[HN Gopher] He Created the Oregon Trail
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He Created the Oregon Trail
Author : benbreen
Score : 74 points
Date : 2021-11-19 22:12 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (slate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (slate.com)
| beowulfey wrote:
| This article set me up to tell me how the Oregon Trail went from
| being the brainchild of three educators not interested in money
| to the hugely explosive software it became... but left me
| unfulfilled. What happened after he published the source code?
| Who decided to sell it for money??
| whoopdedo wrote:
| The answer to that is in this article[1]. I remember it from a
| HN thread[2] earlier this year.
|
| [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-you-wound-
| play...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27871196
| simonh wrote:
| Don Rawitsch was hired by a state funded educational software
| group to develop a version of it for them. That, and it's
| descendants, are the ones that became commercial.
| mproud wrote:
| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials
|
| > also known as the Oregon Trail Generation
| peter303 wrote:
| Store-bought software was a co-revolution with home personal
| computers. Before then it was commercial oriented mainframe
| software. The mainframe computer manufacturers wrote some
| software; corporate users wrote some software; consulting
| software companies some for a rather small market.
|
| Software stores didnt really get started until 1976 or so. Oregon
| Trail was 5 years before that. MicroSoft was an early vendor with
| BASIC for the Altair, then other PCs in 1975. I attended the
| first West Coast Computer Faire in 1977 where there were a few
| software vendors including MicroSoft. Floppy disks were just
| getting started. Alternatives were punch tape, cassette tapes,
| and telephone modem downloads.
|
| The next big software revolution was downloadable self-installing
| internet apps, pioneered by Apple. In most cases this is just
| just 2 to 4 clicks of a mouse. No messy purchase of box in the
| store, copying multiple disks into the computer, and praying your
| license key was valid.
| xwdv wrote:
| It always amazes me how making money can be the furthest thing on
| people's minds when they work on some cool innovative new
| project, to the point where they actively seem to go out of there
| way to not make any kind of money.
| mark-r wrote:
| In 1971, the idea of selling software was completely foreign.
| If it was important software like a compiler or OS, it came
| with the computer you just spent millions on. If it was
| important software that you needed to run your business, you
| paid your team of programmers to develop it. If it was
| something inconsequential like a game, you gave it away.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I envy it, because it relieves so much stress and other things
| that kill creativity. Unfortunately I can't just go without
| income, so the idea of a purely passion project isn't really in
| the cards for me unless it's a very small effort.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| The lesson for me from modern mobile games and microtransaction
| models is that addictive gameplay is actually distinct from
| engaging gameplay and very few modern developers are focusing
| on the latter. It seems to be very nearly the exclusive domain
| of indies nowadays.
| kubb wrote:
| I can't think of a single mobile game that has any artistic
| value to me, but there are quite a few for the PC and
| consoles. A front-end for farming money and high quality
| entertainment should be considered different kinds of
| computer programs, and not lumped together as "games".
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| I guess I don't ascribe particularly high value to the
| category of games, I think even very simple games designed
| to take money from the player count. But I do agree on the
| mobile vs PC divide broadly in terms of what's on the
| market. I would actually cite Civ as a series that's still
| trying hard to do engaging things, in the form of constant
| but varied puzzles with intellectual complexity which
| reward planning and forethought.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > I can't think of a single mobile game that has any
| artistic value to me
|
| Monument Valley
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_Valley_(video_game)
| Stampo00 wrote:
| I think the framing of the article is odd. I'm assuming he was
| paid a salary as an employee of MECC. That was his pay. He got
| paid.
|
| If the article is supposing he should have some intellectual
| property rights since he and two colleagues invented the whole
| thing... I agree! However, employment contracts still stipulate
| things like any and all intellectual property created by the
| employee on company equipment is automatically owned by the
| company. Some contracts are even more restrictive and give
| companies ownership over everything their employees create
| while they're under contract.
|
| God forbid your employees have hobbies they might want to
| monetize. It's a great way to stifle creativity and progress
| IMHO.
