Crowther (pre-Woods) "Colossal Cave"
Linards Ticmanis
fantasy elements, few puzzles) 1972 version of "Adventure" for the
PDP-10(?) still exist anywhere? There was a recent discussion about
this in rec.games.int-fiction and I thought maybe somebody here has a
clue. Everything currently available seems to be derived from Don
Woods' 1977 350-points rewrite.
Any clues? Oh and if you have something it would be very nice to
upload it to ftp.gmd.de/incoming/if-archive, the storehouse for
"interactive fiction" as I am sure many people here already know. Some
people have suggested that the code is lost.
thanks and sorry for intruding here, I figured some people here might
know.
--
Linards Ticmanis
-----------------------------------------------------
"Heaven is Best if viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer"
(from "Children of God" sect homepage.)
Peter Seebach
Linards Ticmanis <ticm...@coli.uni-sb.de> wrote:
>thanks and sorry for intruding here, I figured some people here might
>know.
Intruding? Seems like the right place to me.
That said, try also alt.folklore.computers.
-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!
JMason
exactly followed the version I played on a PDP-11/66. Unfortunately my Apple
II no longer works.
John Mason
Santa Maria California
Welmoed Sisson
to be late '77 or early '78. It was a really big deal then: you got a
little coupon when you registered that allowed you 15 minutes at the
teletype terminal to play; there were about eight terminals set up in a
little room. People would get groups of four together and kibbitz so
they could play for an hour, taking turns typing for 15 minutes. At the
end of my turn I remember one of the things I ended up with was a tame
bear following at my heels!
Trying to explain to a bunch of 7th and 8th graders just how big a
deal it was to play a game on a computer is like pounding sand.
--Welmoed
Peter Seebach
Welmoed Sisson <sis...@erols.com> wrote:
>Gosh, I remember playing "Adventure" at Boskone in ... let's see, it had
>to be late '77 or early '78. It was a really big deal then: you got a
>little coupon when you registered that allowed you 15 minutes at the
>teletype terminal to play; there were about eight terminals set up in a
>little room. People would get groups of four together and kibbitz so
>they could play for an hour, taking turns typing for 15 minutes. At the
>end of my turn I remember one of the things I ended up with was a tame
>bear following at my heels!
Yup! That puzzle turned out to be a horrible syntax hunt.
Charles Richmond
>
> Does the Crowther only (i.e. scoreless, mostly a simulation, no
> fantasy elements, few puzzles) 1972 version of "Adventure" for the
> PDP-10(?) still exist anywhere? There was a recent discussion about
> this in rec.games.int-fiction and I thought maybe somebody here has a
> clue. Everything currently available seems to be derived from Don
> Woods' 1977 350-points rewrite.
> Any clues? Oh and if you have something it would be very nice to
> upload it to ftp.gmd.de/incoming/if-archive, the storehouse for
> "interactive fiction" as I am sure many people here already know. Some
> people have suggested that the code is lost.
>
Willie Crowther's program was called "Adventures". At least one interation
was written in FORTRAN IV, and that was what Willie sent to Don Woods for
enhancement.
You might try to get a hold of Willie Crowther directly to see about getting
the original source code. Don Woods might even still have a copy of the original
code he got from Crowther. Sorry, I have *no* email addresses for them, but
I am pretty sure they are still around.
--
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond <rich...@plano.net> |
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Peter Seebach
Charles Richmond <rich...@plano.net> wrote:
>You might try to get a hold of Willie Crowther directly to see about getting
>the original source code. Don Woods might even still have a copy of the
>original
>code he got from Crowther. Sorry, I have *no* email addresses for them, but
>I am pretty sure they are still around.
Tragically, Crowther was trapped in a cave, because he went into a room
through a very narrow crawlspace (so narrow that he could only carry one
thing with him), and was unable to figure out a way to get out carrying
both his lantern *and* the large emerald he found.
A tragic loss to the computing community. Woods immortalized it in a puzzle
in the enhanced version of the game.
Bruce Tomlin
Seebach) wrote:
> In article <37EACCE2...@plano.net>,
> Charles Richmond <rich...@plano.net> wrote:
> >You might try to get a hold of Willie Crowther directly to see about getting
> >the original source code. Don Woods might even still have a copy of the
> >original
> >code he got from Crowther. Sorry, I have *no* email addresses for them, but
> >I am pretty sure they are still around.
