looking for a program - last gasp questions

Dr Iain Maoileoin iain at csp-partnership.co.uk
Thu Oct 17 08:16:22 CDT 2019


Not star-trek....

I am trying to track down the source of a unix game .....

Years and years ago - 1980s - I was in the Computing Science Department 
at Strathclyde Uni.  and we had a bunch of BSD4 systems running on VAXen.

I have memory of - but have never located - a curses based 24 x 80 
display - multi-user "space-war" game that allowed you to navigate 
around a 3D universe with the 24 x 80 giving you a full screen view of 
the universe..

In the game you could

* hunt the universe for aliens (like "shankers" I cant remember the 
others),
* other players - you saw them as they saw you

you could also team up with other players to have more firepower and 
call for help using a 1-line on screen chat/broadcast system,
there were planet(s) scattered about - that you could hide behind.

The students and I modified the program with some "special features".  I 
cant remember if the name of program was changed too ;-(

Anyway we knew the game as "search", it was written in C - it was a good 
test of serial output capability of the VAXen - it was also a great way 
to teach students about the VI keys - since hjkl worked as expected for 
movement (at least that was out excuse to the prof when caught playing 
the game during the day).

 From my poor description can anybody tie down what I am looking for?

Appreciated

Iain



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