Slashdot Mirror
History Of Infocom aka The Creators Of Zork
halcyon7 writes: "My MIT research group has spent the last two months studying Infocom [?] , Inc. (the creators of Zork [?] ) in great detail. We have talked to many of the original founders and employees, studied board meeting minutes, looked through source code, and done everything we could to tell the story of Infocom's history in a fair and accurate way.
As of Friday, our project has concluded. Our report and presentation, entitled "Down From the Top of Its Game: The Story of Infocom, Inc.", is available online
in both PDF of the paper and
a PDF of the presentation.
The presentation was given on December 13th in a quasi-public forum to members of EECS, STS, the MIT community, and some former employees of Infocom." Ah, Infocom. Many a day was whiled away trying to figure the syntax for the next command *grin*.
Trinity was quite fun - I never quite finished the game, and lost the disk while moving from apartment to apartment. It was such an odd game, and I loved it. Whenever I talk to people about text adventure games, I mention Trinity, and they think I'm talking about the babe in The Matrix.
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
As much, uh, respect, as I have for LGOP, _Softporn Adventure_, which Larry was a rewrite of, came before LGOP. I know we had it at Infocom, and I suspect Steve had played it. -- Dave Lebling
The Lurking Horror, not Zork, had a geography based on the MIT campus.
-- Dave Lebling
They didn't need to. Infocom produced a virtual machine for all their adventure games, with interpreters for different platforms. The same data file can be used on a PC, a Spectrum and an Osbourne providing that you have an interpreter that supports that version of the machine. Someone wrote an interpreter in Java, but the data file used is still the same as the one included on the original HHGTG disks.
=Blue(23)
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
The only allusions to non-Cornerstone related factors were to the growing importance of graphics in computer games, but the examples they detail were mostly console games, and Infocom's text adventures would most likely (as suggested by the earlier accounts of the Zork packaging fiasco) be purchased by a completely different market sector.
One thing that really stuck in my craw for some reason is the authors' assertion that "all sales projections indicated the company would continue to grow exponentially", while they refer the reader to a diagram which presented very little reason to believe that sales had grown exponentially at all - in fact, sales growth looked pretty linear. There were other flaws with their analysis, but this one really bugged me.
Anyways, the only thing that I really enjoyed about the article were the scans and screencaps of the old programs and the throw-ins for the Infocom games. I remember poring over those Deadline materials, and keeping files of rolled-up thermal paper printouts of my game...
I wonder what grade they got...
p.s. anybody know if the downloadable infocom games also have available the physical throwin materials, like maps, crime scene photos, etc ? The article implied that the materials were necessary to complete the games...
And Level 9 - all of that stuff was great. Did anyone here ever use GAC or Quill?
Also, are there any java-enabled Infocom games out there?
--------------- Delete Windows before you mail me
There's also a web-based form here for those who may not use Micros~1 products. I just submitted this URL to it, but I'm still waiting on a response. I guess it takes their server a while to process a 9 MB file...
The start of the game involved getting a slew of cash, and then buying a bridge, which was constructed by hundreds of thousands of little dwarves in what could only be described as helicopters. You then crossed the bridge, climbed a mountain, went into an old house, and accessed other worlds by finding secret passages. The scoring system was as detailed and granular as the plot line. I found it far more fun and challenging than Zork.
Unfortunately, I think it was written for a Data General, and when The Source got purchased by Compuserve, the game vanished. The only proof I have is a few old dusty captures of the start of the game, combined with a piece of marketing literature that briefly mentions it.
I've searched all over the net for it, with the hopes of getting it ported to Linux, but have come up short. Anyone who might know where a copy hides, please feel free to contact me. I've tried all the text game archive sites I could get links to.
Clue: Surely common sense dictates that you can't possibly have tea and no tea at the same time
Aha. The cycle begins again. I think I know what you mean, so I'll refrain from asking for further assistance. I'll try what I think the solution is, it won't work and I'll end up more bitter than before.
But thanks for the clue, and the offer. If, some time later this week, you see a post from me that consists, Spider-Jerusalem-like, of nothing but the word 'fuck', you'll know it didn't work.
