Reply #11: So true about Al, but [View All]

[TacticalPeek]

(whisper) it wasn't 'just a way for scientists and college professors to share information':



Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums

by Stewart Brand

· ROLLING STONE · 7 DECEMBER 1972 ·
snip

Reliably, at any nighttime moment (i.e. non-business hours) in North America hundreds of computer technicians are effectively out of their bodies, locked in life-or-Death space combat computer-projected onto cathode ray tube display screens, for hours at a time, ruining their eyes, numbing their fingers in frenzied mashing of control buttons, joyously slaying their friend and wasting their employers' valuable computer time. Something basic is going on.

snip

Rudimentary Spacewar consists of two humans, two sets of control buttons or joysticks, one TV-like display and one computer. Two spaceships are displayed in motion on the screen, controllable for thrust, yaw, pitch and the firing of torpedoes. Whenever a spaceship and torpedo meet, they disappear in an attractive explosion. That's the original version invented in 1962 at MIT by Steve Russell. (More on him in a moment.)

October, 1972, 8 PM, at Stanford's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory, moonlit and remote in the foothills above Palo Alto, California. Two dozen of us are jammed in a semi-dark console room just off the main hall containing AI's PDP-10 computer. AI's Head System Programmer and most avid Spacewar nut, Ralph Gorin, faces a display screen which says only:

THIS CONSOLE AVAILABLE.
He logs in on the keyboard with his initials: Click clickclickclick click.
L1,REG
CSD FALL PICNIC. SATURDAY 11 AM IN FLOOD PARK . . .
He interrupts further announcements, including one about the "First Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics" at 8 PM, with: CLick ("run") clickclickclick ("Space War Ralph") click ("do it")

R SWR.

WELCOME TO SPACEWAR.
HOW MANY SHIPS? MAXIMUM IS 5.

Click: 5 (Five players. This is for the first familiarization battles in the Spacewar Olympics, initiated by me and sponsored (beer & prizes) by Rolling Stone. Friends, I won't be able to explain every computer-technical term that comes by. Fortunately you don't need them to get the gist of what's happening.)


KEYBOARD BUTTONS? (ELSE REGULAR). TYPE Y OR N.

"Yes" Click Y

THE STANDARD GAME IS:

1 CONSOLE, 2 TORPEDO TUBES, (NORMAL) SCORING, NO PARTIAL DAMAGE,
NO HYPERSPACE, KILLER SUN, SHIPS START IN STANDARD POSITIONS.
TYPE Y TO GET A STANDARD GAME.

Ralph wants other features. "No."

Click: N

snip (picks options)

Immediately the screen goes dark and then displays: Five different space ships, each with a dot indicating torpedo tubes are loaded, five scores, each at zero, a convincing starfield, and four space mines orbiting around a central sun, toward which the spaceships are starting to fall at a correctly accelerating rate.

Players seize the five sets of control buttons, find their spaceship persona on the screen, and simultaneously turn and fire toward any nearby still-help-less spaceships, hit the thrust button to initiate orbit before being slurped by the killer sun, and evade or shoot down any incoming enemy torpedoes or orbiting mines. After two torpedoee are fired, each ship has a three second unarmed "reloading" time. Fired torpedoes last nine seconds and then disappear.

The games progress. A tape recorder kibitzes on the first round of Team Competition, four ships twisting, converging, evading, exploding:

Where am P. Where am I?
Clickclickclickclick
Agh! Clickclickclick clickclick
Glitch. Clickclick
OK, I won't shoot. Clickclickclick

Good work Tovar.
Revenge. Clickclick clickclick
Cease fire. Click
clickclick.

Ohhhhhh NO! You killed me, Tovar.

I'm sorry. Clickclickclick
Being purtners means never having to say you're
sorry. Clickclickclick

Get him! Get the mother
Clickclick-clickclickclick

Sacrifice. Clickclick click

Lemme get in orbit. Clickclick
8'ay to dodge. Click clickclickclick

Awshit. Get tough now.

Clickclickclick
The other guy was out of torps.
I knew it and waited till I got a good
shot. Clickclick.

A beaut. O lord. Clickclclick
I shot him but then I slurped.
Click click clickclick
Oooo!
We win! Tovar and REM!

snip
I asked Alan Kay if Spacewar had been played over the Net. He said it's possible. snip (heehee)

http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html

Sorry to quote at such length, but this is a GREAT aricle. 1972, ARPANet is 2 years old.