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Infocom's Dave Lebling Interviewed
flip-flop writes: "The Adventure Collective has an interview with Dave Lebling, of olde Infocom fame. The quite lengthy Q&A covers topics such as the early days of Infocom, what Dave is doing these days, and even the origin of the name "Zork." A must-read for anyone old enough to remember those legendary text adventures ... *sigh* Those were the days: 'Get up. Turn on light ...'"
ftp://ftp.monkey.org/pub/users/thom/infocom/
There is a bulldozer outside.
I remember that game. It's called Castaway, and its available on the interactive fiction archive. The main site ( ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/ ) is going down soon, unfortunately, but there are plenty of mirrors.
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100% pure freak
I tend to think of Diablo as a roguelike you can actually win.
Is it just me or do all of the text based roguelike authors seem to have some dread fear that someone somewhere might win the game?
I especially remember rogue (I still play it once in a while) where it seems like anytime your character starts doing good (you find the two handed sword, a ring of rust resistance (or whatever it's called), and some nice armor the RNG will decide to do you in and stop putting food on the levels, leaving your adventurer to eventually starve to death or faint while fighting a dragon.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
I went through my old email, and, although I doubt anyone will read this comment, the site from whence you can obtain all those Infocom games on one CD is <http://www.lacegem.com/orders.html>. The page is more of an aquamarine than a peppermint, according to xcolorsel, so I don't suppose that helped much...
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W.A.S.T.E.
The Z-code file for the Hitchhiker's Guide is available off Douglas Adams' web site. Download this, and buy the Activision reissue of "Classic text adventure masterpieces" and you'll have pretty much everything Infocom ever did. If you have a Pilot, put a copy of Frotz on it and you can play on the move. Some of the games have mildly annoying copy protection which means you have to look something up in the PDF manual, but by and large it's fantastic. I paid about £25 or so I think -- unfortunately I can't remember the URL, but I do remember the page was a sort of pepperminty green. Oh, and check out if-archive.
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W.A.S.T.E.
Asylum wasn't Infocom, it was published by Med Systems, and it was the most amazing thing ever published on the TRS-80. The company later did a IBM PC port that I actually saw once, but it seems to have dropped off of the face of the net.
Asylum had a parser every bit as good as Infocom's, but they added a terrific 3d graphics display on the TRS-80's 128x48 pixel display. Asylum was immersive in a way that very few other games I have ever seen were, and in only 16k. Really one of the best adventure games ever published.
And it was HARD.
Med Systems also published an excellent adventure game called Lucifer's Realm, in which you had to go to hell and convince the devil to let you go to heaven.
All of these games were in many ways more exciting than the Infocom ones, because they melded graphics and a first-rate adventure parser that really took advantage of the *cough* awesome power of the TRS-80.
- jon
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
On the other hand, a 133t-speak text adventure game might be funny.
>j00 533 4 d00r
0p3/\/ d00r.
>th3 d00r 15 10x0r3d.
Un10j00 n33d 4 k3y.
I know I am waiting for this game.
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
I tried playing via voice some infocom games (specifically, Enchanter) using WinFrotz and Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
Would have been fine, except Enchanter ONLY took "NE" and "northeast" to mean Go NorthEast (and same for NWSESW) and I couldn't get Dragon NS to think of NorthEast as one word...it kept separating them. And "Spell 'N','E'" didn't seem too much more successful either. I finally gave up on it.
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You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Not quite -- you won't be able to take the pill until you're wearing the gown:
You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it which you can't.
It is pitch black.
>get up
Very difficult, but you manage it. The room is still spinning. It dips and sways a little.
>turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
Bedroom
The bedroom is a mess.
It is a small bedroom with a faded carpet and old wallpaper. There is a washbasin, a chair with a tatty dressing gown slung over it, and a window with the curtains drawn. Near the exit leading south is a phone.
There is a flathead screwdriver here.
There is a toothbrush here.
>get robe
Luckily, this is large enough for you to get hold of. You notice something in the pocket.
>open pocket
It's hard to open or close the pocket unless you're wearing the gown.
>wear gown
You are now wearing your gown.
>look in pocket
Opening your gown reveals a thing your aunt gave you which you don't know what it is, a buffered analgesic, and pocket fluff.
>take pill
You swallow the tablet. After a few seconds the room begins to calm down and behave in an orderly manner. Your terrible headache goes.
No need for that . . . just search online for Z-code interpreters and then try to find the Z-file for the game. I found it last week, and played it through again, just for the heck of it. On the other hand, it would be fun to hook up the 800XL again. I had an 800, then an 800XL, and i first experienced HHGTG on that machine. I might have to hook mine up and play some of the old classics again . . .
I want to see a FPS combined with air combat simulation, tank simulation, strategy, and adventure--a complete battlefield.
That looks way cool. I was planning a similar system using PHP but it seems you've beaten me to it!
Mind you I don't have a secret passphrase so I couldn't get in to have a look at it. Is there a web page somewhere with some more details on it?
