Yes, we (Infocom) published commercially the game that we (the authors) had originally written at MIT in Muddle. The Fortran version was done by yet another person we authorized to do it.
And by the way, _The Wizard and the Princess_ and _Mystery House_ predated _Zork I_.
There are any number of places (including a/. thread from last week) where you could find this out.
Tenex (not Tops-10) ADVENT came first, written in Fortran and widely ported. The first version was written by Wil Crowther, and was expanded by Don Woods to be what most people think of when they think of Adventure.
We (Marc Blank, Tim Anderson, I, and Bruce Daniels) saw it, played it, loved it, thought we could do better. We wrote Zork. We renamed Zork to Dungeon, because Zork was a placeholder name. We renamed it back after TSR (the D&D people) threatened to sue. It was ported to Fortran by a friendly DEC employee while it was named Dungeon, so that's what he called the port.
Marc, Tim, and I were all involved in Infocom, and the rest is history (or comedy).
This has been explained any number of times before, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to explain it again.
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
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
Slashdot Mirror
And by the way, _The Wizard and the Princess_ and _Mystery House_ predated _Zork I_.
There are any number of places (including a /. thread from last week) where you could find this out.
-- Dave Lebling
We (Marc Blank, Tim Anderson, I, and Bruce Daniels) saw it, played it, loved it, thought we could do better. We wrote Zork. We renamed Zork to Dungeon, because Zork was a placeholder name. We renamed it back after TSR (the D&D people) threatened to sue. It was ported to Fortran by a friendly DEC employee while it was named Dungeon, so that's what he called the port.
Marc, Tim, and I were all involved in Infocom, and the rest is history (or comedy).
This has been explained any number of times before, but I suppose it doesn't hurt to explain it again.
-- Dave Lebling
The Lurking Horror, not Zork, had a geography based on the MIT campus.
-- Dave Lebling
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
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