The First First-Person Shooter | Hacker News Reader

The First First-Person Shooter

polygon.com

122 pointsImpossible28 comments

This is one of those ideas that is totally obvious once the enabling technologies are in place.

I played a Star Trek themed game on a time-share system around 1975 or so. Unfortunately I can't pin it down exactly, and I don't know who wrote it. You were shown a map using an ASCII character grid, and there was a sensor display that would give you coordinates to objects of interest in your vicinity. You could shoot either phasers or photon torpedoes at any other player, and the damage they did was inversely proportional to the distance between you and the strength of their shields.

The winning strategy was to aim directly at someone, then accelerate and turn yourself 180 degrees, putting all power to the rear shields. Then get out your watch, and time to the second when you would pass them, and fire all you had at their back side once you passed them.

No graphical displays, this was done on a Teletype at 10 characters per second!

That's $SPACE or a descendant (maybe TREK73).

Neither of those names is familiar. This was on a Control Data machine if that helps.

If it was like a square map like this, it was trek :) It's the one I played in the olden days.

https://ttygames.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/trek73.png

Maybe I'm jaded but it's pretty refreshing to read about pure passion at work. Three guys put together in the same room hacking (in the real sense of the word - going off message and pushing their machines) to produce a fun game that they could share with their friends. No expectations of business value or multimillion dollar exits - just pure fun.

On this topic, I am always blown away by 3D monster maze for the ZX81 (16kb, Z80)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Monster_Maze

8kb ROM, 1Kb RAM. I had one of these little machines and played 3D Monster Maze.

As well as being an impressive bit of code for such a diminutive machine it's also a testament to how engaging even the simplest of games of this type can be utterly absorbing - I recall being frantic to escape the monster :)

I reckon I still have bruises on my finger tips from that horrible keyboard.

And this what blew me away - I, Of The Mask (1985)

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0002433 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kueN2DMN0J4

FYI - Deathmaze 5000 was released for the TRS-80 two years prior.

http://www.trs-80.org/deathmaze-5000/

I'm sorry, I don't enjoy using AdBlock, but I was forced to to even read this article. I've not seen ads like the Flash ad at the bottom of the screen before on Polygon, if it's an experiment it's been unsuccessful imo.

Combined with the gutters, it reduces the percentage of the screen that's actually content to something like ~25% and is not removable. I want to support authors and creators using whatever method they think is best, but if your content is rendered illegible I'm afraid I will avoid that.

My personal standards can only stretch so far before I'll just take what I want, and I imagine many consumers are similar. Please reconsider your ad format.

Which device / screen were you using to read this article?

On a 13" laptop with my browser window taking up 85-90% of my screen, the formatting seemed appropriate. The width of the text column is probably close to the edges of comfortable reading.

Macbook Air, I've revisited the page since making that comment and tried turning AdBlock back off.

It seems to be a problem with just a couple of adverts I was unfortunate to come across - they took up the bulk of the screen from the bottom, were fixed position, and they didn't have 'close' options. One was a public health campaign, don't remember the other one. Most of the adverts don't have this problem because no matter how large they are, they have some kind of close button.

I won't uninstall AdBlock, because I could quite easily imagine coming across the same sort of ad in future, but I'm keeping it paused at least for now.

Its crazy how quickly computers preferred use was gaming. We are clearly hardwired for gaming.

Until you hit 30, then it's Netflix all the way!

Fun fact: Steve Jobs worked at Atari and Steve Wozniak worked on Breakout. Also, the ATARI 2600 was made available the same year as the Apple II, Commodore PET and TRS-80.

Fact with more fun in it: Jobs pretended to work, actually he subcontracted all of it to Wozniak for a fraction of the profits.

Similarly, very soon after film was created it was used for "erotic" films. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornographic_film#History

I like to think it shows that we are hardwired for trying to find new uses for things.

We may also consider in this context Spacewar! 4.4 (1963) http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/4.4/ – not using perspectives, but still first person (as would be seen on a PPI radar screen onboard of the respecitive spaceship).

That is an interesting way of looking at it. The terminology of things like "first person" and "third person" can be tricky in gaming. I wouldn't count Spacewar! as first person but if someone were to remake on a modern device so that the screen showed the Spacewar! playing field framed by a depiction of a spaceship cockpit then it might be? A first person representation of a representation of the battle?

I know, and I'm aware that this is somewhat controversial. I'm currently preparing a detailed write up including some theory. I would maintain that it's a subjective view of a planar universe that shares most, if not all properties and implications of a first-person position. To me, the problem in terms of terminology is that we've either to create a new class for this with just a single member, like "Ptolemaic multiplayer shooter", or we try to find the best fitting class that's already in use, even, if we might have to restrict the term somewhat.

(This is even more of a problem, as it predates anything alike by 10 years and it's therefor not part of a tradition.)

Naturally, upon meeting someone in a maze the first feature one would want is the ability to shoot them.

Perhaps something about human nature is revealed by the history of the development of games.

People always bring this up as if it's got some huge insight into human nature but I disagree. The simple fact is that conflict engenders dynamic equilibria. It shifts a game from having exactly one right answer (why the original maze game got boring) into one in which you need to constantly adjust strategies in reaction to your opponent.

The pattern of something positive happening to you resulting in something negative happening to someone else is one of the most prevalent mechanics in game design. Shooting is simply one of the most literal instantiations of that.

Stuck in a redirect loop

I was getting the same thing, but it seems to be working now.

This was a great read, thanks for sharing.

Has anyone who played the original tried the iOS version?

I didn't know there is one. What's the title?

so the first person was shot or not?

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