>
> Tragically, Crowther was trapped in a cave, because he went into a room
> through a very narrow crawlspace (so narrow that he could only carry one
> thing with him), and was unable to figure out a way to get out carrying
> both his lantern *and* the large emerald he found.
>
> A tragic loss to the computing community. Woods immortalized it in a puzzle
> in the enhanced version of the game.
ROFL!
P.S. Plugh. Or was that Plover?
Charles Richmond
>
> On Fri, 24 Sep 1999 22:35:52 -0500, bto...@NOSPAM.texas.net (Bruce Tomlin)
> wrote:
>
> > [snip...] [sinp...] [snip...]
> >
> >ROFL!
> >
> >P.S. Plugh. Or was that Plover?
>
>
> XYZZY
>
Actually, to get from the well house to the room with the emerald
as big as a plovers egg, you had to say "PLUGH" to get to Y2 and
then say "PLOVER" to get to the emerald. Reverse the process to
go back.
If you care to polish your adventuring skills in the "Colossal Cave",
you can go to the following WEB site:
http://people.delphi.com/rickadams/adventure/index.html
Here you can find some maps, a little history, and a download section
that has executables for several machines in different versions, some
with source code too.
Gene Wirchenko
>In article <37EACCE2...@plano.net>,
>Charles Richmond <rich...@plano.net> wrote:
>>You might try to get a hold of Willie Crowther directly to see about getting
>>the original source code. Don Woods might even still have a copy of the
>>original
>>code he got from Crowther. Sorry, I have *no* email addresses for them, but
>>I am pretty sure they are still around.
>
>Tragically, Crowther was trapped in a cave, because he went into a room
>through a very narrow crawlspace (so narrow that he could only carry one
>thing with him), and was unable to figure out a way to get out carrying
>both his lantern *and* the large emerald he found.
That's "lantern and the *large emerald* he found.".
>A tragic loss to the computing community. Woods immortalized it in a puzzle
>in the enhanced version of the game.
Nice spoof.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
Megan
>Gosh, I remember playing "Adventure" at Boskone in ... let's see, it had
>to be late '77 or early '78. It was a really big deal then: you got a
>little coupon when you registered that allowed you 15 minutes at the
>teletype terminal to play; there were about eight terminals set up in a
>little room. People would get groups of four together and kibbitz so
>they could play for an hour, taking turns typing for 15 minutes. At the
>end of my turn I remember one of the things I ended up with was a tame
>bear following at my heels!
Gee, I remember working in the 'Computer game' room back then... And then
I was head of computer games for noreascon -- provided a PDT-11/150
running ZORK and a GT40 running lunar lander (downloaded from the PDT).
For a number of years following that, I provided a pdp-11 running RSTS and
a bunch of terminals and all sorts of games (I still have the system).
One of the LARPs actually included the computer system and a task which
had to be performed on it into their game...
> Trying to explain to a bunch of 7th and 8th graders just how big a
>deal it was to play a game on a computer is like pounding sand.
Tell me about it... back then it was a big deal... nowadays they
look at you and say, "So?".
Megan Gentry
Former RT-11 Developer
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com |
| Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com |
| Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' |
| 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ |
| Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler |
| (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
John Everett
>
>If you care to polish your adventuring skills in the "Colossal Cave",
>you can go to the following WEB site:
>
> http://people.delphi.com/rickadams/adventure/index.html
>
Tom Wu had created a really accurate web re-creation of the Crowther-Woods
350 point Adventure game at http://tjwww.stanford.edu/adventure/. This was
working as recently as a couple of months ago, but this morning it isn't
available. Perhaps the server is just down, because a domain name lookup still
works.
Now excuse me while I get back to the latest issue of "Spelunking Today".
--
jeverett<AT>wwa<DOT>com (John Everett) http://www.wwa.com/~jeverett
Ruud Dingemans
> > Trying to explain to a bunch of 7th and 8th graders just how big a
> >deal it was to play a game on a computer is like pounding sand.
>
> Tell me about it... back then it was a big deal... nowadays they
> look at you and say, "So?".
Then you just say, "Now, class, to illustrate my point, your next
assigment is to program a working vector-based game *by yourself* in 8 Kilobytes."
