12 Jun
2007
12 Jun
'07
2:40 p.m.
Hi all--
I'm doing some work on promoting Netrek, and it's gotton
me interested in the following qualities:
graphical (incl. ascii graphics)
action (real-time-ish)
multiplayer, by which I mean 3 or more
wide area
on the internet
teams
leagues and guilds
If anyone can help with the following questions or add material,
that'd be great...
I've got the following timeline points:
1972 - Alto Trek
probably first networked game
multiplayer
1973 (Fall) - Empire II on the PLATO system
not networked, but a wide-area multiplayer action game from
graphic terminals
did not clock like a modern game; players called for their own
screen updates manually
1974 - MazeWar, probably second networked game
? XNS/PUP, right?
first First Person Shooter
first use of Avatars (enemy players appeared as walking
eyeballs. I don't count ships as Avatars)
first level mapping
first or second rendered 3D perspective graphics (Spasim may
have been first on this)
? In 1993, SGI did a Mazewar demo at Interop, with
workstations placed around the show,
So at some point, MazeWar became playable on a routed TCP/IP
network. When?
1981 - Empire tournament play starts
1983 Jan - flag day; NCP turned off, net goes TCP/IP
1983 - SGI Dogfight (aka fight)
? I think the first game with its own Internet client-server
protocol?
? Did Mazewar get there first? It was client-server and not peer-
to-peer, right?
? I also think it was LAN-only, using broadcast UDP? I've also heard
it was originally XNS, but there's a well-known UDP port for it,
so when did it switch?
I believe that while it was possible to choose to play in
? cooperation, the game itself did not have teams per se?
1985 - X Window System 10 ships
1986 - Xtrek, descendant of PLATO Empire
? first X-Windows thrown-display game?
1988 - Xtrek II: Netrek
? second client-server game?
? first client-server team game?
? first client-server game with routeable protocol?
1991 - Netrek league play starts
So, what am I missing?
1974 to 1983 seems like too long a gap for there to have been
no ARPAnet graphic action games... there were many PLATO games
during that timeframe, and an IBM space battle game of some sort.
Also probably military simulators.
Thanks all!
12 Jun
12 Jun
3:13 p.m.
1973 (Fall) - Empire II on the PLATO system
not networked, but a wide-area multiplayer action game from
graphic terminals
did not clock like a modern game; players called for their own
screen updates manually
I played 0empire on PLATO sometime around '77 or so, and that
description is not quite right for the game I played: you could ask for
an update manually (and usually did, especially during firefights), but
if you just let it sit, it would refresh on a timer every once in a
while (five seconds? I forget).
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
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13 Jun
13 Jun
1:27 a.m.
> 1973 (Fall) - Empire II on the PLATO system
> not networked, but a wide-area multiplayer action game from
> graphic terminals
> did not clock like a modern game; players called for their own
> screen updates manually
der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> writes:
I played 0empire on PLATO sometime around '77 or
so, and that
description is not quite right for the game I played: you could ask for
an update manually (and usually did, especially during firefights), but
if you just let it sit, it would refresh on a timer every once in a
while (five seconds? I forget).
Oh, yeah, eventually it would redraw if you didn't call for it.
But knowing when not to tie up the line with a redraw was a key game skill.
12 Jun
12 Jun
3:14 p.m.
On Tue, Jun 12, 2007 at 02:40:13PM -0400, Andrew K. Bressen wrote:
Hi all--
I'm doing some work on promoting Netrek, and it's gotton
me interested in the following qualities:
graphical (incl. ascii graphics)
action (real-time-ish)
multiplayer, by which I mean 3 or more
wide area
on the internet
teams
leagues and guilds
There's also Bolo, a networked tank game for the BBC Micro written in
1987. Stuart Cheshire's thesis on the subject can be read at
http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/dissertation/
Cheers,
Brian.
13 Jun
13 Jun
1:46 a.m.
Brian Foley <bfoley at compsoc.nuigalway.ie> writes:
There's also Bolo, a networked tank game for the
BBC Micro written in
1987. Stuart Cheshire's thesis on the subject can be read at
http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/dissertation/
Oh my. He built an RS-232 ring topology by breaking the normal
tx/rcv pairings out to different destinations.
