What game should I code given unusual constraints?

August 12, 2023 10:00 AM

I'm looking for ideas for a game to code for a very strange setup: two very old computers connected via a communications link. The systems have graphical screens that don't allow for easy animations or updates: you can only add to the drawing on the screen or erase the entire screen, that's it! What kind of game might work well here?

I'll be displaying two vintage Tektronix 4051 computers at an upcoming retrocomputing show. As they're capable of talking to each other, it would be cool to set up a kind of two-player game between both machines. But the best choice of game will reflect the unusual constraints of the 4051 display.

It's a bit like a sheet of paper. If you have an ink pen, you can always write more on the paper. You can't erase anything, though --- you can only throw out your whole drawing and start over from scratch. This makes it hard to move things in the game unless you're prepared to redraw everything. This can take a while.

Some games are mostly "additive". Tic-tac-toe is good example; so are Connect Four and (best of all since both players have different displays, fitting my two computers) Battleship. Hangman also counts, although it's mostly single-player. None of these games will take advantage of the 4051s' alluring vector graphics. (Pixels shmixels!) Meanwhile, games like chess are a poor fit, since pieces have to move, and moving requires subtraction as well as addition.

Does anyone have ideas of games that could be a good choice here? Again, the parameters are: two player, "additive" graphics, ideally with visually-interesting vector (i.e. made with only green lines on a dark background) drawings. Also, it can't require too many computing smarts --- this will all run on BASIC on a 1 MHz CPU! Thanks for any thoughts...

posted by stepleton to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Ultimate Tic Tac Toe is a much more interesting game than regular Tic Tac Toe.
posted by rikschell at 10:13 AM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

oooh vectors. XY displays are one of my favorite dead techs.

How about guess-the-secret-pattern games like Mastermind?
posted by Sauce Trough at 10:18 AM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Dots is another pencil and paper game that might work. I’d have to google for the rules, but you start with a grid of dots and players alternately connect pairs of adjacent dots. I think the goal is to avoid closing any boxes while trapping your opponent into creating closed boxes.
posted by LizardBreath at 10:44 AM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Could you do something like the Lightcycles from Tron? No removing the trail after movement, at least.
posted by sagc at 10:53 AM on August 12, 2023 [3 favorites]

Some variant of Snake maybe?
posted by justkevin at 10:55 AM on August 12, 2023

My first thought was a scorched earth/worms style tank battle game, and then saw on Wikipedia that there was an ‘artillery game’ demo made for this system at some point. Makes sense, it’s literally vectors as gameplay. Coming up with a decent input/aiming system without screen refresh could be bit of a challenge though.
posted by soy bean at 11:06 AM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ok, ages and ages ago, like 1989 or so... On the Sun machines at university there was this fun X11 vector graphics-ish networked game we used to play quite a bit. Can't for the life of me remember what it was called. It does require the redraw, but it's very simple and sparce in like lines drawn count.

It was a sort of 3d not-quite-maze, just corridors of a single floor square length. So there can be an opening to your right or left or front or back, or you can be between two walls and there's a space in front of you that goes right or left (or both). The point is that there are only half a dozen or so different views that you have to lay out the lines for. You can only rotate right or left and can only move forwards as you walk through this maze like thing. Somewhere in the maze is the other player represented by a spherical eyeball with the pupil on the side that they're facing when you see them (the same goes for them when they can see you). So you have a front/back/left/right view at two distances. you have to be looking straight at them to see them. Then you hit the space bar and shoot them.

So it's like 2-1/2 D FPS simple maze hunt. Does this make any sense? It's almost like a 3d Pac-Man with very short (1 square) places before you hit a wall an have to turn, but it's not a one-path maze. You only need half a dozen lines or so per frame for the walls and such. If you see the eyeball, shoot it.
posted by zengargoyle at 3:18 PM on August 12, 2023

Collaborative Spirograph. Collaborative etch-a-sketch. Visual Simon-Says. Dots is a good suggestion, especially if you can make a version that doesn’t rely on a right-angle grid.
posted by itesser at 4:52 PM on August 12, 2023

Hex seems like it would fulfill the brief pretty well: two players, simple rules, pieces are never moved, interesting strategy.
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:14 PM on August 12, 2023 [1 favorite]

Also, I assume you found this archive at some point?
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:44 PM on August 12, 2023

Does it need to strictly be a game? I had the image of those pen tester notepads at stationery shops where people write all sorts of messages or scribbles on them and something along those lines could be cute
posted by creatrixtiara at 2:42 AM on August 13, 2023