Dave Lebling
The Dave Lebling? Wow! What do you think of Anchorhead?
Does my bum look big in this?
Me too! Those cruel bastards! How could they kill Floyd? I was just a kid. Oh well, at least they brought him back at the end.
"Planetfall" was my first Infocom game, and it will always have special meaning for me. The followup, "Stationfall" was pretty good, too, although their descriptions of the cylindrical chamber in the interior of the ship were a bit confusing. It took a while to get a good mental picture of what they were describing. Ah, I miss those games...
Free Hans!
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
Get yer Peril-sensitive sunglasses out and play it now!!!
disk images of the original are all over the place too.
"Once in a while you can get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right." - R.H.
The game was a lot of fun. You can find it at this URL; Asylum History
WTF? Infocom didn't invent Zork. I was playing Zork on PDPs before the IBM PC was even released. Not only that, the PC version dumbed down the game, omitting some of the obscure hacker jokes.
Can someone out there post the real history of Zork?
do you remember reading through all the hilarious "footnotes"? even the ERROR messages were funny.
you can play the java version here: http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocom.html
(im' sure someone else has already given that link, but its in my "favorites", so no trouble..
i could live a little longer in this prison
i could live a little longer in this prison
They have to sleep with the lights on because they fear to be eaten by a grue!
HTTP 1.1 GET 'xyzzy'
Which always gives me a chuckle.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
When I was a kid, about 11 years old, I started writing text adventures inspired by Infocom with very simple verb-noun parsers. I passed'em around to all my friends, and they liked playing them too. In fact, I credit a lot of my current vocabulary to Infocom games.
Another honorable mention goes to Magnetic Scrolls, simply because they made The Pawn, which was equally cool. Of course, they were from Britain, so you had to enter the commands in British English. A friend and I spent hours one day trying to figure out how to move a particular boulder. The correct command was some variant of:
"Use the shovel with the shirt to lever the boulder."
Needless to say, the use of 'lever' as a verb was discovered only after several trips to the dictionary and the parser warning us repeatedly that "lever" was not a noun--which, to us americans, it plainly was.
My other favorite gag from the Pawn was the three colors, which is something you could only get from a text game:
>open bag
You open the bag. You find a red, a blue, and a green.
>look at red
The red is just like the blue except it's red.
>look at blue
The blue is just like the green except it's blue.
>look at green
The green is just like the red except it's green.
Of course, the solution was:
>mix the red, the green, and the blue
You mix the red, the green, and the blue, making a White.
Which, of course, was a light source.
Hot Damn! Seeing a story about Zork brought back memories for me. So I downloaded and compiled the P code engine and the Zork I/II/II game files, wrote a quick bash script and hung them off of inetd on my web page. If you want to play Zork I, II or III, goto my webpage
Hot Damn! When I saw a story about Zork, it brought back memories for me. So I downloaded and compiled the P code engine and the Zork I/II/II game files, wrote a quick bash script and hung them off of inetd on my web page. If you want to play Zork I, II or III, goto my webpage
I'm not critical of this, just that this is a distinctive Infocom style compared to LucasArts or most other modern adventure games.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
The default password for At Ease and later some of the other Macintosh workgroup admin tools used to be set to xyzzy. I don't know if they still use that, but they used to.
Probably far too many.
infocom-paper.pdf
infocom-presentation.pdf
I just hope that doesn't push me over my quota... *g*
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Hmmm I remember playing Leather Godess of Phobos... would Leisure Suit Larry ever have been made without Infocom's trashy classic ?
;)
LGOP was trashy...what other game had a scratch and sniff card that really lived up to its name.
Even the content of the adventure could be changed with its user defined smut level.
I still have an origninal Amiga version of LGOP with the scratch and sniff card, I wonder how much that will be worth in 30 years...
He's got Pirate Adventure, The Count, etc. Gotta love those two-word parsers. Also available for the Palm, tho I haven't tried them out.
DT
--
Is this thing on? Hello?
Infocom was often quite good at giving you the little perks -- in this case, a laminated map of the ship -- that established real atmosphere. I think you got one of those scrubbable crayons, or something, to scribble on the map with.