That'll teach 'em some respect ;)
Regards, Ruud
Welmoed Sisson
Oh, for the days before bloated code...
--Welmoed
Eric Smith
> 350 point Adventure game at http://tjwww.stanford.edu/adventure/. This was
Speaking of the classic Crowther-Woods 350 point game (as distinct from
the zillion-odd later "enhanced" games), does anyone have a copy of the
map that someone at DEC drew? It had each room represented as an octogon
with additional arrows sticking out of the left of the top face and the
right of the bottom face for the up and down directions. IIRC, it was
actually given a DEC engineering drawing designation.
I used to have a copy, but no longer can find it. If anyone has it, I'd
love to get another copy to scan and make available online.
Thanks!
Eric
Peter Seebach
Eric Smith <eric-no-s...@brouhaha.com> wrote:
>Speaking of the classic Crowther-Woods 350 point game (as distinct from
>the zillion-odd later "enhanced" games), does anyone have a copy of the
>map that someone at DEC drew? It had each room represented as an octogon
>with additional arrows sticking out of the left of the top face and the
>right of the bottom face for the up and down directions. IIRC, it was
>actually given a DEC engineering drawing designation.
I had a 375-point version on an H89, which included a special "endgame"
puzzle. I believe some Heath-related magazine had an issue with a map - and
I think it was a Heath-related magazine, because the map included the special
endgame room.
Michael N. LeVine
DECUS with a subscription form on the end.
A credit block read
--------------------
This Dungeon map was orignally drawn in January of 1979 by Steve Roy.
Revisions to the original were made over the following months and final
changes (magic-motion) added in March. Endgame is intentionally omitted.
This drawing made January 1981.
--------------------
In article <YubI3.1990$L85.1...@ptah.visi.com>, se...@plethora.net
(Peter Seebach) wrote:
> In article <qh4sgeg1...@ruckus.brouhaha.com>,
> Eric Smith <eric-no-s...@brouhaha.com> wrote:
> >Speaking of the classic Crowther-Woods 350 point game (as distinct from
> >the zillion-odd later "enhanced" games), does anyone have a copy of the
> >map that someone at DEC drew? It had each room represented as an octogon
> >with additional arrows sticking out of the left of the top face and the
> >right of the bottom face for the up and down directions. IIRC, it was
> >actually given a DEC engineering drawing designation.
>
> I had a 375-point version on an H89, which included a special "endgame"
> puzzle. I believe some Heath-related magazine had an issue with a map - and
> I think it was a Heath-related magazine, because the map included the special
> endgame room.
>
> -s
--
Michael LeVine - mle...@ridgecrest.ca.us
"Thirty days hath September, April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty one except for Gypsy Rose Lee
and every one knew what she had" - Mel Blanc
Richard M. Alderson III
<eric-no-s...@brouhaha.com> writes:
>Speaking of the classic Crowther-Woods 350 point game (as distinct from the
>zillion-odd later "enhanced" games), does anyone have a copy of the map that
>someone at DEC drew? It had each room represented as an octogon with
>additional arrows sticking out of the left of the top face and the right of
>the bottom face for the up and down directions. IIRC, it was actually given a
>DEC engineering drawing designation.
Somewhere, I still have a 2-page XEROX-reduced copy of a copy of a copy of a
.... for who knows how many iterations--given to me when I first went to work
for the UChicago Comp Center in 1977.
Ralph Gorin had a copy, on D-size paper, hanging on the wall outside his office
in Tresidder Union (after he moved over there from CERAS). According to him,
it was SUDS output (the Stanford University Design System, licensed to DEC for
the SuperFoonly => KL10 project, which was how Dick Helliwell ended up at DEC),
which makes sense, since Don Woods was at SAIL, where SUDS was developed...
(Hey, the guys from Tech Sq. can't have *all* the bandwidth!)
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
Scott Peterson
>Bwahahaha!!!! Love it!
>
>Oh, for the days before bloated code...
>
Another comparision. The first Zork from Infocom came on a bootable
5- 1/4" floppy. The newest one is on a DVD disc.
Scott Peterson
Notice. Spelling mistakes left in for people
who need to correct others to make their
life fulfilled.
