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Re: History question, Ken Simms and Star Trek

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On Feb 9, 2:15 pm, dawn <dawnwolth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I see that Ken Simms is not mentioned on this page as a developer of
> the Star Trek game, and this indicates that someone named Mike
> Mayfield developed it in BASIC in 1971. Is it the case that Ken Simms
> implemented someone else's game or did he create something with no
> knowledge of the existing BASIC Star Trek game, or is the wiki info
> incorrect? My prior understanding was that he was the original
> developer of the text-based star trek game (like the one I played on a
> Pr1me in 1977 or 78).
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_games
>
> Does anyone have more info on this? Thanks.  --dawn

Dawn:

Does this snippet help?   I found it at :  http://www.pickwiki.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?KenSimms

This article seems to imply that he worked "around" Star Trek, but did
not develop it.

********************************
(The rumor that I wrote Pick/BASIC in order to be able to play 'Star
Trek` is not true. However, I did play a lot of (Star Trek) while
developing the language. I needed to test the product, didn`t I?) So
said Ken Simms in his introduction to Jon Sisk`s Pick/BASIC - A
Programmer`s Guide, published by TAB Books in 1987.

The( Star Trek) story is the apocryphal version of how Pick/BASIC was
originally written. If you ask a dozen people just how Ken got started
on writing BASIC, you will get a dozen different answers. One version
of this story had Dick Pick wandering into Ken`s office to see him
hard at work on a new project. When asked what he was doing, Ken
replied (Writing a 'Star Trek` game in Assembler.) Dick responded with
(Why don`t you write it in BASIC?) When Ken remarked that no such
language existed for Pick, Dick is said to have replied, (So?) Three
weeks later, so the story goes, Pick had a new BASIC compiler and
language.

Other sources have remarked that Ken was very involved in the gaming
concept of (Star Trek) well before Pick. Sometime in 1970-71, Ken
developed an electronic black box: a combination of switches, relays
and lights that was a logical representation of the (Star Trek)
universe. The creation of this computer game-playing machine predates
Nolan Bushnell`s invention of PONG, which was first installed at a now
defunct bar called Andy Capp`s in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Did he write BASIC just to play a game? Simms is also rumored to have
written versions of (Star Trek) for almost any machine to which he had
access. It seemed to him to be a valuable use of system resources. If
indeed he was in the process of writing the game in Assembler, then
writing BASIC was unnecessary. Part of what went on around him
influenced the development of the language.

********************************************


Jim Cronin

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History question, Ken Simms and Star Trek dawn <dawnwolthuis@gmail.com> - 2011-02-09 11:15 -0800
  Re: History question, Ken Simms and Star Trek JJCSR <JCronin@ktp.com> - 2011-02-09 12:41 -0800
    Re: History question, Ken Simms and Star Trek dawn <dawnwolthuis@gmail.com> - 2011-02-09 15:16 -0800

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