7 ms·

Spacewar written in Apple Logo

53 points by empressplay 8y ago

aogl 8y ago
It's quite cool that Logo’s turtle occupies a certain position in Logo "space", and can be moved relative to that position by using commands such as fd (forward), rt (right turn) and so forth. It's like the concept sets an absolute space relative to something and all positions within that are relative from the baseline coordinate. Much as CSS container wrapping works when you set an absolute within a relative.
zellyn 8y ago
The paleotronic folks have been on fire lately. Their Apple II emulator, microM8 is fast becoming one of the most advanced, cross-platform emulators. https://paleotronic.com/microm8/ https://paleotronic.com/microm8/
- zellyn 8y ago
  Oh, and it's written in Go. (Cue incoming comments (a) asking me why it's relevant what language it's written in, and (b) talking about how much better it would be if it were written in Rust. :-) )
  - reificator 8y ago
    (c) How do you even write Hello World in a language without generics?
- peterburkimsher 8y ago
  How do I contribute? I recently used ADTPro to copy a lot of old Apple II software onto my MacBook Pro as DSK images. 5.25 floppies: https://mega.nz/#!yDITXIZC!8fREZdAruk2yYLv859jKABGSWeG4UkRoCN4_feKnmIM https://mega.nz/#!yDITXIZC!8fREZdAruk2yYLv859jKABGSWeG4UkRoC... https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672562505858 https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672562... https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672589613188 https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672589... I've also got a larger selection of DD floppies, HD floppies, JAZ disks, SCSI disks, IDE disks, MacFormat and other CDs. Please tell me if you want the links!
  - zellyn 8y ago
    You could join the Apple2 Slack, and ask if there's anything there that hasn't been captured. Signup: http://apple2.gs:3000/ http://apple2.gs:3000/ Also, just show off pictures — people will be interested! :-)
  - sehugg 8y ago
    You might want to contact Jason Scott at the Internet Archive, especially if some of those are copy-protected: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5180 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5180
    - abstractbeliefs 8y ago
      I know HN doesn't really do "this" or "me too" comments, but I want to underline this isn't just another option, this is the canonical option. Jason Scott is really an important and respected archivist and the IA should really be the first port of call before anyone looks at sending disks elsewhere.
aidenn0 8y ago
There was another logo for apple IIs (logowriter I think it was called?) that was very nearly a 2d game engine. You could have multiple turtles, change the image used for the turtles, and hide turtles, which could be (ab)used as a simple sprite engine. There was even a command to check if two turtles overlapped, making hit detection fairly easy.
protomyth 8y ago
Logo sucked you in with the turtle graphics and making cool shapes. It is basically a computer etch-a-sketch, but it does get boring at some point. I am so grateful that I had a teacher that pointed out there was an amazing language just past cute turtles. Logo was a real change from programming in BASIC, FORTH, and 6502 assembler. It was one thing to read about all the cool languages in Byte Magazine, but it was quite another to actually get a shot at programming one of the cooler ones.
- jrd259 8y ago
  Logo was more than turtle graphics. It also provided list processing with slightly friendlier names: Logo BUTFIRST is Lisp's CDR. This makes possible a great deal of purely linguistic programming, e.g. "20 questions game", text based adventure, etc. (I was one of the implementors of Logo for Apple II.)
  - jhbadger 8y ago
    Exactly. Logo was trying to turn kids into Lisp programmers in the same sense that BASIC was a kid's version of classic FORTRAN.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    thus I said I am so grateful that I had a teacher that pointed out there was an amazing language just past cute turtles.
peterburkimsher 8y ago
Logo was my first programming language! I recently rewrote my own version of it so that I could draw a time-proportional train map. I wrote "fd 5" for 5 minutes, for example. http://peterburk.github.io/tra/ http://peterburk.github.io/tra/ The version I wrote can read values from a spreadsheet, so could be used in other applications too. I think this kind of thing could be a great way for a young person to go from a homework project to the front of Hacker News. If any of you have kids, I'd be happy to help gather the data for some other subway networks!
reaperducer 8y ago
There was a very interesting letter to the editor in Byte magazine in the late 70's (?) that I re-read recently. It was from the guy who wrote Logo for MIT. He was really quite mad, and surprisingly candid about how MIT was screwing with his project. He claimed that he'd made a perfectly lovely, functional Logo for the Apple //, but MIT wouldn't release it. He felt like it should be released because the whole reason he was asked to make it was so that it could be released to the public for public benefit ("Public domain" software, similar to "open source" for you young 'uns). He contended that MIT was withholding Logo from the public because Texas Instruments was a big donor to MIT and asked that it not release Logo. TI, he said, only wanted Logo to exist on the 99/4A, to help boost sales in the educational market. This aligns with my memories of the day, when Logo was only a TI 99/4A product for a very long time. I don't remember if it ever make it to Commodore or CP/M machines, which is where I was at the time. Anyway, it's an interesting tale because it shows that corporate interference in this sort of thing is nothing new. Plus, Logo!
- ken 8y ago
  Logo was definitely on the Commodore 64! I had it as a kid. My impression at the time (having only used BASIC and 6502 assembly) was that it was a little weird, and incredibly slow. The 6502 just doesn't have enough CPU/RAM to do anything where you need a powerful language -- or to run a self-hosted compiler (I assume that's what it was). It was easy to draw "high resolution" lines (at 320x200, or about twice the pixel count of a fingertip-sized iOS icon) but it was so slow you could see each line being drawn. The compiler ran at "go take a snack break" speed, even for short programs. It was possible to make the 6502 run faster than its clock speed suggested, but you needed to take advantage of features (like zero page) that HLLs didn't seem to be able to optimize for. I didn't use a compiler until we got a 16-bit computer, and I didn't like them until I got a 32-bit computer.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    The 6502 just doesn't have enough CPU/RAM to do anything where you need a powerful language I'm not sure about this assertion. Pretty much every major high-level language of the time was available for the 64, including C, FORTH, FORTRAN, COBOL, and I think even PASCAL.
Marisoul 8y ago
https://www.guerra-espacial.rufina.link/ https://www.guerra-espacial.rufina.link/ Spacewar! written in Common Lisp
mycall 8y ago
Strange, but Spacewar (arcade version) is still my all time favorite game. Portal is close second.

