Crowther's Original Adventure Source Code Found

drxenos writes "I don't know how many of you are fans of old-school text adventures (interactive fiction), but Will Crowther's original Fortran source code has been located in a backup of Don Woods's old student account. For fans like me, this is like finding the Holy Grail."

Wow....

For fans like me, this is like finding the Holy Grail.

It's early. . .I'm not even going to bother, I could have probably easily gotten a +5 funny mod with a statement like that though. Someone mind finishing the work for me?

Re:Wow....

Q: "What is your quest?"

A> "To Seek the holy grail!"

Q: "what is your favorite text base adventure game?"

A> "Colossal Cave Adventure... NO wait, blue!"

*Gets launched into the death pit*

   tttttt
  t      t
t          t
t   R I P  t
t          t
t          t
tttttttttttt

Re:Wow....

"Someone mind finishing the work for me?"

Fine, fine.

For fans like me, this is like finding the Holy Grail.

Drxenos! Drxenos, King of the Nerds! Oh, don't grovel! If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people groveling! ...
[slightly later]

Behold! Drxenos, this is the Holy Grail of Computer Games. Look well, drxenos, for it is your sacred task to seek this Grail. That is your purpose, drxenos -- the Quest for the Holy Grail of Computer Games: Adventure. And it is written in FORTRAN.

Wait, FORTRAN? Lord, you're kidding right?

[significantly later]

He says they've already got one!

Yes, it's-a verry nice-a. It is-a coded in C.

[substantially later]

We are the Knights Who Say ... IP! IP! IP!

Augh!!!! Stop it!

[much later]

What is the net speed of an unladen TCP/IP data packet using PPP over a 1200 baud modem?
What do you mean? With or without parity, 7 or 8 bits, with or without flow control?
What? I don't know all that! Auuuuuugh!!!

[slightly later but a little further that the previously-mentioned "slightly later"]

The Castle Stanford. Once we brave its maze of twisty little passages, all alike, our quest is at an end!

THIS IS A HOAX

4chan is responsible. Who else would call FORTRAN a "text adventure"?

Re:THIS IS A HOAX

Who else would call FORTRAN a "text adventure"?

Well, calling it a "programming language" certainly qualifies as "fantasy"... ;-)



/ Props to HPF, though
// Still wouldn't use it unless forced to at gunpoint

The Fortran gods shall smite thee

program smite_em
c-----
      IMPLICIT NONE      ! Catch typos and un-initialized variables.
      integer       IERR_smite
      character*200 ch_name
c-----
      write(6,1)
1     FORMAT(/,' This is one smiting program!',/,
     &   '   Enter name of smitee --> ',$)
      read(*,fmt='(A)') ch_name

      DO while(.TRUE.)   ! Endless smiting loop.
         call smite(ch_name, IERR_smite)
         if(IERR_smite.GT.0) goto 20
      End DO             ! smite loop.
20    CONTINUE

      write(*,*)' Done smiting.'
      if(IERR_smite.LT.0) then
         write(6,2) IERR_smite
2        FORMAT(' ***Possible smiting error, IERR_smite = ',I)
      endif
      STOP
      END
c-----
c End of Main.
c-----

Re:The Fortran gods shall smite thee

How disappointing; you wrote that in modern Fortran. They were true gods in the day when they could smiteth without 'else' statements, and using computed gotos, arithmatic ifs, and the "EQUIVALENCE" statement.

rogue for me

yeah, can't say I'm anything other than a rogue, nethack, moria, umoria fan. the modern games with their "animation" and "pictures" and "sound" are just too easy.

A good example of how coding has progressed

Increased memory (both RAM & Disc storage) availability has allowed us to make our code more readable.
I looked at the various FORTRAN files and am amazed at the spaghetti GOTO maze which, although messy, was probably the only way to do things in FORTRAN at the time with no structuring capability.

A random example:

IF(K.NE.1) MASK1="177*M2(K)
        IF(((A(J).XOR."201004020100).AND.MASK1).EQ.0)GOTO 3
        IF(S.EQ.0) GOTO 2

Wow! Is that the opposite of self-documenting code or what?

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed

So maybe the inspiration for the "maze of twisty little passages, all alike" wasn't Mammoth Cave, it was the code itself.

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed

Um, could you repost that please? It seems your original post got corrupted somehow. All I see is gibberish where the code should be.

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed

Ah, the old computed GOTO. In the first line, the value of KQ is used as an index to the list of labels. If KQ=1, GOTO 5014, if KQ=2, GOTO 5000, etc. etc. If KQ is outside the range (0 or greater than 4), then no GOTO is performed, so you'd hit the PAUSE statement. Looks like it's essentially saying "this shouldn't happen".