If they made that today, you'd spend more time installing the Voo-DooDoo X smell-enhanced card than I ever did playing the original game...
Does my bum look big in this?
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
;)
;)
I loved that game. I got the chance to play it again recently and found out that I'm not as good at figuring out what the computer wants me to type now as I was at seven years old
I spent all my time going "I remember there's something you need to get out of the fscking house that lets you go across the rainbow in the gulf or something like that... How do I get it?"
Wow, it's true - we are smarter when we're younger
In post-9/11 America, the CIA interrogates YOU!
There is a fast mirror of ftp.gmd.de at www.ifarchive.org. Direct links to the papers are:
/if-archive/infocom/info/infocom-paper.pdf /if-archive/infocom/info/infocom-presentation.pdf
and
I'm really tired of seeing these screeds from people who know nothing about criticism of popular culture. No, a television commercial doesn't have the inherent depth and complexity of Goethe or Keats or Walt Whitman -- but it reveals a lot more about the people and the common attitudes of its time. What were the cultural values that made an endorsement by someone who played a doctor on TV trustworthy? Did changing ideas about consumer sophistication and complicity accompany the move from straightforward informational advertisements to those perfume ads that are unrelated to the product? What are the beliefs about entertainment and lifestyle that made ABC's 1997 ads like "hobbies, schmobbies" and "It's a beautiful day... what are you doing outside" seem like a good idea?
I characterize postmodern criticism as psychology by proxy. It's part of the same movement that got historians looking at the diet and lifestyle of the 99% of humanity that wasn't declaring wars and lolling in opulent luxury. The fact that this stuff is important to great masses of people makes it worth trying to figure out, regardless of your personal opinions of it.
- Michael
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
The Scott Adams adventure series were like the Sid and Marty Kroft of text adventures. The parser interprted only 2 words, compared to Infocom's wonderful English parser.
I was amazed that both the Infocom adventures(well, most of them) and the SA series were available for the TI-994/A
I had zork for the apple //e.
The games were fun. The zork maze was evil though, I took me a while to figure out why Going east then west wouldn't put you in the same spot.
I actually liked planetfall better though and managed to finish that game although barely.
I used to like some of the comments it made.
The planetfall help was really funny too. I read the whole thing. One topic was "Don't read unless you've flown the helicopter" when there was no way to get the helicopter started.
One thing that was frustrating about those games was the descriptions of places sometimes seemed too terse.
>Verbose
maximum verbosity
>Jump
weeeeeeee!
Apple Network Assistant, the remote admin client that makes PC anywhere look like a luser account on a *nix box, is "protected" by the default of "xyzzy". This is really stupid, seeing as how early versions [dunno about >3.5] have to be on-site authenticated for remote access. So if your op is a dipass, you can run the security app and change the access on him with relative ease, compared to other remote-admin applications.
LucasArts specifically were targetting a younger market. I was working in a software store around the mid '80s and one of the selling points the LucasArts marketing people wanted the retail sales people to stress was the lack of dying. It was supposed to be "less fustrating to the child"
(Now that I think of it, the marketing stuff was obviously aimed at the parent buying software for the child.)
For Infocom games, the single most important skill was learning to save often, and save many different scenarios in different files. I wish that I had RCS back then. I had to mimic the branches of saved games with file name convensions.
>Open PDF
I don't know how to 'Open' PDF.
>Get PDF
I don't know how to 'Get' PDF.
>Look at PDF
I don't know how to 'Look at' PDF.
>Download PDF
What is 'PDF'?
>Quit
Sound familiar?
-
Just wanted to say the best Infocom game was undeniably Trinity; probably came closer to a true literary feel than any computer game before or since.
And Planetfall was the second best.
--
But this paper goes further into detail, about the mistakes Infocom made that *were* within their control. The two-culture phenomenon was evidently really pronounced. It's a good read for any programmers who have to deal with business types and vice versa, if only as a cautionary tale.
I remember loving the days when the NZT arrived in the mailbox. I was always the one in the family to fill out the warranty cards, so that we'd get 3? more free issues. Those were the days.
