Information AboutSpacewar |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT SPACEWAR | |
| 1962 video games | |
| fixed shooters | |
| mainframe games | |
| multiplayer computer games | |
| simulation video games | |
''Spacewar'' is widely considered to be the first Video Game . Created by Stephen "Slug" Russell , it was a multiplayer space-combat simulation inspired by Doc Smith's Lensman series of Science Fiction novels. ''Spacewar'' was designed at the Higham Institute, and development was assigned to Russell. Development eventually started on a PDP-1 at the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology in 1962. After Alan Kotok borrowed some Sine and Cosine routines from DEC for Russell, Russell began to work, and by February, had produced his first version. It took approximately 200 hours of work to create the initial version. However there are reports that the first actual game creat was in Brookhaven, 1958 where a tennis style game was created to entertain guests at a nuclear site. As with the creation of the first computer, the first computer game is a matter of opinion. GAMEPLAY The basic gameplay of ''Spacewar'' involves two armed Spaceship s attempting to shoot one another while maneuvering in the Gravity well of a Star . Each player controls a ship, and must attempt to simultaneously shoot at the other ship and avoid colliding with the star. Player controls included clockwise and counterclockwise rotation, thrust, fire, and hyperspace. The ships fired missiles which were unaffected by gravity. Each ship had a limited number of missiles and a limited supply of fuel. The hyperspace feature could be used as a last-ditch means to evade enemy missiles, but the reentry from hyperspace would occur at a random location and there was an increasing probability of the ship exploding with each use. OPTIONS AND FEATURES Early versions of the game contained a randomly generated background starfield. However, the inaccuracy and lack of verisimilitude annoyed Peter Samson, so he wrote a program based on real star charts that scrolled slowly- at any one time, 45% of the night sky was visible, every star down to the fifth magnitude. The program was called "Expensive Planetarium" (referring to the price of the PDP-1), and was quickly incorporated into the main code. There were several optional features controlled by Sense Switches (the main control for the game, although the first Joysticks were invented for use with ''Spacewar'') on the console:
''Spacewar'' was a fairly good overall diagnostic of the PDP-1 computer and Type 30 Precision CRT Display, so DEC apparently used it for factory testing and shipped PDP-1 computers to customers with the ''Spacewar'' program already loaded into the Core Memory ; this enabled field testing as when the PDP was fully set up, the field representative could simultaneously relax and do a final test of the PDP. ''SPACEWAR'' TODAY As of November 2005, there is only known to be one working PDP-1 in existence, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California . The computer and display were completely restored after two years of work, and ''Spacewar'' is operational. The restoration team has plans to make a playable exhibit of ''Spacewar'', allowing visitors to actually play it on the PDP-1. A second PDP-1 belonging to the Computer History Museum is currently on tour as part of the Game On exhibition, which is appearing at The Tech Museum Of Innovation in San Jose, California through January 2006. However, this PDP-1 is not operational. OTHER GAMES INSPIRED BY ''SPACEWAR'' Over the years, many computer games have been inspired by ''Spacewar''; some are known by the same name. Some are straightforward clones, but most have introduced additional variations to the game play, such as:
Arcade versions of ''Spacewar'' were released as the '' Galaxy Game '' (1971), '' Computer Space '' by Nutting Associates (1971), and '' Space Wars '' by Cinematronics (1977), the latter being the most commercially successful. Home versions have appeared for most computer and console systems, with some - such as the '' Star Control '' series - becoming quite elaborate, introducing a wide variety of gameplay frameworks around the basic one-on-one combat system at their core. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcomputer_videogames.htm - First graphical computer game is Tic-Tac-Toe. But this is not also the very first game. REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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