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So I was looking for the origins of video games that I like. It came down to crawlers and arpgs in 90s, text adventures in the 80s, and then to games written in TUTOR for the PLATO system.FETSORN
there were some languages based on TUTOR - cT, vPython, GlowScriptFETSORN
But it's easy enough to run an emulator of a PLATO system and work with TUTOR directlyFETSORN
VERY IMPORTANT! This is the "The TUTOR language" book that has everything on the languageFETSORN
Early on I found a user guide that seemed outdated, and a wikiFETSORN
There's a cyber1 service that runs a PLATO CYBIS network. There's also IRATA networkFETSORN
I looked for a way to run my own CYBIS. Some failed attempts: platoterm99, platoterm-plan9.FETSORN
after failures I tried to figure out which emulators I would actually need to assemble the network myself.FETSORN
StackExchange: Did communication between a PLATO terminal and mainframe use pushes?.FETSORN
Bradrico Rigg: Run your own mainframe using Hercules mainframe emulator and MVS 3.8j tk4.FETSORN
IBM: What is a Mainframe Simulator.FETSORN
CppCyber: Desktop Cyber with Dual Mainframe/Dual CPU supportFETSORN
I looked for "plato mainframe cybis" on Reddit, and found that people mainly used cyber1, or tried to.FETSORN
Forums led me to broken links for some of the parts of the system I would need to emulate. A CybisRelease.zip, a DtCYBER.binaries.zip, pterm.FETSORN
I just had to find a fresh website with links to latest releases of these, so I searched "download cybisrelease1.zip"FETSORN
And found the control data groupFETSORN
They linked to CODEX website which had all the latest releasesFETSORN
They also had some useful manuals with instructions on how to load these emulator utilitiesFETSORN
I had trouble running DtCyber on MacOS - it couldn't link libX11. First I looked for another distribution of Desktop CyberFETSORN
Then installed libx11 in a nix shell and failed to run dtcyber.FETSORN
Then I searched for "macos libx11", stackoverflow advised to install XQuartz. I remember using it a while back for wine, I think.FETSORN
I installed it and the dtcyber script worked.FETSORN
Then it was just like the in the CYBIS usage manual. You run dtcyber, install PLATO from the images, and login to CYBIS with an author account.
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I reached the PLATO screen with lessons.
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The manual said that f9 and f10 are DATA and STOP buttons,
so I figured that f8 is BACK and f6 is HELP, or something like that
From there I went to read various HELP screens on my own.
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The CYBIS manual mentioned that there were two TUTOR lessons for study mytut1 and mytut2.
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I learned to edit them, debugged errors.
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Turned out that first 8 characters of each line were a command, and values had to be indented further.
Turned out that editing was akin to sed, you had to write i9 to edit 9th line.
This was also the time to return to "The TUTOR language" textbook to look for some code examples.
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And eventually I put a "HELLO WORLD" on the screen.
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At this point I started wondering if TUTOR is Turing completeFETSORN
And also of course - if I can edit tutor code as a text file
And also I couldn't find the dnd or pedit game in the PLATO system, other games were shipped.
