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Encyclopedia > Dungeon (computer game)

Dungeon was perhaps the first computer role-playing game, and ran on Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10 mainframe computers. The other likely candidate is dnd, which ran under PLATO systems on Control Data Corporation computers in the same 1970s era. Computer role-playing games (CRPGs), often shortened to simply role-playing games (RPGs), are a type of video or computer game that traditionally use gameplay elements found in paper-and-pencil role-playing games. ... Digital Equipment Corporation was a pioneering company in the American computer industry. ... The PDP-10 was a computer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from the late 1960s on; the name stands for Programmed Data Processor model 10. It was the machine that made time-sharing common; it looms large in hacker folklore because of its adoption in the 1970s by many... Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as big iron) are large and expensive computers used mainly by government institutions and large companies for legacy applications, typically bulk data processing (such as censuses, industry/consumer statistics, ERP, and bank transaction processing). ... The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ... Statue of a philosopher, presumely Plato, in Delphi. ... Control Data Corporation, or CDC, was one of the pioneering supercomputer firms. ... Events and trends Although in the United States and in many other Western societies the 1970s are often seen as a period of transition between the turbulent 1960s and the more conservative 1980s and 1990s, many of the trends that are associated widely with the Sixties, from the Sexual Revolution...


Dungeon was written in 1975-1976 by Don Daglow, then a student at Claremont Graduate University. The game was an unlicensed implementation of the new role playing game Dungeons and Dragons, and described the movements of a multi-player party through a monster-inhabited dungeon. Players chose what actions to take in combat and where to move each character in the party, which made the game very slow to play by today's standards. Characters earned experience points and gained skills as their "level" grew, as in D&D, and most of the basic tenets of D&D were reflected. 1975 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1975 calendar). ... 1976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Claremont Graduate University (formerly The Claremont Graduate School) was founded in 1925 in the city of Claremont, California, as the first and only academic institution in North America to devote itself entirely to graduate study. ... This article is about traditional role-playing games. ... The original Dungeons & Dragons set Dungeons & Dragons (abbreviated as D&D or DnD) is a fantasy role-playing game (RPG) published by Gary Gygax and David Arneson in January 1974. ... In games, a dungeon represents a dangerous area with many hidden secrets to explore. ...


Although the game was nominally played entirely in text, it was also the first game to use "line of sight graphics displays." In this case the graphics consisted of top-down dungeon maps that showed the portions of the playfield that the party had seen, allowing for light or darkness, the different "infravision" abilities of elves and dwarves, etc.


This advancement was possible because earlier games printed game status for the player on teletype machines or a line printer, at speeds ranging from 10 to 30 characters per second with a rat-a-tat-tat sound as a metal ball or belt with characters was pressed against the paper through an inked ribbon by a hammer. By the mid-1970's many university computer terminals had switched to CRT screens, which could be refreshed with text in a few seconds instead of a minute or more. A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is a now largely obsolete electro-mechanical typewriter which can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point through a simple electrical communications channel, often just a pair of wires. ... The Line printer is a form of high speed impact printer in which a line of type is printed at a time. ... The initialism CRT has more than one use: In electronics, the cathode ray tube of a display device, such as a television In U.S. schools, the Criterion-Referenced Test In mathematics, the Chinese remainder theorem This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might...


  Results from FactBites:
 
Dungeon (computer game) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (400 words)
The game was an unlicensed implementation of the new role playing game Dungeons and Dragons, and described the movements of a multi-player party through a monster-inhabited dungeon.
This advancement was possible because earlier games printed game status for the player on teletype machines or a line printer, at speeds ranging from 10 to 30 characters per second with a rat-a-tat-tat sound as a metal ball or belt with characters was pressed against the paper through an inked ribbon by a hammer.
Dungeon was picked up by fewer universities and systems in the mid-1970s than Daglow's earlier Star Trek computer game had been in 1971, primarily because it took a then-huge 36K of system RAM vs. 32K for Star Trek.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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