13 Apr
2024
13 Apr
'24
6:08 p.m.
On 4/13/24 10:20, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
PLATO was the system where a whole lot of early games first appeared, especially
multi-player games. Among them were any number of variations of "Star Trek"
inspired ones. While you couldn't refresh a screen full of space ships in motion as
fast as you can on a dedicated graphics engine, it was certainly acceptable for the
players. And a simpler two-ship game like the original spacewar would work even better,
because you'd only need a couple of operations per refresh -- on the classic terminal,
12 output words at 60 per second, so 200 ms per refresh. Not quite "full
motion" but close.
The guys down the hall at CDC SVLOPS were the PLATO people for a couple
of years in the 70s. CDC had internal training classes that used the
orange monster. I recall I took one for Project Manager training. "The
Mythical Man Month" was a required text for the course.
--Chuck