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
Oooooh... memories. =) VikingMUD was the first online game I ever played, and the only MUD I really ever got into. Now if only I could remember what the heck my password was...
~ Leilah
Yeah, I loved the cloth map in Ultima V (the last, great Ultima before that isometric drek); a very nice touch, and actually useful in the game, too.
Watson, "Where is the doctor?"
Oh, in case you've forgotten: They also had the very popular adaption of The Hobbit and the way less popular adaptions of the first two volumes of LotR.
That is, if you can get anywhere with them.
I have this problem where I havn't been able to solve any interactive fiction games. I've put all of my efforts into Jigsaw lately, because it's rather big but the sub-plots are small. Maybe I'll finish it someday... I even gave up on the Kings Quest series.
Wasting hours and hours playing asylum and zork.
:-)
If it wasn't for infocom I probably would have gotten my masters in CS..
no wait, that was the beer that stopped that progress....
Oh well
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You just have to say, "Okay. I'm serious about winning. No more screwing around." and play with that attitude in mind. That's how I ended up winning in ADOM, though I've still got a ways to go with nethack.
Now if only we could get a rewrite of Zork 1 in which you could kill the thief.
You can kill the thief. He's just really tough.
I had an idea a while ago regarding the old Infocom games.
What if you got a good narrator to record all the text from a game, and hooked up a speech-to-text engine for input. Then you could put it on a laptop, sit back in your favorite chair, put on some headphones, close your eyes and just imagine... completely and totally immersed in the story in your mind.
It wouldn't be too hard to do; the main impediment would be to get some decent voice talent to do the recordings. Otherwise, it should be doable entire with existing open source code.
(okay, there is one other problem - copyright. but maybe if this was done in an open source freely available way, they wouldn't mind...)
http://www.adventurecollective.com/articles/inter
from the interview:
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
You are wearing pants.
>Open pants
Pants are open.
>Get hot grits
You already have hot grits.
>pour hot grits in pants
Natalie Portman is petrified of hot grits in your pants.
...
A CmdrTaco appears.
>Hello.
The CmdrTaco screams: Yuo troll! No hto girts or Natalie Protman err allowed at my diskusion bord! Your are to reed my PERL cod 5 tims befroe you're can go ot slep!
>Back!
Contacting images2.slashdot.org.........
Server is not responding.
>Please God no!
You have been Taco-spaghettified to death.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
FWIW, I had a Vic 20 to play the Scott Adams adventure games, then a PCjr where I finally got into Infocoms
Hell, I went out and bought Trinity and Buerocracy back in 1989 for my first year of University (still using the 5 year old PCjr at that point), and I STILL haven't solved them! I swear, a year of post-modernist critique damaged my faculties beyond repair. :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
She showed me the suit of commands like mfeel, gsex, msex
What do the mfeel, gsex, and msex commands actually do?
cpeterso
Scott Adams has been busy creating Dilbert and selling out.
Oh, the OTHER Scott Adams. He has released a new game last year called Return To Pirates Island 2. You can also
play online version of his classic games.
cpeterso
Back in the day when a decent story actually mattered. Now, you don't need an imagination -- that NVidia GForce and Soundblaster provide one for you.
Of course, you didn't have to pay artists and musicians, either.
Yes, some of today's games have good stories, but too many rely on whiz-bang graphics and sound and skimp on actual playability.
--
Charles E. Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Tetris has no plot.
DooM/Quake et al never needed one, it was good that Epic realized this with Unreal Tournament.
you can't unilaterally say games suck because they don't have plots. if a game depends on its plot for part of its interest and enjoyment, and the plot is weak then yes, that is a fault.
but if it's merely extraneous,.. then that's like complaining that zork never had fancy graphics.
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
At the risk of being redundant, here's where to play online INFOCOM games...h tm Java
http://infocom.elsewhere.org/ Telnet mode
http://www.saturn.powerup.com.au/ddesoto/infocom.
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Wow, I wasted most of my life playing Zork, Nethack, et. al.
The best way to burn your brain, and it runs great on a C64...
I have fruitlessly searched for said interpreter. URL?
Between HHGTTG, Planetfall, Zork I and II, Leather Goddesses of Phobos and Deadline, I lost many hours of my childhood. And I'll never regret it as long as I live.
Now, if only I can find that Infocom Masterpieces CD for less than the $80.00 it goes for on eBay.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
I remember a text adventure that was on my eighth grade's computer. Dunno if it even had a title, but you were on a jungle island and needed to recover about ten treasures and light a signal fire to leave the island. All I remember now is that here was a jaguar that could only be killed with a spear (axes don't count as weapons, I guess) and a parrot that gave a button-pushing puzzle clue. The best part was that after I had everything figured out, I'd race myself to see how fast I could do it :) I think I finally got the entire thing down to eight minutes...I didn't even look at the monitor to see where I was or what had happened, I just opened my blazing fury of hunt-and-peck on the keyboard and prayed for no typos. Has anyone out there memorized Zork end-to-end?
