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Today I discovered an absolute gem from the past.
If you were around in 1984 you might have been super awesome and played core wars.
Core Wars is a programming game in which two or more programs run in a simulated computer with the goal of terminating every other program and surviving as long as possible. Known as Warriors, these programs are are written in an assembly language called Redcode.
Basically it's Counter-Strike/COD for programmers where you can fight in a team team, as a free-for-all, or one-vs-one.
What other cool things from the past might us youngun programmers have missed or not have an appreciation of?
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(Score: 2) by mattie_p on Friday October 24 2014, @08:40PM
I never owned this game (my budget as a lad in 1989 severely restricted what I could afford), but Omega [wikipedia.org] probably got me into computers and IT. The idea of designing a tank and writing its AI program was too cool for me. I wonder if anyone here ever played, and if so, how was it?
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Saturday October 25 2014, @06:22PM
Was quite fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDNLkkn6_2Q&list=PLAI1mdgWQZqBzqLHGuUKrKN2JuvvGbkXW&index=3 [youtube.com]
Your tank program had to tell the tank what to do in detail - turn left, scan, detect for obstacles etc.
Different tanks can use different strategies - for example some (like realswan, stv5f, 3hyena[2]) would run away and only come back to fight (when hopefully the enemy was low on power and would run out or be inactive - shields use more power, movement used power, firing weapons and scanning too, but just running code doesn't). Other tanks like backlash would raise shields and wait for the enemy to fire, then lower and fire back and try to raise them before the enemy could return fire. And some would try to dodge shots (mobius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJwfa7XcVuc [youtube.com] ) and one seemed designed for specific maps (daggear on houston: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l1kcBuzs7M [youtube.com] )
The tanks I wrote (baz31, baz32, banzai) were usually more aggressive (I found running away too boring even if it might be effective) - they would use the remote launcher at start to locate the enemy and head towards the last known spot. baz32 had improved low power handling (esp vs stv5f). Example of maze navigation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh4TdQUCs68 [youtube.com]
You could also have team tanks that would communicate with each other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y38WlQeMl04 [youtube.com]
But there were various bugs in the game like m5 turtle armor being better than bentley despite what the manual ( https://archive.org/details/Omega_Neural_Cybertank_Manual [archive.org] ) said.
Various links:
https://web.archive.org/web/20031219022831/http://www.feverish.demon.co.uk/omega/ [archive.org]
https://web.archive.org/web/20130526022751/http://toadstool.net/games/omega/docs/index.htm [archive.org]
https://web.archive.org/web/20030716065059/http://home.insight.rr.com/privategarden/omega.htm [archive.org]
https://web.archive.org/web/20050204084956/http://geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/7003/omega.htm [archive.org]
https://web.archive.org/web/20020615103634/http://www.atlantic.net/~flburns/omega/ [archive.org]
Review:
http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/category/omega/ [pixsoriginadventures.co.uk]
[2] 3hyena https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Dh3I0sOxU [youtube.com]
stv5f https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTRhiHnlCGs [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l1kcBuzs7M [youtube.com]