I also remember how disappointed I was when the New York Times sued/complained/whatever and they had to change both the name and the format. Somehow it was never the same afterwards.
this story is false. zork was not created by this 'infocom' or who or whatever they/are/it is. no indeed.
'zork', as a concept, was created in the depths of time, in the deep heart of the far reaches of space and a scattering of stars, in the murky pools of primordiated bisque that brim with tiny bacteria and odd fish. the product of thousands upon millions of unknown time units of evolution. the answer to generations of unasked questions. the goal of pre post-modern neo-classic socio-capitalistic consummerism. the untold strivings of the tortured soul of modern man. with extra cheese.
you must always remember:
contemporary.
expressive.
chilled to the bone (since 1997).
LORDZORK INDUSTRIES (LOVES TO) LOVE YOU (mind shutting off like a bad dream)
goodbye,
tmk
I just wanted to tell Dave Lebling, since I see that he's posting on this thread, that _Enchanter_ is probably my favorite game ever, and definitely the first I played seriously. I think I was 8 or 10 years old at the time, and parts of it scared the shit out of me! I was honestly too scared to go into some parts of the map, particularly the part with the monster you had to trap by redrawing the map. I only finished the game because I got the hintbook, one of the cool old InvisiClue ones.
One of my favorite parts was the spell which would summon the Implementers. A couple of programmers appear, and look confused, and one comments that it must be a glitch in the system...
i could live a little longer in this prison
i could live a little longer in this prison
First, a plug for my own graphic/text adventure, written about a year ago. It's called "Lunatix: The Insanity Circle" and can be downloaded here (the ZIP file is here). Several screen shots are shown here. It can also be downloaded from www.download.com with info and download here. It's freeware, and I get constant feedback (still) about it (kudos, questions, hint/walkthrough requests, etc).
:::: Mike Snyder
There is an active usenet community for Interactive Fiction at rec.games.int-fiction, and a HUGE (and very complete) archive of games at the ftp.gmd.de archive. These kinds of games are alive and well!
:::: Mike Snyder
i could live a little longer in this prison
i could live a little longer in this prison
I never played Zork, but isn't just a repackaged version of the Dungeon game we used to play? I remember playing Dungeon for *ever* when I was a kid on the local university's VAX. Lucky me, the next door neighbor's dad was the head of IT there. We'd drag an extension cord and a phone extension out to the poolside, and plug in the old amberscreen terminal, dial the rotary modem, jam it in the audiocoupler modem, and play at a whopping 300 baud. Ah the joy of youth! Anyone ever figure out how to hatch the jeweled bird out of egg without breaking it? I think that the Linux "BSD Games" collection has a version of Dungeon in it. UugaBuuga
UugaBuuga
AFMV was years ahead of it's time, in terms of the level of storytelling that was going on. It was one of the only games I've ever played that could be called literature. Even today, fifteen years later, there hasn't been a "high-concept" game that was as well-executed with such an intelligent and thoughtful premise.
- 'tis an ill wind that blows no minds -
I thought Zork came MUCH later, after even the Apple ][ port of that same TOPS-10 game.
Then again, I'm a senile old fart. Some young web "HTML Programmer" with green hair and a stud through his toungue probably invented it.
It isn't a new game, but 'Return to Zork' was the the first true multimedia computer game I'd ever played. I remember how the graphics and sound had me spell bound.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Game was the best Infocom game hands down. I think that the part on the Gorgon ship where you have to figure out how to get the Babel Fish is one of the best parts of any text-based game ever.
Hmmm...Maybe I need a DOS emulator on my FreeBSD box...
"The further I get from the things that I care about, the less I care about how much further away I get." -Robert Smith
There's still a following for games built around craftily written descriptions and puzzles. In fact new textual interactive fiction pieces are developed by a small buy loyal fanbase. Some of the games are really good.
There's information about the current state of the (well, somewhat ancient in internet time) art of interactive fiction here.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Darnit, lost mine in a move. Loved getting those, though.
--
Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.
Does MIT have a Corporate Fluff program now?
