The Future of Star Patrol?
Star Patrol only runs on Mac OS 9 and before and
Classic. Should I port it or let it die? A dilemma with a history
lesson.
As I said in my first
blog and my introduction,
I write Mac shareware. My products are Daydreamer, DPAutochanger and Star
Patrol. I recently released a new version of Daydreamer for Mac OS X
which is basically Intel ready. DPAutochanger, although its functions have been
largely superseded by the Desktop features of Mac OS X itself (and those that
were not are available through Daydreamer), also runs under Mac OS X, and I
expect it will run on Intel with a re-compile. Star Patrol has remained in a
Classic version. The advent of Intel-based Macs will mark the beginning of the
end for Classic. So I find myself in a quandary. Do I bring Star Patrol to Mac
OS X, or do I let it die?
To talk about the future of Star Patrol, I suppose I should summarize its past. For me it begins in early 1974 (though I suppose it really goes back before that). I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois, and I was at a friend's house working on armor for the Society for Creative Anachronism. We took a break at some point and went next door to where another student was playing trek on a TI Silent 700 terminal. The game (as well as the terminal, printing along at a blistering 300 baud) would be laughably archaic to today's game players. But to me it was electrifying. Up till that time, my connection to computers was through punched cards and line-printed printout. Working with a computer in real-time was something I had not done much of. And computer games had been limited to blackjack on an ancient Bendix G-15 and the "Switch 2" game on an IBM 1620. Plus. this was a game based on Star Trek! Heady stuff for a lifelong sf freak.
I didn't get the opportunity to actually play that day, but sometime in '75, I got the opportunity. By that time, I was working for the (still unnamed) aerospace company I told you about before. By this time, I had access to the company timeshare system. Someone pointed me to the strek program available from someone else's account, and I played, again on the Silent 700. strek was really a line at a time, turn-based program. Each command you gave led to 2 "starminutes" advancing. You didn't have to move with each turn. You set a course, and it would come about to that course and travel based on the starminutes elapsed. You didn't get to see where you (or your enemies) were without issuing a short range scan or a short range track (each of which took up time). I ended up wasting a lot of thermal paper until I found some dumb CRT terminals. At some point I actually got my hands on the FORTRAN (!) source, and I made some changes to improve things a bit. I still have a printout of that source.
A couple of years later, probably in late 1976 or early 1977, our department got an HP 9825 "computing controller". These great little computers were designed to control HP test equipment. They did that task well, and I even wrote some test set software using them. Our department also used them for design and analyses programs, having successfully used their predecessor, the HP 9810, for those purposes. I was the one who did most of the translation of those programs.
The HP 9825 used an unusual programming language invented by HP that they called HPL (which they insisted stood for High Performance Language. HPL had a syntax reminiscent of APL (though not as rich), a basic structure like BASIC and subroutines with variable scope, like FORTRAN. I became pretty proficient, and decided to try to port strek over to the 9825. I was successful, and more thermal paper was sacrificed through the optional line printer on the 9825. I also used the 1 line LED display and other UI capabilities of the 9825. At some point, I got my hands on a CRT terminal (Hazeltine, I think) and figured out how to interface it to the 9825. At this point trek became continuous time, with the short range scan auto-refreshing. My friend Eric Arikaki later ported it over to the 9825's successor, the 9826. It had a 5 inch diagonal screen, removing the need for both the thermal printer and the external CRT.
I thought about porting trek to the Apple II and the IBM PC, but in my opinion neither was capable for supporting trek the way I wanted to have it. I think Eric tried moving it to the PC with Turbo Pascal, but he wasn't happy with the results. I got my first Mac at home in 1986, a Mac Plus. I also found out about MacApp and Object Pascal. I got my hands on an early release of MPW, and started to work. With everything else that was going on, I didn't really have a completely working port until 1990. At the advice of someone, I realized that using Star Trek names and icons wasn't a very good idea, so I changed things, coming up with new names and images. the game trek never really fit into the Star Trek Universe particularly well, anyway, so I developed a back story in a more turbulent and dangerous time.
Anyway, I think I released Star Patrol 1.0 in 1991 or thereabouts. I made some improvements over the next few years, but major changes didn't come in until I began Star Patrol 2.0. The impetus for that was getting to PowerPC. Metrowerks was the only game in town for that, so I had to port to C++ and PowerPlant. I changed from a multi-window approach to a unified window. I also added color, sound, music and speech. I can't remember when I released that. In 2002, someone registered the program, and asked me to fix a bug, which I did. That was 2.0.2, and was the last revision of Star Patrol.
Which brings me to my dilemma. Should I port Star Patrol again, this time to Cocoa and Objective C, or let it die? In today's environment of games, it is as far behind as the original trek was behind it. I would like to make some specific improvements, but I don't know if it is worthwhile. It would be a lot of work, and I don't think I would be paid well for it. Shareware is a nice idea which doesn't really work. When Codewarrior 10 came out a couple of weeks ago, I thought I might be abel to do a quick OS X port and leave it there without my improvement ideas, but I ran into some major problems and time is running out on the demo. I could pay Metrowerks the reasonable $99 for the full copy, but again, I don't think I'd make my money back.
Of course, another option is to release it to Open Source, and let what happens to it, happen. But I would purely hate it if after all the work I have put into this, and not having received a lot of money for it, someone else took the app and made a pile with it. Of maybe I misunderstand Open Source. Correct me in the comments.
