Time to enter the sporting realm - for the very first time in video game history! Maybe not with the first game one might expect, either. Pool marks a pretty big shift for early video game development, as this is also the first real-time video game.
Once again, this game is playable thanks to the work of Retrogame Deconstruction Zone. We're still not done with his work yet!
Ol' reliable.
We're not done with the firsts yet! On first look, you might notice that this game uses a joystick! Real-time action, joysticks... we're well and truly in video game territory now.
Pool takes a very barebones approach to the sport - you'll notice that the balls are neither numbered, nor coloured - the game is fully monochrome, but at least the cue ball is white to distinguish it. The standard 15 balls are all present and accounted for as well. My other immediate remark on the visuals is that the cue stick itself looks more like a Q-tip than a cue-stick...
Cue stick or Q-tip??
Rules are of no concern to this game, either. Want to shoot before all the balls have stopped moving? Go nuts. Maybe you want to course-correct the cue ball? Well, you can do that, too. It gives the feel of having a casual round on your backyard Pool table, without a care in the world for rules and regulations. Just go and have fun!
In that spirit, the game also only has one power option for your shots: MAXIMUM POWER. Truly, this is backyard Pool - no care for rules, and the only objective is to hit the cue ball hard enough in the general vicinity of the other balls, and eventually they'll go in. Which honestly isn't that bad here, as accuracy is not the game's strength. I would complain that the joystick's sensitivity is too high to precisely line up your shots... but the position of the cue doesn't even matter! Only the angle matters, which is controlled by a dial. So the joystick's purpose is ultimately moot. That's a shame.
All. The. Damn. Time.
And, true to the real sport, it's a pain in the arse to line up anything precisely. The number of times I'll think I've lined up a shot correctly, only for the ball to bounce around the edges of the hole and depart for the other side of the table is like the sand on the sea shore. Maybe I'm just terrible at judging angles, as I've always had this problem, both with this game and in real life. The last couple of balls also take forever to sink, giving me flashbacks to trying to break the last few bricks in Breakout. It's a bloody nightmare. Most of my playthrough time was spent dealing with the last couple of balls.
Well, that's embarrassing.
Thankfully the game does speed up the further you get in. Because the technology Pool ran on was so antiquated, achieving a stable framerate was a mere pipe dream. According to RDZ's article, the framerate fluctuates between 40 and 8 FPS. On the initial break shot, once all the balls are in motion it feels like you've been hit with a slow spell, as all space and time around you appears to slow down along with the game.
Entering the Matrix.
There's no scoring system present in the game, so you can either keep track of it yourself, or not bother with it. I, however, do have a scoring system, and I will be bothered with it.
Time Played: 15 minutes
Difficulty: 1 (Brain-dead)
There really isn't any challenge, since there is no fail condition.
Gameplay: 2
While I'd say the real-time gameplay here is more compelling than, say, a fixed logic game like OXO, there's not enough for me to increase the score above a 2. This comes from the fact that this game merely simulates Pool - but it doesn't really do anything with it. It's more like a tech demo than a full game. In that spirit, there is also a complete disregard for the rules of the game - you can freely cheat, as you don't have to wait for the cue ball to come to a stop before shooting again.
Controls: 4
While the controls are starting to more resemble something that looks like a video game with the first joystick, it's a bit fiddly. The sensitivity of the joystick in the simulator is quite high (not like it really matters.) Precision is not this game's specialty.
Sound: N/A
Visual: 3
It's more-or-less the best looking game since CRTAD by default, thanks in part to its displaying a dozen objects at once in real time. Even if the frame rate drops to 8 FPS when they're all moving. The afterimages on the balls as they move is probably the nicest touch. The pool cue looks like a Q-tip, which I find amusing.
Story: N/A
Functionality: 5
Unless you want to count the frame rate plummeting when all balls are moving on screen as a functionality issue, there aren't any technical issues here. That's more a limitation of the technology, making it more a feature than a bug.
Accessibility: 4
With a control scheme that looks more video game-y, and from being a easily identifiable sport, I'd say that Pool is a fairly easy game to pick-up-and-play, for 1950s standards.
