Slashdot Mirror

Interactive Fiction, the politically correct name for what used to be called text adventure games

Interactive Fiction, the politically correct name for what used to be called text adventure games

Note: it does not include Shogun due to licensing problems. (No big loss, in my opinion. It is about my least favorite of their games.)

And what you do mean, it only runs on PutriDOS??!

Does that Handspring still use Palm OS?

Here you go.

It has a couple of interpreters, and if you hop around it has the games. I just refinished Hitchhikers and am working through Planetfall.

Note - there are other Frotz's around, though I got the OS X one through Fink. Using Terminal really brings out the throw-back experience if you set the background to black and get some neon green for the letters. Though I am 'cheating' with a larger than 80*24 screen for legibility. :)

No spoilers that I'm aware of, just some great lines. If you play again and want to avoid getting stuck, you might check out the unofficial Infocom homepage -- they have online InvisiClues to help you out.

If you don't get it, read the packaging section of this site.

• Have a web site.
• Review your stats.
• and never trust your instructors.

Uhm....Nethack?

Yes the Satellite may have Infared on it but it also has Lidar which is Laser Radar. My local university has a lidar setup (or the green beam as its called around here). See the Utah State University link below.

Its used for atmospheric observations.

Utah State University - This page seems to be down at the moment
University of Western Ontario - Here is another University with one

here is the broken intro page:

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/faculty/akd/thinkers/

It's part of a Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy game.

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/Invisiclues/hhgg/cha pter10/GeneralQuestions1/9.html

I'd agree - that's where I'd put everything in the world should God hand it all over.

Before long, the scientists said, they will upgrade the monkeys so they can transmit their mental commands to machines wirelessly.

B-52's: Taking the 'Fun' Out of 'Fundamentalism' since 1952

1956

Allright, IAAP (I Am A Psysicist), and I think it's good two debunk a common misconception here:

Gravity waves are not the same as gravitational waves

Gravity waves are matter density waves in fluidi (fluids or gases) caused by the interaction of two forces: bouyancy and gravity. Here, bouyancy is the upward-driving force, and gravity is the downward-driving force. The essence is that these waves require a medium to propagate (e.g. air).

Gravity waves can be found in the atmosphere, e.g. clouds which form in regular bands of cloud and clear sky, where the gravity waves carry momentum and energy from the troposphere to the middle and upper atmosphere Gravity waves can also be found on the surface of fuilds: think of the waves behind a boat. A good primer on gravity waves can be found here

Gravitational waves are a whole different ballgame! These waves have got nothing to do with matter densities as they don't require a medium to progagate: it is not matter that moves, and in that respect gravitational waves are like light (which, contrary to beliefs held at the beginnning of the century, don't require a medium such as "ether"). Gravitational waves are wacves in the spacetime-metric.

So what the hell does that mean? Well, in gravity waves, there is a wave in space (and time) in which the thing that changes over space and time is the density of matter. In gravitational waves, there also is a wave in space and time, but the thing that "wiggles" is not the density of matter (or the strength of electric and magnetic fields, like in light or EM radiation in general), but the properties of the fabric of space and time itself. You can think of it as if the coordinate system itself wiggles, so to speak. This "wiggling" results in the length of the arms of e.g. the LIGO interferometer to change ever so slightly, causing a phase shift between light beams send through both arms, which can (hopefully) be detected.

In more mathematical terms, the exact properties of space and time are called the metric. In a portion of space without any matter, the metric is flat (called the Minkovski metric), which means that the usual laws of geometry apply. In any circumstances with matter (and thus gravity) present, these laws to do hold up!

What?!, I hear you think. Yes sir, you've been lied to in geometry class! However, you've been lied to only very, very slightly. Example: if you measure the radius of a sphere (say: R), you expect to find a surface area of exactly 4/3 * pi * R^3. If the earth would be a perfect sphere (which it isn't), and you would be able to measure its radius and surface very accurately, you would find that the surface area is ever so slightly smaller than expected. Or, in other words, the radius seems to be a bit too large (in the order of 3 cm or 30 cm IIRC). Read more about space time curvature here/

A primer on gravitational waves can be found here. A more detailed description here.

