"Adventure" (early '80s) who wrote it?
Puka
popular in the early '80s and had a reputation for distracting employees
in offices. The game had no graphics, only text, a la Hitchiker's Guide
to the Galaxy.
I saw the inventor profiled on CNN several years ago but didn't catch
the name. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.
Tim Shoppa
Will Crowther and Don Woods, if you're talking about the "Collosal
Cave" adventure from the olden days. See
http://people.delphi.com/rickadams/adventure/a_history.html
for more details.
Tim. (sho...@trailing-edge.com)
Bill Wilkinson
Thank-you for posting that URL. I enjoyed reading the Web page.
Just as a BTW: I was a hard-core Adventure player ever since Gorden Letwin
ported the game from a Dec machine to HDOS (Heath Disk Operating System--which
he wrote) back in the late '70s. Later, he was seduced by the dork side of the
force and left Heath Company to work for Microsoft.
--Bill
--
Bill Wilkinson
email: wxw...@aol.com
Heathkit Page: http://members.aol.com/wwheco1/index.htm
Matt Ackeret
and well, don't you?
rec.arts.int-fiction is for discussion of the CREATION of text adventures.
rec.games.int-fiction is for discussion of _playing_ text adventures (specific
game hints, etc).
ftp.gmd.de is the main ftp site for this stuff. There is a compiler, called
Inform, which lets you write games in the same format used by Infocom, and
thus playable with your actual Infocom interpreters or ports of one of the
many available at ftp.gmd.de. (You can also play the real Infocom games with
these interpreters, though some formats such as Apple II ones have to be
converted to data files first.)
--
mat...@area.com
Peter Seebach
Bill Wilkinson <wwh...@aol.comheathkit> wrote:
>Just as a BTW: I was a hard-core Adventure player ever since Gorden Letwin
>ported the game from a Dec machine to HDOS (Heath Disk Operating System--which
>he wrote) back in the late '70s. Later, he was seduced by the dork side of the
>force and left Heath Company to work for Microsoft.
That's where I played it, too! Hey, maybe you'd know:
A friend of mine and I were both playing ADVENT on the H89.
He *swore* up and down that there was a room off of Swiss Cheese with some
computers in it.
I never found it, and I won the game with a perfect score.
I've heard other references to that room. What's the story?
-s
--
Copyright 1999, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / se...@plethora.net
C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon!
Will work for interesting hardware. http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/
Visit my new ISP <URL:http://www.plethora.net/> --- More Net, Less Spam!
David Rifkind
wrote:
>In article <19990704163524...@ng-fu1.aol.com>,
>Bill Wilkinson <wwh...@aol.comheathkit> wrote:
>>Just as a BTW: I was a hard-core Adventure player ever since Gorden Letwin
>>ported the game from a Dec machine to HDOS (Heath Disk Operating System--which
>>he wrote) back in the late '70s. Later, he was seduced by the dork side of the
>>force and left Heath Company to work for Microsoft.
>
>That's where I played it, too! Hey, maybe you'd know:
>
>A friend of mine and I were both playing ADVENT on the H89.
>
>He *swore* up and down that there was a room off of Swiss Cheese with some
>computers in it.
>
>I never found it, and I won the game with a perfect score.
>
>I've heard other references to that room. What's the story?
I certainly don't remember one. I found the Fortran source code for the
DEC-10 version once, and used it to draw a map. Some of the later ports
were rumored to be extended from the original, though.
--
"Generally speaking, things have gone about as far as they can possibly
go when things have got about as bad as they reasonably get."
REDDWAR871
Adventure that was released in the early eighties. In fact I just open my old
copy of The Book of Adventure Games dated 1984, and the map shows the room off
of the soft pillow room which is accessed from the swiss chesse room>>That's
Charles Eicher
says...
>
>I want to contact the man who wrote the game "Adventure," which was so
>popular in the early '80s and had a reputation for distracting employees
>in offices. The game had no graphics, only text, a la Hitchiker's Guide
>to the Galaxy.
Interesting that you mention "Hitchhiker's Guide"...
It must have been around 1983 or so that I worked in a dinky computer store in
Los Angeles. We mostly catered to screenwriters since we were right next to
several large movie studios. Our store was kinda lame, because we only had CP/M
machines like Kaypro and DEC. So we goofed off a lot, and Colossal Cave had been
re-issued as Zork, so we played it a lot when the boss wasn't looking. One day,
Douglas Adams came in to our store, and purchased a Kaypro with Wordstar. He
asked us about games, so we showed him Zork. He loved it, so we sold it to him
(which wasn't easy as it came on 8 inch floppies and we had to move the programs
via serial ports from an old Xerox Star to the Kaypro). And the rest is history.
