College: Computer Games

One day, while working on one of the programs that was required for BASIC 101, somebody played a computer game. It was a primitive computer game called STRTRK, and simulated a battle between the U.S.S. Enterprise and various ships from the Romulan and Klingon empires. This was the first time that I ever saw a computer game, and it looked like lots of fun.

I spent the rest of that evening happily playing STRTRK. I must have played twenty or thirty rounds of the game - at the time it was very unique and interesting. They had to kick me out of the computer science lab when it closed, about 4 hours later than I normally left.

I had played various arcade games before, but this was very different. Remember, this was before the first video game was released on the market. In fact, it was only slightly after the first real video game was released. This was a game called Space Invaders, which I didn’t discover until after I started working at Software Techniques.

Within a short time I discovered there were hundreds of computer games available. At first I just played them, then I realized I could modify existing games or even write my own.

At first I modified a few existing games, mostly to fix some minor bugs or to make some adjustments to allow them to take more advantage of the CRT terminals. I also modified a couple of programs to use the graphics capabilities of the TexTronics terminal. For example, I changed a program called Lunar Lander to draw a smooth curve showing the path of the lunar module instead of an asterisk. It looked pretty good, even if it could only be used on one terminal in the entire college.

Before long I had begun writing my own computer games. My largest project was a game called WIZWAR, which simulated a war between mighty wizards. It was an interesting game, as it allowed movement, magic, and combat. It was relatively simple-minded - it required the player to enter the coordinates of which "cell" of the playing field was to be struck by a spell. Even so, it was fun to play and, most important of all, I learned an incredible amount about programming.

As you can see if you look at WIZWAR, I was beginning to learn a bit about style and readability. By today’s standard, this program was overly complex and relatively stupid. At the time, it was fascinating to play and interesting to write.