This sounds more like a job for fuckedcompany.com.
"Zork or how I learned the meaning of Gazebo"
Infocom games rocked. They are responsible for my ongoing preference of Text-Muds over all other forms of internet Games.
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
Yes, I remember that game all too well. The Commodore PET was my very first computer. And when I had it, it didn't have a tape recorder. So I had to type in all the games by hand every time I turned on the computer. I can remember typing Hitch Hikers out by hand, trying to fix all the errors I had made. I wish I knew where my source code was for that (and all the other games I had). I wouldn't mind going through it and looking at it again. But they are probably gone to the dump with the PET (I had a bad habbit of taking it apart, and every time I did, it never went back to gether the same way, until it just didn't work anymore hehe)
-- Never monkey with another Monkey's monkey
Details about infocom and their game titles are available here, while more about Interactive Fiction (that's text based games usually) can be found here. The main IF archive can be found at IFArchive.org where you can download many of Infocoms games.
Richy C.
Infocom, ah, didn't they inspire the shell for multics?
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
It was a Vogon Ship you were on.
Nit picking aside, that was one of the most entertaining (& frustrating!) sequences in the history of PC Gaming. Getting that damned fish into your ear felt like a real accomplishment.
Hitchhiker's Guide was a GREAT text adventure, probably the best I ever played. What I liked was that, although maddening, it was all so perversely logical once you figured out the puzzle. The whole tea/no tea thing was another great moment.
Has anyone ever played Starship Titanic or Bureaucracy(?). Those were two Douglas Adams-authored PC games I never got a chance to play at the time.
You still see Starship Titanic in bargain bins at the local Staples - is it worth my milk money?
I wonder how many systems are still protected by this magic Zork password.
What about the poor people on dial up?
Seriously though, the papers are lush with detail, and are worth downloading. There are many photos, and other illustrations. Someone took the time to do this right.
too bad there isn't an html version online someplace. I think Acrobat has some options to make that kind of conversion. (?)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
http://sage.che.pitt.edu/~harrold/infocom-paper.pd f
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
So we can keep from annoying EVERYONE, could someone please update the article to mention A) The Mirrors, and B) The fact that these are BIG files. (I know the first file is ~9.2 Megs)
:)
Oh, BTW. I'm done downloading now, so someone else can have my spot
Nipok_Nek - The opposite of Light is Unlight
(Yes I know: It's Scott Adams, Not Infocom)
Why choose white shoes?
Jesus suffering fuck is right. What the fuck do you think you're talking about.
Zcode is more portable than Java. The parser is amazing compared to most similar parsers I see today.
Don't forget the social impact.
Steve
[ approaching AI ]
A little hunting will get you downloadable versions of almost every Infocom game ever made for about $20-$25 total. Activision has several bundles available, both small (5-6 games) and big (about 33). I purchased them the last time a big Infocom story was on Slashdot because I enjoyed many of them in the 80's too.
I think the most fascinating one I ever played was "A Mind Forever Voyaging", in which I got completely stuck about 15 years ago. I've started it again and hope to eventually win it.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/info/info
http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/infocom/info/info
(maybe a
But if that one goes away, it also has these alternates:
- Germany:
ftp.gmd.de (ftp)
- USA:
wuarchive.wustl.edu (http)
- USA:
ftp.nodomainname.net (http)
- Finland:
ftp.funet.fi (ftp)
- Australia:
mirror.aarnet.edu.au (http)
(ftp)
Hope this helps!Just get a zmachine and download the zcode.
The zmachine runs zcode much the way the jvm runs java, only the zmachine has been ported to many more platforms and is generally more reliable.
Steve
[ approaching AI ]
Say this just makes me think. I've got all but the first three issues of the New Zort Times and I've been thinking about scanning them and putting them up on a web page someplace... I'm wondering who I would go about contacting to get permission. Hmm...
Also, does anyone out there have the first three issues that they would want to scan in for me?
