From: Eric S. Raymond Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 07:48:13 +0000 (+0000) Subject: Document what I've done. X-Git-Tag: 2.0~448 X-Git-Url: https://jxself.org/git/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=21d59740dd2e1cca6b54be441129fb1a72edfe2d;p=super-star-trek.git Document what I've done. --- diff --git a/sst.doc b/sst.doc index 1201d31..564b9da 100644 --- a/sst.doc +++ b/sst.doc @@ -581,7 +581,7 @@ you move, but higher warp factors require more energy. You may move with your shields up, but this doubles the energy required. You can move within a quadrant without being attacked if you just -entered the quadrant or have bee attacked since your last move +entered the quadrant or have been attacked since your last move command. This enables you to move and hit them before they retaliate. @@ -1407,6 +1407,8 @@ Impulse engines require 20 units to warm up, plus 100 units per quadrant. Speed is just under one sector per stardate. ********MODIFICATIONS******** 25 +Tom Almy's story: + Back in (about) 1977 I got a copy of this Super Star Trek game for the CDC 6600 mainframe computer. Someone had converted it to PDP-11 Fortran but couldn't get it to run because of its size. I modified @@ -1466,10 +1468,57 @@ Modifications I made: the algorithm. The DECUS version had a Deep Space Probe. Looked like a good idea - so I implimented it based on its description. + so I implemented it based on its description. + + + 26 + +Eric Raymond's story: + +I played the FORTRAN version of this game in the mid-1970s on +a DEC minicomputer. In the late 1980s Dave Matuszek and I became +friends; I was vaguely aware that he had had something to do with the +original Star Trek game. In October 2004, sitting in Dave's living +room, we got to talking about the game and I realized it would make a +great exhibit for the Retrocomputing Museum . + +A few quick web searches later we found Tom Almy's page. We +downloaded his code and Dave verified that that it was a direct +descendent of UT Super Star Trek -- even though it had been translated +to C, he was able to recognize some of his FORTRAN code. + +Thus, this game is a cousin of Eric Allman's BSD Trek game, which is also +derived from UT Super Star Trek. However, this one has had a lot more +stuff folded into it over the years -- deep space probes, dilithium mining, +the Tholian Web, and so forth. + +This lineage differs from most of the BASIC versions out there in that you +set courses and firing directions with rectangular rather than polar +coordinates. It also preserves the original numbered rather than named +quadrants. + +This game is now an open-source project; see the project site at + + +Here are some good pages on the history of Star Trek games: - ----------ACKNOWLEDGMENTS---------- 26 +http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/startrek/ +http://www3.sympatico.ca/maury/games/space/star_trek.html +http://www.cactus.org/%7Enystrom/startrek.html + +Modifications I made: + +* I cleaned up a lot of grubby FORTRANisms in the code internals. + +* I fixed a surprising number of typos in the code and documentation. + +* I changed the freeze logic to emit an identifiable magic number and + the thaw logic to check for it. + + ----------ACKNOWLEDGMENTS---------- 27 + +These are the original acknowledgments by Dave Matuszek and Paul Reynolds: The authors would like to thank Professor Michael Duggan for his encouragement and administrative assistance with the development of @@ -1487,10 +1536,7 @@ game, programmed in the BASIC language, by Jim Korp and Grady Hicks. It is the authors' understanding that the BASIC game was in turn derived from a still earlier version in use at Penn State University. - - - - ----------REFERENCES---------- + ----------REFERENCES---------- 28 1. "Star Trek" (the original television series), produced and