So, what do you think? Should Star Patrol die? Should I buy CodeWarrior and do a minimal port to OS X? Should I go all out and port it to Cocoa? Release it to Open Source? Or do you have other ideas? Let me know in the comments.
To talk about the future of Star Patrol, I suppose I should summarize its past. For me it begins in early 1974 (though I suppose it really goes back before that). I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois, and I was at a friend's house working on armor for the Society for Creative Anachronism. We took a break at some point and went next door to where another student was playing trek on a TI Silent 700 terminal. The game (as well as the terminal, printing along at a blistering 300 baud) would be laughably archaic to today's game players. But to me it was electrifying. Up till that time, my connection to computers was through punched cards and line-printed printout. Working with a computer in real-time was something I had not done much of. And computer games had been limited to blackjack on an ancient Bendix G-15 and the "Switch 2" game on an IBM 1620. Plus. this was a game based on Star Trek! Heady stuff for a lifelong sf freak.
I didn't get the opportunity to actually play that day, but sometime in '75, I got the opportunity. By that time, I was working for the (still unnamed) aerospace company I told you about before. By this time, I had access to the company timeshare system. Someone pointed me to the strek program available from someone else's account, and I played, again on the Silent 700. strek was really a line at a time, turn-based program. Each command you gave led to 2 "starminutes" advancing. You didn't have to move with each turn. You set a course, and it would come about to that course and travel based on the starminutes elapsed. You didn't get to see where you (or your enemies) were without issuing a short range scan or a short range track (each of which took up time). I ended up wasting a lot of thermal paper until I found some dumb CRT terminals. At some point I actually got my hands on the FORTRAN (!) source, and I made some changes to improve things a bit. I still have a printout of that source.
A couple of years later, probably in late 1976 or early 1977, our department got an HP 9825 "computing controller". These great little computers were designed to control HP test equipment. They did that task well, and I even wrote some test set software using them. Our department also used them for design and analyses programs, having successfully used their predecessor, the HP 9810, for those purposes. I was the one who did most of the translation of those programs.
The HP 9825 used an unusual programming language invented by HP that they called HPL (which they insisted stood for High Performance Language. HPL had a syntax reminiscent of APL (though not as rich), a basic structure like BASIC and subroutines with variable scope, like FORTRAN. I became pretty proficient, and decided to try to port strek over to the 9825. I was successful, and more thermal paper was sacrificed through the optional line printer on the 9825. I also used the 1 line LED display and other UI capabilities of the 9825. At some point, I got my hands on a CRT terminal (Hazeltine, I think) and figured out how to interface it to the 9825. At this point trek became continuous time, with the short range scan auto-refreshing. My friend Eric Arikaki later ported it over to the 9825's successor, the 9826. It had a 5 inch diagonal screen, removing the need for both the thermal printer and the external CRT.
I thought about porting trek to the Apple II and the IBM PC, but in my opinion neither was capable for supporting trek the way I wanted to have it. I think Eric tried moving it to the PC with Turbo Pascal, but he wasn't happy with the results. I got my first Mac at home in 1986, a Mac Plus. I also found out about MacApp and Object Pascal. I got my hands on an early release of MPW, and started to work. With everything else that was going on, I didn't really have a completely working port until 1990. At the advice of someone, I realized that using Star Trek names and icons wasn't a very good idea, so I changed things, coming up with new names and images. the game trek never really fit into the Star Trek Universe particularly well, anyway, so I developed a back story in a more turbulent and dangerous time.
Anyway, I think I released Star Patrol 1.0 in 1991 or thereabouts. I made some improvements over the next few years, but major changes didn't come in until I began Star Patrol 2.0. The impetus for that was getting to PowerPC. Metrowerks was the only game in town for that, so I had to port to C++ and PowerPlant. I changed from a multi-window approach to a unified window. I also added color, sound, music and speech. I can't remember when I released that. In 2002, someone registered the program, and asked me to fix a bug, which I did. That was 2.0.2, and was the last revision of Star Patrol.
Which brings me to my dilemma. Should I port Star Patrol again, this time to Cocoa and Objective C, or let it die? In today's environment of games, it is as far behind as the original trek was behind it. I would like to make some specific improvements, but I don't know if it is worthwhile. It would be a lot of work, and I don't think I would be paid well for it. Shareware is a nice idea which doesn't really work. When Codewarrior 10 came out a couple of weeks ago, I thought I might be abel to do a quick OS X port and leave it there without my improvement ideas, but I ran into some major problems and time is running out on the demo. I could pay Metrowerks the reasonable $99 for the full copy, but again, I don't think I'd make my money back.
Of course, another option is to release it to Open Source, and let what happens to it, happen. But I would purely hate it if after all the work I have put into this, and not having received a lot of money for it, someone else took the app and made a pile with it. Of maybe I misunderstand Open Source. Correct me in the comments.
So, what do you think? Should Star Patrol die? Should I buy CodeWarrior and do a minimal port to OS X? Should I go all out and port it to Cocoa? Release it to Open Source? Or do you have other ideas? Let me know in the comments.
Posted: Sat - November 12, 2005 at 12:57 PM
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Published On: Jun 10, 2006 05:40 PM
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Published On: Jun 10, 2006 05:40 PM