Multi player game before the Internet,Picard and the Borg.
https://gunkies.org/wiki/TREK7
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That’s quite something.
-Gordon
Magnificent! FORTRAN indeed, all upper case. Good work.
Randyl
This is great stuff! I’ve long been pondering a retro combo of Star Trek and space trading type game, with “Gravity Wars” style torpedoes instead of simple linear torps. This manual provides a LOT of cool ideas.
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I’ve done enough DEC C coding on VMS 7.3 to understand how that version of the operating system handles the screen, files, IPC via mailboxes etc. Does anyone know if a port to VMS 7.3 from 2.0 is a significant undertaking? or even 8 and beyond on alpha/itanium/x86.
I know zero FORTRAN, of course, just interested in the effort for a port to later versions of the world’s coolest OS.
It’s going to have a significantly smaller audience. When the OpenVMS hobbyist licence changed recently, all support for VAX VMS was dropped. Non-commercial users are stuck with VMS 4.x, while current versions are somewhat expensive and run on high-end hardware.
From the age of the code, this is going to have heavy FORTRAN-IV/FORTRAN 66 content. If you’re lucky it won’t have too many three-term IF goto kind of deals. It may even have strings as vaguely recognizable strings, rather than packed into Hollerith fields. Oh, and lovely COMMON blocks … It’s an acquired taste, so it’s okay if you decide to nope out.
Regarding GOTOs and arithmetic IFs, one pattern, I’ve seen, is using a variable for the label and putting the target code inside a switch. In its extreme expression, the entire code is in such a switch and each case returns the next label to be executed. (This way, you can get away without reorganizing much.)
I believe, ADVENTure was ported this way.