Slashdot Mirror
Crowther's Original Adventure Source Code Found
drxenos writes "I don't know how many of you are fans of old-school text adventures (interactive fiction), but Will Crowther's original Fortran source code has been located in a backup of Don Woods's old student account. For fans like me, this is like finding the Holy Grail."
I looked at the various FORTRAN files and am amazed at the spaghetti GOTO maze which, although messy, was probably the only way to do things in FORTRAN at the time with no structuring capability.
A random example:
IF(K.NE.1) MASK1="177*M2(K)
IF(((A(J).XOR."201004020100).AND.MASK1).EQ.0)GOTO 3
IF(S.EQ.0) GOTO 2
Wow! Is that the opposite of self-documenting code or what?
Who else would call FORTRAN a "text adventure"?
;-)
// Still wouldn't use it unless forced to at gunpoint
Well, calling it a "programming language" certainly qualifies as "fantasy"...
/ Props to HPF, though
"Someone mind finishing the work for me?"
...
... IP! IP! IP!
Fine, fine.
For fans like me, this is like finding the Holy Grail.
Drxenos! Drxenos, King of the Nerds! Oh, don't grovel! If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people groveling!
[slightly later]
Behold! Drxenos, this is the Holy Grail of Computer Games. Look well, drxenos, for it is your sacred task to seek this Grail. That is your purpose, drxenos -- the Quest for the Holy Grail of Computer Games: Adventure. And it is written in FORTRAN.
Wait, FORTRAN? Lord, you're kidding right?
[significantly later]
He says they've already got one!
Yes, it's-a verry nice-a. It is-a coded in C.
[substantially later]
We are the Knights Who Say
Augh!!!! Stop it!
[much later]
What is the net speed of an unladen TCP/IP data packet using PPP over a 1200 baud modem?
What do you mean? With or without parity, 7 or 8 bits, with or without flow control?
What? I don't know all that! Auuuuuugh!!!
[slightly later but a little further that the previously-mentioned "slightly later"]
The Castle Stanford. Once we brave its maze of twisty little passages, all alike, our quest is at an end!
When I finally finished it, the screen cleared and an operator in the computer centre was typing to me and asking me to come over to the centre. I figured I'd been sprung for all the extra time I'd 'arranged', but instead they gave me printout and iducted me into the Order of Wizards!
A nerdy proud moment... (I wish I hadn't lost that printout in the intervening decades and moves.)
The same thing leaving a campsite better than you found it has to do with ethics, or not littering has to do with ethics. Altering the environment and depriving others of potential experiences is an ethical issue.
A quick Googling will reveal that "climbing ethics" is not an invention of the Wikipedia author, but is an active area of discussion among climbers.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
This is why the grandmaster of 'Literate Programming', Donald Knuth, has done a translation into his CWEB Language which is totaly devoid of jumps and other 'dirty' Fortan:
http://www.literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf
program smite_em
c-----
IMPLICIT NONE ! Catch typos and un-initialized variables.
integer IERR_smite
character*200 ch_name
c-----
write(6,1)
1 FORMAT(/,' This is one smiting program!',/,
& ' Enter name of smitee --> ',$)
read(*,fmt='(A)') ch_name
DO while(.TRUE.) ! Endless smiting loop.
call smite(ch_name, IERR_smite)
if(IERR_smite.GT.0) goto 20
End DO ! smite loop.
20 CONTINUE
write(*,*)' Done smiting.'
if(IERR_smite.LT.0) then
write(6,2) IERR_smite
2 FORMAT(' ***Possible smiting error, IERR_smite = ',I)
endif
STOP
END
c-----
c End of Main.
c-----
Zork was the reason I got on the ARPANET, back around 1980 or so. I was using Bruce's Northstar BBS that had an adventure game that Bruce had written in Basic, and he told me how to play Zork: first, dial up the NBS TIP, connect to MIT-AI (the command was "@L 134", because the ARPANET had 8 bit host numbers, and AI was 134), and apply for an account to learn Lisp. Once that was granted, I connected to MIT-DM ("@L 70"), and logged in as URANUS, password RINGS, used :CHUNAME to change my user name, and waited until one of the two people playing Zork quit, to take their slot. Later somebody told me the magic words to use to get an account on DM, so I applied for my own account on DM, claiming that I wanted to "Learn MDL for calculus and algebraic applications". The source code to Zork was well hidden. DM ran a weird version of ITS that had some kind of file security or cloaking, it was rumored. I was always looking for the Zork sources, but never found it on DM.
Years later I googled for a unique phrase that was only in the original DM version of Zork, and this URL popped up: http://retro.co.za/adventure/zork-mdl/
The original MDL source to Zork is really beautiful code that's almost as fun to read as it was to play. I had discovered a bug in the InfoCom version of Zork, which turned out to be in the original sources. When you're fighting the troll who's wielding an Axe, you can give anything to the troll and he will eat it. So I tried "give axe to troll" and he ate his axe, then cowered in the corner! Better yet you can go "give troll to troll" and he will eat himself and disappear, unfortunately not clearing the troll flag that is required to leave the room, so if you try to leave it prints a message saying the troll fends you off with a menacing gesture, and stops you from leaving. Sure enough, in the original sources, there is a troll flag!
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com