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Co-founder of GerbilMechs
Everquest, which I am completely addicted to
I guess that's where all his coding time has gone then. This game is one of the biggest time wasters around, but for some reason it's a lot of fun.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
You are in a twisty maze of little passages, all alike...
Best Slashdot Co
It is here. Also check out this place for more cool z-machine and other interactive adventure stuff.
Nethack is winnable - it's not even that hard. I see it as an exercise in self-control. You have to concentrate on every single move or you will do something stupid, and not all the +3 blessed gray dragon scale mails in Yendor will save you. You could just think of it as good training for life in general. Never stop thinking, because the moment you start hitting keys before you know what they're going to do things go downhill.
Whatever tool you don't have with you is the one he asks for. Just put them all in the thing your Aunt gave you.
No cynic here. I cried like a baby in my office at lunch when Floyd sacrificed his life for me. No graphical game has ever conjured that much emotion from me. Graphic games are quick, easy, and require no investment, therefore they return much less.
1) I'm not a programmer, I'm a Mac user. So admonitions to 'get over myself' are wasted, since I'm not one of you. I'm making an observation about the Infocom team, about which I'll elaborate.
2) I was referring to the creators of Infocom games, who were both programmers in the grandest sense as well as artists of serious calibre. "Interactive" fiction is made up of TWO pieces, the "interactive" part (programming) and fiction (an artform).
If you don't think that Infocom games merit consideration as art, then you're an absolute idiot and I'd be surprised if you could program your own VCR.
First I disagree with an earlier comment.
Today's 'graphical extensions' of Zork might be a game like "Myst", or some of the other visual adventure games with puzzles-to-solve in the process. There are some parallels even in games like "Resident Evil" and other largely linear, puzzle-based games.
But in honesty, the beauty and genius of Infocom's games won't be replicated in a graphical gaming environment. As soon as the computer screen was doing the rendering that previously was up to the NVidia card in your head, your head didn't have to trouble itself.
Infocom games demanded that players use both their imaginations (to visualize the written word) and their problem-solving skills (to solve the myriad of problems encountered in the course of gaming).
I think that, while enormous imagination goes into *creating* today's best games, I think most require a lot less imagination on the part of the player. Games are becoming more cinematic. This isn't an entirely bad thing, but it is sad that the current generation of gamers are going to miss out on the truly rewarding experience of text-based adventure gaming.
And I still remember which so vivid clarity the profound emotion that Infocom games were able to cultivate during gameplay... I remember my abject terror when being captured by Krill's minions in "Enchanter" - madly scrambling to find a way out of the cell, only to be sacrificed on the altar by Krill himself, a glowing blade plunged into my heart. - I remember how hard I laughed when Floyd, the genius robot with the maturity of a 6-year old from "Planetfall" first starting took out a crayon and wrote his name on the elevator wall, and how I wept (WEPT you heartless cynical punkasses, copious tears!) when he sacrificed his life to help me solve the game.
Text-based systems required more of the participants, but gave back so much more to those who invested the time...Which reminds me...
When is Slashdot going to get-with-the-times, dump all this text-based news commentary crap, and GIVE US NEWS WE CAN JUST SIT BACK AND WATCH!
The whole point of the Infocom parser was that it WASN'T limited to stupid two word combinations.
> get all of the goo and the candle. blow out the candle then attack the interviewer
Red goo: taken.
Blue goo: taken.
Silvery mystery goo: taken.
Brown goo: you cannot carry any more.
Candle: you cannot carry any more.
You blow out the candle, leaving everyone in a pitch blackness. The stench of a grue becomes apparent.
You can't see the interviewer. You have been attacked by a grue.
[
Ok, so it really doesn't have a plot.
And it's graphics suck.
But DAMN that's a fun game. A bunch of semiold players (semiclue++) telling all new players to go to hell and evict them from the game if at all possible. And a bunch of old players who don't really care.
My gf has to pull me out of the appartement by the ear to get me away from that game. Too bad the playerbase is getting smaller by the day.
"Rc++ @ Ald!!!!"
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Interviewer: ask question
Dave: I don't understand what you are trying to say. Perhaps if you rephrase your statement?
Interviewer: talk Dave
Dave: You can't do that here!
Interviewer: query Dave
Dave: I don't understand the command "query".
Interviewer:bah!
Dave: I don't understand the command "bah".
Interviewer: kill Dave
Dave: A strong wind has blown out Interviewer's candle. Interviewer has been attacked by a grue for 106 points Interviewer has died!
Judging from the players on the MUD I code on, I would have to say yes. We have lots of players in their teens. Sure, a substantial part of the players are older but most of the new players are below 20 years of age.
...I have all of the Infocom adventure games on a device the size of a stamp - an SD card for my Palm.
--
-- SIGFPE
Though I have nothing against it as a game, and indeed admire it, I find myself occasionally referring to Diablo as "rogue/nethack for people with short attention spans."
Yeah, I play NetHack in text mode.
-jKarma: T-rexcellent.
You have a point. Solutions: either get real patient, and as another poster pointed out, think out every move, or start doing the savefile copying thing. (I went through a savefile copy phase, and accumulated 20megs of archived savegames, before it turned sour. I don't know why, but it just felt weird. I was cheating, after all.)
I do the patience thing these days. I don't do much 'puter gaming at all, so my nethack sessions are far between but intense. I die a lot. But I manage to learn a lot, too.
The game, as a whole, works for some people. For others, it doesn't. *shrug*
-jKarma: T-rexcellent.
I particularly enjoyed Dave's comments on the commercial viability of the adventure genre. As an interactive fiction designer of the MUSH/MOO flavor, my own experience tends to support everything Dave said about the gaming market today.
/are/ the character in the story. But the success of the story is dependent on your involvement in it, or your engagement by it, and Verant would never hire the enormous staff that would be necessary to weave the kinds of characters and plots together to make -every- PC involved in a good story; with that many people, even if you had the writers, you couldn't keep consistency across a universe that large. So they're reduced to 'dungeon hacks,' short-term plots with tangible rewards. To say nothing of the fact that you have know how to participate in a story without ruining it for everyone else. In MMORPGs, all of the structure that exists to do so exists in terms of 'your ability to kick the sh*t out of other players.' It'd be laughable to even try and turn something like Everquest into a viable dramatic setting, where people actually need REASONS for slaying one another.
I think a good deal of the 'problem' (if it is actually a problem) is that the audience is different. Back when the original Zorks came out -- I learned to read off of Zork I -- they were novelties. There was nothing like them. I suspect (but have no actual data) that people of all ages bought them, because home computers were new enough so that there was no generation gap yet. They really were immersive. It was and still is the best example of an on-line book where you influence the ending (remember when on-line meant 'on your computer,' in the early 80s?)
I've done a lot of work in the MUSH world with RPG systems and entirely free-form roleplaying. A quick jaunt around MUSH/MOO/MUD sites will tell you which games are popular, though. My impression is that MUDs with nothing but hack'n'slash have completely caved to things like Everquest, but MUDs were outside my expertise. The actual 'roleplaying' games, where there are no levels, no fighting, only storytelling, are numerous, but most of them are not successful. Their audience tends to be in the 14-20 age range, which makes these 'adventure' games an excellent tool for kids to learn how to write, but rarely can you find really good storytelling. The 'popular' games are based on franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Anne McCaffrey's novels, and except in the case of the latter, typically have shiny buttons and 'game-like' systems that more resemble computer games than storytelling forums. These games try to be all things to all people, and inevitable fail, because a text environment simply cannot compete with Everquest or UO; their success depends entirely on the proper selection of a goal, of a forum that Everquest can't provide very well (like, for example, storytelling).
There have already been threads on how graphics have dominated the game market. So has the requirement for an online component. With the single exception of The Longest Journey, there have no 'adventure' games that aren't mostly dependent on graphics or gameplay rather than story. Myst, IMO, has been recycled and redone too many times to qualify on the same level as The Longest Journey does. And TLJ didn't sell very well in the US, unfortunately. I think the reason why games like UO and Everquest can't accomodate storytelling on a very real level -- and the reason that really good adventure games like TLJ and Zork can't ever be multiplayer and won't sell well is because a story is a very intimate process. It accomodates, at most, a small group. With a book, you're engaged by the characters in the story; in a MUSH or a Zork, you
end tirade.
I'm 19, and Planetfall was one of my favorite games when I was little. Wishbringer, too. Found Hitchhiker's Guide much later on, and that one was wicked tough, I think I had to cheat and look at hints several times, oh well.
:)
But yeah, if barely 19 counts as a 'young gamer' to you, then some of us still remember.
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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Depending on the side of the pond you lived on, life consisted of Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9. Personally, I favoured the mag scrolls games over the infocom stuff. Fish, Guild Of Thieves, Pawn etc were fantastic. Infocom were good too, but I found some kind of charm in the magnetic scrolls stuff I didnt really find in the Infocom stuff (specifcally the later games, the early stuff I enjoyed muchly!)... Level 9 were also kickass.. Ingrid, Worm in Paradise, etc.
Write your Own Operating System [FAQ]!
no sig for you
...
take robe
open pocket
take anagesic
Speaking of which, I have a headache...
Save a life. Eat more cheese
So there I was, juggling apples and small animals, when I accidentally bit into the wrong one...
i tried to go follow the link but my dented lantern had sputtered out and i was afraid i might walk into the slavering fangs of a wandering grue. Strangely enough, my sword started glowing...
e x p e c t d e l a y . c o m
Fourteen. Played Zork, Adventure, Wumpus, etc. Loved them all (damn wumpus!).
Quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Anything said in Latin, sounds profound.
http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive.html
There's a plethora of independantly authored games, specifications for the Z-Machine, and a few programming languages and compilers (Inform and TADS being the most popular) for writing "interactive fiction" in a faily high level, object oriented manner. Plus, the Z-Machine has been expanded to have some pretty huge memory allowances, such that games the size of the entire Zork and Enchanter series combined can be written and played.
See subject. ps. This is not off-topic--its an "inside" joke that you will understand if you have played Zork.
this was funny, mod it up!
I agree, I spend money on strategy and wargames with many complex rules and am given a box with a CD and told to Print the PDFs. I want my manuals back.
Tell me about it; I've played nethack for well over a DECADE and I've never even come close to winning. Get into the 20s and suddenly a giant mumak comes up and tramples you to death. Before they introduced them the cockatrice would kill you. Tempted to just give up and start copying save files...
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If I remember right you HAVE to kill the thief.
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Concentrating on every single move sucks the fun out of the game. Life isn't only about planning; intuition and quick thinking have a part too, and if you slowly plan out everything you do, it'll suck the fun out of life too.
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What about Curses? The modern IF world wouldn't exist without that one.
There are some truly amazing games out there. I'm in the process of trying to write one myself (just started; don't ask if you can be a beta tester).
/Brian
Ah. The forerunner to Leisure Suit Larry... But if you want a much better dirty IF game play I-0. Adam Cadre is a weird dude but he writes some pretty good stuff -- just enough kink.
/Brian
(It should be noted that you cannot finish the game if you kill the thief too early... he serves another purpose than to just steal from you. (Along those lines, anyone know how to finish the game? I thought I had collected everything but I can't seem to do anything...))
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You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
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You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Perhaps your confusing Slashdot with another site? This is News for Nerds here. Yeah, I know, Kyoto will affect everyone, and I'm so shallow and politically naive for thinking it doesn't necessarily need to be discussed here, whatever. The fact is, I can check out any number of sites to get my Kyoto news. I come to Slashdot to read interviews about 20 year old games.
Incidently, Slashdot wasn't doing the interviewing here, rather they just linked to another site which conducted the interview.
Are those Portman brand Hot Grits ?
For a link that works, try this one. Portman brand Hot Grits
__
You are assuming that the 13-18 age group has only been playing computer games for a few years. This may apply to most people, but it doesn't apply to me.
I started using a computer at age 3. I am now 17. I remember quite distinctly playing all of the Zorks (though I only really tried to play the first), text based action games like Castle, Trinity, Moonmist, etc. on my vast array of 5 1/4" floppies (it helped that my two older brothers liked computers, so I just sorta picked up their stuff and played with it).
In the early 90s I got myself into BBSes. These games, to me, were more fun to play than the single person text adventures. My favorite games were TradeWars and The Pit. You compete against fellow people and build up your character with additional equipment, money, score, etc. I have always loved this genre of gaming - the idea of a multiplayer environment where one can combine strategy, trade, time, and brainless searching/killing to create an awesome character to play.
Not surprisingly, I got into MUDs for a few years. At the same time I played Civ II and Star Craft more than I'd really like to admit. I would play a FPS here or there for a very short time, but they got boring very quickly. On the other hand, Civ II and Star Craft have absolutely unmatched replay power. I also played Zork: Grand Inquisitor, but never really got into it.
I suppose that's one thing I don't really like about the Zork series - you finish the game, and it's infinitely easier to beat a second time, because you've done all of the puzzles (except in games like Monkey Island which have difficulty settings - great idea!).
Yes, Zork and it's derivatives are fun, but I'd take a strategy/building game over it any day for sheer replayability.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
the kyoto treaty is not really "news for nerds", it is closer to "news for ecologists". but at least im doing my part for the environment...
That probably explains why I have yet to get passed level 7. "Ooh, I wonder what would happen if I did this? Oh."
-Medgur
hm? you have to kill the thief, in his lair, behind the cyclops, in the maze. or is the visor version broken?
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https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
heh heh, cool, you're struggling with Zork... ;)
//e and work on it some more.
i don't know how many last-period french classes in juniorhighschool (back in '84) that i wasted mentally wrestling with the exact problem you're having, dying to get home to my apple
of course, there was no web then so i couldn't post for help, and i didn't have a modem... took me a month to find the treasure i was missing...
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https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Whenver I read discussions about the original implementors, there's lots and lots of reminiscing by people in my age group (er, 28-33).
But I'm curious, have any of you younger fellers played and Zorks, Enchanters, Deadline, Suspect, Starcross, Suspended, Plantefall, etc...??
I'm wondering if young gamers of today (13-18) even have the patience to play all-text games, or if the memories of Zork are unique only to a certain age group...
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https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I was maybe 8-10 years old when Zork I was out. I remember a choose-your-own-adventure type book that came out for it, which I read and enjoyed thoroughly. I found the Zork logo (with the opening door as the letter 'O') rather inviting...
