[TUHS] Gaming on early Unix

[Arthur Krewat]

On 12/6/2019 11:19 AM, ron at ronnatalie.com wrote:
>
> Later at BRL we got a copy of “Empire” from PSL.   The good thing 
> about that game was that your amount of activity was limited to one 
> hour a day and however many BTUs (Bureaucratic Time Units) your 
> capital generated.    However, people would print maps near the end of 
> their session and then spend hours planning the next day’s activity.   
> Finally, the lab management had us shutdown.
>

I once took the EMPIRE source code for VAX, and translated it to MSDOS 
using IBM Personal Computer FORTRAN version 2.00. And even added color. 
I broke EMPIRE.FOR into 9 different chunks, I think there was some 
limitation of the compiler, but I'm not sure.

The original EMPIRE.FOR:

         PROGRAM EMPIRE
C
C This program is a war game simulation for video terminals.
C The game was originally written outside of Digital, probably a university.
C This version of the game was made runnable on Digital Equipment VAX/VMS
C FORTRAN by conversion from the TOPS-10/20 sources available around 
fall 1979.
C After debugging it, numerous changes have been made.
C
C Now that you are the proud owner of the source and you are all gung ho
C to do things right, there are a few things you should be aware of.
C Unfortunately, there are many magic numbers controlling how many different
C kinds of units can exist and how many of each, so think well before you
C attempt to add another unit type. Also, "slight changes" to the way 
the units
C work will typically have a fairly devastating affect on the computers
C strategy.  If you are interested in really hacking this, there is a plenty
C of room for enhanced computer strategy.  As you'll see, there are some
C very good debugging tools tucked inside, and you will soon discover weak
C points and bugs, that up until you, have remained problems (all the 
previous
C programmers got lazy or lost interest).  Finally, please be careful with
C the version number and identification at start up to avoid confusion of
C ongoing versions with private copies.  If you make a change don't remove
C the major version id, but rather add something like (V4.0 site.1 
20-JUL-80).
C


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