I will take personal credit for introducing Douglas Adams to text-adventure
games.
Joe Morris
>se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
>>A friend of mine and I were both playing ADVENT on the H89.
>>He *swore* up and down that there was a room off of Swiss Cheese with some
>>computers in it.
>>I've heard other references to that room. What's the story?
>I certainly don't remember one. I found the Fortran source code for the
>DEC-10 version once, and used it to draw a map. Some of the later ports
>were rumored to be extended from the original, though.
Somewhere in my archaeological digs (aka my basement) I've got a full
compilation of the IBM mainframe port of ADVENT from the early 1980s;
it's been years since I looked at it but I don't recall having seen
a computer room.
It would not have been difficult to add one, however, since the topology
of Colossal Cave was defined in a data table, not in the program.
Joe Morris
gnohm...@my-deja.com
se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote:
> In article <19990704163524...@ng-fu1.aol.com>,
> Bill Wilkinson <wwh...@aol.comheathkit> wrote:
> >Just as a BTW: I was a hard-core Adventure player ever since Gorden Letwin
> >ported the game from a Dec machine to HDOS (Heath Disk Operating System--which
> >he wrote) back in the late '70s. Later, he was seduced by the dork side of the
> >force and left Heath Company to work for Microsoft.
>
>
>
> He *swore* up and down that there was a room off of Swiss Cheese with some
> computers in it.
>
>
Do a web search for colossal cave.
The cp/m users group floppy number 57 contained an extended adventure game
with teeth and an ice maze and some other features. One of its authors later
gave me a version that also had a computer room...
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Howard S Shubs
<cei...@inav.net> wrote:
>So we goofed off a lot, and Colossal Cave had been
>re-issued as Zork, so we played it a lot when the boss wasn't looking. One day,
>Douglas Adams came in to our store, and purchased a Kaypro with Wordstar. He
>asked us about games, so we showed him Zork.
Zork isn't the same as Adventure. It's better.
--
Howard S Shubs hsh...@mindspring.com hsh...@bix.com
The Denim Adept Is this the right room for an argument?
SPAM: u...@ftc.gov postm...@127.0.0.1 ab...@127.0.0.1
Lawrence Woods
: A friend of mine and I were both playing ADVENT on the H89.
: He *swore* up and down that there was a room off of Swiss Cheese with some
: computers in it.
: I never found it, and I won the game with a perfect score.
: I've heard other references to that room. What's the story?
I also remember the room. I presume that it was only in the HDOS port of
the game, as the computers in question were Heathkits (H-8's and H-11s
as I recall - not even H-89s) If that is the case, it would explain
why people scanning generic source code don't see the room. As with
anything else in Adventure, if you saw anything you tried to pick it
up, but when you typed TAKE COMPUTERS the wizzard would appear, get
very angry and something bad happened - I don't exactly remember what,
but either the game ended or you lost some power or privilege that
effectively made the current game unplayable.
Peter Seebach
Hmm. Weird; I *was* playing the HDOS port. I loved that system.
John Varela
> He *swore* up and down that there was a room off of Swiss Cheese with some
> computers in it.
>
> I never found it, and I won the game with a perfect score.
>
> I've heard other references to that room. What's the story?
It was in Microsoft "Original Adventure" for the TRS-80.
--
John Varela
to e-mail, remove - between mind and spring
Erik Van den Broeck
Peter Seebach schreef:
>
> In article <19990704163524...@ng-fu1.aol.com>,
> Bill Wilkinson <wwh...@aol.comheathkit> wrote:
> >Just as a BTW: I was a hard-core Adventure player ever since Gorden Letwin
> >ported the game from a Dec machine to HDOS (Heath Disk Operating System--which
> >he wrote) back in the late '70s. Later, he was seduced by the dork side of the
> >force and left Heath Company to work for Microsoft.
>
> That's where I played it, too! Hey, maybe you'd know:
>
> A friend of mine and I were both playing ADVENT on the H89.
>
> He *swore* up and down that there was a room off of Swiss Cheese with some
> computers in it.
>
> I never found it, and I won the game with a perfect score.
