Looking for old IF

Hello. Back in the early 80’s, after being blown away when I encountered the original Adventure (called ADVENT due to name limitations on the Control Data NOS system), another game appeared, called ADVENTP. It was a Pascal program that implemented most of the puzzles of the original Colossal Cave, and a few more (a wolf, a guard post, the requirement that you build a bridge and a ladder to get certain places). The actual cave descriptions and connections were in a data file, like the original FORTRAN ADVENT.

I recently came across a sealed listing of the program (more or less. For some reason lost to time, the first character of each line was missing, and a few lines were overwritten). But what I don’t have is the datafile.

I am slowly typing in the 44 page program using the Lazarus Pascal system. But if anyone has a copy of the data file, I would love to put it all back together.

In the initial comment block it says:
In the initial block comment it says:
ADVENTURE IN PASCAL - MARCH 1979

WRITTEN BY
GEORGE H. RICHMOND
STORAGE TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION

WITH THE SUPPORT OF
MIKE PRESTON
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER
ENGLISH DEPARTEMENT

AND THE
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO COMPUTING CENTER

But I haven’t found an email address for George H. Richmond. There is a letter from him in the publication of the Pascal User’s Group in 1979, offering the program to go out in the 3rd installation tape of Pascal, but no indication of the contents of the tape being on line anywhere.

So if anyone knows anything (or even remembers the game) I’d love to hear about it.

Tom A.

That is fascinating to hear! There are a lot of different versions of ADVENT/Adventure/Colossal Cave out there, but I’ve never heard of a Pascal one. Do you happen to know how many points it’s possible to get? The usual way of categorizing the different versions now is by maximum score, disambiguated by author’s last name, so e.g. the most famous version is probably Adventure 350 (by Woods), then Adventure 550 (by Platt), and so on.

EDIT: This is the most comprehensive list I know of for Adventure versions.

The max score is 500, but the way the code is written, no matter what the cave complex, it will always be 500.

This is the score code:
S := trunc( 70
+ 100 * card (discovt) / card( maxtreas )
+ 200 * card (maxtreas * treasloc^.present)/card(maxtreas)
+ 130 * actvisit / maxvisit
- 17 * numdied);
writeln('You moved ‘, moves:4, ’ times.’);
writeln('You gave me ‘, commands:4, ’ commands.’);
writeln(‘Your score was s:4 out of 500.’);

I remember that you got 1 point per room visited, so that means 130 rooms (and one of them was somewhat hidden, but I don’t remember how). It also means that to get a perfect score, you have to go everywhere.

Tom A.

Ha, so this version forces you to explore the mazes completely. Nice. Alas, the only 500-point version I know of is David Long’s, but it’s written in FORTRAN.

I hit a dead end with George Richmond too. However, I was able to find some apparently-current contact information for Mike Preston. He’s retired now but he might still have an old copy of the data file somewhere. Send me a PM and I can forward it to you, I don’t want to post his personal information publicly here.

Tom, do you still have the Pascal code for ADVENTP, in a form that could be emailed and/or photographed? I would love to get a copy!

Draconis, you mention David Long’s version. I’ve seen a 501-point version (with unfinished sections apparently by some other author) but never 500 exactly. Do you happen to have any code or binaries for any version of David Long’s Adventure that isn’t already available on the Web?
I’m trying to track down David Long’s 751-point version, and have had little luck yet; see club.cc.cmu.edu/~ajo/in-sear … eadme.html

Thanks,
Arthur