Imagesource: https://pexels.com/

Sometimes the way is the goal. Sometimes the goal is the goal. With Space Travel it is more a matter of personal taste, if you want to have fun with the game (the goal) or if you are more interested in how the assembly code written for the PDP-7, was ported to C (the way) by Mohamed Akram also known as @tixilite.

Both are possible. Both are interesting.

Although it should be said that real control of the game is only feasible (without further adjustments) if you have a numeric keypad on your keyboard. What you get then, however, does have a certain historical smell, and is at least as interesting for any space nerd.

The actual game was developed in 1969 by Ken Thompson (yes, the Ken Thompson). I guess it was probably a good year for space simulations. 👩‍🚀 Initially developed for Multics and later ported to GECOS Ken ported the code to the PDP-7. In order to do so, Ken developed his own operating system, which later formed the core of the UNIX operating system. What a legacy.

Thanks to SDL2, the thing should run almost anywhere, a C compiler feels at home. On our M1 we were only able to compile and run it with the help of Rosetta2.