4 ms·

Show HN: Spacewar! featuring the original "Minskytron Hyperspace"

16 points by masswerk 12y ago

masswerk 12y ago
I finally managed to identify Martin Graetz's original hyperspace routine, featuring the "hyperspace Minskytron signature" (as described and depicted in "Origin of Spacewar"). This was actually a patch (hyperspace85.bin) to "Spacewar! 2B". This was actually the first hyperspace in history (in the very first digital video game) – and what a nice one!
- fjarlq 12y ago
  The Origin of Spacewar, by J. M. Graetz: http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/creative/SpacewarOrigin.html http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/creative/SpacewarOrigin.html
  - masswerk 12y ago
    See also http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/SpacewarOrigin.html http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/SpacewarOrigin.html (corrected and annotated version, including additional interviews and images). Some of my own analysis: http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/inside/ http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/inside/
alewix 12y ago
I hope it's ok if I plug my own little "Spacewar!" hobby project. It's not as true to the original, but it automatically matches people connecting to the game to have them play against each other: http://orbital.lewix.eu/ http://orbital.lewix.eu/
- masswerk 12y ago
  Totally ok :-) I was always thinking of doing this with the original game via WebRTC DataChannels (that's also a reason for the emulation running the display asynchronously, so one could be driving the other). BTW: By this Spacewar! would then become Orbitwar (Silas Warner, 1974 / PATO network).
robin_reala 12y ago
Is it meant to work in Firefox? I’m getting the classic JS error “SyntaxError: numbers starting with 0 followed by a digit are octals and can't contain 9”.
- masswerk 12y ago
  Just tested with FF 29.0.1 -- Please reload and try again ...
  - robin_reala 12y ago
    Working, thanks :)
abengoam 12y ago
Nice! Playing spacewar on the real hardware was one of the big highlights of my last visit to the Mountain View Computer History Museum (the other one being seeing the recreation of the Difference Engine actually working).

16 points by masswerk 12y ago

I finally managed to identify Martin Graetz's original hyperspace routine, featuring the "hyperspace Minskytron signature" (as described and depicted in "Origin of Spacewar"). This was actually a patch (hyperspace85.bin) to "Spacewar! 2B". This was actually the first hyperspace in history (in the very first digital video game) – and what a nice one!

fjarlq 12y ago
The Origin of Spacewar, by J. M. Graetz: http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/creative/SpacewarOrigin.html http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/creative/SpacewarOrigin.html
- masswerk 12y ago
  See also http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/SpacewarOrigin.html http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/SpacewarOrigin.html (corrected and annotated version, including additional interviews and images). Some of my own analysis: http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/inside/ http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/inside/

alewix 12y ago

I hope it's ok if I plug my own little "Spacewar!" hobby project. It's not as true to the original, but it automatically matches people connecting to the game to have them play against each other: http://orbital.lewix.eu/ http://orbital.lewix.eu/

masswerk 12y ago
Totally ok :-) I was always thinking of doing this with the original game via WebRTC DataChannels (that's also a reason for the emulation running the display asynchronously, so one could be driving the other). BTW: By this Spacewar! would then become Orbitwar (Silas Warner, 1974 / PATO network).

robin_reala 12y ago

Is it meant to work in Firefox? I’m getting the classic JS error “SyntaxError: numbers starting with 0 followed by a digit are octals and can't contain 9”.

masswerk 12y ago
Just tested with FF 29.0.1 -- Please reload and try again ...
- robin_reala 12y ago
  Working, thanks :)

abengoam 12y ago

Nice! Playing spacewar on the real hardware was one of the big highlights of my last visit to the Mountain View Computer History Museum (the other one being seeing the recreation of the Difference Engine actually working).