Episode 3: Rocketry — Or, Fly Me to the Moon Stars
In 1971, there was still a realistic, while rather exclusive, chance to go to the Moon. Not so today. — Therefor we humbly head for the stars, in stead. What will we need for this? A rocket, in the first place.
Maybe the most important part of Computer Space — and maybe every video game that is not rendering a first person perspective — is the player's representation on the screen. In the case of Computer Space it's a rocket-like spaceship. Famously, the layout of the rocket is traced out on the PCB generating the moving objects (the memory board), and so it is in the schematics.
There are 4 discrete positional layouts to represent the ship at any of 4 angles in half a quadrant:
A closer inspection reveals that there's no straight angle in this. Rather, the ship is always slightly at an angle and even a little skewed. While pratically this may have saved the circuitry required for another position, on the screen we enjoy the impression of the ship always drifting a bit, which adds much to the charms of the game.
As we already noted in our platform considerations, we won't be able to reproduce this on the PDP-1, because of the afterglow of the Type 30 CRT Display and the need for a rather seamless motion arising from this. Just rotating the ship as sketched in the schematics to a straight angle won't do, since then we'd still lack a symmetric outline. After some tinkering, we eventuall arrive at a representation that is close in features to the average outline and also matches the dots to some unit grid.
And here are the coordinates (top down), the respective differantials, and the differential offsets as sums of the discrete values 1, 2, and 4 (we'll see soon why):
x, y diff. components 0, 0 0, 0 0, 0 3, 3 3, 3 2+1, 2+1 7, 5 4, 2 4, 2 11, 6 4, 1 4, 1 15, 5 4, -1 4, -1 20, 9 5, 4 4+1, 4 22, 3 2, -6 2, -4-2 26, 6 4, 4 4, 4
The way to seamlessly rotate an outline, as pioneered by Steve Russell and Spacewar!, is to calculate the unit vector (sine/cosine) of the rotational angle, scale it to the unit of choice and have a drawing routine that advances form bow to stern and displays each of the dots that are making up the outline. Since our outline is symmetric, we just encode one side, adjust some of the components of our matrix and repeat for a second pass to generate the other side of the shape.
Spacewar! features configurable outlines (encoding 5 leteral and/or downwards movements, a code to alternately store and restore the drawing position — think of fins —, and one to mark the end of the outline-encoding). First, this codes had been interpreted, but soon Dan Edwards came up with an ingenious out-line compiler (one of the first JIT compilers in history) that gave the program a decisive boost in runtime, freeing the computational resources for gravity calculations while maintaining a flickerfree display. (See "Inside Spacewar!", Part 4 for details.)
The product of this outline compiler is a procedural sprite — and this is also, what we're going for. Since we're not interested in configurable sprites, we'll directly code it by hand. And this is, how we move around in our grid:
direction y x sternwards - cos + sin outwards + sin* + cos* inwards - sin* - cos* *) sin* and cos* complemented for second, mirrored pass.
Having a look at our differential offsets, we observe all sorts of values from 1 to 6 in our table. As a compromise in costs of setting up the values and costs in repeated calculations, we settle for the three most frequent offsets that may also be used to produce the other ones: 1, 2, and 4. (Coincidentally, these are also powers of 2!)
But, first we need a sine-cosine routine. As did Steve Russell and Spacewar!:
« Russell, never one to "do something" when there was an alternative, begged off for one reason or another. One of the excuses for not doing it, Slug [Steve Russell; N.L.] remembers, was "Oh, we don't have a sine-cosine routine and gee, I don't know how to write a sine-cosine routine..." Then Alan Kotok came back from a trip all the way to Maynard (DEC headquarters) with paper tapes saying "All right, Russell, here's a sine-cosine routine; now what's your excuse?"