Welmoed Sisson
memory of parts of that game. (Hmm... something about being in a balloon
and not stopping at the correct ledge, and floating away, thus losing
one game ... or was that a later Zork?)
Do you think that present hyper-detailed computer games have dulled the
imaginations of today's gamers? Would they even have the patience to
play the old Zork text adventures?
I'm also remembering another text game from some time ago, where the
opening screen was merely a directory prompt, and the idea of the game
was to hack into this computer simulation. What was that?
--Welmoed
bill_h
>
> Welmoed Sisson <sis...@erols.com> wrote:
>
> >Bwahahaha!!!! Love it!
> >
> >Oh, for the days before bloated code...
> >
>
> 5- 1/4" floppy. The newest one is on a DVD disc.
>
>
> Scott Peterson
Mine (Zork I, II, & III) came on 8'' disks; don't remember if they were
configured for some terminal or not - and you had to do that before
playing.
Bill
Rob Nicholson
> Another comparision. The first Zork from Infocom came on a bootable
> 5- 1/4" floppy. The newest one is on a DVD disc.
Whilst undoubtely, the code is less tight, you can guarantee that 99% of
that DVD will be graphics and audio.
Rob.
John Savard
>Yeah, I remember playing that one too ... there are still "images" in my
>memory of parts of that game. (Hmm... something about being in a balloon
>and not stopping at the correct ledge, and floating away, thus losing
>one game ... or was that a later Zork?)
I think that's Zork II, but the original Zork included Zork I, Zork
II, and Zork III - it was split into pieces to be played on home
computers as opposed to, say, Unix systems.
John Savard ( teneerf<- )
http://www.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/crypto.htm
Charles Richmond
>
> [snip...] [snip...] [snip...]
>
> I'm also remembering another text game from some time ago, where the
> opening screen was merely a directory prompt, and the idea of the game
> was to hack into this computer simulation. What was that?
>
is an ad for this game. I heard somewhere that to get in, you
have to control-C out of the login prompt. Err, anyway, you
have to get through some crack in the system...*not* do a regular
login. After that, I have *no* idea what the object of the game is.
Bruce Tomlin
> Mine (Zork I, II, & III) came on 8'' disks; don't remember if they were
> configured for some terminal or not - and you had to do that before
> playing.
I had the original TRS-80 Personal Software version, but the disk died
before I got anywhere. Months later, I took a Model III version,
disassembled the interpreter, and patched it to run on that bastard TRSDOS
2.7DD.
Long after that, I wrote my own interpreter for the TRS-80 Color Computer,
because writing 6809 code is fun. I played the whole game through to test
it before writing the save and load game functions. This was about six
months before Infocom came out with their own CoCo version.
I also write a Z-code disassembler, and figured out the "diamond" puzzle
in Zork II (?) the hard way... via RTFB. And then I was really annoyed at
myself at not having figured out what the "diamond" was beforehand.
TRSDOS 2.7DD was the one that came with Radio Shack's double-density
controller which was completely INcompatible with the Percom design. Even
hacked up my own double-density driver for LDOS. Using a version of
EDTASM which I had hand-patched from the cassette tape version to work
with disks. (And which I eventually ran a disassembler program on and got
a four-part file which could assemble itself and can now be assembled to
run on a Model IV.)
Jeffrey Boulier
Charles Richmond <rich...@plano.net> wrote:
>I think it was called "Hacker". In one of my old BYTE's, there
>is an ad for this game. I heard somewhere that to get in, you
>have to control-C out of the login prompt. Err, anyway, you
>have to get through some crack in the system...*not* do a regular
>login. After that, I have *no* idea what the object of the game is.
I think it was actually a rather straightforward maze game. There's a
pretty interesting thread about it in old, old digests of comp.risks.
Yours Truly,
Jeff Boulier
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
following is reply that I received when I was trying to track down
copy of ZORK (in the late 70s). At the time I already had numerous
copies of adventure in fortran and several enhanced versions written
in pli ... ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#56
> ZORK is a PDP-10 program written in MUDDLE, a LISP-derivative language
> for which no compiler exist outside the PDP-10. It is friendly with
> the I.T.S. operating system and no other. One Tim Anderson of the
> Lab for Computer Science is its proprietor.