We didn't have a computer at home at that time (unless you count the Atari 2600, which I don't, though it was a lot of fun) but a friend of my mom's did. As it happened, they had Zork for their machine, which must've been an old 8086 or possibly a '286.
I couldn't get through the game to save my life. Of course, I didn't have any of the game's documentation (if there was any) but I found the game to be majorly frustrating, as the game barfed at roughly 90% of the commands I tried to give it. I could only manage to get through a very small portion of the game, and only then due to my memory of the choose-your-own-adventure, not due to any actual ability to solve problems.
I concluded that the game was a disappointment and eventually (after several days of getting nowhere) gravitated to the Space Invaders ripoff "Wavy Navy" instead. Still, I did really dig the book version...
----jjjiii
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
As I am an old MUD addict who still do the occational crusades online, I have noticed that the user-base on these things are not declining at any noticable rate. The average age of the players may be higher than in the "golden days" of text adventures, but they still do have a strong following.
FYI: I mostly play on Viking MUD - not the largest of the MUDs, but it's the one I've been hanging around. I also use Frotz - the multiplatform Z-Engine - to play Infocom games on Linux. Not to forget of course, the original text adventure "Adventure" that has always been part of the Slackware Linux distribution, and the unforgettable Foom - a text adventure based on ID Softwares Doom game, using TADS - the Text Adventure Development System.
^]:wq!^M
Try the InvisiClues (probably the Heart Of Gold section) which are conveniently available at the bottom of:t ml
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pete/Infocom/hitchhikers.h
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
Ularn is quite winnable though (I have won it and I am a lousy and impatient roguelike player who never wins things.. ironic?), and is even being actively maintained again. As for all these newfangled games like Nethack and Angband, haven't played 'em yet, so can't comment.
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
Yes, definitely good to give credit to Zork. Back when I was into MUDs (weren't we all addicted at one point?), I would attempt to explain a MUD as "Zork, but with other people playing at the same time". Of course, the people I was explaining to didn't know about Zork either.
Now I try explaining the MUGU system as "a MUD, but with simple graphics".K45
This signature has eleven vowels.
Ah. I've often wanted to build my own www-based text adventure. But can you imagine a page refresh for every mistyped command?
Take the wrench
[page refresh]
"What do you mean?"
Open the toolbox
[page refresh]
"What toolbox?"
Look up
[page refresh]
"You see a shiny new toolbox sitting on the top shelf"
Take the toolbox
[page refresh]
"You now have the toolbox"
Open the toolbox
[page refresh]
"You see a shiny new wrench inside the toolbox."
Take the wrench
[page refresh]
"You now have the toolbox. I hope you're happy."
Quit
It's "Throw Bear"!
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I actually had to disassemble the Z-machine code to the game to figure out that puzzle. I had no clue that it was even a baseball reference until I read the object code.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I'd picked through the executable (which ran in the RT-11 runtime system) and the datafiles, which no way could fit on an Apple ][ disk in their entirety, and found the password for the debugger (name, id(1625?), cat=barney, hey, it was 20 years ago..) and found the vocabulary encoded in Radix50 with a simple dumping program written in Basic, which I ran over the executable. I think I found one of these printouts in a book a couple months ago, so sure I still have some stuff from way back when.
There is a version of the original DUNGEO, I think written in C, which is floating around some ftp servers. I'm sure I have it on one of my home computers.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Zork I-III were a major disappointment. I picked up Zork (note: Not 'I') for the Apple ][ when it first hit the shelves and scampered (not ran, not shambled, not left a cycops shaped hole in the door, etc.) down to our college Apple Lab and booted up the game. I finished in about 15 minutes and was stunned how watered down it was and at how much was missing. I didn't bother to get the rest until picking up a collection of Infocom text adventures at a shop (probably for less than the Apple Zork disk cost me, not even accounting for inflation) and finished Zork II and was equally unimpressed. Haven't bothered with Zork III, but figure it's probably most of the other parts of the original VAX/PDP11 version with a couple new twists.
Did enjoy his Lurking Horror game. Living in Michigan and being somewhat snowbound for a while I really got into it. Pity some of the puzzles were so non-obvious I had to buy the clue book. Even with the clue book some puzzles still seemed completely bizzare. I blame that on Activision, tho, since I believe this was after their acquisition of Infocom and an attempt to extract more bucks out of game players (a trend that seems to continue even today in action games.)
Last Infocom game I got was DNA's Beauracracy. Too damn fun. I should pull that one out and play through it again.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
wow, game packaging sure has changed from the eighties. remember what was contained in the Murder by the Dozen and PlanetFall boxes? there was so much extra materials in the game, it really made you feel like you were are part of it.
look at today's materials.. sigh. sometimes just a bloody CD and nothing more..
remember before infocom? there was a slew of adventures from Scott Adams. you remember, the ones you always saw advertised in Compute's classified section. input was limited to two words; an action and a target. when i saw an infocom game for the first time, it was like, 'holy shit! you can type sentences!"
