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| Re: OMG! For all you RETRO rpg and bbs freaks [message #175328 is a reply to message #175295] |
Wed, 07 March 2007 00:26   |
Anton Treuenfels
Messages: 105
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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"christianlott1" <christianlott1@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1173159798.931959.86140@h3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> http://www.cyber1.org/index.html#home
>
> I discovered this yesterday while looking up info on Castle
> Wolfenstien's Silas Warner.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silas_Warner
>
>
> Register, download the mini emulator (just a term emulator
> apparently), get a user name (takes uo to 4 days), log in, make your
> password.
>
> You can play any of the games and contribute.
>
> Check it out:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(computer_game)
>
> Opening screen I pulled from Avatar:
>
> http://24.27.18.75:8080/Avatar.jpg
>
>
> Note:
> For my eyes the term screen is too small. To make it bigger I right
> clicked on the pterm.exe -> properties and set it to open at a lower
> screen resolution. Works great.
>
> BTW, did you see the size of those 1970s amber monitors??
>
> http://plato.filmteknik.com/
Yeah, those are Maggies, Magnavox plasma panels. 512x512 pixel resolution,
16x16 touch screen resolution, 16x8 characters (so 32 lines of 64 chars
each), built-in line-drawing capability, downloadable character sets
(actually room for only one downloadable set, but any individual character
could be replaced at any time).
I wrote an emulator for that terminal that ran on the C64. Had to scale most
everything down - 193x320 pixel resolution (that extra vertical line was on
purpose for the notesfiles) and 6x5 characters...but I made sure you could
play Avatar and recognize what you were looking at! Also Kevet Duncome's
Moria, the other multi-player RPG I played quite a bit. First large machine
language program I ever wrote (3K!). Sold a few copies, too.
Other people wrote emulators for the Atari, TI-99/4A and the Amiga. Wonder
if Novanet or the Comp1 sites still support the old protocols? If so I'll
bet they'd still work!
- Anton Treuenfels
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| Re: OMG! For all you RETRO rpg and bbs freaks [message #175329 is a reply to message #175328] |
Wed, 07 March 2007 01:54 |
christianlott1
Messages: 1852
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Mar 6, 11:26 pm, "Anton Treuenfels" <atreuenf...@earthlink.net>
wrote:
> Yeah, those are Maggies, Magnavox plasma panels. 512x512 pixel resolution,
> 16x16 touch screen resolution, 16x8 characters (so 32 lines of 64 chars
> each), built-in line-drawing capability, downloadable character sets
> (actually room for only one downloadable set, but any individual character
> could be replaced at any time).
It's a frigin orange TANK. Awesome!
> I wrote an emulator for that terminal that ran on the C64. Had to scale most
> everything down - 193x320 pixel resolution (that extra vertical line was on
> purpose for the notesfiles) and 6x5 characters...but I made sure you could
> play Avatar and recognize what you were looking at! Also Kevet Duncome's
> Moria, the other multi-player RPG I played quite a bit. First large machine
> language program I ever wrote (3K!). Sold a few copies, too.
What was it called? Do you still have a copy? Source?
Earlier I was thinking what it would take to do exactly that. I'm sure
it was a pretty special feat.
> Other people wrote emulators for the Atari, TI-99/4A and the Amiga. Wonder
> if Novanet or the Comp1 sites still support the old protocols? If so I'll
> bet they'd still work!
Would LOVE to test it out!
Christian
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| Re: OMG! For all you RETRO rpg and bbs freaks [message #175330 is a reply to message #175328] |
Wed, 07 March 2007 03:26 |
winston19842005@yahoo
Messages: 180
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Mar 7, 12:26 am, "Anton Treuenfels" <atreuenf...@earthlink.net>
wrote:
> "christianlott1" <christianlo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1173159798.931959.86140@h3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
>> http://www.cyber1.org/index.html#home
>
>> I discovered this yesterday while looking up info on Castle
>> Wolfenstien's Silas Warner.
>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silas_Warner
>
>> Register, download the mini emulator (just a term emulator
>> apparently), get a user name (takes uo to 4 days), log in, make your
>> password.
>
>> You can play any of the games and contribute.
>
>> Check it out:
>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(computer_game)
>
>> Opening screen I pulled from Avatar:
>
>> http://24.27.18.75:8080/Avatar.jpg
>
>> Note:
>> For my eyes the term screen is too small. To make it bigger I right
>> clicked on the pterm.exe -> properties and set it to open at a lower
>> screen resolution. Works great.
>
>> BTW, did you see the size of those 1970s amber monitors??
>
>> http://plato.filmteknik.com/
>
> Yeah, those are Maggies, Magnavox plasma panels. 512x512 pixel resolution,
> 16x16 touch screen resolution, 16x8 characters (so 32 lines of 64 chars
> each), built-in line-drawing capability, downloadable character sets
> (actually room for only one downloadable set, but any individual character
> could be replaced at any time).
>
> I wrote an emulator for that terminal that ran on the C64. Had to scale most
> everything down - 193x320 pixel resolution (that extra vertical line was on
> purpose for the notesfiles) and 6x5 characters...but I made sure you could
> play Avatar and recognize what you were looking at! Also Kevet Duncome's
> Moria, the other multi-player RPG I played quite a bit. First large machine
> language program I ever wrote (3K!). Sold a few copies, too.
>
> Other people wrote emulators for the Atari, TI-99/4A and the Amiga. Wonder
> if Novanet or the Comp1 sites still support the old protocols? If so I'll
> bet they'd still work!
>
Pretty sure the TI cartridge was stand-alone. You bought Plato
courseware on disks...