>
> I've heard other references to that room. What's the story?
>
John Varela
wrote:
> Peter Seebach <se...@plethora.net> wrote:
>
> : A friend of mine and I were both playing ADVENT on the H89.
> : He *swore* up and down that there was a room off of Swiss Cheese with some
> : computers in it.
Minis, Midis, and Maxis, if I recall correctly.
> : I never found it, and I won the game with a perfect score.
> : I've heard other references to that room. What's the story?
>
> I also remember the room. I presume that it was only in the HDOS port of
> the game, as the computers in question were Heathkits (H-8's and H-11s
As I noted in another post, it was also in Microsoft "Original
Adventure" for the TRS-80 Model 1.
> as I recall - not even H-89s) If that is the case, it would explain
> why people scanning generic source code don't see the room. As with
> anything else in Adventure, if you saw anything you tried to pick it
> up, but when you typed TAKE COMPUTERS the wizzard would appear, get
> very angry and something bad happened - I don't exactly remember what,
> but either the game ended or you lost some power or privilege that
> effectively made the current game unplayable.
I think he was the Programmer or maybe he was the Software Wizard.
The penalty may have been that he took away the power from all the
magic words.
One of the magic words was LWPI, which transferred you between the
building and the Software Den. This was a very handy shortcut into
that part of the cave.
I just fished out my old map of Colossal Cave in order to look up that
magic word, and note that the Software Den was off of the Soft Room
(where the Velvet Pillow was found), which in turn connected to Swiss
Cheese.
What would LWPI have stood for?
Matthew Crosby
Peter Seebach <se...@plethora.net> wrote:
>In article <19990704163524...@ng-fu1.aol.com>,
>Bill Wilkinson <wwh...@aol.comheathkit> wrote:
>>Just as a BTW: I was a hard-core Adventure player ever since Gorden Letwin
>>ported the game from a Dec machine to HDOS (Heath Disk Operating System--which
>>he wrote) back in the late '70s. Later, he was seduced by the dork side of the
>>force and left Heath Company to work for Microsoft.
>
>That's where I played it, too! Hey, maybe you'd know:
>
>
>He *swore* up and down that there was a room off of Swiss Cheese with some
>computers in it.
>
>
>I've heard other references to that room. What's the story?
This is the Software Den, found only in the Microsoft version of adventure.
It was useless. As you can see, even then Microsoft used embrace-and-extend
and broke existing standards with useless "features".
--
Matthew Crosby cro...@cs.colorado.edu
Disclaimer: It was in another country. And besides, the wench is dead.
Jack Winslade
>I just fished out my old map of Colossal Cave in order to look up that
>magic word, and note that the Software Den was off of the Soft Room
>(where the Velvet Pillow was found), which in turn connected to Swiss
>Cheese.
>What would LWPI have stood for?
I always wondered that too. J. Gordon Letwin, formerly of Wintek, then
of Heath, now of Microsoft, added that room in his port of ADVENT to
HDOS. I assumed it was one of his trademarks, DBA's, or maybe an in
joke at Heath.
Good day JSW
Lawrence Woods
: >: A friend of mine and I were both playing ADVENT on the H89.
: >: He *swore* up and down that there was a room off of Swiss Cheese with some
: >: computers in it.
: >: I never found it, and I won the game with a perfect score.
: >: I've heard other references to that room. What's the story?
: >I also remember the room. I presume that it was only in the HDOS port of
: >the game, as the computers in question were Heathkits (H-8's and H-11s
: >as I recall - not even H-89s) If that is the case, it would explain
: >why people scanning generic source code don't see the room. As with
: >anything else in Adventure, if you saw anything you tried to pick it
: >up, but when you typed TAKE COMPUTERS the wizzard would appear, get
: >very angry and something bad happened - I don't exactly remember what,
: >but either the game ended or you lost some power or privilege that
: >effectively made the current game unplayable.
: Hmm. Weird; I *was* playing the HDOS port. I loved that system.
Plumbing deeper into my memory, I recall that I had two different versions
of Adventure for my H-8. One was for HDOS, from Walt Bilofsky (sp?) of
Software Toolworks, but I also had an earlier version from early 1979,
before I spent $700-$800 to buy dual-100K floppy disk drives and HDOS.
