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(I'm always pleased when I click on a submission and it's exactly what I inferred it could not be.)

by gwern 4y ago

detrites 4y ago
I too was so ready to be disappointed...
guessbest 4y ago
Probably because the online culture in 2003 was a lot tighter coupled and now it seems more spread out in different simultaneous directions. It even includes the obligatory Docker container.
throwanem 4y ago
In fairness, it looks more like the old Palm game Space Trader, ie roughly the same trade model but combat handled by dice rolls - if there's any code in here for Elite-style 3D combat, I've yet to see it. (Even without graphics and rendering to a text buffer, it would be a hell of a thing to get working in circa-2001 Emacs on a circa-2001 machine!) That said, I do still play Space Trader, every now and again...
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  At first I assumed it was going to be based on this: https://breakintochat.com/wiki/Space_Empire_Elite https://breakintochat.com/wiki/Space_Empire_Elite which is more like the trader type games you're talking about. There was a history of BBS "door" games with this style of interface, that would have been quite adaptable to Emacs. But yeah, his link to 'Elite' does take to the classic 3d game. Nifty.
- anthk 4y ago
  Well, if Emacs supported XEmbed, you could just render a dumb easy X11 port of Elite with wireframe graphics.
  - throwanem 4y ago
    I'm okay with it not. I first got in the habit of building Emacs some time around 2011 precisely because distro builds all wanted to use GTK+ widgets and that caused a lot of crashes, and it turned out there's not honestly anything Emacs needs X widgets for, anyway. That said, Emacs can embed a Webkit widget if you build it to, and I bet there's a web version of Elite out there - I'm sure the Internet Archive has it in emulation, if nothing else. I think that should count for about as much.
    - anthk 4y ago
      Emacs with Lucid or Athena and with proper UTF8 support with Unifont would work okay in the 99% of the cases. Also, an Elite port with XLib or XCB would be totally doable. I've already played a Jet Set Willy port for X.

(I'm always pleased when I click on a submission and it's exactly what I inferred it could not be.)

by gwern 4y ago

(I'm always pleased when I click on a submission and it's exactly what I inferred it could not be.)

detrites 4y ago

I too was so ready to be disappointed...

guessbest 4y ago

Probably because the online culture in 2003 was a lot tighter coupled and now it seems more spread out in different simultaneous directions. It even includes the obligatory Docker container.

throwanem 4y ago

In fairness, it looks more like the old Palm game Space Trader, ie roughly the same trade model but combat handled by dice rolls - if there's any code in here for Elite-style 3D combat, I've yet to see it. (Even without graphics and rendering to a text buffer, it would be a hell of a thing to get working in circa-2001 Emacs on a circa-2001 machine!) That said, I do still play Space Trader, every now and again...

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
At first I assumed it was going to be based on this: https://breakintochat.com/wiki/Space_Empire_Elite https://breakintochat.com/wiki/Space_Empire_Elite which is more like the trader type games you're talking about. There was a history of BBS "door" games with this style of interface, that would have been quite adaptable to Emacs. But yeah, his link to 'Elite' does take to the classic 3d game. Nifty.
anthk 4y ago
Well, if Emacs supported XEmbed, you could just render a dumb easy X11 port of Elite with wireframe graphics.
- throwanem 4y ago
  I'm okay with it not. I first got in the habit of building Emacs some time around 2011 precisely because distro builds all wanted to use GTK+ widgets and that caused a lot of crashes, and it turned out there's not honestly anything Emacs needs X widgets for, anyway. That said, Emacs can embed a Webkit widget if you build it to, and I bet there's a web version of Elite out there - I'm sure the Internet Archive has it in emulation, if nothing else. I think that should count for about as much.
  - anthk 4y ago
    Emacs with Lucid or Athena and with proper UTF8 support with Unifont would work okay in the 99% of the cases. Also, an Elite port with XLib or XCB would be totally doable. I've already played a Jet Set Willy port for X.