I have a relative who is really into the Bigfoot scene. The Bigfoot believers are quite committed. They make a lot of mistakes because of that, though. What is really interesting to me is how so many of the same thought errors get made in radically different areas of human belief.

Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World is an interesting investigation of the entire phenomenon.

It is a terribly complex mental exercise to absorb all of the information in modern life and make intelligent decisions. The fact is that there are far too many claims to investigate for anybody to examine all of them with the necessary care. So we have to rely on the consensus of experts to make decisions. And the organizations necessary for consensus have the same flaws as all human hierarchal bodies.

Here are some of the various brands of kooky ideas that I have come across:

The AIDS Myth The medical analysis is surprisingly deep. A lot of qualified people have weighed in on this idea.
Carbohydrates not calories. They claim that our genes are still adapting to the modern high-carbohydrate diet, and that is why so many of us are so fat. (Enter Atkins.)
Democracy is not good government
Global Warming. Discussed on Slashdot a number of times
Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare Joe Sobran thinks that the Earl of Oxford wrote everything attributed to Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon.
Race and IQ Probably true, but kooky nonetheless.
Multiregional Evolution You can find most of Wolpoff's papers that are cited here somewhere online. I recommend "Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution" and "Modern Human Ancestry at the Peripheries: A Test of the Replacement Theory." Wolpoff is kooky because there are very few anthropoligists left who will side with the Multiregional theory over the Out of Africa theory. (Wolpoff technically supports an Out of Africa theory, but that is how everyone refers to the debate.)

And here is one that I will actually advocate: Bohmian Mechanics It is about as kooky as you can get for a physicist, but I am convinced that it beats QM on the merits.

They were called Invisiclues.

C'mon up to Canada for your education. The tuition is about half (or less) of what it is in the states, if you're gay you can get married, and we're about to decriminalize marijuana.

Better yet, you don't have to pay to see our rankings:

1 Toronto
2 Queen's
*3 McGill
*3 Western
5 UBC
6 Montreal
7 Alberta
8 Sherbrooke
9 Ottawa
10 McMaster
11 Dalhousie
12 Saskatchewan
13 Laval
14 Calgary
15 Manitoba

If you like Infocom adventures you should Download Frotz! 2.4.1. This interpreter installs into /usr/local/bin and runs in the Terminal. It would be nice to have a Cocoa front-end for this. Perhaps some cool Mac Geek will find the time....

Frotz! 2.4.3 is also available in source code form if you're into building from source. You just have to make sure you have the ncurses library installed (Fink helps). I had to rename the "init_process" function (in src/common/process.c and src/main.c) to "my_init_process" before it would build. Some kind of symbol conflict with libSystem....

You can play Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the web but I don't think it allows you to save the game.

Fortunately you can download the HHGG data file (option-click) right off the web and play it in Frotz!

As for other Infocom and Z-engine games, here are some links to resources straight out of the Mac Frotz readme file:

• Interactive Fiction Archive
• Baf's Guide
• XYZZYnews
• Infocom (unofficial)
• Infocom (unofficial)
• Infocom Documentation Project
• Infocom Gallery
• InterData Development
• Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe
• IF Database
• Doe's IF Page
• "Infocom Games"

The old Infocom games had the best hint books...
They used special pens to reveal hidden answers so you couldn't accidentally read something you didn't want to.

There were some great red herring questions to keep people honest, too.

Of course, they are all Online now, too...

He provided much of the early USENET archives. See his page here for details of his contribution and email address.

The original Zork packaging and downloads of the code...might need a dos emulator to run it...

NES? Pah. I pity the person tasked with designing the box for Zork. The Infocom box is goofy enough, but scroll down and check out the package for the Personal Software release. I can almost hear the art manager saying "Well, let's just wing it and hope for the best."

(To their credit, peering closely at the picture, I notice a few things which could be interpreted as props from the actual game. That bell isn't going to do him much good without the book and candles, though.)

