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MACTREK - Star Trek game #790

Open atsampson opened 6 years ago

atsampson commented 6 years ago

.MCTRK is in the list of games in JOBS. There are also mailing lists called BUG-MACTREK, BUG-MACTRK, BUG-STREK and BUG-TREK in AI:.MAIL.;.MCOLD NAMES, and a 1980 comment from LPH@MC in ITS OBUGS0:

the fair share determiner is not useful to trek players. when no one is running a job, fair share is 5%. if i start a macsyma running for i:1 thru 1.e6 do (j:i); and then get 60% fair share, then i can play trek!!!

But no TS MACTRK or similar in AI/MC public tarballs.

Does anyone from MIT remember what MACTREK was, and how it differed from the other 1970s Star Trek games? Do we have it?

eswenson1 commented 6 years ago

There was an EJS; MACTRK INFO file. I could retrieve that and see what it said.

larsbrinkhoff commented 6 years ago

EJS; TREK 1
EJS; TREK 2
EJS; TREK UNFORT
-PICS-; TREK PIC (for the name dragon!)

larsbrinkhoff commented 6 years ago

What is UNFORT? Result from Fortran to Lisp converter?

larsbrinkhoff commented 6 years ago

This? http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/Fortran-to-Lisp.html

larsbrinkhoff commented 6 years ago

I'm guessing UNFORT is like UNFASL.

eswenson1 commented 6 years ago

Yes. It starts out like this:

;;; ;;; This is the UNFORT file for ;;; [Fortran Source]: DSK:EJS;TREK 1 ;;; [Translated]: Sunday, September 24, 1978 21:18:04 ;;; Any Double Precision in source has been coerced ;;; to Single Precision in translation. ;;;

;[Translator]: Warning encountered in translation of NO-NAME. ; Parse Failure due to illegal expression. ; "IMPLICIT INTEGER(A-Z)" ; No FORTRAN keywords or equal sign found ; in expression.

;[Translator]: Warning encountered in translation of NO-NAME. ; Parse error: ; ; DATA BNAME,PIE,DOCKED/'-1 ',3.1415926,'DOCKE'/ ; ^ ; Unable to parse this line. ; Probable cause: Syntax error.

eswenson1 commented 6 years ago

EJS; MACTRK INFO just has instructions for playing the game. It ends with this:

 That should get you stared.  Good luck.

                 My thanks to all those people who have previously
                 written STARTREK games for a wealth of ideas, es-
                 pecially that unknown person who wrote the "Wellsly
                 STARTREK".

                                              H. T. Hunt
                                              8/23/73

LIST OF COMMANDS

1 - SET COURSE 2 - SHORT RANGE SENSOR SCAN 3 - LONG RANGE SENSOR SCAN 4 - PHASERS 5 - PHOTON TORPEDOES 6 - TRACTOR BEAMS 7 - WAIT OR TRAVEL 8 - STATUS REPORT 9 - DAMAGE CONTROL 10 - EVASIVE MANEUVERS 11 - EMERGENCY EVASIVE MANEUVERS 12 - RAISE DEFLECTORS 13 - DROP DEFLECTORS 14 - OPEN COMMUNICATIONS 15 - SHORT RANGE TRACK 16 - GALACTIC UPDATE

larsbrinkhoff commented 6 years ago

The plot thinkens! Who is Hunt, and Wellsly, is that a place?

Also, the date. Daglow's Star Trek is from 1972, would this be a descendant?

larsbrinkhoff commented 6 years ago

Or the 1971 BASIC game?

atsampson commented 6 years ago

From the manual for Daniel R. Strick's 1975 version on DECUS (http://pdp-10.trailing-edge.com/decuslib10-06/01/43,50363/strtrk.doc.html):

This program is upward compatible with the Yale Real Time Star Trek (H. T. Hunt, October 1973) and is designed to eliminate many of its less desirable features (erratic timing, difficult computations, etc.) without sacrificing the great challenge.

dlebling618 commented 5 years ago

One would assume that "Wellsly" is short for "Wellesley," which is a women's college in the Massachusetts town of the same name. There were a fair number of computer hackers there back in the early 70's.