Subject:
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Re: Zork
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.fun
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Date:
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Fri, 8 Nov 2002 04:11:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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1623 times
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Erik Olson wrote:
>
> In lugnet.off-topic.fun, Sean Devolites writes:
> > Thanks for the info guys.
> > But not being one who usually gets into games and the like,
> > Is zork a kind of game that some people put on their TI-83 calculators,
> > or am I way off on that one?
> > Hasta La Vista, Sean
Assuming the TI-83 has a reasonable way to input text, I would say
theoretically yes. It seems to use the same Z-80 processor that the
TRS-80 used, and appears to have enough RAM. Some models come with Flash
ROM, which if useable for user data, should be able to hold the game.
A quick search does not turn up a Z-machine interpreter for the TI-83
though.
I have source for a text adventure game for the HP41C calculator.
> > P.S About that xyzzy command, does fool mean you shouldn't use it
> > or does fool mean something else?
>
> xyzzy doesn't work, fool!
>
> Before there was Zork, there was Colossal Cave. 'xyzzy' only works in
> Colossal Cave.
> Both programs were named 'adventure' at one time, though Zork also went by
> the name 'dungeon'. There were family resemblances: you go north and south
> and se from room to room of a cave with lots of palatial things to see (in
> your mind's eye.) You meet trolls and occasionally throw axes while solving
> puzzles that get you treasures. There are mazes of twisty little passages,
> all alike, and funny things that are not quite essential to collecting all
> the treasures (winning), and you can meet various nasty ends, each with its
> timeless comment:
>
> "You probably shouldn't have done that..." "One swing of the troll's axe
> neatly severs your head from your body. You have died." EAT NASTY KNIFE. "Oh
> dear. It seems that nasty knife didn't really agree with you. You have died."
>
> It's obvious that these games are kin to tabletop role playing where one
> person is telling the story.
Definitely, though this quote from an interview with Don Woods (
http://www.avventuretestuali.com/Interviste/Original/don_woods_original.htm
):
> > Your model was Tolkien, isnt?
> > Only very indirectly. Tolkien was undoubtedly part of the inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons, and D&D and Tolkien were the
> > inspiration for a role-playing game designed by Crowther and his co-workers in Massachusetts. And that role-playing game - which I
> > believe they called Tales of Middle Earth - was part of what led Crowther to write Adventure. It sometimes surprises people to learn
> > that, when I wrote my parts of Adventure, I had never played D&D or any other role-playing game. Someone eventually introduced me to
> > role-playing because they had heard about Adventure and figured I'd enjoy role-playing - They were right! I had read Tolkien, but I didn't
> > consciously use it as a model for anything. Even the description of the volcano, which some writers have claimed was modelled after
> > Mount Doom, was written with no particular vision in mind.
makes it clear that Don Woods had not yet been exposed to RPGs. Crowther
had though.
> I first played Colossal Cave adventure in 1981 on a VAX, rather late. An
> Apple ][ version was going around by then.
>
> read this:
> http://www.gamespy.com/legacy/halloffame/zork_a.shtm
The "Adventure" or "Collosal Cave" game which "xyzzy" comes from, which
was the first such game has avery interesting origin, which relates it
to one of my other hobbies, caving. William Crowthers started the game
by creating a virtual map of the Bedquilt portion of the Mamoth Flint
Ridge cave system (the longest known cave in the world). Don Woods, came
along and added the treasures and creatures to the game. The very
interesting part is that the virtual map is sufficiently detailed that a
visitor who had never been to the cave before (and I think may not have
even caved before) was able to navigate the cave. In fact, in one room,
she suddenly ducked behind a boulder and disappeared for several
minutes. When she returned, the cavers asked why she went down the dead
end passage. She responded that she just had to see Whit's End.
These games are still popular because they are a complex form of word
puzzle. They also represent some of the earliest experiments in computer
natural language recognition.
The first time I saw Zork was in 1980 when Infocom brought a bunch of
TRS-80s to Bosclone (the premier SF convention in Boston, normally known
as Boskone) to run the game. I had seen simpler adventure games before,
but was very impressed by the game.
At least in the TRS-80 port of the game, it was a Object Oriented
Program long before OOP became the "in" way to program, and much of the
power of the game came from the OOP design (in previous adventure games,
so much of the code was special case).
Frank
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Zork
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| (...) xyzzy doesn't work, fool! Before there was Zork, there was Colossal Cave. 'xyzzy' only works in Colossal Cave. Both programs were named 'adventure' at one time, though Zork also went by the name 'dungeon'. There were family resemblances: you (...) (22 years ago, 7-Nov-02, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)
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