"Well," says Slug, "I looked around and I didn't find an excuse, so I had to settle down and do some figuring. »
(J. M. Graetz, "The Origin of Spacewar"; Creative Computing, August 1981)
The sine-cosine in question originated at Adams Associates, Inc. (DEC Preliminary Memo M-1094, 22 Nov 1960) and approximates its results by the well known Taylor series:
x3 x5 x7 sin(x) = x - ––– + ––– - ––– 3! 5! 7! = C1x + C3x3 + C5x5 + C7x7 = ((((C7)x2 + C5)x2 + C3)x2 + C1)x
(See here for all the nasty details.)
The routine accepts radiants as input (0...+2π), where the fractional point is considered to be right after bit 3 (sign, 3 integer bits, 14 fractional bits; 2π = octal 311040
). By this we've a general format for any angles, we're going to deal with.
The other internal format, we'll use, is for any positional values. Here we'll use a fixed point format derived from the display command, consisting of a sign, 9 integer bits and 8 fractional bits. The origin of the Type 30 CRT is in the center, stretching in x-direction to the left to -511 and to the right to + 511, positive y is up and negative y is down (apparently, -0/-0, is just left and below of 0/0):
+511 -511 0/0 +511 -511
Thanks to this system "toroidal space" (meaning, the ship will reappear at the opposite side, as it disappears at any of the borders) is handled automatically by overflow/run-around and we don't have to care for it. — Life can be simple, at times.
Now we're ready to layout a plan for a rocket routine:
- Read inputs (and merge two player inputs into a single one).
- Parse and apply rotation (update thew rotational angle).
- Get the unit vector (sine, cosine).
- Get scaled versions of the unit vector representing 1, 2, and 4 steps for the display routine.
- Put it on the screen.
- Finally, we'll add a consant delta x and delta y to have the rocket floating across the screen.
And this is what we eventually get:
Player Input
We've already addressed our plan of repurposing input methods for the PDP-1 already in place thanks to Spacewar! Let's have a closer look.
Our favorite method of input is, of course, the first gamepads to be attached to a computer ever, MIT's original "control boxes". (For the purpose of the restored PDP-1 at the CHM they have been surrogated by a more audiences-proof solution involving arcade buttons and a layout similar to "Space Duel".)
The other input method is the testword, an array of console switches to set up an 18-bit register.
Whatever device we're using, the signal for any of the player controls is encoded as follows:
bits: 0 1 2' 3 4 5' 6 7 8' 9 10 11'12 13 14'15 16 17 usage: -PLAYER 1- -PLAYER 2- semantics: L R T F L R T F
For our purpose we have to take care of two issues here: a) selecting the input method of choice, and b) mixing the player inputs into a single one to be used by the game (so it doesn't make a difference which one of the two player inputs is supplied).
For chosing the input method, we go with the proven method used by Spacewar!, a double start address. The usual one at 4
will configure the game for the control boxes, an alternate one at 5
for use with the testword switches:
3/ jmp sbf / ignore seq. break jmp a0 / start addr, use control boxes jmp a1 / alt. start addr, use testword controls /... /here from start a0, law rcb / configure to read control boxes (sa 4) dap rcw jmp a2 a1, law rtw / configure to read testword (sa 5) dap rcw /start a new run a2, jsp bsi / start of main /... rcw, jsp . / read player input /... /control word get routines /read control boxes rcb, dap rcx cli iot 11 rcx, jmp . /read testword rtw, dap rtx lat swap rtx, jmp .
For the control boxes, we use instruction "iot 11
", mixing the new input with the contents of IO. (Therefor we'll have to clear the IO register by "cli
" before.)
For the testword controls, instruction "lat
" transfers the current state of the switches into AC. We normalize this method by transferring this into IO by a swap.
The location of the chosen subroutine is put into the address part of the "jsr
" to read the input, either by the path from start address 4
over label "a0
", or by start address "5
" and the code at label "a1
". (Label "a2
" marks our old start of the main routine.)
