Creating Adventure Games on your Computer
David A. Cornelson
along:
http://www.atariarchives.org/adventure/
Dave
Harry
I have a couple of books like this on the shelf next to my desk, which
I sometimes browse in search of simpler, better times.
From the link above:
"As you've probably gathered, creating an initial map and a Travel
Table from it, lies at the heart of Adventure programming. All else is
commentary."
Oh my, how far have we come... Or have we?
-------------------------
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"I was."
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Beej Jorgensen
David A. Cornelson <david dot cornelson at iflibrary dot com> wrote:
I'm so glad I don't have to program in BASIC anymore... :)
-Beej
Jim Fisher
> I'm so glad I don't have to program in BASIC anymore... :)
Amen.
--
--
Jim (AT) OnyxRing (DOT) com
Visit "An Inform Developer's Guide" or browse the
"ORLibrary" extensions to the standard library at
www.OnyxRing.com
----------------------
Some days you eat the code; some days the code eats you.
Pig-in-muck
@enews1.newsguy.com
But I like BASIC
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donarumo
news:62mdndfJmqk...@speakeasy.net:
Wow, I still have this book in a box somewhere. I remember coding the
damn examples for hours and hours when I was a kid (this is before disk
based or online examples). I wanted to create my own game so much. Of
course, the code was inevitably full of bugs (probaby due to typos) and
back then I didn't know enough to figure out how to squash them.
Still this book is a fun read and worth it if you have some time. Just
to feel all warm and runny inside for a time when an adventure game was
only a small dungeon romp to get some treasure and kill some trolls.
Also, it is fun to relish in the fact that we don't have to use the GOTO
command anymore. Damn, line numbers really sucked.
Tommy Herbert
> From the link above:
>
> "As you've probably gathered, creating an initial map and a Travel
> Table from it, lies at the heart of Adventure programming. All else is
> commentary."
>
> Oh my, how far have we come... Or have we?
Also provided is "a number of names you might like to incorporate into
your programs either as names of monsters or as mythical place names".
Saved me a lot of time, anyway.
Andrew Plotkin
> On Mon, 7 Apr 2003 19:39:36 -0500, "David A. Cornelson" <david dot
> cornelson at iflibrary dot com> wrote:
>>I was looking for something on the DEC newsgroups and someone passed this
>>along:
>>
>>http://www.atariarchives.org/adventure/
> From the link above:
> "As you've probably gathered, creating an initial map and a Travel
> Table from it, lies at the heart of Adventure programming. All else is
> commentary."
> Oh my, how far have we come... Or have we?
Indeed. Someone requoted this last night, and I thought... actually,
that's pretty accurate. The programming *does* start with the map.
Everything else in the code is twiddling with room properties, or
properties of things in rooms.
What that quote doesn't convey -- and I'm not sure if the author
understood it or not -- is that adventure *programming* is only one
part of adventure *creation*. For me, it's the easiest part, though of
course not everyone hits it that way.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Adam Thornton
Tommy Herbert <cave...@excite.com> wrote:
>Also provided is "a number of names you might like to incorporate into
>your programs either as names of monsters or as mythical place names".
> Saved me a lot of time, anyway.
I found amusing that, if I'm reading the purpose of the data statements
right in the big program at the end, the "Flying Buffalo" is one of the
monsters. They are, by the way, still at the same address, even though
it's struck through in the online book.
Adam
Shadow Wolf
news:62mdndfJmqk...@speakeasy.net:
> http://www.atariarchives.org/adventure/
I've had the hardcopy of that book for _years_, played every one of the
games using QBasic -- and I actually translated "Werewolves and Wanderer"
into TADS2 once... (not nearly as easy as you'd think).
--
Shadow Wolf
shadow_wolf1 at hotpop dot com
Stories at http://www.asstr.org/~Shadow_Wolf
Edmund Kirwan
> > In article <62mdndfJmqk...@speakeasy.net>,
> > David A. Cornelson <david dot cornelson at iflibrary dot com> wrote:
> >>I was looking for something on the DEC newsgroups and someone passed this
> >>along:
> >>
> >>http://www.atariarchives.org/adventure/
> >
That book is fantastic! So innocent! Brilliant! Lines read like
adventure Haiku, e.g.:
"The lines 650 through to 700 move you
within the castle environment,
as was explained
earlier."