2D rpgs made me wonder how the lands really looked and made me think about the character personalities etc. (think about how Link from Zelda never speaks)

I'd love to see a remake of my all-time favorite, Sword of the Samurai. Or maybe not. Everything I loved about the game was dictated by the limited technology of the time. Low-res EGA graphics? Make all the game screens look like a Japanese wood-cut. Junky MIDI music? Hire a good composer to write simple drum and lute pieces, then hire a clever designer to integrate the music seemlessly with the game action. Wonderfully beautiful. But if they remade it, it would have high production values and the playability of burnt toast.

I don't know about anyone else here, but I still love playing the old Infocom text adventures which can be obtained from eBay or from other places.

They have no need for fancy 3D graphics cards or the latest speedy processors.

It's very relaxing to play the games. They are quiet. They keep my mind stimulated.

It would be nice if there were a game manufacturer who made new text adventures; I am not aware of any that currently do.

Actually, it doesn't cost more then a penny to produce a penny.
It used to, but then they switched to a cheaper design that was comprised mainly of zinc. In 2000 they changed again, and are now made up mostly of steel

Innovations in form as well as content are possible. There are already CFS games that try to give the player a graphic view of his surroundings. ... On the other hand, the player's imagination probably has a more detailed picture of the Great Underground Empire than could ever be drawn. I can even recall discussions among the game's implementors over who should play the thief in the movie version. --P David Lebling, one of the co-creators of Zork

F-105 Thunderchief (this was originally designed for nuclear strike, even though that wasn't what it became famous for).

F-105. F-101 Voodoo (the toss computer was made by Mergenthaler Linotype of all people)!

B-47 Stratojet (a pretty big aircraft for this kind of maneuver).

I intend to research on epinions.com and on fixyourownprinter.com. I appreciate any insight.

ObPrinterStory

I like the nostalgia happening here. Amen to the Apple printers. I worked with the gentlemen who were lead engineers for Apple's printing and imaging technologies until the return of Jobs, which smote them summarily and mightily. Bob Ogrey had one of each Apple printer ever made, in his garage and knew them each as if they had their own personality :) Wicked talented industrial designers. Bob was present on the famous tech support call where some dude called Apple tech support to ask how to remove his cat's tail from the Laserwriter. Everyone was drunk by the time that call ended. I believe that story was covered by Steven Levy either in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution or in Insanely Great: The Life and Times of the Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything. Here is a similar true story.

Greetings,
Well... To get this right would take a while, and is massively off-topic, but IIRC, the original Colossal Caves (Adventure, by Crowther and Woods) was written in Fortran, and had a twisty maze of passages, which was also used in Dungeon/Zork, which was very heavily influenced by Adventure.

The commercial (Infocom) Zork series is a splitting up of the Dungeon/Zork program, which was not originally written in Fortran, it was in fact originally written in MDL by Marc Blank and Dave Lebling, and translated to Fortran by a 'somewhat paranoid DEC engineer who prefers to remain anonymous'.

Zork took the Dungeon world, split it up into three worlds, and then added a bunch more stuff to each part of it, although most additions were to Zork II and III, IIRC. Zork I was mostly identical to the early part of Dungeon.

The Adventure versions are are also known by their point values (330, 551, etc.). There are modified versions of Adventure which add large amounts of other areas, and up the points to as many as 1000 points. I've played Adventure on machines ranging from my PalmPilot to PC's of all shades, to Vaxen and even a Prime mini/mainframe which had the largest and highest point version I'd ever seen. (>1000 points, iirc).

The names Zork and Dungeon have been completely intermingled. I was under the impression it was originally named Dungeon, and then later named Zork, but many of the history pages have it the other way around.

The original Dungeon/Zork had 'GDT', a 'Grand (Game?) Debugging Tool', that let you examine objects, and rooms, in the world. Getting to it required knowing some magic way of translating a key that was printed when you typed in 'GDT'. In my case, it meant teaching myself VAX assembly language, so I could debug and patch the binary, so whatever I typed was accepted...

Some more information is available here (Colossal Caves), and here (Dungeon/Zork), and you can find out more about Interactive Fiction's history as well.

I'm a terribly long-standing fan of IF, even before it had that moniker, having learned a lot about programming by writing text adventure games, parsers, and all the database-like coding needed to make a good text adventure game.

