Dragon no. 64 Robot rules spreadsheet?
- Thread starter Socrates8
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Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
Were these the ones that eventually became LBB8? It's more likely someone created a spreadsheet for that.
saundby
SOC-14 1K
No, Book 8 was based on material from the Traveller's Digest by Joe Fugate. The Dragon article was by Jon Mattson. In many ways the Dragon article gives more physical design choices, and IMO has a more Traveller feel about it. Book 8 has a longer software list. TD64 has power calculated last, to suit the design, LBB8 has power source chosen early, as in ship design.There are some big similarities between the design systems, and differences can be reconciled pretty easily by concatenating lists and adjusting prices/power requirements a bit. Book 8 carries a lot more 3I background, while Mattson's article is largely nuts and bolts.
To the original post--I don't know of a spreadsheet for the Dragon article, sorry.
To the original post--I don't know of a spreadsheet for the Dragon article, sorry.
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In perfectcalc for CP/M, back when it first came out... Don't know if I even still have the disk...
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
If the disk is around - and still good - are you offering the OP a Kaypro to go along with it?
Would that have been an 8" (?) floppy disk (the big ones)? Until a couple years ago I still had a C/PM machine (a 286?) in operating order, with a few programs, which I would have happily given away to a good home
Kept it as long as I did (diverted it from the landfill on a job) for the pen plotter, a very sweet print alternative. Big format, precise drawing. I miss the old beast but just didn't have the room (and there's still more not quite so old computer hardware I need to haul down to the recycle depot).
Actually, as far as running the program if found, I'm sure there are emulators. There used to be anyway... iirc.
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Kaypro came with 5.25 IIRC... around the same time frame as the Osborne and the Commodore VIC-20, TI 99/4A, Timex Sinclair 1000, etc.
I don't recall any home PCs that had 8 inch drives as standard or integrated peripherals. Even the big silver expansion box for the TI, was 5.25 inch (lot of summer vacation money spent on that, before discovering the C-64 and switching
). Not to say no one made one or jury rigged it. The last 8 inch disk I used was ~'87, I repaired an old VAX - fun, but kinda a pointless enterprise since it was so freak'n loud, I barely played with the thing after I got it running!
Ironically, given your post, I salvaged the huge (noisy) dot matrix printer that came with it and emulated a plotter for very long printouts. Jury rigged it to what I called Trash-80s - a Radio Shack computer I can't even recall the name of right now (TRS-80 Model 3/4 comes to mind?) and wrote an emulator in assembly for several physics class programs (wave reflection, curve fitting, etc.) I had written. Also recall making an ASCII mandelbrot set 'banner' that was like 40 feet long. (And ASCII ⌧ - hey, I was a teenager!)
Of course, was kidding about the Kaypro. Though it is possible - old systems lasted a long time, especially without a HD to fail and with well made caps and transformers. Yes, there are (well, were, last I checked) lots of CP/M Z80 and 80xx emulators... as long as nothing BIOS specific was used, a lot of stuff should still function.
I don't recall any home PCs that had 8 inch drives as standard or integrated peripherals. Even the big silver expansion box for the TI, was 5.25 inch (lot of summer vacation money spent on that, before discovering the C-64 and switching
). Not to say no one made one or jury rigged it. The last 8 inch disk I used was ~'87, I repaired an old VAX - fun, but kinda a pointless enterprise since it was so freak'n loud, I barely played with the thing after I got it running!Ironically, given your post, I salvaged the huge (noisy) dot matrix printer that came with it and emulated a plotter for very long printouts. Jury rigged it to what I called Trash-80s - a Radio Shack computer I can't even recall the name of right now (TRS-80 Model 3/4 comes to mind?) and wrote an emulator in assembly for several physics class programs (wave reflection, curve fitting, etc.) I had written. Also recall making an ASCII mandelbrot set 'banner' that was like 40 feet long. (And ASCII ⌧ - hey, I was a teenager!)
Of course, was kidding about the Kaypro.
Though it is possible - old systems lasted a long time, especially without a HD to fail and with well made caps and transformers. Yes, there are (well, were, last I checked) lots of CP/M Z80 and 80xx emulators... as long as nothing BIOS specific was used, a lot of stuff should still function.Yeah, to me too. That's why I'm thinking about using them. Even in a 3I setting. It just looks like a quick and easy way to create some robots for a game. The only thing that bothers me is the fact that it basically just takes the human stats, which makes not that much sense in my opinion, as Soc is not really applicable that much for Robots.
That is how I did my own (never had Book 8 till long after I was using robots).
I used SOC as a game mechanic for interaction with others (not titles, esp. since not playing a 3I setting). In the case of robots, SOC was more for interaction with other robots. In other words, S3E3 had a better chance of ordering another droid around if its SOC was higher.
For 'programs' I just used skills (with a few extras, IIRC) and assumed all functional parts had programming built in (not like having to add Jump-3 etc.). Wish I could find those notes...
I used SOC as a game mechanic for interaction with others (not titles, esp. since not playing a 3I setting). In the case of robots, SOC was more for interaction with other robots. In other words, S3E3 had a better chance of ordering another droid around if its SOC was higher.
For 'programs' I just used skills (with a few extras, IIRC) and assumed all functional parts had programming built in (not like having to add Jump-3 etc.). Wish I could find those notes...
Good plan... those older machines would be less susceptible to EMP, just in case!
(Plus, didn't they come with Asteroids!)
Bringing that back to Traveller - did any of the published rules address a robot's vulnerability to EM or hard radiation interference (the later can effect an optical system - like my version of a positronic brain).
No. No graphics. They had a text-mode pac-man clone and a text mode Lode Runner clone. I played Zork I-III, HHGTTG, and Planetfall on them.Good plan... those older machines would be less susceptible to EMP, just in case!
(Plus, didn't they come with Asteroids!)
Not that I recall.
saundby
SOC-14 1K
I still have a Kaypro 10 and a Kaypro 4x. But my main CP/M system is an Ampro Little Board Plus:
http://saundby.com/electronics/AmproLB/
The Ampro's present terminal is the Dec VT-100 on the right.
If the disk is around, and you still have a dual density drive in a DOS/Windows machine, it's possible to make a disk or file image that can be posted & read. I can then recover the file on my Ampro and make the original spreadsheet available. PerfectCalc for DOS will read it. I may even remember how I used to move PerfectCalc sheets over to 1-2-3 (Supercalc? Not sure any more.)
As to TD64 vs. Book 8, I think using a URP is part, plus the design sequence feeling more logical. I was also exposed to Book 8 far later--I was still getting TD when the article was published, but I wasn't buying official Traveller stuff any more (long story made short: a gaming group in college used Merc and HG1 to unintentionally convince me newer Trav materials ruined the core game, I swore off anything but LBB1-3.) So the only new Trav materials I saw were in TD and Space Gamer for some long time.
I'll admit the 3I still feels a bit foreign to me (though COTI has taken me into enjoying it far more than I would ever have thought possible), but I still feel TD64 feels more Traveller even when I just look at the design sequence portion of LBB8. It's probably that Mattson was consciously mimicking the extant Traveller design sequences while Fugate felt more freedom to vary in an official book. *shrug*
http://saundby.com/electronics/AmproLB/
If the disk is around, and you still have a dual density drive in a DOS/Windows machine, it's possible to make a disk or file image that can be posted & read. I can then recover the file on my Ampro and make the original spreadsheet available. PerfectCalc for DOS will read it. I may even remember how I used to move PerfectCalc sheets over to 1-2-3 (Supercalc? Not sure any more.)
As to TD64 vs. Book 8, I think using a URP is part, plus the design sequence feeling more logical. I was also exposed to Book 8 far later--I was still getting TD when the article was published, but I wasn't buying official Traveller stuff any more (long story made short: a gaming group in college used Merc and HG1 to unintentionally convince me newer Trav materials ruined the core game, I swore off anything but LBB1-3.) So the only new Trav materials I saw were in TD and Space Gamer for some long time.
I'll admit the 3I still feels a bit foreign to me (though COTI has taken me into enjoying it far more than I would ever have thought possible), but I still feel TD64 feels more Traveller even when I just look at the design sequence portion of LBB8. It's probably that Mattson was consciously mimicking the extant Traveller design sequences while Fugate felt more freedom to vary in an official book. *shrug*
Sweet website saundby!
The CNC setup looks interesting - have to investigate that!
BTW: The smartcable bit made me grin - I spent many hours back in the day reverse engineering serial comms. A few days after a particularly hairy bit getting a Laserwriter II NTX to 'talk' with a PS-2* I made a colorful verbal wish about having something like it and a co-worker pulls one out of a nearby pile and innocently asks 'oh, one of these?'
*IIRC, parallel to serial to appletalk - all jury rigged naturally (probably with paper clips and teeth stripped wires). And with no bi-directional feedback - I 'learned' postscript with only the 4 or so blasted LED's on the side of the printer and a lot of trial and error. I had absolutely no reference material except some CAD printouts, but I was determined to use the printer to process some data, as it was the most powerful computer in the building at the time! Those were the days...
The CNC setup looks interesting - have to investigate that!
BTW: The smartcable bit made me grin - I spent many hours back in the day reverse engineering serial comms. A few days after a particularly hairy bit getting a Laserwriter II NTX to 'talk' with a PS-2* I made a colorful verbal wish about having something like it and a co-worker pulls one out of a nearby pile and innocently asks 'oh, one of these?'
*IIRC, parallel to serial to appletalk - all jury rigged naturally (probably with paper clips and teeth stripped wires). And with no bi-directional feedback - I 'learned' postscript with only the 4 or so blasted LED's on the side of the printer and a lot of trial and error. I had absolutely no reference material except some CAD printouts, but I was determined to use the printer to process some data, as it was the most powerful computer in the building at the time! Those were the days...
