RT11 / RSTS-E games

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2015-05-08 03:38, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 8:34 PM, Johnny Billquist <bqt at update.uu.se> wrote:
>> On 2015-05-07 20:41, Ethan Dicks wrote:
>>>> I have 2.52 version of Dungeon
>>>
>>> That's definitely missing some features (puzzles) from later versions.
>>> I don't recall what does and doesn't backport from the VMS-era
>>> versions.
>>
>> Revision history:
>>
>> 16-Jan-03       Backport to RSX-11M-PLUS (V3.2C).
>> 20-Oct-94       Bug fixes (V3.2B).
>> 01-Oct-94       Bug fixes (V3.2A).
>> 01-Feb-94       Portable VMS/UNIX version (V3.1A).
>> 01-Jan-90       Portable version (V3.0A).
>> 18-Oct-80       Revised DECUS version (V2.6A).
>> 18-Jul-80       Transportable data base file (V2.5A).
>> 28-Feb-80       Compressed text file (V2.4A).
>> 15-Nov-79       Bug fixes (V2.3A).
>> 18-Jan-79       Revised DECUS version (V2.2A).
>> 10-Oct-78       Puzzle Room (V2.1A).
>> 10-Sep-78       Endgame (V2.0A).
>> 10-Aug-78       DECUS version (V1.1B).
>> 14-Jun-78       Public version with parser (V1.1A).
>> 04-Mar-78       Debugging version (V1.0A).
>>>
>>
>> But that "backport" was done by me, and requires an RSX system with split
>> I/D-space to run...
>
> Nice version history there.

Yeah. All from within the game. Pretty nice. That command should be 
there in most versions of DUNGEON I know of.

>> I think in general V2.6 was the last version that was generally available
>> for PDP-11s.
>
> That seems about right (especially with the 10 year gap, past the
> point of most daily PDP-11 use).

Indeed.

>>> If you are looking for games you _can_ play, a couple of years ago at
>>> VCFe, I hacked one of the RT-11 Z-Machines to run on RSTS/E
>>
>> I would guess that would be ZEMU?
>
> I think it's actually a decompiled and commented Infocom Z-machine I
> got from someone on this list.

Cool. I know that Infocom did publish ZORK I for RT-11, but I haven't 
seen it myself.

> I do have it, but on a copy of the daily-driver machine I was using in
> 2013 or so.  I have to go find it on an archive disk.

Interesting. Might be fun to check out if I ever have time...

>> Do you have the RSTS/E fixes around. I
>> have been hoping for ages that someone would just try and get it running
>> under RSTS/E, since then I could incorporate those fixes into the
>> distribution as well.
>
> If ZEMU compiles for RT-11 (not just RSX-11), then the fix, if it
> needs one, for RSTS/E would be similar and minor (there's an extra
> little twiddle you have to do when allocating memory under the RT-11
> emulation environment that is not required on real RT-11).

ZEMU works just fine on both RSX and RT-11. I wrote the thing with 
portability in mind. All OS-dependent code is in just one file, and 
Megan Gentry did the RT-11 port.
An RSTS/E port should be pretty straight forward. You could possibly 
even use most of the RT-11 code straight up. The RSX code would probably 
be harder.

>> Afraid I can't help much, though. All stuff I got is for RSX.
>
> In 1986-1987, I was doing a bunch of RT-11 development for a custom
> product.  I was on the PDP-11 all day every day, and my gaming
> alternatives were a C-64 (nice, but getting a bit old at that time)
> and an Amiga with single floppy and 512MB of RAM (fixed up to 2MB and
> 20MB disk a year later), so I collected RT-11 games (and OS/8 games,
> but that's for another thread).

Well, I know that there are a bunch of games on DECUS distributions, so 
I would suggest checking those out.

Also, a bunch of DECUS programs were source in FORTRAN or BASIC, and 
should really compile just fine on any OS.

The most fun games for RSX, however, are multiplayer things, and those 
would be much harder to port... But if anyone is interested, they can 
certainly check under MIM::SYS$GAMES: on HECnet.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol