intfiction.org

I last posted about this project in rgif: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... onch&pli=1

Just a short time and a few Inform versions later (the team did an excellent job on the new mapping function, by the way -- I only needed a couple of tweaks to get a really useful index map), I think I have something complete enough to be worth testing.

My goal was first to reproduce Crowther's original IF world in its entirety, including output text, without removing all the niceties of a modern parser. Ideally, a transcript of valid (and, less importantly, many invalid) commands in the original executable should produce the same output in my version, with possibly a few disambiguation messages in parentheses.

So, I'd like some testers interested in trying to break it. Again, I'm looking for exact reproduction of the behavior of the executable in http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/adv_crowther.zip made available by Dennis Jerz in his article Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave.

If you're interested, PM me here or contact me at http://if.game-testing.org/

I don't think I've ever had the chance to do this, so I'll take this chance right away!

The only feature that really reduces my pleasure of that old game nowadays is the light source. Every port of Adventure I've seen maintains the light limit - which of course, is reasonable enough. But I kept hoping for a game that'd either allow us to extend the lamp's life or just remove the limit altogether, as an extra option. There's actually a TADS version (Colossal Cave Revisited) that does just that, at the cost of losing five points and calling it an "easy" game. Thing is, it doesn't say what *else* it changes when it goes into "easy" mode.

Also, if you're using I7... then you have access to something else which would make it easier for modern players to enjoy Adventure. An onscreen, toggleable, automap. The cave is so windy, the gameplay so oldschool, that mapping it out - especially when you get to bedquilt! - just makes it overwhelming for some players.

I understand this is very much a tall order... well, it's just a couple of suggestions, really.

Incidently - did you base your code on Aaron Reed's I7 port of Adventure? The one he uses to illustrate his "intelligent hinting" system?

Did you really mean the adv350-pdp10.tar.gz file? That's the 1977 Crowther and Woods version: the 1975-6 Crowther original is this one
http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/source/adv_crowther.zip

Oops! Thank you, David. Yes, I meant to link to Crowther's original version.

Pears: No, I only wanted to reproduce Crowther's version, before Woods' involvement. The lamp's lifespan is infinite in that early version.

Oh, the very very first version without all that fantasy? The "cave exploration" simulation? Funny, I don't think I ever played that. Didn't think it existed anymore.

Ok, then.

There was fantasy in Crowther's original. Just not as much of it. But it was definitely a game and not just a sim.

I'm really happy to see this being done. Trying to read Fortran to experience what Crowther did gets kind of old.

One thing that has always bugged me about ports of Adventure is that there is a dead end in the twisty maze that exits in the wrong direction (east instead of west, or west instead of east, one of those), and it exits in the wrong direction in the TADS adaptation as well (and in the Inform adaptation that is based on it), but it exits in the correct direction (i.e. true to Crowther & Woods) in the DOS version (Ekman's?) that the TADS version is supposedly based on.

I can look it up for you if you wish I have it noted down somewhere. Not that a dead end maze direction is a big deal or anything, it's always bugged me nonetheless — that and the parser responses that have been added, particularly error messages, which are often not really in keeping with what I felt was the very bare bones spirit of the original. The textual experience (as opposed to the modelled world experience) has not been ported in as sacrosanct a manner as I would have wished. So I reverted a lot of these additions back to just repetitions of room text that already exists in the original, and I found that it really alters the feel of the game. It reads less like Infocom, in other words, and more like its own kind of experience, which is what it was. (I have a MUD version of Adventure that I've been doing all this in, but it's the Crowther & Woods, not just the Crowther). However, I third-person-ised the whole thing, including the descriptions, so I have made my own transgressions; they're just my own idiosyncratic idea of what's OK to change for MUD version of this and what isn't. 87

I'm sure once I start I'll get quite into it and eat up lots of time -- so I'll try out your game later in the week when I've got it to spare. I'll PM you. 8)

Paul.

Heh, that's what I thought at first, too, but it's actually pretty easy to get a basic understanding of Fortran and the code from a bit of poking around and experimenting with the executable.

I can confirm that there is no such backwards dead end in Crowther's original. I pretty much agree about the original prose.

Thanks for offering, I've sent you a response.

Are you ever going to open your MUD version to players? I think it would be awesome to explore the Adventure map in an austere, traditional presentation with other players.

I doubt it would take much to port this to Guncho now!

Heh heh. It must seem singularly useless to read about somebody constructing a multiplayer version of Adventure in a MUD and not ever talk about releasing it or inviting people in. But it's just an accident of how this thing was built.

I'll try to make this rundown quick as possible, but it is a long story. Originally, I chose LambdaMOO as a place to conduct some personal IF experiments because it seemed like there was nothing it couldn't do, from IF to actual dynamic-served web pages. My experiments were structural -- I was thinking about interactive video and toying with ideas for tools for tracking interactive narrative. and I needed a sandbox testing environment, and I didn't want to get bogged down in creative decisions, so I basically ripped off all the rooms and text of the original Adventure, knowing that it was in the public domain by default (though not formally I don't think).

Anyway, I love that game, and as I experimented with some tools I'd often test them by mangling some Adventure puzzle with them, so I'd have to code that puzzle. After my experiments were done, I'd return the puzzle to its 'original' state. In this way I eventually coded most of the game. This past summer I realised that I was so close to having a complete version, that I went ahead and spent time specifically on that goal, polishing text, checking historical sources, etc.

But most of the work on this thing was a side effect of me doing stuff purely for my own edification and as a place for me to hang out in and feel creative in, and experiment. I've let in friends now and then, but since the environment wasn't specifically designed to entertain them — it didn't. So I became a little wary about visitors. That being said, I do think about opening the doors, as it were. But there are some things I have to work out first. Should I make changes to give multiple players more things to do? (There is still only one light source, for example. Think about that. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?)

So the answer is, I don't really know what's wise to do, here. I'm afraid that it's actually less entertaining for multiple people to play, and, conversely, that making it more entertaining in that way will destroy the historical value of it. And I don't have any good answer for the criticism, 'You know what? There is no actual good reason to make this particular game multiplayer.' There probably isn't. It just makes the place feel even more real to me. I've come to love it and depend on it, and think of it as my own little museum of a thing I care about, which I have guests in from time to time. They're polite but few of them appreciate it as much as I do, and isn't that always the way? 87

Paul.