Fun Factor: 3
Even if the gameplay isn't much to write home about, it's still Pool, and a little, mindless fun can be had with it. Often I find that trying to be precise in such a game is pointless, and going fast and frantic is a much more enjoyable route to take. It's like playing an IRL round of Pool by yourself and just goofing off, especially considering the lack of care for rules.
Overall: 21/80 (26.25 | E Tier)
21 is the same score Bouncing Ball got. Funny that the first two real-time video games end up that way. I think the "tech demo" feel of the game is probably the biggest downside, when it comes to actual game design. Of course, the guys who made this didn't know what game design was at the time, so some grace can be extended there. We're still in the territory of technical experiments and testing of technological limits in the 1950s - games aren't being made purely for entertainment yet.
Here's the video playthrough, for those interested. I added some background music this time, which I thinks makes things more engaging. Let me know what you think!
The next game up, however, was made for entertainment purposes.
Special milestone today - this is my 100th post! Took a bit longer to raise the bat than I thought - been at this almost three-and-a-half years. But it's pretty special to hit my first century.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled article.
OXO holds a series of unusual firsts in video games. One, it's the first "repeat" game. A Tic-Tac-Toe game has been done before in Bertie the Brain, marking OXO as the first time a game concept has been revisited. Of course, Josef Kates and A. S. Douglas likely knew nothing of each other (that's what I'm assuming, having done no research for this game yet), so this is only mere coincidence.
Before I forget - here's a link to the EDSAC simulator, where you can play OXO.
However, OXO also holds a first that I'd consider somewhat undesirable - it's the first impossible game. You can't beat the computer here - it's programmed to play a perfect game of Tic-Tac-Toe. Best you can manage is a draw, unfortunately. In some way, it's actually a bit disappointing that this is the first unwinnable game. No extravagant programming blunder or monstrously poor piece of game design rendering the game broken and unbeatable. Nope, it's just... you can't win, and that's the way it was always meant to be. How boring. I've got nothing to riff on with that.
I guess you could call this the "title screen."
I guess we'll just have to talk about managing a draw, then. But first, let's talk controls, because OXO is also quite unique here. You control the game via a rotary phone dial. Some of you younger readers might have no idea what a rotary phone is, so I'll provide a picture for reference.
This was state-of-the-art tech in the 1950s.
OXO is well thought out in that you're provided with a visual key of which number represents each position on the game board. The good thing about playing this on a simulator is that you don't have to actually rotate the dial to input a move - a simple click of the mouse will do. Yet another first you will discover while playing OXO is that it has sound! I'm assuming that the sound played when you make a move replicates the sound of rotating the phone dial. That would not make the sound particular to OXO, so on a technical level, it's not built-in sound generated by the game - we'll have to wait a few more years for that yet.
Now, back to the drawing board. It's significantly easier to achieve this going first. Tic-Tac-Toe is technically a game of strategy, so at least a few brain cells are required to know what spots to put your crosses in.
This was peak strategy gaming in the 1950s...
The first bit of good strategy is going first - if you know how to play, you cannot lose. Starting with the corners is typically the way to go. When I've done so, the computer most often responds by placing its first nought in the centre square. It's a forgone conclusion at that point, with the round devolving into defensive moves until the board is filled.
Even from a sub-optimal position, a draw is possible.
Going second, it's a little trickier to draw, as the computer is now in the advantaged position. Again, sticking to the corners is advisable - but copying the computer and going for a centre move first is probably best practice. A sure fire way to lose is going for any of the cardinal direction squares early. I did try that for the sake of experimentation, but it resulted in a swift defeat- recorded to satisfy your schadenfreude, of course.
This was not peak strategic gameplay.
This was a quick one - we're on to the scores already!
Scores
Time Played: 5 mins
Difficulty: 10* (Impossible)
Only gets a 10 by technicality. Technically, the game is impossible to beat, but it was also designed that way. So it's not a true 10 in my mind, and won't be considered if I do any "hardest game" lists in the future.
Gameplay: 1 Tic-Tac-Toe is as rudimentary a form of gameplay as you can get. Less technical than even something like Nim, and I gave that a 2. Therefore, the only appropriate score here is a 1.