Now that we've managed the input sources, we'll have to merge the two possible player inputs. We prefer to have the result in the highest 4 bits (so that we may apply simple checks for the sign to inspect the bit in msb-position).
rcw, jsp . /read control word cla / clear ac dio \cw / store io in variable \cw rcr 4s / rotate lowest 4 bits of io into ac ior \cw / inclusive or \cw dac \cw / deposit merged inputs in \cw swap / put it into IO
By this we've the merged input stored in variable \cw
and (after the final swap) in the IO-register. To parse the sign-bit in IO, the instruction "spi
" (skip on IO positive) is exactly what we want. Let's parse and process rotations:
Rotating the Ship
lac \rth /load angle spi /sign cleared in io? add raa /no, add angular acceleration (ccw) ril 1s /next bit spi sub raa /rotate clockwise /game parameters raa, 2000 / rocket angular acceleration
After normalizing our angle (0 .. 2π) we calculate the sine cosine and store them in variables "\sn
" and "\cs
":
sma /normalize 0 >= angle >= 2Pi (311040) sub (311040 spa add (311040 dac \rth /update angle jda sin /get sin, store it in \sn dac \sn lac \rth jda cos /get cos, store it in \cs dac \cs
There are some new instructions: "sma
" skips on minus AC (sign-bit set), "spa
" is the opposite, skipping on a piositive contents of AC, and finally, instruction "jda
" is a jump to subroutine that puts the contents of AC into the given address and jumps, quite like a normal jsr
, to the location immediatly after this. Here, jda
is used to transfer our angle (\rth
) as the input to the sine and cosine routines.
This code is much like the one we find in Spacewar!. The beauty of this is that we're following a single path, regardless of the input. We may skip a single addition or subtraction, but all the time consuming processing is done in any case. (Since we do not have a clock, we would have to count instructions and spend them in a delay loop, otherwise.)
Now we've to introduce another macro, "scale
". This is as simple as loading the contents of an address, shifting it right by given number of bit-positions and storing it in another address. We'll use it here mainly for its expressive qualities. As soon as we're seeing this, we know that it's about scaling a value.
define scale A,B,C lac A sar B dac C term
Also, we add a two common definitions to the head of our code:
mul=mus div=dis
These are defining symbols for mnemonics that are not defined in Macro out of the box, concerning the hardware multiply/divide. Early machine came just with a special shift instruction for a partial multiplication step (mus
) or division step (dis
). While the hardware multiply/divide option repurposes the opcodes of the earlier, partial instructions, new mnemonics are used to mark the difference.
What's missing? Updating the spaceship.
Position and Graphics
Since our drawing routine starts at the tip of the rocket, we must get ahead of the center of our ship (as in "\rpx
" and "\rpy
"). To do so, we apply a scaled version of the unit vector. While we have to handle the ship position anyway, we may also update this one by adding a constant delta x and delta y in order to let the ship float accross the screen.
Finally, we compose the components for our drawing routine, also scaled versions of the unit vector. With these in place, we call the drawing routine at label "rdo
": First we draw a the dot at the stern, then we draw one of the sides in a first pass, invert the lateral offset components and redo with a second pass for the other side. As we're, again, sure to spend at least 50 microseconds between any two display commands, we may go with the fire and forget varsion dpy-i
.