I can still lose myself in the games, just like I can lose myself in a really good book. It's a different world, and a lot of fun as long as you're okay letting your imagination provide all the graphics.

-- CyberFOX!

Not 100% sure what you meant by that, all of the Guinness that I sell in Canada is imported...read here.

Ahhhh, maybe you meant that you should check the label and make sure you're drinking a nice Canadian beer. That I can understand, though Guinness is nice as a substitute for breakfast.

At the time of the original large fungus discoveries, I recall that the largest living organism was considered to be a tree. Actually, grove of aspen trees that all shared the same roots.

When the aspen trees were discovered, they replaced some giant sequoia which had long been considered both the largest and fastest growing organism on earth.

I'm currently playing Infocom's Trinity. It's still an awesome game even if it's 15 or so years old and has no graphics. To make my experience as true to life as possible I'm playing it under emulated DOS on my PowerBook :-)

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

• work seriously toward nuclear disarmament;
  
• abide by the biological and chemical weapons conventions;
  
• repudiate "preemptive" war plans;
  
• repudiate "regime change" doctrine;
  
• cease interference with the inspections process;
  
• acknowledge the Israeli nuclear program and cut off aid until it can be inspected and dismantled;
  

Indeed, I too wonder how this computer would fare with Guinness

For the record, if Westwood had any involvement in Crescent Hawk's Inception, it was publishing only. That game was developed fully by Infocom, the same company that gave you Zork.

Here's the boxart. Notice it says "Westwood Associates" on it, not "Westwood Studios". They may not have even been the same company.

"Spaceward Ho!"??? Sounds like another sequel to "The Leather Goddesses of Phobos"...

The New Zork Times

I've lectured two classes at the University of Western Ontario (CompSci) in the last year: Compiler Theory and Organization of Programming Languages. Let me say that your comments are spoken like a true student, but still contain some decent ideas.

Look, technology is good, WiFi is good...

This is blind devotion and you should just stop that. It's religious zealotry. Either that, or provide an argument for your reasoning, which you have not done.

The teacher could even bring his own laptop, add their AIM screen names to his AIM account, and talk to students via AIM.

I'm going to assume you don't mean during class, since that is a monumentally bad idea (have we reduced ourselves to the point where we would rather use IM to communicate, even when in the same room?). If it is outside of class, it doesn't add that much value because it is rarely the case (from my experience) that students and teachers have the same schedule. The IM notes would just sit in limbo most of the time. This is what email is for - asynchronous communication.

This is college not highschool, a teacher cannot try to blame the students for lack of attention, students pay you with THEIR money so that you can get their attention, these people want to learn and pay to learn...

Wrong, wrong, wrong. So very wrong. This is the attitude that is plauging universities right now. A univeristy education is not a service. Paying tutition does not equate to a degree. Paying tuition is, essentially, a fee that provides access to a large communitity for independent learning with some help along the way.

A university teacher's job is not to get your attention. Rather, it is your job to pay attention. This is not the absolute (we still have teacher evaluations at UWO) but it is the kernel of the teaching philosophy at university. Nonetheless, what it means is that if some student is diddling away in the corner doing nothing, it is not my responsibility to get him to learn. I assume that he is here because he wants to learn and will participate as he sees fit. If he does not meet the requirements I clearly set out for the course, he will fail.

Sound harsh? Sure it is, but life is not about having your hand held. Sometimes, you have to take the initiative. Students that do take an active interest in their education by making an effort in some vein will most likely be rewarded. Having a problem with the material? It is the student's job to seek out the teacher, not the opposite. (Of course, if the teacher is not available, then it's not all that fair but again, this is the primary idea.)

I am pleading with you, stop taking the viewpoint that "I am paying for this, so I deserve better!" on every aspect of university. It is not helping.

[clip stuff about boring lectures]

I agree with you that a teacher should make an effort to provide an interesting lecture. I try to do that (and I hope I succeeded on some level). But now we address the problem of those who will simply come to class with a laptop and not pay attention.

Frankly, I don't care if that is what they are doing so long as it is not distracting others. I don't know why they even bother coming to class if all they are going to do is watch a movie or read email. However, if they are interfering with my lecture, I will not stand for it (cell phones going off in class, the Windows sound, etc. are all examples of distractions). Students who don't care about the lecture are left to their own devices.

