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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*.
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
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.
HTTP 1.1 GET 'xyzzy'
Which always gives me a chuckle.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
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:
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.
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
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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!
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
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
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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
That would explain the total absense of a dam on the MIT campus, yes. But I loved "the Lurking Horror" and its "beyond the state of the art PC". Wow -- it has a hard drive AND a network connection -- what will they think of next? :-)
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?
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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.
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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...
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
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.
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"
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.
(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.
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
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
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
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Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
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