/==================\
www.edmundkirwan.com
"It's not very good."
Preben Randhol
> That book is fantastic! So innocent! Brilliant! Lines read like
> adventure Haiku, e.g.:
>
> "The lines 650 through to 700 move you
> within the castle environment,
> as was explained
> earlier."
Nostalgia
Oh, I remember the good old days with my Memorex 512 trying to play Quest,
but failing miserably. Wasn't old then and had to look up many words in my
daddy's English-Norwegian dictionary.
Preben
Harry
>
>Also, it is fun to relish in the fact that we don't have to use the GOTO
>command anymore. Damn, line numbers really sucked.
Heh, I remember when I switched to QuickBasic and read the manual,
that I could not believe I could do *without* line numbers. The whole
concept of calling subroutines by their *name* rather then a number
felt alien to me...
Neil Cerutti
> On 8 Apr 2003 10:04:15 -0500, donarumo <dona...@onramp.net> wrote:
>>
>>Also, it is fun to relish in the fact that we don't have to use the GOTO
>>command anymore. Damn, line numbers really sucked.
>
> Heh, I remember when I switched to QuickBasic and read the
> manual, that I could not believe I could do *without* line
> numbers. The whole concept of calling subroutines by their
> *name* rather then a number felt alien to me...
_Compute!_ had the best system for entering games on the C64. If
you used the simple development software (which you had to enter
the hard way), you couldn't make a typo.
--
Neil Cerutti
Harry
There were tons of 'checksum' programs around for the MSX too. You
would type the listing and the program would calculate a number you
would compare to a table in the magazine.
Dear God... The hours I spent typing in BASIC... With one finger! (I
could not type that well at age eleven)
chris
> @enews1.newsguy.com
>
> > In article <62mdndfJmqk...@speakeasy.net>,
> > David A. Cornelson <david dot cornelson at iflibrary dot com> wrote:
> >>I was looking for something on the DEC newsgroups and someone passed this
> >>along:
> >>
> >>http://www.atariarchives.org/adventure/
> >
> > I'm so glad I don't have to program in BASIC anymore... :)
> >
> > -Beej
> >
>
> But I like BASIC
I agree. Programming in BASIC is fun. When you move from line numbers
to routine labels, you start to lose the fun of programming... Back in
my day we didn't have objects, we had DATA statements. And GOTO, which
took less memory than sissy GOSUBs...
John W. Kennedy
Feh! When I was a kid, we had the IBM 1401, and subroutines required an
optional hardware feature. (So did subscripts, multiplication,
division, and the ability to divide not-equal into less-than and
greater-than.)
--
John W. Kennedy
"Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only
the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots
would fight a war on twelve fronts."
-- "Babylon 5"
Matthew Russotto
John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>Feh! When I was a kid, we had the IBM 1401, and subroutines required an
>optional hardware feature. (So did subscripts, multiplication,
>division, and the ability to divide not-equal into less-than and
>greater-than.)
Couldn't you just cut the wire disabling the feature?
--
Matthew T. Russotto mrus...@speakeasy.net
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue." But extreme restriction of liberty in pursuit of
a modicum of security is a very expensive vice.
John W. Kennedy
> In article <4E0la.15190$Xd1.6...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>,
> John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
>>Feh! When I was a kid, we had the IBM 1401, and subroutines required an
>>optional hardware feature. (So did subscripts, multiplication,
>>division, and the ability to divide not-equal into less-than and
>>greater-than.)
> Couldn't you just cut the wire disabling the feature?
You really don't grasp how basic those old machines were. Remember,
this was an era when _each_ _transistor_ was about the size of a pea,
and all logic had to be hard-wired, because microcode hadn't been
invented yet.