As for the dnd game - when you get to a field (early on) and type
"smoke weed", does the screen go berzerk? I remember playing a version
like that on Plato...
And it had the most awesome sky planetarium program. Showing you views
of the sky, and using touchscreen, it would identify the objects!
This was about 1978-1980...
And being chased off the system by the sysops...
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| Re: OMG! For all you RETRO rpg and bbs freaks [message #175358 is a reply to message #175330] |
Wed, 07 March 2007 23:44 |
Anton Treuenfels
Messages: 105
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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<winston19842005@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1173255981.627541.253650@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> On Mar 7, 12:26 am, "Anton Treuenfels" <atreuenf...@earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>>
>> Other people wrote emulators for the Atari, TI-99/4A and the Amiga.
Wonder
>> if Novanet or the Comp1 sites still support the old protocols? If so
I'll
>> bet they'd still work!
>>
>
> Pretty sure the TI cartridge was stand-alone. You bought Plato
> courseware on disks...
Mmm, I think you may be right. The other two were "real emulators", though.
The Atari version was called "The Learning Phone" (distributed as a
cartridge). Control Data kept trying to market the Plato system as being
primarily educational in nature, when their own internal statistics showed
that what people were doing was playing the multi-user games and using the
notesfiles - ie., users were interested in social interaction. I think
Control Data made a mistake there; they were years ahead of CompuServe and
Prodigy and could have dominated the market if they'd just paid attention to
what people actually wanted to do, instead of what they thought people ought
to want to do.
> As for the dnd game - when you get to a field (early on) and type
> "smoke weed", does the screen go berzerk? I remember playing a version
> like that on Plato...
Not sure I ever saw a "field". Maybe that was the CERL version; I logged
onto it a few times to check how (if) the protocol differed significantly
from the local systems in the Twin Cities. The Avatar community there seemed
significantly, um, wilder than the local one. The character named
"Geishaisagoddess" comes to mind.
> And it had the most awesome sky planetarium program. Showing you views
> of the sky, and using touchscreen, it would identify the objects!
>
> This was about 1978-1980...
>
> And being chased off the system by the sysops...
>
>
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| Re: OMG! For all you RETRO rpg and bbs freaks [message #175360 is a reply to message #175329] |
Thu, 08 March 2007 00:10 |
Anton Treuenfels
Messages: 105
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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"christianlott1" <christianlott1@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1173250485.487397.270100@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com...
> On Mar 6, 11:26 pm, "Anton Treuenfels" <atreuenf...@earthlink.net>
> wrote:
>> Yeah, those are Maggies, Magnavox plasma panels. 512x512 pixel
resolution,
>> 16x16 touch screen resolution, 16x8 characters (so 32 lines of 64 chars
>> each), built-in line-drawing capability, downloadable character sets
>> (actually room for only one downloadable set, but any individual
character
>> could be replaced at any time).
>
> It's a frigin orange TANK. Awesome!
>
>> I wrote an emulator for that terminal that ran on the C64. Had to scale
most
>> everything down - 193x320 pixel resolution (that extra vertical line was
on
>> purpose for the notesfiles) and 6x5 characters...but I made sure you
could
>> play Avatar and recognize what you were looking at! Also Kevet Duncome's
>> Moria, the other multi-player RPG I played quite a bit. First large
machine
>> language program I ever wrote (3K!). Sold a few copies, too.
>
> What was it called? Do you still have a copy? Source?
It was called "C64PAD" (Plato Access Disk). I'm sure there must be a copy
around somewhere, although I'm not sure where. The source must be with that.
I have a partial printout dated 1985, so I haven't played with it in about
20 years.
> Earlier I was thinking what it would take to do exactly that. I'm sure
> it was a pretty special feat.
Maybe, but I had pretty good documentation to work from. Control Data's
internal specifications, actually. The transmission format was seven-bit
even-parity ASCII, and the documentation showed exactly what you could
expect, how binary data was encoded in the ASCII, and what you should do
with it.
>> Other people wrote emulators for the Atari, TI-99/4A and the Amiga.
Wonder
I probably worried too much about size, but I was trying to leave room in
case Control Data decided to try to market C64 courseware along the lines
they used for the TI-99/4A. If I re-wrote it now I'd use two screens so I
could at least start to clear the undisplayed one during idle times, and
switch them when the raster beam was off the screen. Clearing the screen was
the single most time-consuming operation that could be requested, taking
several character transmission times, and I was always worried about falling
behind.
- Anton Treuenfels
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| Re: OMG! For all you RETRO rpg and bbs freaks [message #175391 is a reply to message #175360] |
Thu, 08 March 2007 12:20 |
christianlott1
Messages: 1852
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Mar 7, 11:10 pm, "Anton Treuenfels" <atreuenf...@earthlink.net>
wrote:
> It was called "C64PAD" (Plato Access Disk). I'm sure there must be a copy
> around somewhere, although I'm not sure where. The source must be with that.
> I have a partial printout dated 1985, so I haven't played with it in about
> 20 years.
This sounds really cool.
> I probably worried too much about size, but I was trying to leave room in
> case Control Data decided to try to market C64 courseware along the lines
> they used for the TI-99/4A. If I re-wrote it now I'd use two screens so I
> could at least start to clear the undisplayed one during idle times, and
> switch them when the raster beam was off the screen. Clearing the screen was
> the single most time-consuming operation that could be requested, taking
> several character transmission times, and I was always worried about falling
> behind.
I'm sure the people who bought from you 20 years ago aren't going to
be clamoring for an upgrade, but I'd sure like to see it.
:)
Christian
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