2027 is similar, there's just a lot more possible values. That rogue 1 is a continuation indicator, it would have been in column 6 on your punch card.

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed,

This is why the grandmaster of 'Literate Programming', Donald Knuth, has done a translation into his CWEB Language which is totaly devoid of jumps and other 'dirty' Fortan:
http://www.literateprogramming.com/adventure.pdf [literateprogramming.com]

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed

Yeah, Perl has gotos (computed and otherwise) but it also has block structure. Which is why few Perl programmers ever have occasion to write a goto. (I don't think I ever have.) Perl's readability problems are exactly the opposite of FORTRAN's. Where FORTRAN's designers knew too little about artificial language theory, Perl's designers know way too much! Indeed, Larry Wall started out as a linguist, and can't seem to stop dreaming up clever language constructs. The result is a language that has a nasty tendency to bring out the poet in the programmer. Why is that a bad thing? Because, as any English 101 student will tell you, reading poetry is hard work.

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed

Memory is not the issue here. Turbo Pascal was designed to run in a single 64K 8086 segment, and Pascal is the quintessential block-structured language. The real problem is that the designers of FORTRAN were totally ignorant of the principles of language design. They could hardly be otherwise: FORTRAN was the very first high-level language.

But here's a sobering thought: Dijkstra launched his attack on the goto statement [acm.org] in 1968. Every programmer who's grown up with block structured languages would take it as a given that Dijkstra was right. But at the time, the concept was extremely controversial, and there was a lot of resistance — as evidenced by the fact that Crowther and Wood were still using computed gotos in 1976!

Re: A good example of how coding has progressed

You sound younger than me...

Well, that's nice to know, but the fact is that I'm probably older than you. How old? Without being to specific, I'll just say that I once met Harpo Marx.

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed

The code you're quoting isn't grossly messy because of the GOTO statements. It's grossly messy because PDP-10 Fortran didn't have a CHARACTER type -- instead, you could pack 5 characters to a 36-bit integer, with the low-bit unused. The M2 array contained integer masks with one bit set, the low bit of one of the characters. Multiplying that mask by octal 177 got you a mask which selected a single character, except for the first character where the multiplication would overflow. The octal constant 201004020100 is 5 space characters. The "S" flag indicated whether a space had been found yet.

So the little snippet you posted goes to label 3 if the current character (selected by J for the integer and K for the character within the integer) is a space, and to 2 if no space has been found yet, and continues without branching if a space has been found but the current character is not a space.

If A were, more sensibly, a character array, the above would be written as

                IF(A(J:J).EQ.' ')GOTO 3
                IF(S.EQ.0) GOTO 2

which is no problem to read at all, despite the gotos.

The Holy Grail?

Bad, bad Zoot. I'm sorry that's just the grail shaped light.

Found? When was it lost?

I once wrote a script to find and delete copies of this and the star trek game due to the limited disk space on our PDP-11/70. It had to compare file contents because the sneaky bastards would change the file names to something like TPSRPORT.DOC to hide them.

Re:Found? When was it lost?

I've got a box of cards (two, actually. Two and half, really. You could never get all the cards back into the box). All I need is a card reader and a 360/65 with OS 360 and TSO and I'm set for life.

I've also got a programming card for an 029 and COBOL.

We were the sneaky bastards that used to put random comments and unused character strings into the code to thwart people like you. Then I graduated and became a people like you. And was constantly thwarted by people like me.

OS 360, RSX11D, RSX11M, VMS. RIP.

Re:Found? When was it lost?

I'm not sure about the PDP-11 era, but as early as the mid-80's it was common to use .doc to indicate that something was a general document as opposed to a .ltr, .mem, or the like. The word processor used was irrelevant. (We used XyWrite at the time.) MS Word commandeering .doc is a relatively new phenomenon - the .doc extension itself is not.

command

xyzzy

This sounds familiar

I've never seen this game or anything like it. (too young) It sounds to me to be like one of those interactive books. It would seem to be a little easier to go the book route than to have to mess around with 70's era computers. How this was successful at all is a wonder.

Re:This sounds familiar

GIT OFFA MAH LAWN! /me waves a shotgun around menacingly

Reversed causation

Those interactive books came about because of Adventure.