Often, that device is the Internet. My courses are run such that coming to class is a greater benefit that not and I do this by saying up front that "coming to class is not a substitute for reading the notes or textbook". My notes do not cover everything and neither does the textbook.

This is a somewhat underhanded way of making the student work at their education a bit more. The material I lecture about is often learned quite well by experimentation (hrm, what happens if I do this?...). I try to motivate students in my class to do this using on-screen demos and other such mechanisms.

The laptop in the classroom is not suited for every type of material. I could ramble on forever about different teaching methodologies but let me say this: computers in the classroom are not going to solve everything. There are many factors that play into it and the teacher must weigh all of them when they make up the course. It's a very difficult balance to achieve that is fair and reasonable (what if everyone doesn't have a laptop, for example?). I also do not think it is the teacher's job to force students to pay attention so long as the distracted student is not distracting others. Design your course around some classroom work and try to get those who are passive about education to be more active, especially if they are doing poorly.

Woz

I've lectured two classes at the University of Western Ontario (CompSci) in the last year: Compiler Theory and Organization of Programming Languages. Let me say that your comments are spoken like a true student, but still contain some decent ideas.

Look, technology is good, WiFi is good...

This is blind devotion and you should just stop that. It's religious zealotry. Either that, or provide an argument for your reasoning, which you have not done.

The teacher could even bring his own laptop, add their AIM screen names to his AIM account, and talk to students via AIM.

I'm going to assume you don't mean during class, since that is a monumentally bad idea (have we reduced ourselves to the point where we would rather use IM to communicate, even when in the same room?). If it is outside of class, it doesn't add that much value because it is rarely the case (from my experience) that students and teachers have the same schedule. The IM notes would just sit in limbo most of the time. This is what email is for - asynchronous communication.

This is college not highschool, a teacher cannot try to blame the students for lack of attention, students pay you with THEIR money so that you can get their attention, these people want to learn and pay to learn...

Wrong, wrong, wrong. So very wrong. This is the attitude that is plauging universities right now. A univeristy education is not a service. Paying tutition does not equate to a degree. Paying tuition is, essentially, a fee that provides access to a large communitity for independent learning with some help along the way.

A university teacher's job is not to get your attention. Rather, it is your job to pay attention. This is not the absolute (we still have teacher evaluations at UWO) but it is the kernel of the teaching philosophy at university. Nonetheless, what it means is that if some student is diddling away in the corner doing nothing, it is not my responsibility to get him to learn. I assume that he is here because he wants to learn and will participate as he sees fit. If he does not meet the requirements I clearly set out for the course, he will fail.

Sound harsh? Sure it is, but life is not about having your hand held. Sometimes, you have to take the initiative. Students that do take an active interest in their education by making an effort in some vein will most likely be rewarded. Having a problem with the material? It is the student's job to seek out the teacher, not the opposite. (Of course, if the teacher is not available, then it's not all that fair but again, this is the primary idea.)

I am pleading with you, stop taking the viewpoint that "I am paying for this, so I deserve better!" on every aspect of university. It is not helping.

[clip stuff about boring lectures]

I agree with you that a teacher should make an effort to provide an interesting lecture. I try to do that (and I hope I succeeded on some level). But now we address the problem of those who will simply come to class with a laptop and not pay attention.

Frankly, I don't care if that is what they are doing so long as it is not distracting others. I don't know why they even bother coming to class if all they are going to do is watch a movie or read email. However, if they are interfering with my lecture, I will not stand for it (cell phones going off in class, the Windows sound, etc. are all examples of distractions). Students who don't care about the lecture are left to their own devices.

Often, that device is the Internet. My courses are run such that coming to class is a greater benefit that not and I do this by saying up front that "coming to class is not a substitute for reading the notes or textbook". My notes do not cover everything and neither does the textbook.

This is a somewhat underhanded way of making the student work at their education a bit more. The material I lecture about is often learned quite well by experimentation (hrm, what happens if I do this?...). I try to motivate students in my class to do this using on-screen demos and other such mechanisms.

