Structure of space

The structure of space has to do with which points are considered adjacent or neighboring. In a square plane space, any point has 4 or 8 immediately adjacent points, depending on whether the diagonals are considered adjacent. But other structures are possible. Many games choose to employ a "Wrapping" mode, in which points at the boundaries are considered to be adjacent to those at the opposing boundary. In others, the rows or columns are offset slightly so that a point is surrounded by six others. These are typically used in maps that use hexagons rather than squares. Still others, such as Hunt the Wumpus, use a finite space in which each point, or location is numbered, and described as "adjacent to" three specified others. In the original version, these were the vertices of a dodecahedron, but any number of other spaces can be constructued and have been.

Continuing with my historical look, in 1972, PONG came out as an arcade game, and was quickly copied for computers. A couple of versions of Star Trek were also developed, and Hunt the Wumpus was written. In 1973, a game called Lunar Lander was also written for the DEC 10, but a verson without the graphics display can also be found. Although only a few of these games are mentioned in the Wikipedia history, that same year David Ahl came out with 101 BASIC Computer Games, which is a sampling of what had been written and could be found on various systems around this time. I intend to use this, or rather the 1978 version, for some source material, but hope to move beyond it. Of the games I've mentioned so far, only a version of Star Trek and Lunar Lander are found here.
In 1974, Daniel Lawrence wrote the first of the computer adventure RPG games, dnd, based on Dungeons & Dragons, which is considered the grandaddy of role-playing games. Some of its descendants are a bit easier to study, so I will consider them later.