"Google Tech Talk (more below)
March 7, 2011
Presented by Jason Scott.
ABSTRACT
Jason Scott will talk about making the documentary and we'll be screening some portion of the film.
http://www.getlamp.com/ In the early years of the microcomputer, a special kind of game was being played. With limited sound, simple graphics, and tiny amounts of computing power, the first games on home computers would hardly raise an eyebrow in the modern era of photorealism and surround sound. In a world of Quake, Half-Life and Halo, it is expected that a successful game must be loud, fast, and full of blazing life-like action.
But in the early 1980s, an entire industry rose over the telling of tales, the solving of intricate puzzles and the art of writing. Like living books, these games described fantastic worlds to their readers, and then invited them to live within them.
They were called 'computer adventure games', and they used the most powerful graphics processor in the world: the human mind.
Rising from side projects at universities and engineering companies, adventure games would describe a place, and then ask what to do next. They presented puzzles, tricks and traps to be overcome. They were filled with suspense, humor and sadness. And they offered a unique type of joy as players discovered how to negotiate the obstacles and think their way to victory. These players have carried their memories of these text adventures to the modern day, and a whole new generation of authors have taken up the torch to present a new set of places to explore.
Get Lamp is a documentary that will tell the story of the creation of these incredible games, in the words of the people who made them..."
From
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action/c/beHRZpRB9i4.
6 Comments
StukaFoxsays...So this is absolutely true:
When I was 14, I wrote the (as far as I can determine) first parser-driven BBS in the world, basically creating the first purpose-driven, "multi-player" online adventure game, with the following caveats:
- Unis had such games themselves, but their access was limited to other university students and not the general public.
- It's also possible that someone else might have done the same thing before me, but I have never found any record of a such a BBS or online game existing prior to 1981.
The name of the BBS was 'New House of Wrath' and it featured a house that you explored via simple verb-noun syntax. Each room in the house was a BBS function (various text games which I wrote myself / a message base / a philez repository / a graffiti wall) as well as a simple underlying adventure in the style of Zork. The whole thing was written in sloppy TRS-DOS BASIC on a TRS-80 Model III and resided within 48k of memory including a primitive DB engine that I wrote. I still have a 8-pin dot-maxtrix print out of the code.
Shortly after my BBS went "online", a couple of multi-line BBSs sprung up, but these were straight BBSs without an overlying structure like mine.
At the time, I thought nothing of writing the BBS other than it was a fun thing to do. 80 Micro, the magazine that covered all things TRS-related, was going to write a story about my BBS, but nothing ever came of it. I ran it until about 1986 when I finally gave up because everyone was going to online service like Compu$erve and Prodigy.
I know I'll never get a single bit of credit for what I did, but I know what I did and I'm proud of my little contribution to the online world; that'll have to be enough.
antDo you still have them? If so, then revive for the Internet!
So this is absolutely true:
When I was 14, I wrote the (as far as I can determine) first parser-driven BBS in the world, basically creating the first purpose-driven, "multi-player" online adventure game, with the following caveats:
- Unis had such games themselves, but their access was limited to other university students and not the general public.
- It's also possible that someone else might have done the same thing before me, but I have never found any record of a such a BBS or online game existing prior to 1981.
The name of the BBS was 'New House of Wrath' and it featured a house that you explored via simple verb-noun syntax. Each room in the house was a BBS function (various text games which I wrote myself / a message base / a philez repository / a graffiti wall) as well as a simple underlying adventure in the style of Zork. The whole thing was written in sloppy TRS-DOS BASIC on a TRS-80 Model III and resided within 48k of memory including a primitive DB engine that I wrote. I still have a 8-pin dot-maxtrix print out of the code.
Shortly after my BBS went "online", a couple of multi-line BBSs sprung up, but these were straight BBSs without an overlying structure like mine.
At the time, I thought nothing of writing the BBS other than it was a fun thing to do. 80 Micro, the magazine that covered all things TRS-related, was going to write a story about my BBS, but nothing ever came of it. I ran it until about 1986 when I finally gave up because everyone was going to online service like Compu$erve and Prodigy.
I know I'll never get a single bit of credit for what I did, but I know what I did and I'm proud of my little contribution to the online world; that'll have to be enough.
StukaFoxsays...Ant,
It would require a fairly intensive refactor to get it to work. The hardest part would be figuring out how to shoehorn GOTO into a modern BASIC interpreter since that command was taken out back and shot in the head -- and for good reason -- but with the memory and processor restrictions of computers at the time, GOTO was necessary because GOSUB required 4 bytes of stored information and a bit more processing power. There's also a number of functions that are exclusive to TRS-DOS BASIC and the Model III in particular.
At one point, I thought about moving the code from BASIC to Z-80 Assembler, but by then the first PC Jr. clones were out (I had a TRS Model 1000 and it was GREAT!) and it no longer made sense to continue doing anything on the Model III.
The worst loss is the database data, which was all the room and pathing descriptions, as well as part of the warm storage for the games. That's the part that breaks my heart to have lost.
That said, the sound over an acoustic coupler of an analog modem making a 300 bps connection is still makes me smile.
Do you still have them? If so, then revive for the Internet!
antCan't keep it in a virtual machine of the original softwares and emulated hardwares?
Ant,
It would require a fairly intensive refactor to get it to work. The hardest part would be figuring out how to shoehorn GOTO into a modern BASIC interpreter since that command was taken out back and shot in the head -- and for good reason -- but with the memory and processor restrictions of computers at the time, GOTO was necessary because GOSUB required 4 bytes of stored information and a bit more processing power. There's also a number of functions that are exclusive to TRS-DOS BASIC and the Model III in particular.
At one point, I thought about moving the code from BASIC to Z-80 Assembler, but by then the first PC Jr. clones were out (I had a TRS Model 1000 and it was GREAT!) and it no longer made sense to continue doing anything on the Model III.
The worst loss is the database data, which was all the room and pathing descriptions, as well as part of the warm storage for the games. That's the part that breaks my heart to have lost.
That said, the sound over an acoustic coupler of an analog modem making a 300 bps connection is still makes me smile.
StukaFoxsays...I looked into this a few years ago when I was thinking along the same lines as you: it looked like a LOT of work. I looked at the printout today and it's fading badly. I'm going to try to run it careful through and optical scanner and see if OCR can read the faint letters and numbers.
Can't keep it in a virtual machine of the original softwares and emulated hardwares?
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