The laptop in the classroom is not suited for every type of material. I could ramble on forever about different teaching methodologies but let me say this: computers in the classroom are not going to solve everything. There are many factors that play into it and the teacher must weigh all of them when they make up the course. It's a very difficult balance to achieve that is fair and reasonable (what if everyone doesn't have a laptop, for example?). I also do not think it is the teacher's job to force students to pay attention so long as the distracted student is not distracting others. Design your course around some classroom work and try to get those who are passive about education to be more active, especially if they are doing poorly.

Woz

UNIX was lawyer-driven software design.

Personally, this reminds me of the little green blobs on the covers of the Hitchhiker's Guide books.

You mean, this guy? Yeah, that was my first thought, too.

Someone should fashion an add-on kit of two posable arms and an adhesive mouth-with-stuck-out-tongue, and sell it to fans of the HHGTTG books.

~Philly

Frankly, it should've happened a lot sooner- because there are a lot of great videogame pioneers who deserved more recognition than they got, including the geniuses at Infocom, Howard Scott Warsaw (despite the travesty that was E.T. for Atari...), ID and so on.

And no offense to /. or The Onion, but the Webby Awards (recognizing "the best of the Web both in quality and quantity") is the most ridiculous and pointless awards ceremony of the last century.

If the Internet is, as is often claimed, one of the most important mediums of the last century (and perhaps even last 1000 years), doesn't it deserve a better body for the recognition of its best-and-brightest contributors than this? An awards ceremony created by a pretty actress cum filmmaker cum Good Morning America 'internet expert'?

(inserting obligatory karma-whore reply, "I dunno man- her body looks pretty good to me!")

Not necessarily. You can still download all the Zork games here. As far as I can tell, this is perfectly legal, though I don't know if Infocom waived it's copyright. I agree that copyright lengths are not what they should be, but there are obviously ways around it.

Maybe the folks at Scientific American just needed to find one person that they could write a nice story about. You could check out John Baez's web page too, or Dan Christensen's page for example.

Testors released models of the F-117 *after* it was made public, I'm fairly sure. Same goes for the other manufacturers.

(Of course, the "F-19" is still a bit of a mystery - maybe it's real after all. But I doubt it.)

I believe they will use high speed networks of Linux based Beowulf clusters (actually clusters of clusters of clusters). Ontario has already established SHARCNET between a number of Universities with a total of over 500 COMPAQ Alphas (mostly four-processor, 833Mhz, Alpha SMPs) and some Pentiums, all running Linux. A press release from last year gives a good overview of the project, already first in Canada and the 11th most powerful academic computing system in North America. I believe the Canada wide project will essentially form a cluster of these cluster of clusters.

SHARCNET has been up and running for a while and last year accounted for about 27% of supercomputing power in Canada (half of all supercomputing power in Canadian universities), with three sites on the Top 500 list and total power exceeding institutions like Cambridge, Princeton, Cornell and Caltech. There's loads of information available about the hardware and software used at each facility, as well as CPU load and usage statistics at members sites like these status charts from the most powerful individual site, at the University of Western Ontario. As for applications, a number of researchers are already using the system for a variety of projects across science, engineering, and economics.

Actually, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy came smack dab in the middle of the big text-adventure boom of the 1980s. If you want early, go check out the Zork trilogy or Scott Adams's games. (No, not that Scott Adams.) And if you'd like to try Hitchhiker's, it's playable on the web at Douglas Adams's site.

Sorry if it seemed like I was trying to chew you out :). It's just that Hungry Jacks is also a former sponsor of my solar car team. The owner of the franchise is a graduate of my school, so he helped us out quite a bit in the past. I was just trying to clear up the misinformation (and include a shameless plug while I'm at it :)

Under the NEPA (Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft) Project, the US Air Force had a contract with Fairchild to develop a nuclear-powered bomber. Part of the problem was that the project was split in two: the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was responsible for the reactor, and Fairchild/USAF was responsible for everything else (including a converted Convair B-36H).

Well, that wasn't really the biggest problem. There was the small detail: where do you crash-land a nuclear-powered bomber?

Class? The answer is: you don't.

There's a good write-up available about Project NEPA.