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Artillery game
Artillery games are two- or three-player (usually turn-based) video games involving cannons trying to destroy each other. The core mechanics of the gameplay is almost always to aim at the opponent(s) following a ballistic trajectory (in its simplest form, a parabolic curve). Artillery games are among the earliest computer games developed; the theme of such games is an extension of the original uses of computer themselves, which were once used to calculate the trajectories of rockets and other related military-based calculations.[citation needed] Artillery games have been described as a type of "shooting game", though they are more often classified as a type of strategy video game.[by whom?]
Early precursors to the modern artillery-type games were text-only games that simulated artillery entirely with input data values. One of the earliest known games in the genre is War 3 for two or three players, written in FOCAL Mod V by Mike Forman (date unknown), then ported to TSS/8 BASIC IV by M. E. Lyon Jr. in 1972, HP Time-Shared BASIC by Brian West in 1975, and then to a cross-platform subset of Microsoft BASIC by Creative Computing in 1979 for the book More BASIC Computer Games, where it appears with multiple names: Artillery-3, Artillery 3, and WAR3. Another early game is Gunner (1973) by Tom Kloos. These early versions of turn-based tank combat games interpreted human-entered data such as the distance between the tanks, the velocity or "power" of the shot fired, and the angle of the tanks' turrets.[citation needed]
Perhaps the first version with a visual display (plotter) is Potshot 1974 by Arthur Luehrmann (https://www.atariarchive.org/an-interview-with-arthur-luehrmann/)
The Tektronix 4051 BASIC language desktop computer of the mid-1970s had a demo program called Artillery which used a storage-CRT for graphics. A similar program appeared on the HP 2647 graphics terminal demo tape in the late 1970s.[citation needed]
In 1979, Atari, Inc. released Human Cannonball for the Atari Video Computer System. It replaces the military theme with a player attempting to launch a performer into a container of water by adjusting the angle and force of the cannon. The game is based on an unreleased arcade video game developed at Atari.
Graphical adaptions of the artillery game, such as Super Artillery and Artillery Simulator, emerged on the Apple II in 1980. These games built upon the earlier concepts of the artillery games published in Creative Computing but allowed the players to also see a simple graphical representation of the tanks, battlefield, and terrain. The Apple II games also took wind speed into account when calculating the path of the artillery. Some games used lines on the screen to show trajectories previous shots had taken, allowing players to use visual data when considering their next shot. Similar games were made for home computers such as the Commodore PET by 1981. In 1983, Amoeba Software published a game called Tank Trax, which was very soon picked up and re-released by the early Mastertronic Games Company. This was again the classic version of the Artillery Game, however, the player could change the height of the hill in between the players to either a mountain or a foothill (However this sometimes made no difference in the actual gameplay as some foothills were as high as mountains and some mountains were low enough to be considered foothills). The players also had the default names of General Patton and Monty.[citation needed]
Video game console variants of the artillery game soon emerged after the first graphical home computer versions. A two-player game called Smithereens! was released in 1982 for the Magnavox Odyssey2 console in which two catapults, each behind a castle fortress wall, launched rocks at each other. Although not turn-based, the game made use of the console's speech synthesis to emit sarcastic insults when one player fired at the other. Artillery Duel was written for the Bally Astrocade by Perkins Engineering and published by Bally in 1982. It was later released in 1983 for the Atari 2600, ColecoVision, Commodore 64 and VIC-20. The game has more elaborate background and terrain graphics as well as a simple graphical readout of wind speed and amount of munitions.
Several variants were written and published as type-in program listings in magazines as well as commercial games for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer through the 1980s, the earliest example possibly being "Tanx" by Pan Books Ltd (UK), published in 1983 in the book Sixty Programs for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.[citation needed]
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Artillery game AI simulator
(@Artillery game_simulator)
Artillery game
Artillery games are two- or three-player (usually turn-based) video games involving cannons trying to destroy each other. The core mechanics of the gameplay is almost always to aim at the opponent(s) following a ballistic trajectory (in its simplest form, a parabolic curve). Artillery games are among the earliest computer games developed; the theme of such games is an extension of the original uses of computer themselves, which were once used to calculate the trajectories of rockets and other related military-based calculations.[citation needed] Artillery games have been described as a type of "shooting game", though they are more often classified as a type of strategy video game.[by whom?]
Early precursors to the modern artillery-type games were text-only games that simulated artillery entirely with input data values. One of the earliest known games in the genre is War 3 for two or three players, written in FOCAL Mod V by Mike Forman (date unknown), then ported to TSS/8 BASIC IV by M. E. Lyon Jr. in 1972, HP Time-Shared BASIC by Brian West in 1975, and then to a cross-platform subset of Microsoft BASIC by Creative Computing in 1979 for the book More BASIC Computer Games, where it appears with multiple names: Artillery-3, Artillery 3, and WAR3. Another early game is Gunner (1973) by Tom Kloos. These early versions of turn-based tank combat games interpreted human-entered data such as the distance between the tanks, the velocity or "power" of the shot fired, and the angle of the tanks' turrets.[citation needed]
Perhaps the first version with a visual display (plotter) is Potshot 1974 by Arthur Luehrmann (https://www.atariarchive.org/an-interview-with-arthur-luehrmann/)
The Tektronix 4051 BASIC language desktop computer of the mid-1970s had a demo program called Artillery which used a storage-CRT for graphics. A similar program appeared on the HP 2647 graphics terminal demo tape in the late 1970s.[citation needed]
In 1979, Atari, Inc. released Human Cannonball for the Atari Video Computer System. It replaces the military theme with a player attempting to launch a performer into a container of water by adjusting the angle and force of the cannon. The game is based on an unreleased arcade video game developed at Atari.
Graphical adaptions of the artillery game, such as Super Artillery and Artillery Simulator, emerged on the Apple II in 1980. These games built upon the earlier concepts of the artillery games published in Creative Computing but allowed the players to also see a simple graphical representation of the tanks, battlefield, and terrain. The Apple II games also took wind speed into account when calculating the path of the artillery. Some games used lines on the screen to show trajectories previous shots had taken, allowing players to use visual data when considering their next shot. Similar games were made for home computers such as the Commodore PET by 1981. In 1983, Amoeba Software published a game called Tank Trax, which was very soon picked up and re-released by the early Mastertronic Games Company. This was again the classic version of the Artillery Game, however, the player could change the height of the hill in between the players to either a mountain or a foothill (However this sometimes made no difference in the actual gameplay as some foothills were as high as mountains and some mountains were low enough to be considered foothills). The players also had the default names of General Patton and Monty.[citation needed]
Video game console variants of the artillery game soon emerged after the first graphical home computer versions. A two-player game called Smithereens! was released in 1982 for the Magnavox Odyssey2 console in which two catapults, each behind a castle fortress wall, launched rocks at each other. Although not turn-based, the game made use of the console's speech synthesis to emit sarcastic insults when one player fired at the other. Artillery Duel was written for the Bally Astrocade by Perkins Engineering and published by Bally in 1982. It was later released in 1983 for the Atari 2600, ColecoVision, Commodore 64 and VIC-20. The game has more elaborate background and terrain graphics as well as a simple graphical readout of wind speed and amount of munitions.
Several variants were written and published as type-in program listings in magazines as well as commercial games for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer through the 1980s, the earliest example possibly being "Tanx" by Pan Books Ltd (UK), published in 1983 in the book Sixty Programs for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.[citation needed]