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TEXT ADVENTURES

C

CaptainCommodore

Member
Joined
Aug 31, 2003
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35
I was watching Big (w/Tom Hanks) this weekend, and it reminded me I always wanted that "text adventure" game.

Does anyone know where you can get a copy from? I mean, wouldn't it be great to play that game... I'm def. going to try to program it myself in BASIC.

Anyone want to clue me in if I'm missing something?
Does anyone have the game? :?:
 
Update

Update

UPDATE:
I recently remembered the name of the famous "text adventure" genre... ZORK. How could I forget?

I've done research, and it looks like I found a few copies to buy.

I'm also working on writing a "text adventure" in BASIC. Should be interesting.
 
Good luck with your text adventure writing!

When I was looking around for text adventure writing help, I found this site to be pretty good. Talked a lot about using off the shelf parsers and stuff, but it also had a lot of articles that were far more general in nature.

Interactive Fiction (IF) Authorship site
http://www.duke.edu/~srg3/IFdesign/desrecs.html

Chris
 
Sorry about the late post.

In addition to vintage computers, I also collect vintage computer books, when I can find them. One of my favorites is "Writing BASIC Adventure Programs for the TRS-80" by Franc Dacosta. I picked this one up from a guy on eBay. The book was published in 1982, and is the third printing. It is in absolute pristine condition. The spine isn't broken, and the pages haven't yellowed.
 
Re: TEXT ADVENTURES

CaptainCommodore said:
I was watching Big (w/Tom Hanks) this weekend, and it reminded me I always wanted that "text adventure" game.

Does anyone know where you can get a copy from? I mean, wouldn't it be great to play that game... I'm def. going to try to program it myself in BASIC.

Anyone want to clue me in if I'm missing something?
Does anyone have the game? :?:
Click to expand...

I googled "text adventure" and got hundreds of hits. I couldn't find the original Adventure, but this page has Colossal Cave for download. C.C. is kinda like version II of the original.

http://www.whitestick.co.uk/text.html

Also, on the web, you can find lots of help for creating your own text adventure games. Just google your way through it all...

--T
 
I played the "original" Colossal Cave adventure on an IBM Mainframe way back when. I even got a great listing of it (at a somewhat later date) including the FORTRAN source, the data file and a 3rd listing, 10 times the size of the first two, that had a "map" of every room.

A program had been written to parse the data file and for each room it had the text of the room, the rooms connected to and the direction to go to get there. It was especially helpful in "twisty little passages, all alike" and such.

The sad part is that I ended up tossing that foot and a half of greenbar over a decade ago.

Last year I found myself playing with the first PC port of that game. It was rewritten in BASIC and ran under CP/M. The version that I had was VERY buggy.

I finally finished the game in 1982 using the Microsoft Adventure which was among the first games for the IBM PC.

I've since played through Zork 1-3 and a half dozen other games, mostly Infocom stuff. . .

Erik
 
Re: Update

Re: Update

CaptainCommodore said:
UPDATE:
I recently remembered the name of the famous "text adventure" genre... ZORK. How could I forget?

I've done research, and it looks like I found a few copies to buy.

I'm also working on writing a "text adventure" in BASIC. Should be interesting.
Click to expand...

Several flavors of Zork are found on this page:

http://www.if-legends.org/~adventure/machines/PC.html

(I didn't see the original Zork, or even Zork Zero (a prequel).

--T
 
Zork for Linux?

Zork for Linux?

Anyone know of a good Zork for Linux?

I've found Windows versions, they seem to need an interpreter, but the plain console version fo Linux seems very elusive.


.T.I.M
 
FWIW, the original adventure game was called ADVENT and written in FORTRAN. And Zork, before it was broken into 3 pieces so it would fit on a micro, was called DUNGEON.

If you're into Infocom adventures, you may know that they typically consist of a small executable and a large data file. But did you know that the data file is written in a command language (called ZIL?) and can be played by any other Infocom executable. You just need to hot-patch the executable with the name of the data file you want to use. It also means you can play the data file from one O/S on another O/S. For example, you can play a CP/M data file using an MSDOS executable. There are certain exceptions to this, but it generally works with the later games.

For Linux, there are a number of packages that will play Infocom data files (search freshmeat.net for "infocom"). I think I used to use one called "zip" (not to be confused with the archive utility). I'm not sure if there's a ZIL version of the original Adventure, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't one, it's been redone so many times.

Cheers,
Andy
 
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