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Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

vejeta.com

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Re: Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

#31

Post by vejeta »

anthk wrote: post #23

https://inconsolation.wordpress.com/2014/10/19/conquest-much... this?

It is a different game, conquer is a multiplayer strategy game, loosely based on middle-earth atmosphere, nations could be: elves, humans, dwarves, orcs, there were npc nations too: lizards, nomads, etc. Conquer is still ncurses based, probably originating from the same times (the 80s). The original author, Ed Barlow, originally published the game in USENET, comp.sources.games, as conquest, but changed the name on the second release, when noticing there was already a game called conquest, probably this one.

Thanks for the link!

Re: Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

#32

Post by vejeta »

xenophonf wrote: post #25

Stories like these make me want to give modernizing vtrek another try. I'd originally played it on my cousin's 3B2 in the late 1980s after being introduced to the CP/M port of classic trek, which I played on my family's IMS 5000SX. (Oh, how I wished at the time that we'd gotten an Apple II! But that's a story for another time.) I have distinct memories of playing vtrek on my dad's VT220, dialed into my cousin's BBS o…

Author of the article here, I encourage you to do so, and share the results!

I started this journey in 2006, doing the same as you, crawling old usenet archives in the newsgroups interface taht groups.google.com provided. Finding the code was troublesome, because I lost track of it, when moving from floppy disks, to different storage systems, until it has finally been preserved on github.

I find it fascinating that your father had a VT220, did he have it at home or in his office. I thought that kind of terminals were more like a thing of labs.

Re: Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

#33

Post by ilaksh »

anthk wrote: post #20
jmclnx wrote: post #10

Nice to see this happening, FWIW: I uploaded a very old Star Trek Game I think from 1973. I got it from the Coherent OS people. You can get it by issuing these commands: curl 'gopher://sdf.org/0/users/jmccue/repository/trek-73.tar.gz' -o trek-73.tar.gz curl 'gopher://sdf.org/0/users/jmccue/repository/trek-73.tar.gz.asc' -o trek-73.tar.gz.asc and my gpg key in case you want to validate the download: curl 'gopher://sdf…

Trek lives in every OpenBSD install. And OFC with any Basic interpreter running the original game. I translated a Zmachine port into Spanish, too. ZTrek.

Is it Trek or Super Star Trek?

https://github.com/philspil66/Super-Star-Trek

Re: Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

#34

Post by shevy-java »

That's pretty cool. I think it should all be bundled into scummvm, or an extension of this such as scummvm-history or scummvm-preservation. We could bundle all games ever written, with a focus on older games; and ensure they are playable (be it either by released-to-the-public, or people having privately owned copies - the point is more than an engine should be able to make them playable on a modern computer. And yes, we have hardware emulators, I get it, but I am thinking here more of making sure that the code would still work as is on any computer system really, with a focus on omdern systems.)

Re: Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

#35

Post by anthk »

ilaksh wrote: post #33
anthk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trek lives in every OpenBSD install. And OFC with any Basic interpreter running the original game. I translated a Zmachine port into Spanish, too. ZTrek.

Is it Trek or Super Star Trek? https://github.com/philspil66/Super-Star-Trek

https://gamicus.fandom.com/wiki/BSD_Trek

Re: Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

#36

Post by vejeta »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #2

I remember something similar from my university days (30-odd years ago) called Empire. This still lives on here [1]. There was many a map printed out on the laser printer (and my prof wanted to know why his budget was so much higher that term...) back in the day. We played against other colleges of the university of Londone over JANet, and I ran the server on a DECstation 5000, somewhat less powerful than my watch th…

LOL, part of the charm of those games is what you mention, the plots behind the movements with the messages between the nations, the double games to make the other thing you were allied with someone, when in every turn maybe...you were sending troops by boat from another direction. People could enter deep into the roleplaying on those messages and that could be really fun. That was my experience with conquer :P

PS: I am the author of the article, and although I reached the university when the modems were being phased out (1994 or so), we played a lot to it while we were in the computer labs, instead of studying.

Re: Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

#37

Post by Razengan »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #2

I remember something similar from my university days (30-odd years ago) called Empire. This still lives on here [1]. There was many a map printed out on the laser printer (and my prof wanted to know why his budget was so much higher that term...) back in the day. We played against other colleges of the university of Londone over JANet, and I ran the server on a DECstation 5000, somewhat less powerful than my watch th…

"Play-by-Mail" games could make a comeback now:

An AI could maintain the state of a world in its "mind", take text commands from a bunch of players, and update the state the next day.

Re: Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

#38

Post by QuesnayJr »

halffast wrote: post #11

I often find the historical and archaeological aspects more important, this is a wonderful way to start the day.

If you like that kind of thing, you might like looking at the Angband Plus github repository: https://github.com/NickMcConnell/AngbandPlus

Angband is a roguelike that had many variants over the years, and Nick combined all of these variants into one big git repository where each variant is a branch.

Re: Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

#39

Post by [deleted] »

Tepix wrote: post #26
justin66 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that everything had to be relicensed under the GPL “so it could be properly preserved and packaged for modern Linux distributions” seems pretty silly.

Only if you haven‘t dealt with licenses. This software was published without a license.

[deleted]

Re: Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

#40

Post by anthk »

shevy-java wrote: post #34

That's pretty cool. I think it should all be bundled into scummvm, or an extension of this such as scummvm-history or scummvm-preservation. We could bundle all games ever written, with a focus on older games; and ensure they are playable (be it either by released-to-the-public, or people having privately owned copies - the point is more than an engine should be able to make them playable on a modern computer. And yes…

ScummVM doesn't work that way. It needs an engine per game engine.
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