53 points by empressplay 8y ago

aogl 8y ago

It's quite cool that Logo’s turtle occupies a certain position in Logo "space", and can be moved relative to that position by using commands such as fd (forward), rt (right turn) and so forth. It's like the concept sets an absolute space relative to something and all positions within that are relative from the baseline coordinate. Much as CSS container wrapping works when you set an absolute within a relative.

zellyn 8y ago

The paleotronic folks have been on fire lately. Their Apple II emulator, microM8 is fast becoming one of the most advanced, cross-platform emulators. https://paleotronic.com/microm8/ https://paleotronic.com/microm8/

zellyn 8y ago
Oh, and it's written in Go. (Cue incoming comments (a) asking me why it's relevant what language it's written in, and (b) talking about how much better it would be if it were written in Rust. :-) )
- reificator 8y ago
  (c) How do you even write Hello World in a language without generics?
peterburkimsher 8y ago
How do I contribute? I recently used ADTPro to copy a lot of old Apple II software onto my MacBook Pro as DSK images. 5.25 floppies: https://mega.nz/#!yDITXIZC!8fREZdAruk2yYLv859jKABGSWeG4UkRoCN4_feKnmIM https://mega.nz/#!yDITXIZC!8fREZdAruk2yYLv859jKABGSWeG4UkRoC... https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672562505858 https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672562... https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672589613188 https://www.flickr.com/photos/150180606@N08/sets/72157672589... I've also got a larger selection of DD floppies, HD floppies, JAZ disks, SCSI disks, IDE disks, MacFormat and other CDs. Please tell me if you want the links!
- zellyn 8y ago
  You could join the Apple2 Slack, and ask if there's anything there that hasn't been captured. Signup: http://apple2.gs:3000/ http://apple2.gs:3000/ Also, just show off pictures — people will be interested! :-)
- sehugg 8y ago
  You might want to contact Jason Scott at the Internet Archive, especially if some of those are copy-protected: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5180 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5180
  - abstractbeliefs 8y ago
    I know HN doesn't really do "this" or "me too" comments, but I want to underline this isn't just another option, this is the canonical option. Jason Scott is really an important and respected archivist and the IA should really be the first port of call before anyone looks at sending disks elsewhere.