It was from someone in Sudbury MA, came on audio casette, and required me
to upgrade my memory from 8K to 16K before I could play it. I'll bet that
was the version that had the extra room. It would also explain the H-11
reference, as the H-11 was a Heathkit version of an PDP-11 that didn't
work too well, and did not last long after its 1978 launch.
Peter Seebach
Lawrence Woods <lwo...@shell2.tiac.net> wrote:
>Plumbing deeper into my memory, I recall that I had two different versions
>of Adventure for my H-8. One was for HDOS, from Walt Bilofsky (sp?) of
>Software Toolworks, but I also had an earlier version from early 1979,
>before I spent $700-$800 to buy dual-100K floppy disk drives and HDOS.
>It was from someone in Sudbury MA, came on audio casette, and required me
>to upgrade my memory from 8K to 16K before I could play it. I'll bet that
>was the version that had the extra room. It would also explain the H-11
>reference, as the H-11 was a Heathkit version of an PDP-11 that didn't
>work too well, and did not last long after its 1978 launch.
Ah-HAH! *ding ding ding*
You have explained why *I* never saw this room, and my friend with an H89 did.
I was using Walt Bilofsky's version for HDOS.
THANK YOU! I've wondered about this since I was in 8th grade. As soon as I'm
off the phone, I'll call Dave and tell him.
John Varela
Crosby) wrote:
> This is the Software Den, found only in the Microsoft version of adventure.
> It was useless.
I beg to differ. The magic word LWPI that moved you between the
Software Den and the building was a useful shortcut.
gla...@glass2.lexington.ibm.com
>: >Peter Seebach <se...@plethora.net> wrote:
>: >: A friend of mine and I were both playing ADVENT on the H89.
>: >: He *swore* up and down that there was a room off of Swiss Cheese with some
>: >: computers in it.
>: >: I never found it, and I won the game with a perfect score.
>: >: I've heard other references to that room. What's the story?
>
>: >I also remember the room. I presume that it was only in the HDOS port of
>: >the game, as the computers in question were Heathkits (H-8's and H-11s
>: >as I recall - not even H-89s) If that is the case, it would explain
>: >why people scanning generic source code don't see the room. As with
>: >anything else in Adventure, if you saw anything you tried to pick it
>: >up, but when you typed TAKE COMPUTERS the wizzard would appear, get
>: >very angry and something bad happened - I don't exactly remember what,
>: >but either the game ended or you lost some power or privilege that
>: >effectively made the current game unplayable.
>
>: Hmm. Weird; I *was* playing the HDOS port. I loved that system.
>
>of Adventure for my H-8. One was for HDOS, from Walt Bilofsky (sp?) of
>Software Toolworks, but I also had an earlier version from early 1979,
>before I spent $700-$800 to buy dual-100K floppy disk drives and HDOS.
>It was from someone in Sudbury MA, came on audio casette, and required me
>to upgrade my memory from 8K to 16K before I could play it. I'll bet that
>was the version that had the extra room. It would also explain the H-11
>reference, as the H-11 was a Heathkit version of an PDP-11 that didn't
>work too well, and did not last long after its 1978 launch.
I remember the H-11. In my opinion, it was a decent processor. However,
the floppy disk drive that went with it was awful! The one I used generated
disk errors unless it was sitting on its side with the bottom panel removed
(as it would be if you were trying to debug it).
That was the same system that had floppies die repeatedly. I think we
finally traced that to the fact that the janatorial staff had waxed the
floor, and that the solvent from the floor wax was dissolving the binder
used on the disks.
Dave
P.S. Standard Disclaimer: I work for them, but I don't speak for them.
Local User
More of a thread reply. I remember a very similar game on the TRS-80
called Pyramid. I loaded it with a cassette tape.
Bill
bma...@iglou.com
At www-tjw.stanford.edu/adventure is a version that works with any browser,
and there was a Java version but it seems to have disappeared.
Net-Tamer V 1.08X - Test Drive
Paul Wexelblat
server;
I suspect the original question has long since been answered, but if not...
Adventure was written by Bill/Will/Willy Crowther
gla...@glass2.lexington.ibm.com wrote:
--
...wex
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
i got a mainframe fortran copy within 3 months of adventure appearing
(by a somewhat circuitous route ... went from stanford to the UK back
to the states and finally to san jose). I made the binary available on
the internal network ... and would send the source to people that had
completed the 300 pts. Within another six months somebody sent me back
a PLI source version with something like 450 pts.
