Refugees from other social media platforms, talking about games and geekery.
Walter Bright's original EMPIRE, *including PDP-10 implementation*, available online!
EMPIRE, Wargame of the Century (tm) index
A shrine dedicated to the original classic Empire wargame by Walter Bright
Now, this is the game I remember playing. I dunno what language he wrote the original in; it's in a ZIP file I can't download at the moment. But if it's FORTRAN, a really common language back then, it should be easy to translate to something more modern.
TOPS-10 assembler, on the other hand, not so much. And not 100% sure I'd want to play the original any more. 40 years old game? Might be better to let nostalgia lie.
But, EMPIRE!
The author, Walter Bright, wrote a 'C' compiler, Zorland-C, that we used at Symantec (later bought and renamed "Think C"). I met him at some Symantec thing once. Told him how much I loved the game.




Oh gawd I loved Empire to death on the Amiga.
Amiga-schmeega! Atari ST rules!! (One of the earliest system flame wars that I was a part of!!!)
And I'm just goofing, of course. I was in the Atari ST camp, but I've never even touched an Amiga so can't comment on them, though they had awesome demos!
I was working at Digital Research at the time, and we wrote the GEM O/S for the Atari ST, so I got into that pretty early. A programmer a couple offices down had an Amiga. He always was annoying about showing off the cool Amiga demos that the ST just couldn't match :P
My next job was at a place called Intuitive Technologies, a consulting firm that I worked at for awhile before Symantec. The owner, Mike Lehman, was a huge Amiga developer, so I finally got a chance to play with one! It was AWESOME. But by then I'd already sunk a lot of dough into Atari ST. Oh well.
We only had an Amiga 500, the all-in-one-but-no-HD system. I loved that thing. My friend had the Amiga 1000 which was more of a recognizable PC form factor.
I remember one day he and I tried to get a HD installed in that thing. We spent HOURS trying to figure it out...don't remember if we ever succeeded or not...
I ran a short-lived business on the Atari ST. Remember you could get a cheap laser printer for it, because the ST basically did all the computing whereas, at the time and maybe still, most laser printers would figure out how to print something on their own sortof, so they had to have a CPU onboard.
I used software called Calamus (http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-st-calamus_21873.html). That was back when "Word Processing" was a business opportunity. I did signs and menus and stuff. My biggest job was probably the program for an art exhibition. I did the layout but they sent it off to be printed.
I'm sure it was AWFUL since I can't design but back then you just needed the software.
Gasp I played that on Amiga too!