aidenn0 8y ago

There was another logo for apple IIs (logowriter I think it was called?) that was very nearly a 2d game engine. You could have multiple turtles, change the image used for the turtles, and hide turtles, which could be (ab)used as a simple sprite engine. There was even a command to check if two turtles overlapped, making hit detection fairly easy.

protomyth 8y ago

Logo sucked you in with the turtle graphics and making cool shapes. It is basically a computer etch-a-sketch, but it does get boring at some point. I am so grateful that I had a teacher that pointed out there was an amazing language just past cute turtles. Logo was a real change from programming in BASIC, FORTH, and 6502 assembler. It was one thing to read about all the cool languages in Byte Magazine, but it was quite another to actually get a shot at programming one of the cooler ones.

jrd259 8y ago
Logo was more than turtle graphics. It also provided list processing with slightly friendlier names: Logo BUTFIRST is Lisp's CDR. This makes possible a great deal of purely linguistic programming, e.g. "20 questions game", text based adventure, etc. (I was one of the implementors of Logo for Apple II.)
- jhbadger 8y ago
  Exactly. Logo was trying to turn kids into Lisp programmers in the same sense that BASIC was a kid's version of classic FORTRAN.
- protomyth 8y ago
  thus I said I am so grateful that I had a teacher that pointed out there was an amazing language just past cute turtles.

peterburkimsher 8y ago

Logo was my first programming language! I recently rewrote my own version of it so that I could draw a time-proportional train map. I wrote "fd 5" for 5 minutes, for example. http://peterburk.github.io/tra/ http://peterburk.github.io/tra/ The version I wrote can read values from a spreadsheet, so could be used in other applications too. I think this kind of thing could be a great way for a young person to go from a homework project to the front of Hacker News. If any of you have kids, I'd be happy to help gather the data for some other subway networks!

reaperducer 8y ago

There was a very interesting letter to the editor in Byte magazine in the late 70's (?) that I re-read recently. It was from the guy who wrote Logo for MIT. He was really quite mad, and surprisingly candid about how MIT was screwing with his project. He claimed that he'd made a perfectly lovely, functional Logo for the Apple //, but MIT wouldn't release it. He felt like it should be released because the whole reason he was asked to make it was so that it could be released to the public for public benefit ("Public domain" software, similar to "open source" for you young 'uns). He contended that MIT was withholding Logo from the public because Texas Instruments was a big donor to MIT and asked that it not release Logo. TI, he said, only wanted Logo to exist on the 99/4A, to help boost sales in the educational market. This aligns with my memories of the day, when Logo was only a TI 99/4A product for a very long time. I don't remember if it ever make it to Commodore or CP/M machines, which is where I was at the time. Anyway, it's an interesting tale because it shows that corporate interference in this sort of thing is nothing new. Plus, Logo!

ken 8y ago
Logo was definitely on the Commodore 64! I had it as a kid. My impression at the time (having only used BASIC and 6502 assembly) was that it was a little weird, and incredibly slow. The 6502 just doesn't have enough CPU/RAM to do anything where you need a powerful language -- or to run a self-hosted compiler (I assume that's what it was). It was easy to draw "high resolution" lines (at 320x200, or about twice the pixel count of a fingertip-sized iOS icon) but it was so slow you could see each line being drawn. The compiler ran at "go take a snack break" speed, even for short programs. It was possible to make the 6502 run faster than its clock speed suggested, but you needed to take advantage of features (like zero page) that HLLs didn't seem to be able to optimize for. I didn't use a compiler until we got a 16-bit computer, and I didn't like them until I got a 32-bit computer.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  The 6502 just doesn't have enough CPU/RAM to do anything where you need a powerful language I'm not sure about this assertion. Pretty much every major high-level language of the time was available for the 64, including C, FORTH, FORTRAN, COBOL, and I think even PASCAL.

Marisoul 8y ago

https://www.guerra-espacial.rufina.link/ https://www.guerra-espacial.rufina.link/ Spacewar! written in Common Lisp

mycall 8y ago

Strange, but Spacewar (arcade version) is still my all time favorite game. Portal is close second.