>
> Someone at DEC apparently took the MUDDLE source and
> transliterated it to FORTRAN. I don't know how faithful
> the transliteration is. It is supposed to b e available through
> the DEC Users group association, DECUS. A letter to them
> may turn up some information.
>
> Beware. ZORK is addictive. Untold man-hours will disappear into
> its use, and some people will decide they want to analyze the game
> itself, which is said to require a man-month or so before solutions
> and algorithms become clear.
--
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | ly...@adcomsys.net, ly...@garlic.com
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ http://www.adcomsys.net/lynn/
James Powell
alde...@netcom12.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) writes:
> In article <qh4sgeg1...@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Eric Smith
> <eric-no-s...@brouhaha.com> writes:
>
> >Speaking of the classic Crowther-Woods 350 point game (as distinct from the
> >zillion-odd later "enhanced" games), does anyone have a copy of the map that
> >someone at DEC drew? It had each room represented as an octogon with
> >additional arrows sticking out of the left of the top face and the right of
> >the bottom face for the up and down directions. IIRC, it was actually given a
> >DEC engineering drawing designation.
>
> Somewhere, I still have a 2-page XEROX-reduced copy of a copy of a copy of a
> .... for who knows how many iterations--given to me when I first went to work
> for the UChicago Comp Center in 1977.
Funny, I went to work at one of the the UChicago computing centers in
1987, and Adventure (and TOPS-10) still had a strong presence there.
I was told about, and briefly played an extended ADVENT game that had
been developed at the U of C, by Dave Long and Michele Medanski and
others. I've been trying to find a copy or a description of it on the
ADVENT archive sites recently, but I've come up empty. Does this ring
any bells for you, Rich, or for anyone else in a.f.c?
Thanks,
James
--
James Powell - Software Engineer/Reverse Engineering - ja...@advancedsw.com
Advanced Software Technologies, Inc.
"Best Tools. Best Service. No Compromise."
jmfb...@aol.com
James Powell <ja...@advancedsw.com> wrote:
>
>alde...@netcom12.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) writes:
>> In article <qh4sgeg1...@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Eric Smith
>> <eric-no-s...@brouhaha.com> writes:
>>
>> >Speaking of the classic Crowther-Woods 350 point game (as distinct from
the
>> >zillion-odd later "enhanced" games), does anyone have a copy of the map
that
>> >someone at DEC drew? It had each room represented as an octogon with
>> >additional arrows sticking out of the left of the top face and the
right of
>> >the bottom face for the up and down directions. IIRC, it was actually
given a
>> >DEC engineering drawing designation.
>>
>> Somewhere, I still have a 2-page XEROX-reduced copy of a copy of a copy
of a
>> .... for who knows how many iterations--given to me when I first went to
work
>> for the UChicago Comp Center in 1977.
><snip>
>
>Funny, I went to work at one of the the UChicago computing centers in
>1987, and Adventure (and TOPS-10) still had a strong presence there.
UofC ran TOPS-10? I thought they were a -20 site.
<snip>
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Peter Seebach
>been developed at the U of C, by Dave Long and Michele Medanski and
>others. I've been trying to find a copy or a description of it on the
>ADVENT archive sites recently, but I've come up empty. Does this ring
>any bells for you, Rich, or for anyone else in a.f.c?
The 550 point one? I used to trade email with a guy involved with it;
actually, "Dave Long" sounds familiar. Downside, this was before the Great
Conversion To MH, so I'd have to grovel through 40+MB of compressed messages
to find the email. I think he worked at 3DO for a while.
James Powell
jmfb...@aol.com writes:
> In article <23yadiw...@dragon.advancedsw.com>,
> James Powell <ja...@advancedsw.com> wrote:
> >
> >alde...@netcom12.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) writes:
> >> In article <qh4sgeg1...@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Eric Smith
> >> <eric-no-s...@brouhaha.com> writes:
> >>
> >> Somewhere, I still have a 2-page XEROX-reduced copy of a copy of a copy
> >> of a.... for who knows how many iterations--given to me when I first went to
> >> work for the UChicago Comp Center in 1977.
> ><snip>
> >
> >Funny, I went to work at one of the the UChicago computing centers in
> >1987, and Adventure (and TOPS-10) still had a strong presence there.
>
> UofC ran TOPS-10? I thought they were a -20 site.