Contemporary history of modern institutions and corporations is important. Just as we can learn a great deal about the politics and economics of previous centuries by studying the books of the East India Company or Lloyd's of London, histories like this will preserve the details of this time. This is especially important as we turn a new millennium, as many of our documents are now electronic and ephemeral. If somebody doesn't jump in and preserve this stuff, it'll be lost forever. And make no mistake, Infocom was a VERY important company in the early history of computer games. Believe me, people will be reading this document 300 years from now.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Want some rye? Course ya do!
Daniel Bendorf
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here...
>open mailbox
You find a letter inside.
>read letter
...
Ah, those were the days.
(And if my Apple //e still boots, I'm going through the Enchanter/Sorceror/Spellbreaker trilogy over the holidays. Still got the original 5.25" floppies. Woo-hoo!)
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
...if they still have copies of the ``New Zork Times'' packed away in their basement.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Nemesis was an awesome game. The twist in the end was great. Didn't see it coming.
I don't care what they called it though, it wasn't a Zork. Grand Inquisitor was, although maybe a little over the top, even for a Zork.
Suspended was wicked.
I remember when I figured out how to make the people do my bidding.
Or when I opened the damn pillar and saw myself... briefly before I died.
--
Marc A. Lepage (aka SEGV)
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
There is repository of Infocom walkthroughs at the Infocom Walkthrough Archive.
I used to maintain it before I went off to college, but I handed it down quite a few years ago.
Additionally, the Underdogs have a company profile posted at the Infocom Profile.
.... One world, one web, one program - Bill Gates
This site lets you play a version of Zork, as well as Colossal Cave (the original Adventure game,) in your web browser via a Java Z-machine interpreter. You can also play Mini-Zork here , or play Zork II here , or play Zork III here . And, finally, you can also play the original Adventure here
Enjoy!
The Big News Page
iFiction.Org has a lot of the infocom games online.
Actually, no, Infocom's market dominance was based on the fact their parser was flexible and powerful, and you didn't need to play 'hunt the verb'.
Usual links:
Does my bum look big in this?
Don't turn out the light! Stay in the light!
Arrrrgggghhhh!!!!
Grues!!!!!!!!
*munch munch*
Eric Gearman
--
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
Just take a peek here for interpreters on your platform of choice, and here for free official releases of the first three Zork games (see above for Hitchhiker's Guide links).
Much like bash in Linux. And C/C++/C#. And Java/JavaScript. And Perl. And...
Let's face it. If you don't think in the syntax, you're bound to get a syntax error. I think about Quake cvars and commands all the time (hopefully, that'll apply to code later). I think that one of the reasons for bugs in software/JavaScript syntax errors/syntax mistakes in general is that people are too busy thinking about something else. Sure, you can't let yourself go insane by just eating/drinking/breathing/thinking/coughing/stinki ng code all day; you have to escape sometime. However, you need to put yourself in the mindframe for coding. I think that this applies for almost every human activity as well.
One thing I hate about programmers today is that most of the new ones are novices just looking to add a few lines (of code, hehe) to their resumé. They don't really need to get into coding; they just go out and buy JBuilder/VisualCafé/VisualStudio because it'll be seen on their resumé and (supposedly) they'll get a big fat bonus for it. That kind of sleazy carpetbagging has to stop; if you can't contribute to the swarm, then get the hell out of the hive.
Sure, you may say, "What coding experience do you have?" As far as actually coding, none yet; my intro to C class begins soon. However, I did get to coordinate a little project: adding FMOD to a Q2 .cin player for Windows. Thanks to Randy Heit at zdoom.notgod.com, I can actually double-click a .cin file and watch it - WITH SOUND! Sure, XMPlayer already has libidcin.so, but in Windows, the only way to watch a .cin file was to start Q2 in software, 320x240 (which, frankly, stinks when it comes to actual gameplay). So, I helped change that, and now there's a sense of redemption after that was finished. Maybe I'll tweak it later on with a config file so I don't have to select the sound method every time, hmmm....