Controls: 6
By way of comparison to previous games, OXO is incredibly easy to control. Sure, the rotary phone dial is strange by today's standards, but it's actually quite intuitive for a game like Tic-Tac-Toe, when used in combination with the reference key provided by the game.
Sound: 3
Gadzooks! There's sound! First time for everything, I suppose. Again, I'm not sure if the simulator is replicating the sound of the rotary phone controls, or if that's the actual noise the computer makes, but I do at least appreciate it as a form of auditory feedback from the game. Not the most pleasant noise, but it's better than not having sound at all, in my opinion.
Visual: 2
Graphically, it's quite similar to Draughts - only a lot more zoomed in. That's not enough to give it an extra point in my mind, seeing as the actual game graphics themselves are nigh-on identical to Draughts.
Story: N/A
Functionality: 5
Nothing's ever gone wrong over the multiple sessions I've played this game, so free points here. Additionally, it's very snappy and responsive, again in comparison with Draughts.
Accessibility: 4
Can't really go wrong with such a simple game. Taking off one point for the antiquity of the technology being a slight barrier.
Fun Factor: 1
About as much fun as an unwinnable game of Tic-Tac-Toe could possibly be. I can't give it a zero because it's actually a functional, playable game. And you can at least try to beat the computer, futile as it may be.
Overall: 22/90 (24.44% | E-tier)
A weighted score of 24.44 puts OXO just below Bouncing Ball on the tier list. Bouncing Ball is certainly the superior game in terms of pure gameplay and replay value - but only marginally. The shallowness and simplicity of these games are going to keep them in the lower tiers for some time to come. Anything E-tier or above is at least worth trying once in my scoring system, so it's worth your while if you want to experience the earliest stages of video game history. Though I'm sure there's one strange soul out there whose all-time favourite video game is, in fact, OXO. If that's you, please leave a comment.
PSA: The structure of the blog has changed. Please read the most recent update for details.
I first became aware of the Bouncing Ball simulation when I first watched Stuart Brown's "The First Video Game." However, what he covered wasn't a game - it was just a physics simulation. What I didn't know until recently was that that simulation was converted into a game. That revelation came courtesy of Ethan Johnson's response blog to Stuart's video, which goes into great detail regarding the existence of the Bouncing Ball game variant.
That being said, the Bouncing Ball game was kind of staring me in the face this whole time. Because, there's a playable version out there that comes from a familiar place.
RetroGame Deconstruction Zone, which has the Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device simulator, also has a Bouncing Ballsimulator. I knew it was there, but brushed it off under the assumption that it wasn't a game. Naturally, Ethan's blog caused me to revise my assumption, and it turns out that RDZ's Bouncing Ball is, in fact, the game version of the program!
Here we are again, old friend.
Bouncing Ball has probably the most simple premise of any game I've played across this reboot series: get the ball in the hole. You do this by adjusting the speed, bounce and gravity parameters, until the desired result is achieved. Basically, this is a physics puzzle - and the first of its kind at that. Physics-based puzzlers are a dime-a-dozen now, the most famous of all likely being Portal. Yet, here we are in 1952, seeing the very first one!
I'm so very glad that I don't have to write a doctoral dissertation to describe how to play Bouncing Ball as I did with Draughts. Adjusting the physics parameters couldn't be simpler - each of the three parameters can be adjusted with a dial. On the simulator, you click the right of the dial (clockwise) to increase the strength of the parameters, and left (anti-clockwise) to do the opposite. Clicking allows for a good level of precision for a game based on trial-and-error like this. There is also a little silver button that toggles a visual indicator for where the hole is.
Going for a hole in one.
As I say in my video, the gameplay here very much reminds me of Jim Storer's Lunar Lander. You want to make small adjustments to one parameter at a time, judging if the ball over or undershoots the hole. Keep making small adjustments until you get the ball in the hole. Very much trial and error, like making miniscule adjustments to fuel consumption each second in Lunar Lander. Of course, I think Lunar Lander is a more technical game, in the sense that there are more points of error, and more precision required in figuring out fuel consumption.
For Bouncing Ball, it didn't take me very long to get success. From eyeballing the time on my video, it took me about 2-and-a-half minutes to get the ball in the hole. That was easy. Too easy. The solution was incredibly simple, which took me by surprise. From what I read, several college students were failed in the course this game was used in back in 1951/2. Maybe we're just smarter than they were back then? Ha.