--
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | ly...@adcomsys.net, ly...@garlic.com
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ http://www.adcomsys.net/lynn
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
oh yes ... this had the 100 move limitation if being played between
8am-5pm.
Joe Morris
>oh yes ... this had the 100 move limitation if being played between
>8am-5pm.
...but if it was the same version I had you could get unlimited moves
by declaring yourself a wizard and entering the magic password.
Speaking of which, how did one become a wizard on the version that
ran on the DECsytstem-10 TOPS? Even with the source code, neither our
our resident DEC guru nor I could figure out the logic of the validation
when a user claimed to be a wizard. It was apparently some kind of
challenge/response test that relied on internal data representations
in the hardware to generate the (dynamic?) password.
Joe Morris
Richard M. Alderson III
(Joe Morris) writes:
>Speaking of which, how did one become a wizard on the version that ran on the
>DECsytstem-10 TOPS? Even with the source code, neither our our resident DEC
>guru nor I could figure out the logic of the validation when a user claimed to
>be a wizard. It was apparently some kind of challenge/response test that
>relied on internal data representations in the hardware to generate the
>(dynamic?) password.
I've tried to remember the details, but it's been more than 20 years, when I
was at Chicago. I do remember that it was based on the time-of-day clock: You
entered "DWARF", the game responded "Really? I thought it was XXXXX" (a
randomly generated 5-char string--i. e., one word's worth), and you had to work
out the correct response, another 5-char string. The response changed every 10
minutes.
There was a story that went with this, as it happens. A clever young type
wrote an APL function that would do the calculations for you, and then simulate
a line-drop. When you hit a <CR> to re-connect, you would be greeted by an
apparent monitor header and EXEC prompt--but when you tried to log in, your
password was not invisible, and you ended up logged out (and your password was
now written into his log file of such attempts). Apparently some very high-ups
from the university (or the Comp Center) were in there...
--
Rich Alderson Last LOTS Tops-20 Systems Programmer, 1984-1991
Current maintainer, MIT TECO EMACS (v. 170)
last name @ XKL dot COM Chief systems administrator, XKL LLC, 1998-now
jmfb...@aol.com
Neat. That must have amused him. :-)
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Ron Hunsinger
>Speaking of which, how did one become a wizard on the version that ran on the
>DECsytstem-10 TOPS? Even with the source code, neither our our resident DEC
>guru nor I could figure out the logic of the validation when a user claimed to
>be a wizard. It was apparently some kind of challenge/response test that
>relied on internal data representations in the hardware to generate the
>(dynamic?) password.
The sequence was:
First, you had to type "MAGIC MODE" as the very first command.
(Alternatively, you could try to run the program during "prime time", in
which case the program would tell you the cave was closed unless you were a
wizard.)
Either way, the program then asked "ARE YOU A WIZARD?"
If you said "NO", that was it. You weren't a wizard. If you said "YES", the
program would respond with "PROVE IT! SAY THE MAGIC WORD!"
You then had to type in the password, which any wizard could change.
If you typed the wrong password, that was it. You weren't a wizard. If you
got the password right, then the program would say "THAT IS NOT WHAT I
THOUGHT IT WAS. DO YOU KNOW WHAT I THOUGHT IT WAS?"
It you answered "YES", that was it. You were obviously bluffing, since you
couldn't possibly know. Real wizards never bluff. If you said "NO", then
the program would type out a random string of 5 octal digits, with no
explanation.
To get in, you had to type back in the same octal string, but using the
characters from "PIRATES!" in place of the normal octal digits "01234567".
For example, if the random string was "61702", you had to type "SI!PR".
If you typed that correctly, then the program would exclaim: "OH DEAR! YOU
REALLY *ARE* A WIZARD! SORRY TO HAVE BOTHERED YOU . . .", and you'd now be
in WIZARD MODE.
In wizard mode, you could:
Play at any time of the day, any day, for as long as you wanted.
Resume a saved game sooner than a non-wizard can. (1/3 the wait.)
Schedule up to 10 upcoming holidays.
Specify prime time hours separately for weekdays (Mon-Fri),
weekends (Sat & Sun), and holidays. Internally, this was
saved as three 24-bit masks, one bit for each hour of the day.
Set the length of a short games (non-wizards during prime time,
default 30 moves).
Set how soon a non-wizard could resume a saved game
(default 90 minutes, 45 minute minimum).
Change the password (default "DWARF").
Change the message of the day.
-Ron Hunsinger