And here is the complete code, so far:
ironic computer space 0.02 nl 2016-10-14 mul=mus div=dis define initialize A,B law B dap A term define index A,B,C idx A sas B jmp C term define swap rcl 9s rcl 9s term define load A,B lio (B dio A term define setup A,B law i B dac A term define count A,B isp A jmp B term /macros specific to the program define scale A,B,C lac A sar B dac C term define random lac ran rar 1s xor (355671 add (355671 dac ran term 3/ jmp sbf / ignore seq. break jmp a0 / start addr, use control boxes jmp a1 / alt. start addr, use testword controls /game parameters raa, 2000 / rocket angular acceleration ran, 0 / random number /routine to flush sequence breaks, if they occur. sbf, tyi lio 2 lac 0 lsm jmp i 1 /subroutines for background display nos=77 /number of stars /table of stars coors (nos words, 9 bits x and 9 bits y) bst, . nos/ /setup (nos random coors starting at bst) bsi, dap bsx / deposit return address init bsc, bst / deposit first addr of bst in bsc bsl, random / get a new random number bsc, dac . / store it in current loc of st index bsc, (dac bst+nos, bsl / increment bsl, repeat at bgl for nos times bsx, jmp . / return /display background stars (displays every 2nd frame only) bg, dap bgx / deposit return address isp bgc / increment bgc, skip on positive bgx, jmp . / return law i 2 / load -2 into ac dac bgc / deposit in bgc to reset frame counter init bgl, bst / init bgl to first addr of stars table bgl, lac . / get coors of next star (x/y) cli / clear io scr 9s / shift low 9 bits in high 9 bits of io (x) sal 9s / move remaining 9 bits in ac in high part (y) add bgv / add vertical offset swap / swap contents of ac and io add bgh / add horizontal offset dpy-i / display a dot at coors in ac (x) and io (y) index bgl, (lac bst+nos, bgl / repeat the loop at bgl nos times jmp bgx / return bgc, 0 bgh, 0 bgv, 0 /sine-cosine subroutine_ Adams associates /calling sequence= number in AC, jda sin or jdacos. /argument is between .+2 pi, with binary point to right of bit 3. /answer has binary point to right of bit 0. Time = 2.35-? ms. /changed for auto-multiply , ddp 1/19/63 cos, 0 dap csx lac (62210 add cos dac sin jmp .+4 sin, 0 dap csx lac sin spa si1, add (311040 sub (62210 sma jmp si2 add (62210 si3, ral 2s mul (242763 dac sin mul sin dac cos mul (756103 add (121312 mul cos add (532511 mul cos add (144417 mul sin scl 3s dac cos xor sin sma jmp csx-1 lac (377777 lio sin spi cma jmp csx lac cos csx, jmp . si2, cma add (62210 sma jmp si3 add (62210 spa jmp .+3 sub (62210 jmp si3 sub (62210 jmp si1 /here from start a0, law rcb /configure to read control boxes (sa 4) dap rcw jmp a2 a1, law rtw /configure to read testword (sa 5) dap rcw /start a new run a2, jsp bsi / initial setup of bg-stars dzm bgh / reset offsets of stars to zero dzm bgv /rocket reset ar, dzm \rth / rotational angle lac (-140000 dac \rpx / pos x cma dac \rpy / pos y lac (1000 dac \rdx / dx lac (-400 dac \rdy / dy /main loop fr0, load \ict, -4500 / initial instruction budget (delay) jsp bg / display background jsp rkt / rocket routine count \ict, . / use up rest of time of main loop jmp fr0 / next frame /player rocket routine rkt, dap rkx rcw, jsp . /read control word cla /merge (or) spacewar player inputs dio \cw / highest and lowest 4 bits in io rcr 4s / (rotate ccw, rotate cw, trust, fire) ior \cw / store them in high pos of \cw dac \cw swap /parse and process rotation lac \rth /load angle spi /sign cleared in io? add raa /no, add angular acceleration ril 1s /next bit spi sub raa sma /normalize 0 >= angle >= 2Pi (311040) sub (311040 spa add (311040 dac \rth /update angle jda sin /get sin, store it in \sn dac \sn lac \rth jda cos /get cos, store it in \cs dac \cs scale \sn, 