Ah, I think you are correct. TOPS-20, with DECNet, running a DBMS
system supporting university administration software. And of course a
Fortran compiler and ADVENT. I think I recall trying TECO on the box.
I cannot recall the name of the DBMS system, though...
Mea culpa,
James
--
James Powell
} > > alde...@netcom12.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) writes:
} > > > In article <qh4sgeg1...@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Eric Smith
} > > > <eric-no-s...@brouhaha.com> writes:
} > > >
} > > > >Speaking of the classic Crowther-Woods 350 point game (as distinct from the
} > > > >zillion-odd later "enhanced" games), does anyone have a copy of the map that
} > > > >someone at DEC drew? It had each room represented as an octogon with
} > > > >additional arrows sticking out of the left of the top face and the right of
} > > > >the bottom face for the up and down directions. IIRC, it was actually given a
} > > > >DEC engineering drawing designation.
} > > >
} > > > Somewhere, I still have a 2-page XEROX-reduced copy of a copy of a copy of a
} > > > .... for who knows how many iterations--given to me when I first went to work
} > > > for the UChicago Comp Center in 1977.
} >
} > In article <23yadiw...@dragon.advancedsw.com>,
} > > James Powell <ja...@advancedsw.com> wrote:
} > > Funny, I went to work at one of the the UChicago computing centers in
} > > 1987, and Adventure (and TOPS-10) still had a strong presence there.
} > >
} > > I was told about, and briefly played an extended ADVENT game that had
} > > been developed at the U of C, by Dave Long and Michele Medanski and
} > > others. I've been trying to find a copy or a description of it on the
} > > ADVENT archive sites recently, but I've come up empty. Does this ring
} > > any bells for you, Rich, or for anyone else in a.f.c?
}
} se...@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) writes:
} > The 550 point one? I used to trade email with a guy involved with it;
} > actually, "Dave Long" sounds familiar. Downside, this was before the Great
} > Conversion To MH, so I'd have to grovel through 40+MB of compressed messages
} > to find the email. I think he worked at 3DO for a while.
Aha! I have tracked this version down, at
http://people.delphi.com/rickadams/adventure/e_downloads.html
There are two games listed on this site that came out of the UChicago,
first a 501 point and then a 551 point, and Dave Long appears to have
been the principal.
Regarding Eric's request for a 350 point map, there is such a map at this site,
but it appears to be recent creation. Now I'm curious about the DEC map too!
Thanks for your help,
James
Richard M. Alderson III
<ja...@advancedsw.com> writes:
>alde...@netcom12.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) writes:
>> Somewhere, I still have a 2-page XEROX-reduced copy of a copy of a copy of a
>> .... for who knows how many iterations--given to me when I first went to
>> work for the UChicago Comp Center in 1977.
>Funny, I went to work at one of the the UChicago computing centers in
>1987, and Adventure (and TOPS-10) still had a strong presence there.
I worked for the Comp Center (which was still at the site in the basement of
the physics building(s) at 57th & Ellis when I left in 1984); did you work for
them, or for the Graduate School of Business? I don't remember whether GSB had
one -20 or two; we had two (Chip and Dale--though Chip was the newer one) at
the Comp Center.
>I was told about, and briefly played an extended ADVENT game that had been
>developed at the U of C, by Dave Long and Michele Medanski and others. I've
>been trying to find a copy or a description of it on the ADVENT archive sites
>recently, but I've come up empty. Does this ring any bells for you, Rich, or
>for anyone else in a.f.c?
Dave Long was an interesting guy--worked for GSB as a computer operator, and
did the Adventure expansion in his spare time. He left Chicago for a time to
work in the Saudi oil fields, but came back a few months before I left. He
wouldn't allow anyone at Chicago to see the source code, though he gave me a
copy of the parser subroutine since I was a linguist.
(When I got to Stanford, I found the Long 550 point version of Adventure on the
LOTS systems. Not bad considering that Chicago wasn't on the ARPANET at the
time--or at least, the -20s weren't.)
At the first LOTS Town Meeting after I arrived, a student came up to me and
introduced himself as "P1.PALANTIR"--a Comp Center username on Dale, the
academic system. It turns out he graduated from the UofC School of Edudation's
Laboratory School (a K--12 facility)--and I had kicked him off the system once
for playing Adventure during "off" hours. We've been friends ever since...
