Back in the day we had Red Code, and then we had CRobots, and other games. These days people have not been idle. There are some very cool games out there that you actually play by writing code.

For this blog to have value I want to show you some examples of coding as the game in the past and then I'll launch into some great new opportunities to play with this.

My Past Interest in this Topic

I lived in a pretty remote rural location all of my adolescent life. I was a computer fanatic though. We were too far away to benefit from BBSes and the internet did not yet exist in the public. I didn't know any phone phreaks and in reality they would have been in their heyday. So I lived vicariously through magazine articles, books, and the occasional documentary. The rest came purely from me. I experimented on my own.

Well I do remember reading about Red Code. I believe it was in a Scientific American, or possibly Omni. My go to magazines back then were Scientific American, Popular Science, and Omni.

As I read about Red Code my mind was dancing around the movie Tron and unlike "regular" people us programmers could visualize vast adventures in our code. The concept of red code tapped into that.

Source: www.tron-sector.com

Red Code and Core Wars

Red Code is the programming language used in the game Core War.

Source: wikipedia.com

Core Wars was inspired by a self-replicating program called Creeper and subsequently by a program designed to kill it that came later called Reaper. In otherwords, a worm style program and a program designed to kill a worm.

The first description of the Redcode language was published in March 1984, in Core War Guidelines by D. G. Jones and A. K. Dewdney.[1] The game was introduced to the public in May 1984, in an article written by Dewdney in Scientific American. Dewdney revisited Core War in his "Computer Recreations" column in March 1985,[14] and again in January 1987.[15]

Which this research proves that it was likely in **Scientific American** when I firs discovered the concept of Core Wars. I would have been 14 years old when the article was published, though I am certain I didn't encounter it until a couple of years later.

This may not seem that exciting by today's standards but that was extremely interesting to Geeks and Nerds like me. :)

I didn't have their code, but I do remember making my own languages and versions of something like this on the Commodore 64. Later in College (early 90s) I was teaching other students some concepts of coding, hacking, etc and I resurrected this concept and I had a combat program style game I made on the VAX/VMS system called ICE. That worked and looked a lot like Core Wars and was again my own language. Interestingly enough I have NEVER actually used Core Wars, and I have never written a line of Red Code.

C-Robots inspired by RobotWars

The one I got into the most that is similar though and infant to some other styles coming out today is C-Robots. The goal was to have an arena with two robots in it. Each robot would be driven by code written in a subset of the C Programming language. The robots would battle until one died or a certain amount of time had passed. this involved them driving around the arena, repairing, scanning for enemies, etc. All of these things took time. The wider your scan the more time it took. Could you program the AI brain of a robot such that it was a killing machine with the quickest and most efficient code you could write. This was a lot more visually appealing to watch than Core Wars. There are similar games that came out in other languages such as Pascal.

I had this game on my Commodore Amiga 2000. Man I loved that machine.

The following screens I prefer to block quotes are taken from the wikipedia page here.



Source: crobots.deepthought.it

In tripping down nostalgia lane I have stumbled upon variants of a game like this I haven't tried. I want to show a few screenshots from some of them. Perhaps some of you might investigate. I very well may myself.
Grobots

Source: grobots.sourceforge.net
AT-Robots v2

Source: necrobones.com
P-Robots - Pascal version :)

Source: corewar.co.uk
APOCALYX - GUN-TACTYX - Programming Game

Source: apocalyx.sourceforge.net

Time Moves Forward

Those are two nostalgic titles. They influenced me and it is clear they influenced other people. This is not the end of this movement though. It is very active in games today. In fact, it was seeing numerous new games that are in this genre and style that inspired me to write this blog post. This genre is the genre of games where programming IS the game. How visually pleasing and rewarding the outcome of your programming can make the game that much more appealing. They can also be a gateway drug for teaching people more complex programming concepts.

Code Wars

This is not the fanciest, but it does have competitions between universities.

You can visit the sign up page here.

This makes it almost e-sport like.

TIS-100

This is one in my Steam wishlist at the moment. I have not tried it out. It is another of those interesting coding games. The Assembly Language Game That Nobody Asked For

Duskers

This is a programming sci-fi like game where you control drones to solve puzzles by programming the drones.

Source: duskers.misfits-attic.com

Screeps

Screeps is actually and RTS game where you use programming. It is also and MMO. That makes it an interesting combination.

Source: www.indiegogo.com

CodinGame

This is the one I saw today that is pretty exciting looking. It inspired me to make this blog post. The web page is pretty active and exciting looking just from the beginning.

They have a youtube channel for it here.

Thank you for your time... Steem On!