Well, that was easy.
I wasn't overly satisfied with beating the game so quickly. It seemed likely that there could be multiple solutions, so I had another go to see if I could find another solution. Along the way, I had some funny interactions with the simulator. I had one successful solution, only for it to not work on the next cycle.
How does this not count?
The ball went in - I didn't touch anything - and then the next time around, it didn't go in. How terribly rude of the game. Now, I don't know if this was a quirk of the simulator, or if this sort of thing could happen in the original game. I haven't got my Tardis working yet, so I can't test that, unfortunately.
Needless to say, I was able to quickly rectify that situation after recovering from the shock of the game changing its mind. All of this madness took place over the course of a mere seven minutes, from when I began first playing.
A second victory.
It's like scoring a first date, thinking "gee, that went well," organising the second one, only to be stood up last minute courtesy of a text saying "I've decided I'm not ready for a relationship yet." Only for her to change her mind, and you end up scoring the second date the day after. Did I just compare video games to women? Yes. Yes I did.
Anyway, here's the scores. Best get on with it before I say something offensive.
Scores
Time Played:7 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (Very Easy)
A rather simple game of trial and error. Success is inevitable with these sorts of games - it just depends on how long. I was successful in about 5 minutes.
Gameplay: 2 Bouncing Ball is pure trial-and-error gameplay. While that does it make it more interesting than, say, a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, it's not by much. Bouncing Ball probably gets a little bit of a boost in that there's multiple ways to win, which can allow for creative solutions.
Controls: 6
What I played on the simulator was quite easy and intuitive to control, and it made sense for the type of game this is. The adjustable dials compliment the real-time gameplay, not disturbing the flow of the game.
Sound: N/A
Visual: 2
While it's only a black-and-white game with extremely minimal graphics, they are real-time graphics, which is a significant jump from the static graphics of Draughts, and thus boosts the score up from a 1 to a 2.
Story: N/A
Functionality: 5
I mean, I question the hitbox of the hole... but that could be a simulator thing. In terms of the game actually working properly, I have no complaints.
Accessibility: 4
This is a simple game to comprehend and pick up and play.=
Fun Factor: 2
I did have more fun with this than with Draughts. Again, the fact that there are multiple solutions available gives Bouncing Ball an edge in replayability for me. Also a bonus that it doesn't take several years to complete a game.
Overall: 21/80 (Weighted 26.25)
A much better game than Draughts, that's for sure. That's not to say it's a good game, but it's at least recommendable to sample, which I cannot say about the former game. It's the first puzzle game, and a quick little one at that.
As always, here's the video if you'd like to see the game in action:
PSA: The structure of the blog has changed. Please read the most recent update for details.
Time for the first revisit in this reboot series. Although this is slightly different, being that I've now split my articles in two. We're also playing a bit of catch-up here, as I did the video version of this Let's Play two weeks ago (at the time of writing.) But, no matter. The playthrough is still fresh in my mind for... several reasons, which I will now explain.
And yes, I did say playthrough. Last time I covered this game, I was completely unaware that it was possible to play Draughts. Turns out I was wrong, and I'm quite happy to be wrong when it comes to finding out that lost games aren't actually as lost as I first assumed. There exists a Ferranti Mark 1 simulator - part of the SimH cpanel suite of computer simulators that attempt to recreate the experience of using ancient computing technology.
Welcome to the Ferranti Mark 1 simulator.
...and that "recreating" of ancient computers includes all the trappings of outdated technology.
The Ferranti Mark 1, while bearing some minor resemblance to a modern computer, is a very different beast compared to said computers. For one, there isn't a keyboard. Computers just didn't work like that back in the 1950s. Instead, we've got an array of switches, knobs, and levers - many of which with seemingly random sequences of letters attached to them. Figuring out what any of these things do is beyond the scope of my purposes.