Besides, the High-Low-Equal-Compare feature cost more than money. The
1401 performed its instructions from right to left. When the
High-Low-Equal-Compare feature was installed, the Compare instruction
was slowed down, because comparisons had to be run the full length of
the data, instead of stopping at the first unequal character.
Remember, too, that a basic 1401 had only one input device -- the card
reader. Equal/not-equal compare was adequate for basic card accounting
applications. High-Low-Equal Compare was normally regarded as going
with tape drives. (I think it may even have been standard on models
equipped with a tape controller.)
Matthew Russotto
>
>Matthew Russotto wrote:
>> In article <4E0la.15190$Xd1.6...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>,
>> John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Feh! When I was a kid, we had the IBM 1401, and subroutines required an
>>>optional hardware feature. (So did subscripts, multiplication,
>>>division, and the ability to divide not-equal into less-than and
>>>greater-than.)
>
>> Couldn't you just cut the wire disabling the feature?
>
>You really don't grasp how basic those old machines were. Remember,
>this was an era when _each_ _transistor_ was about the size of a pea,
>and all logic had to be hard-wired, because microcode hadn't been
>invented yet.
I was making a joke; certain old IBM machines had extra-cost options
which were included with all machines and actually enabled by cutting
a wire.
Seebs
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>Indeed. Someone requoted this last night, and I thought... actually,
>that's pretty accurate. The programming *does* start with the map.
>Everything else in the code is twiddling with room properties, or
>properties of things in rooms.
Huh! I often don't start with a map, I often start with an initial scene,
then build from there.
-s
--
Copyright 2002, all wrongs reversed. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
$ chmod a+x /bin/laden Please do not feed or harbor the terrorists.
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Consulting, computers, web hosting, and shell access: http://www.plethora.net/
Nikki
> Matthew Russotto wrote:
> > In article <4E0la.15190$Xd1.6...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>,
> > John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >
> >>Feh! When I was a kid, we had the IBM 1401, and subroutines required an
> >>optional hardware feature. (So did subscripts, multiplication,
> >>division, and the ability to divide not-equal into less-than and
> >>greater-than.)
>
> > Couldn't you just cut the wire disabling the feature?
>
> You really don't grasp how basic those old machines were. Remember,
> this was an era when _each_ _transistor_ was about the size of a pea,
> and all logic had to be hard-wired, because microcode hadn't been
> invented yet.
>
> Besides, the High-Low-Equal-Compare feature cost more than money. The
> 1401 performed its instructions from right to left. When the
> High-Low-Equal-Compare feature was installed, the Compare instruction
> was slowed down, because comparisons had to be run the full length of
> the data, instead of stopping at the first unequal character.
>
> Remember, too, that a basic 1401 had only one input device -- the card
> reader. Equal/not-equal compare was adequate for basic card accounting
> applications. High-Low-Equal Compare was normally regarded as going
> with tape drives. (I think it may even have been standard on models
> equipped with a tape controller.)
What has this got to do with IF? Did anyone express an interest in the
"High-Low-Equal-Compare feature"? Please don't presume that it's of any
interest to us, just because it's your only pleasant childhood memory.
Oh, and please cut down on the didactic. "You really don't grasp" doesn't
sound very polite. This is no way for a newbie to address a respected
veteran like Matthew.
Aaron Krochmal
> In article <gL1la.15543$Xd1.6...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>,
> John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >110482
> >
> >Matthew Russotto wrote:
> >> In article <4E0la.15190$Xd1.6...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>,
> >> John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>>Feh! When I was a kid, we had the IBM 1401, and subroutines required an
> >>>optional hardware feature. (So did subscripts, multiplication,
> >>>division, and the ability to divide not-equal into less-than and
> >>>greater-than.)
>
> >> Couldn't you just cut the wire disabling the feature?
> >
> >You really don't grasp how basic those old machines were. Remember,
> >this was an era when _each_ _transistor_ was about the size of a pea,
> >and all logic had to be hard-wired, because microcode hadn't been
> >invented yet.
>
> I was making a joke; certain old IBM machines had extra-cost options
> which were included with all machines and actually enabled by cutting
> a wire.
