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DEC PDP-1 emulator running "Spacewar", the earliest known digital video game
- Waterluvian 2y agoI guess Tennis for Two is not exactly digital.
- Bytewave81 2y agoAlternatively, Draughts. https://youtu.be/uHQ4WCU1WQc https://youtu.be/uHQ4WCU1WQc
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- djmips 2y agoI guess a turn based strategy game displayed on a CRT (storage display) is technically a video game... https://youtu.be/wvHscto5J-4?si=908N1G99SiYeL3Y7 https://youtu.be/wvHscto5J-4?si=908N1G99SiYeL3Y7
- ant6n 2y agoI was gonna post this too. One of the best documentaries on YouTube.
- neilv 2y agoThe controls I've found so far: Triangle Ship: A=left S=thrust D=right 4=fire Rocket Ship: J=left K=thrust L=right 0=fire I guess there are two human players, sharing a keyboard.
- mlyle 2y agoDoes it not display the instructions when you first navigate to it? It does for me.
- neilv 2y agoThanks, I missed those.
- masswerk 2y agoAlso, gamepad mappings: https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/images/gamepad-mappings-hr.png https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/images/gamepad-mappings-hr.... There are also virtual touch controllers. If a touch device is not auto-detected, toggle them on/off with Options Menu (top right corner) -> Virtual Controllers. Finally, you can change keyboard mappings by the "Keyboard" menu at the top. (The splash screen, which is not part of the original game, reflects the current mapping.) --- If interested in the code (PDP-1 assembler), see this walk-through: https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/inside/ https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/inside/ Canonical reading on the game's history: "The Origin of Spacewar" by J. M. Graetz, https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/SpacewarOrigin.html https://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/SpacewarOrigin.html
- neilv 2y agoOn the Vectrex (1980s vector-graphics home video game console), a game presumably based on Spacewar was Vectrex's Space Wars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XakwjZXAdFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XakwjZXAdFk
- SoftTalker 2y agoI remember a very similar game I played on a Tektronix 4051 computer in the late 1970s.
- masswerk 2y agoNotably, Spacewar! is not a vector game, rather, it's X/Y point plotting. Meaning, each point is plotted individually on a high-res 1024 x 1024 screen and has to be refreshed regularly by the program in order to stay visible. (This is also the major bottleneck of the game, in terms of timing, and only became viable thanks to Dan Edwards' just-in-time compiler for the spaceship outlines.) In other words, the burden of maintaining the display is entirely on the program and the instructions for this have to be recomputed for each frame (as memory for storing any screen related information was horribly expensive and thus unfeasible.) Which makes this even more remarkable.
- djmips 2y agoThank you! It's a point plotter! Vectrex is a line plotter. It still has to refresh the entire display every frame however and it's still the bottleneck. That's why arcade games like Asteroids have GPU-like hardware that execute display lists to unburden the CPU from this overhead.
- brlcad 2y agoVery cool that it emulates the phosphor "burn" fading away like the original vector graphics hardware. You can see and play the real thing at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.
- masswerk 2y agoActually, the real thing can be seen (and played) at the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View/CA. [1][2] As far as I know, there's only one restored and functional PDP-1. (There are some unrestored, like at the Smithsonian, but these are stored away in boxes.) [1] https://computerhistory.org/exhibits/pdp-1/ https://computerhistory.org/exhibits/pdp-1/ [2] https://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/ https://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/ Regarding the CRT tube and phosphor: The display uses a CRT tube developed for RADAR, which uses P7 phosphor. This features a short, responsive activation in bright blue and a long sustain in greenish-yellow. (It's actually a 3D display, as in X/Y and time. It also features 8 intensities of brightness, which do not scale too well, for which Spacewar! rather manages apparent brightness by refresh rates.)
- arcade79 2y agoI was lucky enough to play it against Steve Russell at the CHM, about 10-12 years ago I believe.
- nextaccountic 2y agoKDE still ships an amazing game that, now I know, is a clone of this game https://apps.kde.org/kspaceduel/ https://apps.kde.org/kspaceduel/ I remember playing this in the age of KDE 2 (which in my opinion was peak desktop experience)
- taejavu 2y agoOne of my favourite tidbits from computing history is that the original motivation for creating the set of utilities that became the very first version of UNIX was to aid in porting this game from a GE mainframe to the PDP-1.
- fjarlq 2y agoThat was Space Travel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Travel_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Travel_(video_game)
- taejavu 2y agoHa, thanks for the correction, I've been giving the wrong name to Ken Thompson's game for years!
- larsbrinkhoff 2y agoAlso, it was ported (rewritten) to a PDP-7.
