Read the text and pay attention to the chronological stages of computer games development.

COMPUTER GAME PREHISTORY

1. 1890. The USA is hit by a mass movement of the customers to play games on coin operated devices – the first ones being phonographs. These recording devices were set up in hotel lobbies, railway stations and small pubs or restaurants. The working class population, clerks and businesspeople used the machines during their lunch breaks.

Around 1885 the kinematoscope became the favourite toy of the population. Now people used to look at wonders of the world, famous buildings, athletic men movies. In the end of the 1890ies the kinematoscopic devices have again been replaced by the mutoscopes. Mutoscopes were interactively controllable kinematoscopes. A lever served as the interface for replay speed, forward/backward movement or freeze frames.

THE HISTORY OF COMPUTER GAMES

2. The history of computer games – mistakenly termed videogames – probably started in 1961. The early programmers and game designers came up with ideas which have been taken over by the industry and have nowadays become cultural stereotypes. Game types like combat games, strategy, simulation or dungeons and dragons were early 60ies inventions but they are still alive today and probably more vital than ever. Having a look at the old predecessors of today's Playstation and Dreamcast games might explain why certain stereotypes are so persistent. Comparing early games with today’s programmes also shows the technological progress achieved during the last 4 decades. It seems that the gaming industry and game technology nowadays challenges the complete computer industry in becoming the key industrial branch.

Autumn 1961 Digital Equipment Corp. delivers a PDP-1 computer to the MIT in Cambridge, Mass. This was the first computer equipped with a cathode ray tube monitor and a keyboard. DEC expected the MIT scientists to develop scientific programmes with the machine they donated, yet two scientists programmed an application which is said to have been the first computer game.

1962. Stephen Russell, Peter Samson, Dan Edwards, and Martin Graetz realized spacewar, a shoot-up game with animated spaceship icons on a black and white monitor. Two users could shoot the other player’s spaceships in order to «survive». A number of programmers working on big mainframe computers developed different computer games during the following years. Most of these games have been programmed in BASIC programming language:

3. Lunar Lander was a text based simulation game. The user had to type in to what amount a lunar spacecraft should accelerate or decelerate. The computer then calculated the fuel consumption, landing speed and height above the lunar ground. All the information was output in monochrome numbers on a black and white screen. More recent adoptions of the basic idea of Lunar Lander add graphics and sound to the game, which of course were not available on 1966ies computer terminals. (A recent remake of Lunar Lander is the Web application Mars Lander.)

HAMMURABI (KINGDOM) simulated economic processes in a virtual Mesopotamian kingdom. The player was asked to numerically specify tax rates and other parameters and was then told about tax revenues, food supplies available, birth and death rates and the profits of the kingdom. Hammurabi could be considered a predecessor of SimCity.

HUNT THE WUMPUS consisted of a network of tunnels and rooms. The first implementation was said to have used a dodeocaedric structure. Players were able to wander around in the tunnels and they were warned whenever they approached the «Wumpus». Nobody knows what a Wumpus is, but it must have been something dangerous, because you could read on your console when coming close to it: «You are in node x. I smell a Wumpus. Move or shoot». Then there were bats able to move you to another room. (Console message: «I smell a bat».). Hunt the Wumpus is a predecessor of the Dungeon & Dragons genre.

4. The software developers at Epic Megagames released a programme called UNREAL in 1998. The programme was written in C++ by Tim Sweeney, programmer of the small corporation. Tim Sweeney made ample use of the 3D features of the Voodoo graphic card, then one of the best 3D cards available. The game was also bundled with a 3D Editor enabling the consumer to build levels of his own. Not only was it possible to use the textures and sounds shipped with the software, but it was also possible to import any texture material, 3D object or soundfile, if it was in the PCX, DXF or WAV-file format. The most exciting feature of UNREAL is a scripting language called UNREALScript, which is a close dialect to Java and C++. UNREALScript is an object-oriented language. Classes already implemented in the game (like effects, water, fog, monsters, moving objects) can easily be extended by creating new classes which inherit the original classes’ properties.

Task 1.

a) write out from the text key words and word combinations that support the main idea of the text;

b) using these words and word combinations write they summary of the text reflecting the reasons of computer games progress.

Task 2. Topics for discussion.

1. Is it possible nowadays to play such games as «Spacewar», «Luna Lander», «Hammurabi», «Hunt the Wumpus»? If it is yes, have you ever played them? If it is not, why?

2. What other computer games are played today?

3. Could you explain why the programme called UNREAL became a novelty for computer games?

4. Are you a fan of computer games or are you indifferent to them?