Original CAW for Apple II?

[pad152]

Apple copies of CAW, don't make me look in the basement, I think there is am Apple IIGS down there and god knows what else.[X(]

Computer Air Combat - the only SSI wargame that had a expansion disk.

Computer Bismarck the first computer wargame from SSI, I remember the original for the TRS-80, on cassette tape? Yes boys and girls before DVD's, before CD's, before 3-1/2" floppy disks, before 5-1/4" floppy disks, we used cassette tapes, and what a pain in the ass they were![:@] Before that we used paper tape, before that we used the switches on the front panel and entered programs in hex code.

The Good o'l days, I don't think so. [8|]

[JD Walter]

Remember those well, pad152 [8D]

Ran many a cassette tape game on my beloved "Trash 80" before I saved up for the "modern, advanced" Apple II with a 5.25" floppy disk drive.

Coded in assembler on my school mainframe, but never was good at compiling. Always got a punchcard out of sequence...

And don't forget Computer Baseball! [:'(] Had the 1981 and 1982 teams disks after SSI put that one out...Played lots of games replicating a season.

[LarryDS]

Hi bink, mjk428

Computer Ambush: Yes. On the old GEnie BBS, one of the Billings brothers said the designer, Ed Williger, liked SPI's Sniper. It was one of his favorite games and an inspiration for CA. He wanted a computer opponent to play against solitaire when he couldn't find anyone.

The more successful Computer Ambush was the 2nd edition from SSI (1982), which took fuller advantage of the Apple II's capabilities, re-developed by Larry Strawser (rules) & Kendall Whitesell (who did the coding). It had a very competent AI, in part because the playfield was limited and only the German side was run by the computer. This allowed Mr. Whitesell to script setups for the Germans, which made the scenarios quite challenging. IIRC, the first CA had a rather limited AI (which basically just moved the Germans towards you), since it was cartridge-tape based. I played a lot of that before I upgraded my Apple to a II-plus with a diskette drive - big bucks right out of college!

Hi Def Zep, bink, and mjk428,

This is Larry Strawser. I know its been a couple of months since the last reply to this thread, but I just became a member of MatrixGames. It is true that I wrote the rule book for CA 2nd edition, but I also did the coding. Ken Whitesell got me started on the project. He and I were in the Air Force stationed at Biloxi, Mississippi where we taught communications-computer programming. We coded most things in machine code (octal) in those days -- assembly language was a high order language for us! Ken bought an Apple II before I did and he was a big fan of CA, 1st ed. I tried the game on his computer, but was turned off by how LONG the "resolution phase" took (as others have noted, CA 1st ed. was interpreted BASIC). Ken apparently discussed this with SSI and Joel Billings asked if he wanted to write an assembly language version. Ken told me about it and we became "partners." Ken stayed with the project until about halfway through coding the "order entry" phase. Then I moved to Colorado and Ken decided he wasn't interested anymore. Thus, I had to purchase my own Apple II and I completed the project eventually -- but not fast enough to satisfy Joel!

Ken left the Air Force a year or two later, but I made a career out of it and retired just two years ago. I've coded some fairly sophisticated programs (quantum mechanical computational chemistry, for example), but some of the routines I coded for CA 2nd edition are among the best coding I ever did. The necessity to squeeze everything in the resolution phase into 48K of memory required quite a few tricks. The line of sight (LOS) routine is probably the cleverest bit of coding I've ever done. The code had to be compact, but it also had to be FAST. That is, since the "command control" function depended on the LOS each soldier had to each of his squadron mates, the computational time exploded as an N to the N problem. I often found myself conducting a "trade space" between clock cycles and bytes of memory -- people don't code like that any more! By the way, the Apple version used the Apple DOS and the "Initialization Phase" was written in BASIC, but every part of the Atari version was written in Assembly and I wrote a primitive DOS specific for the game (the Atari version came out about a year after the Apple version, but that's another story).

Its gratifying to see that at least a few people still remember the game and liked playing it. Yes, the game certainly had an "AI" built in (and Ken had NOTHING to do with any of it), and NO, it was not recompiled! I can't even guess how HUGE the compiled code would have been (even if a compiler existed in the early 1980s that could have done the job), but I know it would have been too big. However, I will now admit, the computer was a tough opponent at the most challenging level, because it "cheated." That is, at that level, the computer opponent had all "10s" for capabilities, his weapons never jammed, never ran out of ammunition, and he could even "heal" over time -- something the human opponent could never do. Nevertheless, the computer played by all the other rules, so it could be beat -- but if you took an "average" squad into battle, it was a tough go.

I built quite a bit of "debug" code as I went along. I had to strip most of it out after the code was completed due to memory constraints, but I was able to leave in one tiny bit of code that displayed the "terrain multiplier" from one point to another (FSxxyyL) at the novice level -- I used this to make sure the LOS routine worked as it should, for example, as I streamlined the code both for speed and size.

In any event, I have often thought over the years of writing CA 3rd edition. I have already designed the opening scene. Remember that cheesy "tune" at the beginning of the game? The opening screen of CA 3rd edition would look exactly as the it did on the Apple version (a black and white line drawing), then that stupid "tune" would play, followed by a pause. Then the sound of a mortar round coming into the battle space would be heard. When it exploded, the screen would "split open" onto a 1,000,000-color, chaotic, three-dimensional battle field with "real" gun fire, grenades, screams, etc. Anyone interested?