You really don't grasp that what you're dealing with here is a
self-important little geek who's too full of self-admiration to
recognise a joke. Remember, r.a.i.f. is the only place where he and
his likes can feel good about themselves.
Aaron Krochmal
> John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >110482
> >
> >Matthew Russotto wrote:
> >> In article <4E0la.15190$Xd1.6...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>,
> >> John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>>Feh! When I was a kid, we had the IBM 1401, and subroutines required an
> >>>optional hardware feature. (So did subscripts, multiplication,
> >>>division, and the ability to divide not-equal into less-than and
> >>>greater-than.)
>
> >> Couldn't you just cut the wire disabling the feature?
> >
> >You really don't grasp how basic those old machines were. Remember,
> >this was an era when _each_ _transistor_ was about the size of a pea,
> >and all logic had to be hard-wired, because microcode hadn't been
> >invented yet.
>
> I was making a joke; certain old IBM machines had extra-cost options
> which were included with all machines and actually enabled by cutting
> a wire.
You really don't grasp that what you're dealing with here is a
John W. Kennedy
> You really don't grasp that what you're dealing with here is a
> self-important little geek who's too full of self-admiration to
> recognise a joke. Remember, r.a.i.f. is the only place where he and
> his likes can feel good about themselves.
A quick scan of Google shows that your self-assessment is quite correct.
But this is, after all, not Self-Imortant-Little-Geeks Anonymous. I'm
sure you'd find more sympathy at a regular meeting.
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <b6v05p$cop$4...@reader1.panix.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>>Indeed. Someone requoted this last night, and I thought... actually,
>>that's pretty accurate. The programming *does* start with the map.
>>Everything else in the code is twiddling with room properties, or
>>properties of things in rooms.
> Huh! I often don't start with a map, I often start with an initial scene,
> then build from there.
When you're designing the game, or when you're implementing it? I
meant the latter.
(I don't implement all the rooms first, but for any given area, the
room and connections get written first, and I work down into details
from there.)
Matthew Russotto
Aaron Krochmal <kroc...@sociologist.com> wrote:
>
>You really don't grasp that what you're dealing with here is a
>self-important little geek who's too full of self-admiration to
>recognise a joke. Remember, r.a.i.f. is the only place where he and
>his likes can feel good about themselves.
Do you have a suggestion for a faster implementation of a killfile?
Mine's getting kind of large and bogged down. But maybe I just need
to tweak the hashtable parameters.
Joe Mason
> In article <664ecb1.03041...@posting.google.com>,
> Aaron Krochmal <kroc...@sociologist.com> wrote:
>>
>>You really don't grasp that what you're dealing with here is a
>>self-important little geek who's too full of self-admiration to
>>recognise a joke. Remember, r.a.i.f. is the only place where he and
>>his likes can feel good about themselves.
>
> Do you have a suggestion for a faster implementation of a killfile?
> Mine's getting kind of large and bogged down. But maybe I just need
> to tweak the hashtable parameters.
You just need to killfile on NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.181.163.49 instead
of on the from address.
This has been discussed before.
Joe
Gene Wirchenko
>In article <gL1la.15543$Xd1.6...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>,
>John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>110482
>>
>>Matthew Russotto wrote:
>>> In article <4E0la.15190$Xd1.6...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>,
>>> John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>Feh! When I was a kid, we had the IBM 1401, and subroutines required an
>>>>optional hardware feature. (So did subscripts, multiplication,
>>>>division, and the ability to divide not-equal into less-than and
>>>>greater-than.)
>>
>>> Couldn't you just cut the wire disabling the feature?
>>
>>You really don't grasp how basic those old machines were. Remember,
>>this was an era when _each_ _transistor_ was about the size of a pea,
>>and all logic had to be hard-wired, because microcode hadn't been
>>invented yet.
>
>I was making a joke; certain old IBM machines had extra-cost options
>which were included with all machines and actually enabled by cutting
>a wire.
Given his level of apparent knowledge, I think he caught the joke
and slipped another one to you. That it is almost certainly true--it
appears so given my level of knowledge--makes the joke even funnier.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.