That is so gross, yet so cool.
1:58 a.m.
Oh my. He built an RS-232 ring topology by breaking
the normal tx/rcv
pairings out to different destinations.
That is so gross, yet so cool.
Agreed!
This actually reminds me of something I've been contemplating doing:
"the same thing" for twisted-pair Ethernet. That is....
For two machines, with a crossed cable, machine A's 1/2 pair goes to
machine B's 3/6 pair, and conversely.
But suppose you have three machines, and connect machine A's 1/2 to
machine B's 3/6, B's 1/2 to C's 3/6, and C's 1/2 to A's 3/6.
Obviously
you'd have to set all interfaces involved half-duplex for it to have
any hope of working (so each non-sending host will feed through the
signal it gets to the next host in the ring)...but will it work if you
do that? Clearly, too many hosts in the ring and you'll start getting
late collisions and such. But it could be a similarly "gross but cool"
way to run a small LAN hubless, something normally not possible with
more than two machines....
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
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8:21 a.m.
On 13/06/2007 06:58, der Mouse wrote:
This actually reminds me of something I've been
contemplating doing:
"the same thing" for twisted-pair Ethernet. That is....
For two machines, with a crossed cable, machine A's 1/2 pair goes to
machine B's 3/6 pair, and conversely.
But suppose you have three machines, and connect machine A's 1/2 to
machine B's 3/6, B's 1/2 to C's 3/6, and C's 1/2 to A's 3/6.
Obviously
you'd have to set all interfaces involved half-duplex for it to have
any hope of working (so each non-sending host will feed through the
signal it gets to the next host in the ring)
That's not what half-duplex does. HD doesn't make each interface pass on
what it receives, it just ensures that nothing is transmitted while
receiving (or, if it is, that's a collision).
...but will it work if you do that?
I wouldn't expect so, without some additional software. In principle,
given software support, you could pass things around like that. You'd
need to use something like UDP that doesn't expect the sort of software
handshaking that TCP does. It's perfectly possible to have a machine
listen to the Rx side while the Tx is not connected to anything (we
sometimes use that for a demo to snoop on traffic) and similarly it's
possible to transmit while the receive side is connected to nothing more
than a link pulse generator.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
10:01 a.m.
But suppose
you have three machines, and connect machine A's 1/2 to
machine B's 3/6, B's 1/2 to C's 3/6, and C's 1/2 to A's 3/6.
Obviously you'd have to set all interfaces involved half-duplex for
it to have any hope of working (so each non-sending host will feed
through the signal it gets to the next host in the ring)
That's not what
half-duplex does. HD doesn't make each interface
pass on what it receives, it just ensures that nothing is transmitted
while receiving (or, if it is, that's a collision).
14 Jun
14 Jun
3:19 a.m.
On 13/06/2007 15:01, der Mouse wrote:
...oh. I thought half-duplex was basically shared-bus
Ethernet - that
all pairs in a collision domain would be carrying the same signal.
'Fraid not :-(
Hmm. I wonder what would happen if you connect A and
B's TX pairs and
C's RX pair together, and similarly for B/C TX and A RX, and C/A TX and
B RX.
As you wrote, nothing useful. You can connect one Tx pair to several Rx
pairs. I don't know how many, I've only ever tried connecting one extra
Rx pair. I don't know about connecting two or more Tx pairs together,
though. You'd end up with collisions, undetected by the transmitters,
and I don't know if 10baseT transmitters can handle that. Anyway, what
you're suggesting would connect all the Tx pairs together (A to B, then
B to C).
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
3:39 a.m.
Hmm. I wonder
what would happen if you connect A and B's TX pairs
and C's RX pair together, and similarly for B/C TX and A RX, and C/A
TX and B RX.
I don't know about connecting two or more Tx pairs together,
though.
You'd end up with collisions, undetected by the transmitters, and I
don't know if 10baseT transmitters can handle that. Anyway, what you're suggesting would connect all
the Tx pairs
together (A to B, then B to C).