|
| Although, as a professional software developer, I've found that
| it makes me value my ability to write software more than the
| software artifacts I create. Kind of like an artist. Only one
| person can own your painting or sculpture. Your ability to
| create art is what puts food on the table.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Source to _Oregon Trail_ published in _Creative Computing
| Magazine_ (May, 1978) here (page 134):
|
| https://archive.org/details/CreativeComputingbetterScan19780...
| AviationAtom wrote:
| How might one go about running this original code on a modern
| day PC? An emulator of sorts?
| ghostly_s wrote:
| It's BASIC.
| mark-r wrote:
| BASIC has lots of different dialects. Anybody know which
| one this is, and what modern choices would be compatible
| with it?
| whoopdedo wrote:
| I don't see too many quirks in the listing, so most any
| classical BASIC variant should handle it. Like PC-
| BASIC[1], FreeBASIC[2], or the venerable GW-BASIC[3].
| (The later I think you need to run in DOSBox though.)
|
| I did notice one unique keyword that should be easy to
| fix. 6200 PRINT "TYPE "; S$(56)
| 6210 B3 = CLK(0) 6220 INPUT C$ 6230 B1 =
| CLK(0) 6240 B1=((B1-B3)*3600)=(D9-1)
|
| I couldn't find 'CLK' in any of the BASICs I know of.
| Seems from context to be a time function. My guess is it
| returns number of seconds since system boot, or program
| start.
|
| [1] http://www.pc-basic.org/
|
| [2] https://www.freebasic.net/
|
| [3] http://gw-basic.com/
| kingcharles wrote:
| Was about to Google it.. and.. you've done the work for me.
| Thank you!
|
| I'm confused by the code listing in the magazine. The Os are 0s
| and the 0s are Os for no good reason.
|
| Here is the code typed up:
| https://github.com/LiquidFox1776/oregon-trail-1978-basic
| mark-r wrote:
| In the early days, the important thing was to be able to
| distinguish between zero and oh. There was no standard yet
| established for the best way to do that. At least it was
| better than typewriters, which didn't have zero or one keys
| at all - you had to use the upper-case O and lower-case L
| instead.
| mikestew wrote:
| Programmers had been putting slashes through zeros long
| before _The Oregon Trail_ showed up, and my Mom might even
| have an old, hand-written IBM coding form lying around to
| prove it. I imagine in this case it is probably OCR gone
| awry that confused the zeros and Os.
|
| As one who originally took typing class on manual
| typewriters, I can tell you that every typewriter I've ever
| used had zeros and ones. If one were to tell me that there
| existed _portable_ typewriters that did not have those
| characters, I might believe it.
| mark-r wrote:
| I never said slashed zeros were unknown, just that
| conventions hadn't settled yet and were far from
| universal. Sometime you got a dot in the middle instead
| of a slash.
|
| I don't know if OCR even existed back when this was
| published. If it did, it wasn't common.
|
| The manual typewriter I learned to type on did not have a
| zero or one.
| adamddev1 wrote:
| How many Canadians remember Cross Country Canada? It was a
| similar educational text-adventure where you learned about
| Canadian geography and commodities as you navigated your truck
| through greasy spoon dining shops and sketchy motels. We lived on
| it in the computer lab.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| In these times of supply chain woes, what better game to assign
| the kids? It's not like they're old enough to play the beer
| game.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| That game was full of really neat Easter eggs that were a lot
| of fun to find as a kid.
|
| If you "buckle up"d before driving and got into a crash it
| would cost less money to fix.
|
| You could exit your truck, lock the door, and throw away the
| keys to strand yourself.
|
| You could order room service from the motel.
|
| Looks like you can play it online through Archive.org:
| https://archive.org/details/msdos_Crosscountry_Canada_1991
| selimthegrim wrote:
| There's also a USA version (the original) - I remember fiddling
| with the radio and oversleeping in said sketchy motels
| shrubby wrote:
| Sounds like the first Leisure Suit Larry to me.
| tromac wrote:
| In Australia we had a similar game called Goldfields. Every kid
| loved it and playing it is one of my most fond memories of
| primary school. A fantastic way to teach history and economics at
| the same time.
|
| https://www.squakenet.com/game/goldfields/
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if kids still play it today.
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(page generated 2021-11-21 23:01 UTC)