- Syzygies 2y agoMy Dad worked in the research labs at Eastman Kodak, where he eventually devised the "Bayer filter" used in digital cameras. Around 1962, there was an open house evening, the first time I set eyes on a computer. I briefly got to play this exact game. Later that year, I busted up a bunch of spring clothespins, to use as toggles to work out binary arithmetic from a book our grandfather had given us. The look on my Dad's face was priceless.
- last_one_in 2y agoSpacewar! (there's an exclamation mark in the name) inspired me to write a modern one player version with gameplay more like the amazing (and free) Waves (https://store.steampowered.com/app/107600/Waves/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/107600/Waves/). It bombed and sold about 9 copies! Here's the Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2434510/Gravity_Waves/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2434510/Gravity_Waves/
- masswerk 2y agoI also had a take or two at a "Spacewar! for One". Neither made a dent in the universe. :-) [1] Outer Orbit (closer to Spacewar! and its orbital mechanics): https://www.masswerk.at/outerorbit/ https://www.masswerk.at/outerorbit/ [2] Gravi-o-roids! (featuring multiple gravity attractors and probably the better game): https://www.masswerk.at/gravioroids/ https://www.masswerk.at/gravioroids/
- djmips 2y agoIt looks cool!
- last_one_in 2y agoThanks! I also wrote Tiny Solar System which is kind of KSP for 5 year olds. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2116950/Tiny_Solar_System/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2116950/Tiny_Solar_System...
- The_Colonel 2y agoThe game is quite impressive for 1962. I'd also expect the first game to be something like tic-tac-toe, should be easier than such a real-time game. The circular screen also brings up the idea of having circular displays today. It seems at first pretty inefficient, like windows are rectangles, duh. But such constraints can produce creative solutions, a very different way how to layout the UI. It's fun to think about how it could look like. (we have circular screens in many watches, but that's a bit special case ...
- masswerk 2y agoFor an actual GUI on a PDP-1 (the PDP-1 featured a light pen for input), see the very first DECUS proceedings [1], "A World Oceanographic Data Display System" (1962) by Ed Fredkin (who was one of the most ardent proponents of the PDP-1), page 32. (This issue also features a paper on Spacewar! by J.M. Graetz, "Spacewar. Real-Time Capabilities of the PDP-1".) [1] https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/decus/confProceedings/DECUS_1962.pdf https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/decus/confProceedings/DECUS_19... The PDP-1 provided also the basis for the first commercial CAD system by Itek. [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20130129213055/http://cadhistory.net/06%20First%20Commercial%20CAD%20System.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20130129213055/http://cadhistory...
- Create 2y agoHi! We are grateful for all your nice archeological work, may we please ask to make "Baa Baa Black Sheep" on the Ferranti available again based on the scans? Many thanks!
- masswerk 2y agoThat's not me. Sorry.
- Create 2y ago:) From what I can recall, it was a java (applet) Ferranti simulator running a typed in copy of the song obtained from a library (Manchester?). It was part of a research/art installation project. I'm not so sure now, but .at, and masswerk seemed to be involved. I'll look into it, or if someone here recognizes it...
- readingnews 2y agoEvery time I see these I always think of my roll of punch tape that has "Lunar Lander" written on it that I can not possibly use as I have no access to a DEC. Should the title read "earliest known Digital video game"? I keep reading it "the very first computer game ever", instead of "from DEC". Maybe I am wrong, is it the very first video game (before tennis for two, etc)?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jmclnx 2y agoThere was a arcade that had that game for a short period of time, friends and I loved that game. The machine disappeared after a few months :(
- flyinghamster 2y agoThat was almost certainly the Cinematronics "Space Wars" cabinet, which I saw here and there back then. I mostly remember one being in a bowling alley's arcade. It was a custom platform, not based on the PDP-1, but I'm not finding much info about it. It was two players only - there was no provision to play against the computer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Wars
- lakkal 2y agoThere was also Computer Space, which was a very similar single-player game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Space
- masswerk 2y agoWhile not the original setup, thanks to a bit of back-porting, you can play Computer Space on the PDP-1, too: https://www.masswerk.at/icss/ https://www.masswerk.at/icss/
- dboreham 2y agoI've played this briefly (on a pdp-1). Edinburgh University had moved their CS dept to an out of town campus (Kings Buildings). The university's open day (open house in US English) events however happened in town. As a school kid I'd go attend those events. This would be around 1980. I'm not sure the full story but I got the impression that the pdp-1 had been left in the Appleton Tower building when everyone left for KB years earlier. Perhaps it wasn't up to being moved. Anyway, it, running spacewar, was pretty much the only computer you could see on one of these open day events. Of course a pdp-1 was a deep relic of history even then. The only other one I've seen is in the CHM in Mt View.
- evereverever 2y agoThis is amazing! I've played it at the computer history museum and this is just as good (although the real circular monitor is super fantastic).