(TFT) Re: TFT Digest V3 #246

[James Eckman <FUGU@prodigy.net>]

> From: JodyM529@aol.com
> Subject: Re: (TFT) Re: Re: Traveller Computers
> 
> really captures the core of the issue.  I have a rather inordinate interest
> in micro trainers and consequently am reading an ancient Don Lancaster book,
> Micro Cookbook Vol. 1, circa 1981-82.   For those of you who are unfamiliar
> with D. Lancaster's work

Might still have my copy!

> If an expert like Don Lancaster couldn't get it right in 1982 can we really
> expect a game designer like Marc Miller to get it right in 1977?

Dead nuts on, actually for a non-computer person in that period, he was
within an order of magnitude, close enough!

> bizarre sort of charm to unusual and outmoded hardware.  Besides, isn't there
> a genuinely fantastic element to the idea that you can pop a casette into the
> ship's VIC-20 tape drive and plot a course for Alpha Centauri?  How many
> boxes of punch cards or reels of paper tape would that require, I wonder?

Well from what I understand, the space shuttle runs on what are 3 6502
equivalents that vote best 2 out of three, so it's not impossible!
Spacewar anybody ;) About the size of a shoebox from what I understand.

> An excellent source for raw, bad and unlikely sci-fi hardware is the long OOP
> Tyr Gamemakers LTD. "Spacequest" with its rigger operations and ships'
> Circuit Function Boxes and Ion Chatter guns.  Oddly enough, this game was
> also written in 1977 and seems like the perfect vehicle to roleplay the
> Jetsons.  By comparison, Traveller is pure hard SF and, IMHO, a better put
> together game.

It had some cool ideas though! I thought their ship design was fairly
ingenious, string boxes together to make up a ship. (At least I think
it's that game.) Traveller is a better game, I agree.

<david_michael_grouchy_ii@hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: (TFT) Re: Re: Traveller Computers
> 
> A little bit on Mark Miller,
>    From what I've heard the designer of Traveller was a computer guy in the
> US Navy.  It shows in his hexadecimal approach to recording characters stats
> (A8735F). 

That's true, I forgot about the hex stuff.

> One which would have to include the space for workstations,
> chairs, desks, printers and such.  

Since the computer could be accessed from fire control and the bridge
and there's no mention of anything except the actual computer, I'd
assume it's the actual computer volume, not unreasonable for a 60's
computer.

> From: "Marty Brown" <marty@mythicgames.com>
> Subject: (TFT) Still new...
> 
> Hello again,
> 
> Well... do any of you "old-timers" still play the game?  If so, to what
> capacity?  Do you just play a round of melee every now and again - or do you
> role-play?

Last time was 3-5 years ago.
 
Jim
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