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Let's not forget about the new Zork games. Grand Inquisitor is a more than a bit campy, but is classic Zork in feel. Zork Nemesis, however, was truly an inspired piece of work. Creepy as hell, the soundtrack rocked, and unlike the games made by Trilobyte (7th Guest, 11th Hour, Clandestiny), the puzzles actually fit in the environment and make sense. A friend and I spent an entire semester playing that game. When we got to the Air lab (the sanitarium), we actually had trouble playing the thing for long stretches because of the imagery getting to us. Even now, despite the fact that I know how to beat it, I still enjoy breaking it out and tearing through it, just for the experience.
-PARANOIA is fun. D20 is not fun. The Computer says so.
-The Computer
Your in the barrow. The room is cast in
:>
shadows. You see a dagger, and a lanturn here.
There is a wooden door to the north which is closed.
GOD i spent HOURS as a kid on those games .. I was the first of my 'geek' friends to solve zork on my c64. (mainly due to a few days spent at home coughing into a bowl of chicken soup *cough cough* mom .. im sick.)
Really though .. in a way .. having always been a 'reading creature' i think the text games had a certain kind of magic to them. They were the precurser to muds as a text rich environment. How many other games let you recurse three levels when your looking at a picture on the wall? (think flatheads) Great .. thanks /. .. now im all nostalgic today :(
i have not read the report yet .. but during my 'tour' at MIT as a potental student, the tour guide mentioned that zork was based on the MIT campus .. and that the writers had gone there. (maybe why they chose this as a project?)
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
I once broke a date to play one of the Zorks. I nearly cried when Floyd died. And I played Infidel in one sitting. sabine, who had a subscription to the new zork times and all
Read before you post. The papers were done as part of a course on technological innovation. They wanted to look into why Infocom, which ruled the universe of adventure gaming in the early 80s, lost big and died by 1989. There were lots of reasons, all of which combined to take them down. -- Dave Lebling
I spent all my time going "I remember there's something you need to get out of the fscking house that lets you go across the rainbow in the gulf or something like that... How do I get it?"
You cross the rainbow by waving the sceptre you find in the temple.
Of course, without the brass lantern, which is found in the house, you are unlikely to suceed in that endeavor.
You know how in _Farenheit 451_ people "become" books by memorizing them? In the dystopia of the future, when now interpreters for the "Z-machine" are available, I'll "become" Zork I-III and allow someone else to take care of weightier matters for me.
(My favorite ZORK game was the third one. The strange rotating multi-panelled room at the end verged on the ridiculous in its complexity; that room was probably the only place in ZORK where a GUI (like Myst) would have been better than the text interface.)
I thought I was the only one out there who remembered those games. rezzrovv was the spell for light.
I had to delete the files due to transfer quota restrictions... exceeding these is quite expensive. Use the official mirrors (a message telling you where to find those can be found by restricting message view to score 5). I hope you all had a good download... *g*
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Does anyone remember this. LOOooong before the Infocom version..in fact, i think the original game may have been subject to a lawsuit? Not sure who it was by, may have a look now.
I dont think it was as good as the Infocom version, but it was one of the first text adventures i played and i quite liked it!
LGOP, however, was a breeze for me, I resorted to the Invisiclues maybe once, and the maze part that you found so hard was easy enough for me to not even remember it except for refering to the enclosed map and thinking afterward that I had hardly even needed it.
I think that this is indicative of how different people can come to the same puzzle in IF and have diametrically opposed experiences. One can have a cakewalk and another can be pulling hair out. I further think that this widely differing experiences is one reason that IF hasn't garnered a wider audience. I often don't think about playing a text adventure just because I know how time consuming and potentially frustrating it can be.
-sk
what?
Ok.
Don't be hasty.
Ok.
His head lies in a pool of blood on the floor.
You'll never make it to Valhala at this rate.
I hope you're happy.
Life's Great Text Adventure
Drat, only 100 can read this paper at a time. Perhaps slashdot should warn sites before they are the subject of a story. it would be nice to have this paper on a few mirror sites.
...weren't technologically innovative when they were new... An object oriented 128K virtual machine running on 32K RAM computers not innovative? Games that ran on 20+ platforms from a single compile not innovative? I think you might be a bit confused. I saw more innovation in the single year I worked there than I think I've seen in the 15 years since. ASK