Mind you, just figuring out what I needed to do to get a game of Draughts going might as well have been enough to award me an honorary PhD in Computer Science. First off, there's hardly any documentation around explaining how to play Draughts. There's one online source I could find, and it's not exactly the clearest, and the operation of the simulator both automates and contradicts some of the steps outlined within. It's from an online publication called "RESURRECTION," the "Bulletin of the Computer Preservation Society." The article in question is from Issue No. 60, from Winter. 2012/13, entitled "Programming ENTER: Christopher Strachey's Draughts Program", by David Link.
When opening up the game, both the GUI and a command line interface open. The CLI replaces the teletype printer that would print out information regarding the game state on - yes, printed out on actual paper. Who needs text on the screen, anyway? To get a game of Draughts going (once the lengthy process of loading the game was completed), you are first prompted to read the "instruction card" for the game, then pull the switch labelled "KAC". We don't have this lying around anymore, so the simulator just automates this process.
Secondly, the game asks you to do a coin toss. It assumes you have a real coin lying around. The computer will call, and then ask you if it won or not. Obviously, there is no way for the clanker to check if you're lying. This is where things get really hazy concerning Link's instructions. It says - and I quote - that,
"The user let the program know via a switch and KAC if it had won or not to determine who had the right to start the game."
That's great... but what switch??? There's only about 60 of them on the machine... I got stuck here for a long time. I thought that maybe the simulator would just let me hit KAC to indicate that I won, and I could continue with a game.
But, no. Doing that causes the game to freeze. Reload the entire program. This happened over and over again. I kid you not, I tried just about every switch and button the simulator would let me press to see if that was the one that would get me pass the bloody coin toss of all things.
The odd thing was, that sometimes the game would start, but I couldn't figure out why. I probably played around with his, banging my head against the wall, for a good hour before I stumbled across the solution to get the game progressing.
The solution? Nothing. You do... absolutely nothing. And the game just... goes by itself.
Visually, we have an array of CRTs - six in total. Two of these are used by Draughts to display the game board. The right CRT (circled blue in the below image) is the one you want to pay attention to, as that displays the current state of the board, and previews what your selected next move will look like. The left (circled red) CRT displays the state of the board from the previous move. According to Link's article, you can apparently cancel your selected move with a specific sequence. I wasn't aware of this during my playthrough, though I doubt I would've been brave enough to try it. The game is already fragile enough.
Encircled CRTs are the game displays. Microscope sold separately.
Speaking of... once I actually got the game to go, there was an overwhelming sense of treading through a minefield pervading my entire playthrough. Previous attempts at playing the game, once I got pass coin-toss jail, were all promptly ended by some various glitch or other occurrence that the computer didn't like. If you don't input your move correctly, the game crashes. If you pull any switches during the computer's thinking phase, the game crashes. If you wait too long to make a move, or make too many mistakes the game gets progressively more and more annoyed at you until it quite literally gives up and tells you to go away. And the game crashes itself. It says, "I REFUSE TO WASTE ANY MORE TIME. GO AND PLAY WITH A HUMAN BEING." Savage. Absolutely savage.
I think playing a human being would be more of a challenge, though. Mercifully, I was able to beat Draughts on my first successful full game. The competency of the computer is roughly equivalent to the Checkers game I played prior to the reboot, but perhaps slightly better - more adept at wasting time, at least. I say "mercifully" because the full game took over an hour to complete. It takes so long simply because the computer has a lot of thinking to do. By my measure, it takes the computer between 10 - 30 seconds to ponder and select its next move. It goes quicker than that when it has the opportunity to capture a piece.
Now, how does the player move his pieces in this game? You'll see on the simulated machine two rows of colourful switches - only the top row of the two is used for Draughts. This also caught me out in figuring out the game, as Link's article does provide a useful visual reference for the controls, but it's not explained terribly well. I initially thought that both rows of switches were used, but this is not the case - it's only the top row.
I'll try to provide as simple an explanation as I can, with Link's visual references, and screenshots from my video.
As is standard in real Checkers, each of the playable squares has a number assigned to it. In Strachey's Draughts, the top-leftmost square is assigned 0, and increased moving left-to-right, top-to-bottom, so that the final square in the bottom left is assigned 31.
The switches are used to select the numerical position of the squares the player wants to move a piece from, to, and capture. The left-most switches (yellow) represent the tens column from left to right (0 1 2 3 - since we only go up to 3, the last yellow switch is ignored.)