LarryDS

[LarryDS]

Are you sure the AI was redone is Computer Ambush 2nd edition? I thought it was recoded (maybe just compiled?) rather than run in interpretive basic, as it was originally released. I had both versions and they both ran on disk - AFAIK, SSI never released a tape version of CA for the Apple II.

Even Computer Bismarck was released on disk, again AFAIK never on tape. Here is a link with a photo of the box:
http://gotcha.classicgaming.gamespy.com/ssi.htm

I would love to find out more historical info on CA, but there is not much out there.

Hi bink,

This is Larry Strawser -- I programmed CA 2nd edition and wrote the rule book. What would you like to know?

Larry

[bink]

Larry,

I think a new version of Computer Ambush would be a great idea!!!

Bink

[MarkShot]

Man, you guys go way back.

I remember playing Pong at a friends house on an old TV in the basement. In Junior High, I remember playing Lunar Landar in BASIC from punch tape on a PDP-8, I think. I did a little BASIC then.

Later, in college after dropping out for a while (originally Bio-Chem), I went back to school and majored in a new discipline, Computer Science. Began my programming on punched cards.

To think that I am sitting here now typing on my own personal computer that easily outperformed the multi-million dollar IBM mainframe batch processing system that was the workhouse behind my undergrad degree. Mind blowing!!!

Some of my first professional programming was done assembly/machine language; 8 bit, 16 bit, ... overlays before virtual storage. A truly forgotten art!

[LarryDS]

Man, you guys go way back.

I remember playing Pong at a friends house on an old TV in the basement. In Junior High, I remember playing Lunar Landar in BASIC from punch tape on a PDP-8, I think. I did a little BASIC then.

Later, in college after dropping out for a while (originally Bio-Chem), I went back to school and majored in a new discipline, Computer Science. Began my programming on punched cards.

To think that I am sitting here now typing on my own personal computer that easily outperformed the multi-million dollar IBM mainframe batch processing system that was the workhouse behind my undergrad degree. Mind blowing!!!

Some of my first professional programming was done assembly/machine language; 8 bit, 16 bit, ... overlays before virtual storage. A truly forgotten art!

MarkShot,

CA 2nd edition was published for the Apple II in 1983; the Atari and C-64 version came out about a year later (and a Mac version followed that). I never programmed on a PDP-8, but did quite a bit of assembly language programming on a PDP-11 (wrote a pretty fair version of missile command!).

There are still a few people coding in machine language for embedded systems. But very few applications need to worry about either clock cycles or memory constraints anymore!

Interestingly, my PhD is in biochemistry! I had to learn computer programming (FORTRAN was my first language) in order to perform my data analysis in a timely manner. Later I taught myself assembly language. That was the only language I used for programming on 8-bit machines.

LarryDS

[RSGodfrey]

Mark

Your remark about programming on punched cards invokes memories of my experience as an undergrad in Economics only able to submit a single regression run a day. Invariably there would be a mistake in punching that required a correction.

The econometric packages today in terms of speed and analytical power are awesome!

Richard

[ibeam81]

This thread brings back a lot of good memories. I've actually gone back and played a few of the "Golden Oldies" with emulators, since my Apple II is long gone. The game play is still interesting, although of course the graphics (and text too) pale in comparison to modern games.
 
Oh the pleasure of punch cards, machine language, and assemblers. Fortran was a godsend.

[martxyz]

I first programmed on an IBM 360/67 (I think) in PL1! Then Basic, Fortran, Algol 60. and finally Z80 assembler.  Can't remember a blessed thing about any of them!!  [:D]

However, I do rememeber how much I just HATED punch cards, waiting, waiting, waiting only to next day discover the program kicked out as I'd left a comman out of line 62 or something!  [:@]

Happy days.

Martin

[MarkShot]

PL/I: PROCEDURE OPTIONS(MAIN)

IBM 360!



I was almost going to ask you if you attended school at CUNY (City University of New York; a system schools actually), but then I see you are in the UK. The entire New York City university system used just a couple of machines, and we had RJE rooms (Remote Job Entry card readers). There was a thick plexiglass partition separating students who would submit their deck of punch cards and pick up their output runs. Sometimes, the students could be somewhat hostile. I worked at my school's data center. So, we had a sign facing inwards that only we could read, "Please, don't feed the animals!". What memories!

[matchwood]

Play online using your web browser!

http://www.virtualapple.org/carriersatwardisk.html

ORIGINAL: bink

Does anyone else have the original CAW for the Apple II? I still have my copy (though I have not played it in a long time), and must say that the packaging and artwork on that was superb. I miss the frills that used to come with wargames, such as the laminated maps and grease pencils that SSI supplied for its wargames, such as Computer Bismarck and Computer Ambush (great games).

[BlindOldUmp]

ORIGINAL: RSGodfrey
Mark

Your remark about programming on punched cards invokes memories of my experience as an undergrad in Economics only able to submit a single regression run a day. Invariably there would be a mistake in punching that required a correction.

The econometric packages today in terms of speed and analytical power are awesome!
Richard

Punched cards - ah the smell of burning words !!!!! I volunteered as a lab assistant and tutor. (I was after all a Computer Science major) That allowed me to run many more than one run per day as it did my friends [;)]