A list of major ITS attractions.

[larsbrinkhoff]

When people ask "what makes ITS interesting?", I'd like to point them to a list like this.

EDIT: It's not intended to make a long list of each and every cool ITS feature. It's more, what makes people want to take a look at ITS. E.g. we think the network transparent remote file system is neat, but it's not something people come here to ask about.

[larsbrinkhoff]

I'm posting this as a draft pull request for discussion. For convenience, I'll copy the text of the draft here:

ITS Attractions

Maclisp — historical Lisp for ITS and Multics, and the base for a family of dialects that consolidated as the Common Lisp standard. It was used to bootstrap Scheme.

SHRDLU — infamous natural language input block stacking robot simulation, written in Maclisp.

Lisp machines — were bootstrapped from ITS and Maclisp.

C compiler — written by Alan Snyder; possibly the first created outside Bell Labs.

Macsyma — symbolic manipulation program that was written in Maclisp and made available to researchers on the Arpanet. Macsyma was so important a dedicated PDP-10 was purchased for it, not just once, but twice.

Emacs — was developed on ITS as a set of TECO macros.

The Magic Switch — a piece of hacker lore chronicled in Guy Steele's book Hacker's Dictionary. The book comes from the JARGON file.

Logo — educational programming language began at BBN but greatly enhanced at MIT. ITS hosts many versions for the PDP-10, PDP-11, Apple II, etc. A Small ITS timesharing system was written to run Logo on a PDP-11/45. Marvin Minsky designed a dual text and vector display minicomputer for running Logo.

CLU — a programming language by Barbara Liskov that introduced abstract data types way ahead of its times. The CLU group developed the first version of the X Window System.

Zork — the game that kicked off interactive fiction. It was written in MDL/Muddle, the major programming language on the Dynamic Modeling PDP-10.

Maze — 3D game, and possibly the first first-person shooter.

MacHack VI — Greenblatt's chess program was the first computer program to play chess in human tournament competitions and be granted a chess rating.

Spacewar — one of the first video games. First devloped on a PDP-1 at MIT. ITS has a much updated PDP-6 version, and consoles made by HAKMEM author Mike Beeler.

[larsbrinkhoff]

By my own criteria, I should strike C compiler and CLU off the list. Maybe move them to one of the others.

[rmaldersoniii]

I disagree with the commentary regarding Zork in the initial list of attractions. By its own lights, MADADV was a reaction to Don Woods's ADVENT at SAIL (based on Will Crowther's cave exploration program, of course), to see how a game with a cuspy parser done in MDL would stack up.

Long before MADADV (AKA ZORK) was known to the general public, ADVENT escaped into the world at large because it was written in FORTRAN and could therefore be ported easily to any timesharing system. When micros with BASIC became the norm, people began porting ADVENT, as well as writing other new games (Scott Adams--not the Dilbert one--comes to mind).

The success of ADVENT was what led Bob Supnik to translate MADADV into Fortran and produce DUNGEON.

So Zork was important to some of us, but it was not the game that kicked off interactive fiction.

Just my US$0.02 worth.

[eswenson1]

I would argue that had the quality and depth of text-based adventure-like games stayed at the level of Crowther’s and Woods’ ADVENT, this genre of games would not have been a success in the games industry. It was the significantly better parser, greater vocabulary, better puzzles, humor, creativity in Zork, which directly let to the Zork I, II, and III PC games, that made the genre successful. Games like Myst and Riven (although much more sophisticated in graphics and technology) followed the pad started from the Zork trilogy.

[foxkit]

I'm not disputing anything here. The version of Maze I played was on the PDP-1x. To me, the immersively was unmatched until DOOM-1.

Carl Mikkelsen email: @. email: @. LinkedIn: //www.linkedin.com/in/carlmikkelsen/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlmikkelsen/

On Sun, Mar 19, 2023 at 12:24 PM Eric Swenson @.***> wrote:

I would argue that had the quality and depth of text-based adventure-like games stayed at the level of Crowther’s and Woods’ ADVENT, this genre of games would not have been a success in the games industry. It was the significantly better parser, greater vocabulary, better puzzles, humor, creativity in Zork, which directly let to the Zork I, II, and III PC games, that made the genre successful. Games like Myst and Riven (although much more sophisticated in graphics and technology) followed the pad started from the Zork trilogy.

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[larsbrinkhoff]

I posted a draft for comments, so I thank you @rmaldersoniii for the feedback. I agree that my phrasing "the game that kicked off interactive fiction" can be improved. I wanted to convey something like what @eswenson1 wrote more eloquently. The basic idea is to describe various reasons why people come to have a closer look at ITS. With regards to Zork, that is largely because of the Infocom games, and those of the other interactive fiction companies that sprung up. This is not to dispute that ADVENT has an important place in this history, but it's not something that attracts people to ITS.

I'll try to think of something!

[larsbrinkhoff]

@foxkit, just to make sure do you mean the PDP-1/X (or 1-X, I'm not sure about the correct spelling)? That's very interesting, I never heard there was a maze game on that machine! I think this is something we must examine more closely. Are you sure it was not the Imlac PDS-1?

[larsbrinkhoff]

a game with a cuspy parser

So nice to see this! Was "cuspy" used at Stanford?

I'd wager the typical thing to say at the MIT AI lab would be "winning parser". But the Dynamic Modeling people would more likely say "tasteful parser". @taa01776, feel free to correct me.

[foxkit]

The PDP-1x was the modified PDP-1 at MIT. Some of the hackers who moved on to the PDP-6 at the MIT AI lab had both the PDP-1x and TMRC (tech model railroad club) in their backstory.

There was a single player, non-shooter game called Maze. The player was dropped randomly into a maze with the goal of finding a way out. It was, for me, totally immersive, and set the bar for 3D, first person graphics.

I was too young to be part of that generation, but Bill Gosper certainly was one of the principals.

-- Carl

On Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 3:53 AM Lars Brinkhoff @.***> wrote:

@foxkit https://github.com/foxkit, just to make sure do you mean the PDP-1/X (or 1-X, I'm not sure about the correct spelling)? That's very interesting, I never heard there was a maze game on that machine! I think this is something we must examine more closely. Are you sure it was not the Imlac PDS-1?

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[larsbrinkhoff]

Thank you Carl for confirming. I asked Peter Samson, but he said the Maze game would have been after his time at MIT. He did remember a 4x4x4 3D tic-tac-toe on the TX-0. I'm trying to get a message to Gosper, but it's difficult.

[foxkit]

I came across the PDP-1X when it was in, I think, building 26. It was in the next room to the TX-0.

I don't know what the life of the PDP-1X had been before that point, and I don't know much about the pre-history.

There were a set of log books that covered some of the PDP-1x, PDP-6, and TMRC history. I happened to be lurking one night in the PDP-1x room when Bill Gosper and a few others were having a trip down memory lane reading the enteries. Those books would be informative to find.

They might be in a TMRC archive.

-- Carl

On Wed, Mar 22, 2023, 2:15 AM Lars Brinkhoff @.***> wrote:

Thank you Carl for confirming. I asked Peter Samson, but he said the Maze game would have been after his time at MIT. He did remember a 4x4x4 3D tic-tac-toe on the PDP-1. I'm trying to get a message to Gosper, but it's difficult.

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[larsbrinkhoff]

@foxkit, does TMRC have an archive? I have seen a log book from the Dynamic Modeling PDP-10, and it's interesting reading. But certainly nothing for the PDP-6.

Is the PDP-1X the RLE machine? Here are the last pages in the log: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/rle_pdp1/last_log_aug1976.jpg