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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

#51

Post by vejeta »

Firehawke wrote: post #47
vejeta wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the author of the article. I have put a quick prototype to see how a game like this could be played from the web. And it is certainly possible. I used "ttyd" as a bridge from a shell program and show the output through websockets with apache. You can check the code in https://github.com/vejeta/conquer-web . The game is playable through the web, with the original curses interface, you can login with your nation a…

Something like what's done with https://www.hardfought.org/nethack/ maybe?

The opposite, from what I read in that page, they provide instructions to connect from the shell.

Conquer-web looks for avoiding the "problem" to connect to a server with putty/telnet or ssh through a terminal. You can just connect from the web.

I can´t provide a URL to try, because I want to provide some security measures, and create a proper world, before opening something like this, but the code is there.

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

#52

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

#53

Post by vejeta »

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…

Not exactly what you ask, but for example, for unix textual games, Debian (the GNU/Linux distribution I know best) provides the package called bsdgames: https://packages.debian.org/source/sid/bsdgames where many games like this are provided https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/bsdgames

The thing is that list is not constant and is changing overtime, depending on the usage, demand, and effort to maintain them from the debian maintainers.

I am wondering if such a collection, no matter the license, and no matter the status of the codebase is maintained somewhere (for specific unix/bsd/linux text based games)

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

#54

Post by mmooss »

cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #3
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…

The creator of this game is a frequent contributor on this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=WalterBright

Is that the same Empire? The version I've seen has no BTUs. Just basics: random continents, cities produce military units, units require different numbers of turns for production, etc.

However, I saw a modern-ish decendent called Empire Deluxe, so maybe the original had more features?

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

#55

Post by justin66 »

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.

It's a wonder the software's authors, users, and distributors have evaded dire legal consequences all these decades.

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

#57

Post by DonHopkins »

billfruit wrote: post #9

There use to be a set of games which were available for SunOS and may be Solaris, including a flight simulator with wired frame graphics, and Sun even had released a book about these games at that time(may be early 1990's). Are they also covered by these? Anyone remember a flight simulator with wireframe graphics available Unices?

I bought a copy of Aviator by Curt Priem and Bruce Factor, that ran on my SS2 pizzabox's GX "LEGO: Low End Graphics Option" SBus card (an 8 bit color + 2 bits monochrome overlay plane graphics accelerator):

https://www.techmonitor.ai/hardware/aviator_15_for_sun_netwo...

>AVIATOR 1.5 FOR SUN NETWORKS OPENS UP GRAPHICS WORKSTATION GAMES MARKET. By CBR Staff Writer, 08 Jul 1991.

https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/aviator-a-flight-sim...

https://bitsavers.org/bits/Sun/aviator/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RQscDJCy4c

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44049987

>Bruce Factor and Curtis Priem developed a flight simulator called Aviator for Sun's S-Bus GX graphics accelerator. I had one of them on my SS2, and owned a copy of Aviator on CDROM, and loved to play it. [...]

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

#60

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

drob518 wrote: post #45

We’re hitting that point in time when key figures in the history of early computing are starting to leave us. It’s nice to see these early applications preserved. If we can get this code off old disks and tapes and into modern cloud-based repositories, with open source licenses, we might be able to enjoy these programs for a long time, whether for actual amusement or just historical significance. The digital age is b…

Someone should start a museum where you can walk in and play these ancient games and fiddle with ancient software (probably using virtual machines and emulators for the sake of hardware preservation). They could use donations and admission tickets to fund the restoration of more and more old stuff, in a virtuous cycle.
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