The next ten (red and cyan) are used for the ones column (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9).
To make a basic move such as 21-17, for example (my first move in the video), you must flip the 2 tens switch and the 1 ones switch, then flip KAC. You then reset the switches, and select the second number in like fashion, and flip KAC again. Then reset the switches, and press KAC a third time for the game to preview your move, updating the right screen. Flip KAC a fourth time to confirm the move, and the screen will change to a garbled-looking mess while the computer decides its move.
Once you start wanting to capture pieces is where things get a little bit more complicated. The same control scheme applies, but the sequencing changes. You still select the piece you want to move first, but the second number you select must be the space your piece will land on after it captures. You then have to input a third number, which is the space you are capturing. Then you can reset the switches, and confirm your move. The same applies for double and triple captures - but you have to input each piece being captured before fully confirming the move. You can see a successful triple capture in my video.
These are the inputs to make a move of 23-14(18)
Once you've got all that down... hey presto! You can now play a game of Draughts.
Actually, there is one more thing... this game does have some glitches. As if it couldn't get any worse. I encountered a bug where the game gave me more pieces on field after inputting a move. At least it helps me? I don't know what caused this bug, as it occurred during the course of normal gameplay, but the command prompt suggested that the game read that glitched move as 63-63.
So, there we go. Laborious gameplay, instability and glitches. I bet this will go down well in the scores...
Scores
Time Played: 1hr 30mins
Most of this time was spent in getting the game to actually run, and the computer's thinking time.
Difficulty: 3 (Easy)
The real challenge of Draughts is figuring out how to actually play the damn game. The AI itself was not to hard to beat, but wasted my time considerably during the endgame phase.
Gameplay: 3
By it's very nature, Checkers is a more interesting game than, say, Nim. So Draughts, by default, gets a higher gameplay score than Nimrod simply because the core game has much more depth in it.
That's not to say anything of the actual experience of playing Strachey's Draughts, which is quite miserable. That'll be reflected in the other, experiential scores.
Controls: 2
Ugh... the controls were a real nightmare to learn. It doesn't help that the available literature is somewhat vague in describing the control scheme, and it took me over an hour to discover exactly how the game was meant to play. Setting up moves is quite an arduous task, and an incorrect input can cause the game to either skip your move, or will crash the game entirely.
Sound: N/A
Visual: 2
It's got real computer graphics! It's just a grid of green noughts and crosses, but that counts for something. The display itself is very small on the simulator, however. Actually seeing what I was doing wasn't the easiest.
Story: N/A
Functionality: 2
There are a few issues with Draughts' functionality - most surround how precise you need to be with your inputs. Do one thing out of order, and the game breaks. But, even if you do things right, the game still might do something unexpected... like give the player extra pieces. The game is playable, but there's a sense of walking on eggshells throughout.
Accessibility: 1
This seems like a given to me. Antiquated, temperamental hardware, vague documentation and cumbersome controls make for a game that is highly inaccessible. At least most of us know how to play Checkers.
Fun Factor: 1
Ugh... this was a mighty slog of a game to play. My recorded playthrough was about an hour long, and at least half of that time was spent between fiddling with the temperamental controls, and waiting for the game to decided its move. I do enjoy Checkers itself as a board game, and Strachey's Draughts at least retains some of that strategic enjoyment for me, but there's just too much effort required to play this game.
Overall: 11/80 (Weighted 13.75)
I was not expecting a score this bad for Draughts coming into experiencing this game. But, between the absolute awfulness of getting the game to run, figuring out how to play it, and the snail's pace gameplay, a score of 11 (weighted to 13.75) checks out. Obviously, this puts Draughts on the bottom of the tier list - and I don't anticipate playing a game as bad as this for a while (but I could always be surprised...) So it might be stuck there for some time.
In hindsight, I may have been right to split these articles in two. According to Obsidian, I've written over 2,100 words for Draughts' gameplay alone. I've written university papers shorter than that.
Finally, I'll be leaving the video Let's Play at the bottom of the page for these articles going forward, in case you'd like to see the molasses nightmare that is playing Draughts. Remember earlier how I said that this game took over an hour to complete? Look at the timestamp. Roughly half of that footage was either myself or the computer thinking, which was edited out for your convenience. If, however, you are a glutton for punishment, I will be putting the full, uncut edition up on Patreon for supporters there.