Doh! Of course. Oh well. So much for cheap pseudo-token-ring
Ethernets. :-/
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
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/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
4:55 a.m.
On 14 Jun 2007 at 3:39, der Mouse wrote:
They must be able to at least tolerate it without
frying; that's
basically what you get if you connect two hosts with a straight cable -
or a host and hub with a crossed cable - so there'd be a lot of toasted
hardware if it weren't at least relatively harmless.
Er, isn't what you're suggesting very akin to RS-485?
Cheers,
Chuck
Anyway, what you're suggesting would connect
all the Tx pairs
together (A to B, then B to C).
Doh! Of course. Oh well. So much for cheap pseudo-token-ring
Ethernets. :-/
5:50 a.m.
On 14/06/2007 08:39, der Mouse wrote:
You can still do it, so long as you write something to handle the tokens
and avoid things like TCP handshaking.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
> You'd end up with collisions, undetected by
the transmitters, and I
> don't know if 10baseT transmitters can handle that.
They must be able to at least tolerate it without
frying; that's
basically what you get if you connect two hosts with a straight cable -
or a host and hub with a crossed cable - so there'd be a lot of toasted
hardware if it weren't at least relatively harmless.
Of course -- in my eagerness to reply I forgot that minor detail!
Anyway, what
you're suggesting would connect all the Tx pairs
together (A to B, then B to C).
Doh! Of course. Oh well. So much for cheap pseudo-token-ring
Ethernets. :-/
13 Jun
13 Jun
11:37 a.m.
On 13 Jun 2007 at 1:58, der Mouse wrote:
This actually reminds me of something I've been
contemplating doing:
"the same thing" for twisted-pair Ethernet. That is....
For two machines, with a crossed cable, machine A's 1/2 pair goes to
machine B's 3/6 pair, and conversely.
Before I picked up my first ISA ethernet cards and started stringing
coax, I used two products under MS-DOS 2.1 and 3.3, "The $25 Network"
and "The Invisible Network". The first was strictly RS-232; the
second could also use printer ports and dedicated cards. Not like
Laplink, but full "always-on" networking. Very primitive--whole
drive letter and printer sharing only, with no selective access. I
still have a 2P+2S ISA card that populated the machines that I
chained together. I don't remember too much about the setup, only
that it worked pretty well. I stll have the software and manuals.
The MS-DOS networking hooks were pretty handy, particularly when it
came to hosting foreign filesystems. CD-ROM access is accomplished
that way, IIRC.
Cheers,
Chuck
3:25 a.m.
Andrew K. Bressen wrote:
Brian Foley <bfoley at compsoc.nuigalway.ie>
writes:
Just like MIDIMaze, which used the MIDI connections in all Atari ST
machines as a crude network? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_Maze
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
There's also Bolo, a networked tank game for
the BBC Micro written in
1987. Stuart Cheshire's thesis on the subject can be read at
http://www.lgm.com/bolo/guides/dissertation/
Oh my. He built an RS-232 ring topology by breaking the normal
tx/rcv pairings out to different destinations.
That is so gross, yet so cool. 
12 Jun
12 Jun
3:38 p.m.
I played Conquest quite a bit on the Vax in college, that played through
the VT100 terminals with refreshing the graphics on the screen for
animation (ships turning, shots fired, etc...) We'd get like 10 or
more people on after hours in the computer labs in Manhattan and Old
Westbury and we'd essentially bring the Vax to its knee's ;-)
Curt
Andrew K. Bressen wrote:
Hi all--
I'm doing some work on promoting Netrek, and it's gotton
me interested in the following qualities:
graphical (incl. ascii graphics)
action (real-time-ish)
multiplayer, by which I mean 3 or more
wide area
on the internet
teams
leagues and guilds
If anyone can help with the following questions or add material,
that'd be great...
