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  • Star Lanes

    From Beej Jorgensen@3:633/10 to All on Sat Nov 29 06:11:23 2025
    For those retro-computing compu-archaeology geeks...

    I've gathered a bunch of information about the 1977 Altair BASIC game
    _Star Lanes_. I've also "reverse engineered" the rules and put together
    a spec for it. And fixed it to run with the modern `bas` interpreter so
    it can be played.

    https://github.com/beejjorgensen/starlanes-info/

    -Beej

    --
    Brian "Beej Jorgensen" Hall | beej@beej.us

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.1
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E.R.@3:633/10 to All on Sat Nov 29 15:04:03 2025
    On 2025-11-29 07:11, Beej Jorgensen wrote:
    For those retro-computing compu-archaeology geeks...

    I've gathered a bunch of information about the 1977 Altair BASIC game
    _Star Lanes_. I've also "reverse engineered" the rules and put together
    a spec for it. And fixed it to run with the modern `bas` interpreter so
    it can be played.

    https://github.com/beejjorgensen/starlanes-info/

    Ah. The game came as a sample of BASIC programming with early PCs. I did
    a port of it to TPascal, and I added background music. :-)

    --
    Cheers, Carlos.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.1
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Ben Collver@3:633/10 to All on Sat Nov 29 19:00:24 2025
    On 2025-11-29, Stefan Ram <ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
    Later games of this type include the 1984 "Trade Wars",
    "Eve Online", "Wing Commander Privateer", "Elite",
    "Master Trader", and "Star Trader".

    "Star Traders" actually is Star Lanes republished by S. J. Singer in
    1984, which also has versions for Windows 3.1 and Linux with releases
    as late as 2024, possibly by John Zaitseff.

    I'd nominate Urquan Masters as another example.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ur-Quan_Masters

    Although it's less about trading and more exploration and resource
    management.

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.1
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Beej Jorgensen@3:633/10 to All on Sat Nov 29 20:16:19 2025
    In article <lanes-20251129123818@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>,
    Stefan Ram <ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
    |"Star Lanes"
    [...]
    Interface Age, Vol. 2, Issue 7, June 1977

    Yeah! I link to that from the README in the repo. I was just thinking
    about the game one day and was wondering where the original source came
    from. Did a lot of digging before I found a link to the magazine from
    the _Star Traders_ Wikipedia page. :D Should have gone there to begin
    with!

    The code is definitely interesting--that non-programmer side shows
    through in a couple places. But I have to give a HT to Faber for making
    a fun game!

    I strongly suspect _Star Lanes_ was inspired by the board game _Acquire_
    from the 1960s, since it's quite similar in several respects.

    -Beej

    --
    Brian "Beej Jorgensen" Hall | beej@beej.us

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.1
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Beej Jorgensen@3:633/10 to All on Sat Nov 29 20:17:05 2025
    In article <j3brvlxk4d.ln2@Telcontar.valinor>,
    Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    Ah. The game came as a sample of BASIC programming with early PCs. I did
    a port of it to TPascal, and I added background music. :-)

    Sweet! Is that port available online anywhere? I'll link to it if it is.

    -Beej

    --
    Brian "Beej Jorgensen" Hall | beej@beej.us

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.1
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Carlos E.R.@3:633/10 to All on Sat Nov 29 22:06:14 2025
    On 2025-11-29 21:17, Beej Jorgensen wrote:
    In article <j3brvlxk4d.ln2@Telcontar.valinor>,
    Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
    Ah. The game came as a sample of BASIC programming with early PCs. I did
    a port of it to TPascal, and I added background music. :-)

    Sweet! Is that port available online anywhere? I'll link to it if it is.

    No, it is not, sorry. It is buried in one of my old computers.

    --
    Cheers, Carlos.
    ES??, EU??;

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.1
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)