(Hey, Ed! You reading this?)
Richard M. Alderson III
<ja...@advancedsw.com> writes:
>Ah, I think you are correct. TOPS-20, with DECNet, running a DBMS system
>supporting university administration software. And of course a Fortran
>compiler and ADVENT. I think I recall trying TECO on the box. I cannot
>recall the name of the DBMS system, though...
That would have been the (in)famous System 1022. By 1987, I think Compu$erve
had bought the company, since all of their internals were based on it (running
on top of a very old Tops-10 highly bummed for larger memory). A few years ago
we tried to buy the source, but it didn't work out.
Eric Fischer
> Funny, I went to work at one of the the UChicago computing centers in
> 1987, and Adventure (and TOPS-10) still had a strong presence there.
Unfortunately, by the time I showed up in 1991 the DEC systems were
gone, and so was any cultural attachment to Adventure. MM was still
the recommended mailer on the Unix systems there until a year or two
ago, though.
Eric
James Powell
alde...@netcom2.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) writes:
> In article <23yadiw...@dragon.advancedsw.com> James Powell
> <ja...@advancedsw.com> writes:
>
> >alde...@netcom12.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) writes:
>
> >> Somewhere, I still have a 2-page XEROX-reduced copy of a copy of a copy of a
> >> .... for who knows how many iterations--given to me when I first went to
> >> work for the UChicago Comp Center in 1977.
>
> >Funny, I went to work at one of the the UChicago computing centers in
> >1987, and Adventure (and TOPS-10) still had a strong presence there.
>
> I worked for the Comp Center (which was still at the site in the basement of
> the physics building(s) at 57th & Ellis when I left in 1984); did you work for
> them, or for the Graduate School of Business? I don't remember whether GSB had
> one -20 or two; we had two (Chip and Dale--though Chip was the newer one) at
> the Comp Center.
I worked for the GSB computing services dept. in the Walker Museum
building from '87 to '90. I think the GSB only had one -20,
'gsbdec'. I don't see it on the internet now, but I'm not sure that I
ever did.
> Dave Long was an interesting guy--worked for GSB as a computer operator, and
> did the Adventure expansion in his spare time. He left Chicago for a time to
> work in the Saudi oil fields, but came back a few months before I left. He
> wouldn't allow anyone at Chicago to see the source code, though he gave me a
> copy of the parser subroutine since I was a linguist.
<smile> He was the director of the GSB computing services dept. when I
was hired. The last I heard he had moved on, I don't know where. He
kept a factory-fresh BMW motorcycle in his office! When I knew him,
he was still working on the adventure code in his spare time,
translating it to 'C' so that he could compile it on the VAX/VMS
systems they were migrating to.
> (When I got to Stanford, I found the Long 550 point version of Adventure on the
> LOTS systems. Not bad considering that Chicago wasn't on the ARPANET at the
> time--or at least, the -20s weren't.)
Not bad. I was beginning to despair that I'd be able to find a copy,
but the Fortran source is available. Now I get to find out how well
'f2c' works.
> At the first LOTS Town Meeting after I arrived, a student came up to me and
> introduced himself as "P1.PALANTIR"--a Comp Center username on Dale, the
> academic system. It turns out he graduated from the UofC School of Edudation's
> Laboratory School (a K--12 facility)--and I had kicked him off the system once
> for playing Adventure during "off" hours. We've been friends ever since...
> (Hey, Ed! You reading this?)
Heh. Yeah Ed, c'mon!
Charles Richmond
> Aha! I have tracked this version down, at
>
> http://people.delphi.com/rickadams/adventure/e_downloads.html
>
> There are two games listed on this site that came out of the UChicago,
> first a 501 point and then a 551 point, and Dave Long appears to have
> been the principal.
>
was converted to C by Ken Wellsch <kcwe...@math.uwaterloo.ca> from Oz. I am
*not* sure why there was *no* attribution to Mr. Platt on the Adventure page.
>
> Regarding Eric's request for a 350 point map, there is such a map at this site,
> but it appears to be recent creation. Now I'm curious about the DEC map too!
>
somewhere there is a walk-through (read "script of completed game) of this version.