(If you're wondering why there's a numbering discrepancy, it's because Bertie the Brain did not receive a Let's Play video.)
I had no internet for the entirety of yesterday. As someone who is terminally online, this caused no small amount of distress. However, it did afford me ample time to ruminate on the changes and progress (or lack thereof) happening with the blog in recent times.
I'm still learning to manage my different content streams, with consistency being my chief goal right now. I solved a content bottleneck with my videos, but that's caused another bottleneck with the blog. Not having regular content is a big no-no for me, and a big no-no for growth - so how to fix this?
The solution on the YouTube side of things was for me to push ahead with weekly uploads of my "Let's Play" series of videos - my "blind" playthroughs of every video game, in chronological order; while the "Chronicles" - my mini-documentary/review of the game, would become desynched with the Let's Plays. Those Chronicle videos take weeks and weeks to edit, and having only one video a month simply won't do.
So, what's the solution for the blog? As I was ruminating on the subject last night, I realised that the solution for the blog is... the exact same thing.
What I mean is, that I can split my articles in two - one for gameplay, one for research. Since I now use my blog articles as the basis for YouTube scripts, the release schedule for them is dependent on how quickly I can get a video edited (which is "not very" at the moment, with my novice editing skills.) But what I can do is provide the gameplay element of my blogs on a more regular basis as a reader's version of the Let's Play series for those of you who prefer to read the blog over watch the videos.
So that's the new plan: a Let's Play article to go along with my Let's Play videos - which will include preliminary scores and tier listings, while the big articles will line up with my Chronicles videos. I know this will change the face of the blog into a more gameplay-forward one, instead of research, but it makes my life a hell of a lot easier when it comes to managing everything, and ensures that neither side gets neglected, as was the case before. It keeps me playing new games, too, which helps keep it fresh and interesting for me as a creator. You'd be getting the gameplay and scores either way - it's just going to happen more often now!
My hope is to have a regular upload schedule of one Let's Play per week (released Saturday AEST), and one Chronicle per month (released last day of the month.) Hopefully I can increase this as I get less shit at editing.
Anyway, there's some catching up to do! Expect three Let's Play articles this week: Draughts, Bouncing Ball, and OXO!
Before we get to Draughts, we're taking a little sidestep into the adjacent world of chess programs. Dietrich Prinz's Mate-in-Two, or Robot Chess, appears in a couple of online databases, so I felt it was worth brief consideration. Gaming-History creatively calls this program Chess-Playing Program. Which is... a true statement. Sort of.
What I mean is that Mate-in-Two isn't a full chess-playing computer program. You couldn't run a full, computerised game of chess on even the newest tech back in 1951 - Alan Turing's Turbochamp experiment proved that. The hulking, room-sized beasts, even of the calibre of Ferranti's Mark 1, just didn't have enough memory to manage all the thousands upon thousands of possible combinations of moves available in Chess - not to mention additional rules like castling and en passant. To make a working Chess program of any form, you'd have to focus on one phase of the game, rather than the whole. Dietrich Prinz realised this, and decided that the most manageable phase to focus on was endgame. Less pieces, less moves to contend with. Specifically, Prinz designed the program to deal with specific chess puzzle scenario where the task is to checkmate within two turns - hence "mate-in-two."
A Prinz-ly Parallel
Prinz himself has a rather interesting story, in some ways paralleling that of Josef Kates, creator of Bertie the Brain. Born on the 29th of March, 1923 in Berlin, Germany, Prinz's family would, like Josef Kates', make their way across the English Channel prior to the onset of the Second World War - Prinz's mother was Jewish. Prior to leaving Germany, he had received quite a prestigious education at the University of Berlin - he got to learn from Albert Einstein! Prinz graduated with a Ph.D. in Physics, and worked for a time with German TV and Radio manufacturer Telefunken, before deciding in 1935 that it wasn't worth hanging around Germany anymore.
