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First Graphics Game Written On/For a 16-Bit Home PC
The GPI writes with a story about Scott's Space Wars, a piece of gaming history:
"This game was written by the famous game author Scott Adams, who founded Adventure International, the first multimillion dollar PC game company. It was founded over 30 years ago and developed for early 8-bit home PCs, i.e. TRS-80, Apple II, Atari. Scott's Space Wars is the first graphics game that was ever written at home, for a 16-bit home computer. The original source code is available as photos of the original 1975 hand-written manuscript. The last purchaser of the manuscript paid $197,500 in 2005. A brief video shows how the game was played."
I'm such an idiot - I wrote all that and I've been thinking more and more about it. I saw that game on the PC of a friend's dad - a couple years before I worked with computers in school. His dad was an engineer for Carsten Manufacturing - they make Ping golf clubs. Ah well - we did do similar stuff on school computers - but it was at Doug Avann's house that I saw this game or a copy of it that was based on Star Trek. I'd forgotten all about that until tonight.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
No, you're right. We've destroyed unregulated industry-- you can't just start your own business anymore, doing anything. Your initial risk is either monetary or legal; you have to break the law a lot to get started, or put up a lot of money you might lose and probably don't really have anyway.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
That's an interesting way of looking at it - I'm glad you shared it.
I don't have a lot to add or anything - I need to think it over and process it but I did want to let you know I appreciate it.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I don't understand half of what ye are saying, but I can share my brother's experience. He wanted to start a lawn-mowing business - nothing big - just mowing 4-5 lawns each weekend. The state government forced him to jump through all sorts of hurdles, such as acquiring a taxpayer ID, then creating a "fictitious name", then publishing the name in the local paper in order to establish it as a real entity (cost ~$200), and since business taxes are ridiculously complicated he had to hire an accountant. Despite that he was fined because he didn't file first-quarter taxes (he didn't know he was supposed to). And of course before the local state government even granted him anything (ID, name), he had to provide them proof of insurance because apparently private individuals have a choice Not to get insurance, but businesses don't. You must participate in the insurance ponzi scheme.
At the end of the year my brother was about $2000 in the hole thanks to all the government-related overhead, so he decided it wasn't worth the hassle and ended the business. Yay big government. You made it impossible for a private citizen to earn a little extra cash on the side. Good job.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
::sigh:: apparently the moderators never played _The Colossal Cave Adventure_. Hint, the standard ``magic word'' which would allow one to continue playing past the time limit imposed by some administrators was ``xyzzy'' (but usually sysadmins who imposed such time limits changed the magic word).
Fortunately one can read a Literate Programming commented version of the source code:
From:
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs.html
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/advent.w.gz
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.