I'm waiting for a reliable and easy-to-install modchip for my PS2 so I can finally start importing all the dating/school-sim goodness!
GTRacer
- My high school experience SUCKED. At least on console, I can reload if things don't go my way...
Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
bad news... last I knew, Looking Glass had gone out of business...
>Open browser.
The browser is now open.
>Point browser at slashdot.
I can't see any slashdot here!
>Type slashdot.org in browser.
You quickly type the information into the browser and press enter, the browser slowly... very slowly loads the web page.
>Examine browser.
The browser is currently displaying the slashdot.org home page. There is an interview here.
>Skip interview.
You don't read the interview.
>Get first post.
The first post is already taken.
You are in a well-lit room containing a mace, boots, and a plant.
>Take mace
I don't know the word "mace"
>Take boots
I don't know the word "boots"
>Take plant
I don't know the word "plant"
>quit
...
Recently I picked up The Longest Journey. It the first enjoyable adventure game that I'd played in years, and the story is fantastic. (Although it also suffers from the click-everywhere-when-you're-stuck syndrome.) If you were a fan of the old Sierra games, you'll really like it. Hopefully game companies will see that there can be a market for adventure games again, so long as they are done well.
A note about the article: Enchanter has always been my favorite of all the Infocom games, and I probably got "into" computers because of it. I think it is overlooked in discussions of text adventure games (more people seem to think of Zork or HHGTHG as the best-of-genre), so it was cool to read that Lebling also thought it was one of the better games.
-
What better way to spend time on an airplane than with a brand new adventure on your PDA.
'Same speed C but faster'
I mean jebus, I've heard enough of that Kyoto treaty crap on the nightly news. I gotta hear about it from Slashdot now too? Lets measure the two: Legendary computer games vs. obscure environmental treaty......hmmmmmmmm yeah thats a hard one to decide for a TECH SITE!
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Here are a few modern, independently-written Interactive Fiction games that match or beat anything Infocom has produced:
Photopia (scroll down)
Metamorphoses
For a Change
Babel
Worlds Apart
For lots more, head over to The Best of IF.
There is, of course, the "intended" solution to the problem, which is to put all the fluff you find in the game (there are four pieces) into the flowerpot from the whale, wait until a plant sprouts, then carry it into the sauna. The fruit that grows, when eaten, will provide the name of the tool you need to give Marvin.
--Matthew
"If the lights of Broadway blind me, I won't mind..."
kill troll with sword
It's nice to see games like Zork get recognition for the profound influence it had on adventure games. Today's games like Diablo are just graphical extensions of games like Zork and eventually Rogue.
A good computer game is like a good novel, it creates the image of a world and forces your mind to fill in the details with your own imagination.
The better text adventure games (and to a lesser extent, some of the earlier graphical RPG's, like Ultima III to VI) did an excellent job of this. Modern games tend to do a very poor job, they just do it with stereo sound and texture maps.
Then again, we shouldn't be surprised. A trip to the movie theatre will show you that for the most part special effects long ago replaced imagination.
Just have to make sure I don't eat the sandwich this time...
It is 2100AD.
> begin war
War is beginning.
> look
You are captain of great base. You hear an explosion.
> ask operator, "what happen?"
Operator say, "Someone set up us the bomb"
Operator say, "We get signal!"
> say, "What!"
The Operator looks at you.
> inventory
You have:
5 zigs (you are wearing)
main screen
> turn on main screen
Operator say, "main screen turn on."
You see Cats.
Cats says "How are you Gentlemen!"
Cats says "All your base are belong to us."
Cats says "You are on the path to destruction."
> ask Cats, "What you say?"
Cats says "You have no chance to survive make your time."
Cats says "ha ha ha ha ha"
Cats leaves.
> make time
You still have no chance to survive
> examine zig
The zigs know what they are doing.
> move every zig.
You are still wearing the zig.
> Take off every zig
The zigs take off for great justice.
> Quit.
You have got 263 points.
This is the 100000000th lamest reuse of the "All your bases" gag.
--
This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
-- This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
Ah.. A mind forever voyaging was awesome.. I had this years ago on the commie 128. I managed to get ahold of a copy, but I couldn't play it without the "secret decoder wheel". Anyone know if these games are in the public domain yet? And if so, where could I get a copy of the key wheel?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Does this not make you worry about the quality of the news site that's interviewing you?
Here's a small excerpt (Formatting is a bit cruddy):
You are in a cube. In front of you is a 16" (visible) Sony monitor. In front of that is a Mitsumi keyboard and an unbranded mouse. Just to the right is a 266 MHz PC clone. The system is running a development version of BeOS R4.
There is a graphics card here.
There is a floppy disk here.
There is a note from your boss here.
There is a Hoberman sphere here.