5s, \sn1 /get position of rocket tip scale \cs, 5s, \cn1 lac \rpx add \rdx dac \rpx sub \sn1 dac \px lac \rpy add \rdy dac \rpy add \cn1 dac \py scale \sn, 6s, \sn4 /scaled sine 4 steps dac \sm4 sar 1s dac \sn2 /scaled sine 2 steps dac \sm2 sar 1s /scaled sine single step dac \sn1 dac \sm1 scale \cs, 6s, \cn4 /same for cosine dac \cm4 sar 1s dac \cn2 dac \cm2 sar 1s dac \cn1 dac \cm1 jsp rod /display it lac \ict /update instruction count add (1000 dac \ict rkx, jmp . /control word get routines /read control boxes rcb, dap rcx cli iot 11 rcx, jmp . /read testword rtw, dap rtx lat swap rtx, jmp . /rocket display / step rearwards - x add \sn1, y sub \cn1 / step outwards - x add \cm1, y add \sm1 / step inwards - x sub \cm1, y sub \sm1 rod, dap rox stf 6 /set flag 6 lac px lio py dpy-i rop, swap /y +3, x +3 sub \cn2 sub \cn1 add \sm2 add \sm1 swap add \sn2 add \sn1 add \cm2 add \cm1 dpy-i swap /y +4, x +2 sub \cn4 add \sm2 swap add \sn4 add \cm2 dpy-i swap /y +4, x +1 sub \cn4 add \sm1 swap add \sn4 add \cm1 dpy-i swap /y +4, x -1 sub \cn4 sub \sm1 swap add \sn4 sub \cm1 dpy-i swap /y +5, x +4 sub \cn4 sub \cn1 add \sm4 swap add \sn4 add \sn1 add \cm4 dpy-i swap /y +2, x-6 sub \cn2 sub \sm4 sub \sm2 swap add \sn2 sub \cm4 sub \cm2 dpy-i swap /y +4, x+4 sub \cn4 add \sm4 swap add \sn4 add \cm4 dpy-i szf i 6 /flag 6 set? (skip on not zero) rox, jmp . /no, return clf 6 /clear flag 6 lac \cm1 /invert unit vector components cma dac \cm1 lac \sm1 cma dac \sm1 lac \cm2 cma dac \cm2 lac \sm2 cma dac \sm2 lac \cm4 cma dac \cm4 lac \sm4 cma dac \sm4 lac px /load first pos lio py jmp rop /second pass for other side constants variables start 4
Note: The amount used to update the instruction count is completely arbitrary.
And in case, we didn't have this before: Instruction "cma
" complements the value in the accumulator.
Thanks to the gods of wires and transistors, almost everything worked out of the box. That's especially nice, because I stripped any debugging from the emulator long ago, since it was original meant to run authentic, historical programs.
That is, with one exception: The spaceship was rotating constantly. I stared at the input instructions, I stared at the code for parsing the inputs — nothing of notice here, and still… Let's comment something out, — and still…
Finally, I found, I had used a "dac
" for a "dap
" where the address of the control word get routine of choice is inserted into the instruction at label "rcw
", thus rather owerwriting the whole instruction word instead of fixing up the address part only. — The dangers and perils of self-modifying program code!
Anyway, see the code live in action: ▶ www.masswerk.at/icss/.
*****
P.S.: An Interesting Find
While tinkering around, I remebered that an early version of Spacewar! (2B) was using a slighly different constant to modify the random seed, namely 355671
instead of the constant 355670
, we're finding in later versions. And using this one, we get a much nicer starfield, even reminding of some constellations! I've always been wondering, why the random number was changed at all. Coincidentially, Spacewar! started with a random starfield, too, before Peter Samson added his realisticly moving starfield, the Expensive Planetarium. Maybe, the earlier version of the constant was specially crafted for the purpose of the starfield, while exposing properties that where not that ideal for features that became more important later on, like the particle effect of the explosions.
That's all for this post.
▶ Next: Episode 4: “A Rocket Ship That You Control”
◀ Previous: Episode 2: Stars & Sync
▲ Back to the index.
2016-10-15, Vienna, Austria
www.masswerk.at – contact me.
— This series is part of Retrochallenge 2016/10. —