My trick for successful landing the CDC Cyber/6000 series lunar lander version was to set the initial height above the moon's surface to the minimum height of 1' and then let it drop. I never successful landed from the default height above the surface. It was seriously difficult.
On Tue, 29 Aug 2023, 5:06 am Paul Koning via cctalk, <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > On Aug 28, 2023, at 4:55 PM, Will Cooke via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > > > > >> On 08/28/2023 3:48 PM CDT Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> > wrote: > >> > >> Lander, in FOCAL? The only one I know is for the GT40, in assembler. > >> > >> paul > > > > Apparently the original version was in FOCAL. > > https://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~storer/LunarLander/LunarLander.html > > > > Will > > Interesting. And amazingly short. > > I flipped through some of those articles. There's a version from around > those early times not mentioned, for the CDC 6000 mainframe computer. It > used the console display, dual green text displays that could also do > graphics (clumsily, because the API was a dot drawing one, not line > vectors). > > What's unusual about that one is that it's a pilot's point of view display > -- it shows you the lander's instruments and a view out the windows, rather > than an outside observer view as the GT40 version does. I played it a few > times, it was hard -- I never managed to land it. One of the system staff > (at University of Illinois PLATO project) was rumored to have a fast way to > land: flip upside down, blast rockets, flip right side up, blast some more > for a soft landing. > > paul > >