> INVENTORY
You have a well-used satchel. Inside it are
- A set of screwdrivers
- A small telescope
- A 16M laptop RAM module
- A book on decorative knots
- A PCMCIA Ethernet card
- Last year's tax return
- A 166 MHz Pentium laptop computer
- A bottle of echinacea capsules
- Hair sticks
Your wallet contains $3200.> REPLACE KEYBOARD
You put aside the amazingly cruddy Mitsumi keyboard and substitute your favorite AT&T keyboard.
> PUT LAPTOP ON DESK
The laptop is now on the desk.
> READ NOTE
"Write a driver for this card. We'd like it in time for R4 release."
> EXAMINE GRAPHICS CARD
You are evidently the proud owner of a Yoyodyne Monstra VelocElite-LX 128-3D-AGP graphics card.
> INSERT CARD IN MACHINE
The machine emits a curious and worrying noise.
> TURN OFF MACHINE AND INSERT CARD
The graphics card is now installed in the machine.
> TURN ON MACHINE
BeOS R4(devel) boots. You are looking at a gray scale desktop.
> EXAMINE FLOPPY DISK
The handwritten label reads, "Programming docs."
>INSERT DISK AND PRINT DOCS
Nothing happens.
> INSERT DISK, MOUNT DISK, AND PRINT DOCS
The drive spins for a moment, and the command prompt returns.
> READ DOCS
I see no docs here.
> GO TO PRINTER AND GET DOCS
The printer is out of paper.
> PUT PAPER IN PRINTER
There is no paper here.
> STEAL PAPER FROM COPIER UPSTAIRS
After installing the liberated paper in the printer, you print your docs.
There is absolutely no reason to panic.
Its too bad Zork didn't have any of the 'g' and 'm' commands from some of the MUDs I found myself in. I remember in college one of my friends was into mudding, and I never saw the fun in a text based game. I got into it one day, and this other character kept harassing me in the game. She showed me the suit of commands like mfeel, gsex, msex, etc etc. Jeez, sometimes my past embarasses me :)
;) Those games were sure fun, when you had to type in your commands. By the time Larry 6 came around the fun kinda disappeared. I mean, clicking the zipper icon on everything gets kind of lame after a while ;) Though it was fun peeing in the water fountain... :)
I never played Zork too much because I was busy playing Leisure Suit Larry
I personally spend a lot of time playing them on my Palm, using one of the PalmOS interpreters. Text-based games are great for their small size and infinite enjoyability. Infocom games and rogue-like games have a perfect home on handhelds. Some people I have beamed the original Adventure to have never seen an infocom game before (believe it or not!). It is all dark here. You will most likely be eaten by a grue. >Open can of whoopass I see no can of whoopass here! >Open can of whoopass Realizing your peril, you decide not to open the can of whoopass and then pat yourself on the back. >Open can of whoopass Ok, can opened.
[sig]you really dont want the answers, trust me[/sig]
Even modern adventure/puzzle games, which can be quite good (Last Express, Discworld, etc.), don't really match the level of achievement I felt when playing A Mind Forever Voyaging, for example.
I mean, one of the single most vivid memories of my youth was sitting in from of my old Commie and finally figuring out the last bit of the Babel Fish puzzle.
A measly little air frag with a railgun will never, ever equal it.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
It's interesting to see what Lebling had to say about the so-called demise of the adventure genre. I suppose he's right in some respects, but the situation is a bit more complex than that. I think what's really dying is the idea of genres themselves. I mean, categories like your tried-and-true sports and puzzles are here to stay...they're pretty defninite in form and function. But all the other genres seem to be mixing into one big pot. You've got RTS games with a hint of sim (or even FPS in some cases). You've got RPGs mixing up with action and strategy aspects. I think I've even seen a role-playing racing sim out there somewhere.
IMO the adventure genre is still alive, only it has taken on many different forms. And even if there seems to be a decline of "adventure" in today's games, I'm sure it'll come back in fashion tomorrow because the video game industry cycles. Games like Zork are simply to frickin' sweet to just fade away out of existence like that.
--
"I strongly urge both the faint of heart and the faint of butt to leave the room at this time."
- Strong Bad
How do you figure out which tool Marvin the Paranoid Android will want to use to open the hatchway from the Heart of Gold out onto the planet? He asks for a different tool every time. I've been stuck there for months....
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
there's another Link where you can play at least the Zork-Games: http://www.webwallet.de/cgi-bin/rezrov/rezrov it has also some kind of chat system, but it's not fully debugged at the moment. So please report all bugs you find. Because it's webbased, you don't have to save your game (will be saved automatically) and you can play it with every webbrowser even on your PDA!
This article brings back many happy memories. I worked at the MIT Lab from 1976-1978, while Zork was being created. I was an undergraduate. I wrote Fortran and PDP-11 assembler code to collect data for the morse code decoding project. Also wrote my very first Life game there, displayed by frobbing two D/A converters connected to the X & Y inputs of an ocscilloscope. I remember late nights sitting in front of the Imlacs, shooting at each other in the maze game that PDL (Dave Lebling's login) helped write.