I too would like to see the DEC map in octogons (whatever version it is for).
jmfb...@aol.com
alde...@netcom2.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III) wrote:
>In article <23u2o5w...@dragon.advancedsw.com> James Powell
><ja...@advancedsw.com> writes:
>
>>Ah, I think you are correct. TOPS-20, with DECNet, running a DBMS system
>>supporting university administration software. And of course a Fortran
>>compiler and ADVENT. I think I recall trying TECO on the box. I cannot
>>recall the name of the DBMS system, though...
>
>That would have been the (in)famous System 1022.
Oh, yeah. I remember hearing those words at work :-). I always
got the impression that they were swears.
>By 1987, I think Compu$erve
>had bought the company, since all of their internals were
>based on it (running
>on top of a very old Tops-10 highly bummed for larger memory).
>A few years ago
>we tried to buy the source, but it didn't work out.
Why would you want the sources, if it's not impertinent to ask :-).
/BAH
Richard M. Alderson III
Even if it *were* impertinent, hmm? That's easy: A customer needed it. I
don't know whether the customer in question would care if I named them in this
newsgroup, but it's not hard to figure out. Perhaps the frequent poster who
works for them will say.
Richard M. Alderson III
>James Powell <ja...@advancedsw.com> wrote:
>> Funny, I went to work at one of the the UChicago computing centers in
>> 1987, and Adventure (and TOPS-10) still had a strong presence there.
>Unfortunately, by the time I showed up in 1991 the DEC systems were gone, and
>so was any cultural attachment to Adventure. MM was still the recommended
>mailer on the Unix systems there until a year or two ago, though.
Ah, MM. And thereby hangs a tale!
In 1983, UC wanted badly to get into networked e-mail, and joined a consortium
created by EDUCOM for the purpose of setting up such a thing. It was a star
topology, the center of which was MIT-MULTICS; it was MMDF- and SMTP-based,
with dialup from MIT to the various member sites for delivery and pick-up. As
the Multics system was also on the ARPANET^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HInternet, it would
relay to and from there, as well.
We had already been using MM (about edit level 320 or so) on the -20s for quite
some time. I was given the task of making MM talk to this Edunet; I read the
sources to all the various pieces of MM several times, and concluded that we
needed a newer version. I got in touch with the maintainer, Mark Crispin, at
Stanford's Computer Science Department' computer facility. (Mark reads this
group from time to time, of course, and is well-known in e-mail circles.)
I got the latest version of MM (about edit level 584 or 585), which had a great
deal of added matter for network mail, and started reading. I sat for days in
DDT single-stepping mail transport programs and mail user interfaces, until I
had a handle on how it worked, and started to write.
By mid-summer, 1984, I had it working well enough to get mail on MIT-MULTICS
from UC, so I tried a test message: I sent mail from the Comp Center to MRC's
address at Stanford. I got a furious reply. It seems that Edunet's decision
to call themselves by a top-level domain name ".Edunet" was a violation of all
sorts of Internet protocol--no one would be able to reply to us, it was a crock
and should be shut down, who thought this up?, etc., etc.
I forget how we got around that--I think the systems folks at MIT-MULTICS
agreed to transform Edunet mail going out to the Internet with the "substitute
% for @ and stick an @mit-multics.edu on the end" hack--but get around it we
did. And being fed up with conditions around me (i. e., I wasn't getting to
work on the cool projects), I sent MRC a message saying that if he heard of any
systems programmer jobs around Stanford, let me know.
By return mail came the phone number for the manager of LOTS--and the rest, as
they say, is history.
Oh, the edit level on MM here is 1153...and MRC is still a good friend.
OBfolklore: The Unix port of MM supported *three* mailbox formats, mbox, TENEX
(though they got it wrong), and RMail/BABYL!
lars.br...@gmail.com
> Does the Crowther only (i.e. scoreless, mostly a simulation, no
> fantasy elements, few puzzles) 1972 version of "Adventure" for the
> PDP-10(?) still exist anywhere?
I suppose by now all software archaeologists know this surfaced some time ago.
I'll add I have compiled it with the DEC F40 compiler, and it went just fine.
I had to make some minor changes to make it work in ITS.
Charles Richmond
https://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/adv_crowther.zip
--
numerist at aquaporin4 dot com