 198:
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Dec 14 02:53 UTC 2000 |
I typed !man chess at the main prompt:
man - event not found.
Please be more specific. All I know about Unix I learned here.
The copy of Chessmaster 2000, a newer version, that someone sent me, meets
all the criteria - nice readable screen (with adjustable board colors),
inoffensive sounds (that you can turn off - choice of music, beeps, or a voice
saying "Gotcha!"), mouse or keyboard or joystick, an enormous choice of levels
and ways to set them. Only problem is that it does not come up ready to play
a new game. You have to learn (shudder) to press ESC for the menu, arrow down
to New, and press Enter. If he learned to set levels in WEP chess, he should
be able to manage this, if written down neatly.
There are all sorts of interesting things to do besides actually play chess,
such as look at famous games (if I can figure out how), some of which were
played by Russians.
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drew
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response 163 of 198:
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Dec 14 03:44 UTC 2000 |
If you're already at a main prompt (csh, sh, or other command shell), the !
looks for a command beginning with what you type that you have already
entered, and executes that. Use the ! only if you're in bbs or party.
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keesan
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response 164 of 198:
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Dec 14 04:09 UTC 2000 |
'Moves may be given in standard (descriptive) notation or in algebraic
notation.' ? Obviously I have never played Class D chess.
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gelinas
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response 165 of 198:
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Dec 14 05:14 UTC 2000 |
Re #155: It was on the second floor of Fisher, yes. The digital and hybrid
computers were in the room next door, the card reader was in the hall, and
the card punchers were across the hall. I've not been back since May, 1975;
I really need to get up that way.
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tpryan
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response 166 of 198:
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Dec 14 17:22 UTC 2000 |
The joke, I'm told is that though the door said 'Simulation
Labratory', people tended to read it as the 'Stimulation Labratory'.
-
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gelinas
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response 167 of 198:
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Dec 14 22:09 UTC 2000 |
Yeah, I noticed that in your response, but I don't remember such a sign
from a quarter-century ago. ;)
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danr
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response 168 of 198:
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Dec 15 01:34 UTC 2000 |
Back in 1971, I wrote a game in BASIC that ran on a DEC PDP-8 that simulated a
Milwaukee Bucks - Detroit Pistons basketball game. When a player's team had the
ball, he or she had the option of shooting or passing, and based on the team's
statistics would randomly generate an outcome for that action. It was kind of
amusing.
One of the strangest computer games I ever played was a golf game on a
Burroughs B80 (I'm not sure that's the right model number). What made this game
strange is that the output device was a teletype-like printer and the game
would print an ASCII-graphics represenation of the hole before each shot. I
think this game was written in SL-5, which was the assembly language that those
machines ran.
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dunne
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response 169 of 198:
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Dec 15 09:07 UTC 2000 |
#164: I wouldn't bother. The chess program on grex is very weak, and
the user interface is pretty horrible. Stick with the Chessmaster
2100. If you really want top-notch Unix chess, there is GNU Chess
and Crafty -- I prefer the latter myself -- but unless your Russian
friend is a strong player, Chessmaster will be more than sufficient.
Needs less hardware resources too.
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bru
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response 170 of 198:
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Dec 15 12:22 UTC 2000 |
I can remember being completely amazed when a geek brought a computer to the
college, hooked it up via a modem to the votec computer, and played a Star
Trek game with Klingon ships vs. the Enterprise.
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danr
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response 171 of 198:
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Dec 15 14:18 UTC 2000 |
Ah, yes. Star Trek games were also a favorite on those early computers. I
forgot all about those.
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jp2
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response 172 of 198:
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Dec 15 15:01 UTC 2000 |
This response has been erased.
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keesan
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response 173 of 198:
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Dec 15 18:52 UTC 2000 |
Chessmaster 2100 is certainly the nicest of the chess programs I have seen.
Grex chess is a complete mystery to me. I tried p2-p3 (which is what the
command looks like in other chess games). eh? The only command the chess
game on grex has understood is exit. I played Boggle instead and found more
words than the computer did. This made me feel better.
I just found a really nice little shareware CAD program called microcad40,
which has nothing to do with the 'toy' microcad, though they are about the
same size. In just a 66K zipped file (unzips to 58K .exe and 102K .doc) it
does everything we could ever want, including export as .pcx (bitmap,
convertable to gif for sending out in New Year's e-mails) or .dxf (vector
format usable by other programs). Not quite as flexible as the 300-500K
PC-Draft Cad and Draft CAD, both also DOS shareware, but much easier to learn
and so far no bugs. Draft CAD would have worked, if it worked, but it is too
buggy - crashes when you try to change units (every time), erases sometimes
the first and sometimes the last line drawn. Homepro, and architectural
program, is also nice (669K) but lines mysteriously disappear or reappear when
you resize, and we could find no way to shorten our house drawing by a foot
after making a mistake in window heights. Microcad did this perfectly. You
have to do a bit more thinking to get certain effects. AutoCAD would probably
also do everything but Jim has not yet managed to get it working (12, DOS)
and it takes up around 25M hard drive and keeps running out of memory or
environment space. It is overkill for us. There is another Microcad at
simtel that is unrelated. In about the same size file, it does much less.
Anyone know more than I do about the history of CAD programs?
Microcad 40 is mcad40.zip, available from at least one shareware site.
My only objection is that it absolutely needs a mouse, but for those of us
who cannot remember the meaning of icons, it displays a text description of
them when you click on them. Help is available both while using the program
(click on ?) and as a .doc file readable with more, list, edit, etc. I found
not a single typo! I nominate this for the Shareware Hall of Fame.
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ashke
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response 174 of 198:
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Dec 15 18:55 UTC 2000 |
I would love to try and help, but I only have copies of AutoCAD 14 and 2000
as well as a program called CadKey. I don't know how big CadKey is, but it's
a bit easier to use than AutoCAD. Is there a reason you don't upgrade to a
larger hard drive/computer?
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