I've got the following timeline points:
1972 - Alto Trek
probably first networked game
multiplayer
1973 (Fall) - Empire II on the PLATO system
not networked, but a wide-area multiplayer action game from
graphic terminals
did not clock like a modern game; players called for their own
screen updates manually
1974 - MazeWar, probably second networked game
? XNS/PUP, right?
first First Person Shooter
first use of Avatars (enemy players appeared as walking
eyeballs. I don't count ships as Avatars)
first level mapping
first or second rendered 3D perspective graphics (Spasim may
have been first on this)
? In 1993, SGI did a Mazewar demo at Interop, with
workstations placed around the show,
So at some point, MazeWar became playable on a routed TCP/IP
network. When?
1981 - Empire tournament play starts
1983 Jan - flag day; NCP turned off, net goes TCP/IP
1983 - SGI Dogfight (aka fight)
? I think the first game with its own Internet client-server
protocol?
? Did Mazewar get there first? It was client-server and not peer-
to-peer, right?
? I also think it was LAN-only, using broadcast UDP? I've also heard
it was originally XNS, but there's a well-known UDP port for it,
so when did it switch?
I believe that while it was possible to choose to play in
? cooperation, the game itself did not have teams per se?
1985 - X Window System 10 ships
1986 - Xtrek, descendant of PLATO Empire
? first X-Windows thrown-display game?
1988 - Xtrek II: Netrek
? second client-server game?
? first client-server team game?
? first client-server game with routeable protocol?
1991 - Netrek league play starts
So, what am I missing?
1974 to 1983 seems like too long a gap for there to have been
no ARPAnet graphic action games... there were many PLATO games
during that timeframe, and an IBM space battle game of some sort.
Also probably military simulators.
Thanks all!
5:02 p.m.
Anyone ever see a game that I think was called "Monster" that ran on a
Tektronix vector storage terminal around the late 1970's time period?
I believe it was hosted on a Honeywell mainframe they had a UAA (AK).
From what I remember the player was randomly positioned
somewhere in
2-D space, along with various "monsters" and suns and black
holes and
maybe anti-gravity objects. You input angle and velocity from your
position and tried to hit the monsters and it would plot the
trajectory around and into the various objects. It was one of the
first computer graphic games I ever saw and it was pretty cool at the
time, although pretty simple as I think about it now.
-Glen
13 Jun
13 Jun
2:32 a.m.
"Curt @ Atari Museum" <curt at atarimuseum.com> writes:
I played Conquest quite a bit on the Vax in college,
that played
through the VT100 terminals with refreshing the graphics on the screen
for animation (ships turning, shots fired, etc...) We'd get like 10
or more people on after hours in the computer labs in Manhattan and
Old Westbury and we'd essentially bring the Vax to its knee's ;-)
Conquest was one of several children of PLATO Empire.
You can still play; ascii or OpenGL.
http://radscan.com/conquest.html
(Actually, there are two completely different Empire descendents
named Conquest; one is the widely-known VMS game, the other a PLATO
game made by Silas Warner (Castle Wolfenstein) from the first version of
Empire, which was a sort of economics game; Empire didn't become an
action-oriented game until version II).
Xtrek/Netrek comes from Empire as well.
And Robert Woodhead of "Wizardry" fame did a version of Empire for the
Apple II called "Galactic Attack".
12:23 a.m.
Don't forget Sopwith:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith_%28computer_game%29
It had it's own network protocol as well.
Andrew K. Bressen wrote:
Hi all--
I'm doing some work on promoting Netrek, and it's gotton
me interested in the following qualities:
graphical (incl. ascii graphics)
action (real-time-ish)
multiplayer, by which I mean 3 or more
wide area
on the internet
teams
leagues and guilds
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
12:24 a.m.
Andrew K. Bressen wrote:
I'm doing some work on promoting Netrek, and
it's gotton
me interested in the following qualities:
graphical (incl. ascii graphics)
action (real-time-ish)
multiplayer, by which I mean 3 or more
wide area
on the internet
teams
leagues and guilds
I also noticed you omitted Snipes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipes
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
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18 comments
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participants (8)
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akb+lists.cctech＠imap1.mirror.to -
bfoley＠compsoc.nuigalway.ie -
cclist＠sydex.com -
curt＠atarimuseum.com -
glen.slick＠gmail.com -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
pete＠dunnington.plus.com -
trixter＠oldskool.org