Dietrich Gunther Prinz (1923 - 1989)
Britain was a profitable safe haven for Prinz, settling quite nicely into a job for the British General Electric Company (GEC - not to be confused with the American General Electric!) However, this is a case of "second verse, same as the first." Just like Josef Kates, Prinz was interned when war hit Britain, over suspicion of any German (or Austrian) refugees being potential spies. Also like Kates, Prinz was booted out to Canada!
Unlike Kates, however, Prinz would return to England after the war's end. He started up north in Leeds, before being picked up by Ferranti in 1947 for a computer project at their Manchester site. That project would become the Ferranti Mark 1 - a landmark computer that I touched briefly on in the Nimrod article. The Mark 1 was the first commercially available digital computer and, for us gamers, is the oldest computer with extant games and software. It's only taken four years to transition from purpose-built hardware made to play a single game, to the more familiar model of a single computer able to have multiple games programmed and stored on it.
Unfortunately, Prinz's Mate-in-Two is not part of the suite of extant software - hence why this is a Gaiden article. Prinz got the idea to look into chess programming from a couple of sources - one, a research paper on the subject, and seminars he'd been attending on programming run by none other than Alan Turing himself. However, like I said at the beginning of the article, the Ferranti Mark 1 wasn't capable of running a full chess program, so Prinz focused his efforts on endgame situations, hence the commonly given "Mate-in-Two" title for the program. He began work on this program in 1949.
However, Prinz's program would not be completed before he got involved in a little side project that will be familiar to us - Nimrod. It shouldn't come as a surprise that a man of Prinz's calibre, working at Ferranti during Nimrod's development, would be left out. How much of the design process he was involved in is unknown, but his German heritage proved incredibly serendipitous when Nimrod made its way over to Germany for the Berlin Industrial Fair. Prinz was able to teach German students and dignitaries on the operation of Nimrod. According to Raymond Stuart-Williams, Prinz also had to invent an entirely new German computing vocabulary to do so!
More than Chess Problems
With that little Nimrod side quest out of the way, Prinz set about completing his chess program. Remember the timeline here - Nimrod was in Berlin in October, 1951, and Prinz had Mate-in-Two working by November the same year. From what I've read online, both the process of inputting a game state for the program to solve, and the computer solving the problem were exceptionally slow and arduous. The piece placements were provided to the computer on punched tape, which is then stored on the computer's magnetic tape memory, which the computer then converts to digital memory.... and only then it can start solving the problem.
The first problem given to Mate-in-Two took around 15 minutes to solve. It tested 450 moves - 100 of which ended up being illegal moves - and ran a self-check diagnostic every time a move was completed (this tested to see if the king was in check or not), which meant that each of those 450 moves took roughly 2 seconds to execute. The eventual solution was literally moving a rook two squares to the left. It took me about 10 seconds to figure out the winning move after I saw the layout - so the computer's not exactly winning any awards for quick thinking, is it? The technology will catch up, eventually...
This is the first problem Mate-in-Two solved. Can you figure it out in under 15 minutes?
Summarising Mate-in-Two's legacy is a tricky task. Much of that is because I'm not sure if it has one. One source reports that Mate-in-Two was never used again after its first outing, due to more pressing matters computers were needed to address. There seemed to be some awareness of the program by contemporaries, as Prinz published an article about the program in a journal titled Research in 1952. Not a terribly descriptive title for a journal, and so I wasn't able to find said article in the archives. That article was reprinted in a 1988 book called Computer Chess Compendium, however, but I'm not shelling out $30 for an ebook copy of that, sorry-not-sorry.
Prinz's article was responded to in some manner in a 1953 book titled Faster Than Thought, by B. V. Bowden (the title is inspired by Nimrod). The author is apparently quite harsh in his assessment of Mate-in-Two, citing several improvements that could've been made to the code, and that there wasn't much of a future in computer chess if this was the only programming means available. But the first of anything is hardly ever going to be a success, right? The foundation's been laid for computer chess, at the very least.
And, just so we all know for future reference - I won't be covering every chess program ever made. I think that would be a fruitless exercise, and would be a distraction from my chief goal. I'll consider making mention of significant ones to video game development in the future - that's why we've been discussing Mate-in-Two to begin with. It's one of the first known examples of a "game" program developed for a programmable, digital storage computer, even predating the functional debut of Christopher Strachey's Draughts on the same system.
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