Re:This sounds familiar

My first expose to Collosal Cave was when I was about 10ish... my Dad was a programmer(mainframes... mostly IBM, sperry etc) and I played it on a Sperry mainframe terminal. It may be hard to imagine for someone like yourself that has probably grown up with high resolution, high powered desktop PCs... but playing it for me was eye opening in the extreme. I suspect Im not alone and many other got hooked on development and technology because of interactive stuff like the good old original adventure.

xyzzy

Re:Why it was special...

I encountered it as an engineering undergrad, on a university Cyber 204 or 205 mainframe, the first computer I'd ever used. I had to hack extra console time via various means to complete it, using a mega flowchart I drew up as I went.

When I finally finished it, the screen cleared and an operator in the computer centre was typing to me and asking me to come over to the centre. I figured I'd been sprung for all the extra time I'd 'arranged', but instead they gave me printout and iducted me into the Order of Wizards!

A nerdy proud moment... (I wish I hadn't lost that printout in the intervening decades and moves.)

Re:This sounds familiar

In an era where there were no computer graphics at all, text was the only thing available. And it was a lot of fun as well.

The original Zork games, as well as the rest of the Infocom games were inspired by Adventure to a large degree. It should be noted that because they were text based, some things that would be considered obvious were not necessarily obvious in those days, which added to the puzzle solving aspect of the game.

These days, everything is made almost too obvious, because too many potential customers don't like a challenge(note that many games can be beaten straight out of the box in under 24 hours of playing). Back in those days, a game could take weeks of playing to figure out what to do, beating your head against a problem for several days before a solution would present itself wasn't uncommon.

Then again, it seems that too many people never bother to pick up a book when movies are available, and never realize how horribly the film makers have screwed up a great story, so it's no wonder some people would never understand why text adventures were fun.

I must not be old enough

Had to go to wiki [wikipedia.org] for this one...

William ("Willie" or "Will") Crowther (born 1936) is a computer programmer and caver. He is best known as the co-creator of Colossal Cave Adventure, a seminal computer game that influenced the first decade of game design and created a new game genre, text adventures.

[edit] Biography
During the early 1970s Crowther worked at defense contractor and Internet pioneer Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN). Following his divorce from his wife Patricia, Crowther began using his spare time to develop a simple text-based adventure game in FORTRAN on BBN's PDP-10. He created it as a diversion his daughters Sandy and Laura could enjoy when they came to visit. (Montfort, 2003, pp. 85-87)

In Adventure, the player moves around an imaginary cave system by entering simple, two-word commands and reading text describing the result. Crowther used his extensive knowledge of cave exploration as a basis for the game play, and there are many similarities between the locations in the game and those in Mammoth Cave, particularly its Bedquilt section. (Montfort, 2003, p. 88) In 1975 Crowther released the game on the early ARPANET system, of which BBN was a prime contractor. (Montfort, 2003, p. 89)

In the Spring of 1976, he was contacted by Stanford researcher Don Woods, seeking his permission to enhance the game. Crowther agreed, and Woods developed several enhanced versions on a PDP-10 housed in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) where he worked. (Montfort, 2003, p. 89) Over the following decade the game gained in popularity, being ported to many operating systems, including personal-computer platform CP/M.

The basic game structure invented by Crowther (and based in part on the example of the ELIZA text parser) was carried forward by the designers of later adventure games. Marc Blank and the team that created the Zork adventures cite Adventure as the title that inspired them to create their game. They later founded Infocom and published a series of popular text adventures.

The location of the game in Colossal Cave was not a coincidence. Will and his first wife Pat Crowther were active and dedicated cavers in the 1960s and early 1970s--both were part of many expeditions to connect the Mammoth and Flint Ridge cave systems. Pat played a key role in the September 9, 1972 expedition that finally made the connection. (Brucker, 1976, p. 299)

Will has also played an important role in the development of rock climbing in the Shawangunks in New York State. He began climbing there in the 1950s and continues to climb today. He made the first ascent of several classic routes including Arrow, Hawk, Moonlight, and Senté. Some of these routes sparked controversy because protection bolts were placed on rappel; a new tactic that Crowther and a several others began to use at the time. The community reaction to this technique was an important part of the evolution of climbing ethics in the Shawangunks and beyond.

Re:I must not be old enough

what the fuck does rock-climbing have to do with "ethics"?

The same thing leaving a campsite better than you found it has to do with ethics, or not littering has to do with ethics. Altering the environment and depriving others of potential experiences is an ethical issue.

A quick Googling [google.com] will reveal that "climbing ethics" is not an invention of the Wikipedia author, but is an active area of discussion among climbers.

Holy Grail

I digged out my Transformers toys when the movie was out, but playing with them doesn't give me the same thrill as they did 20 years ago.

This, is probably the same.

at last!

I may print it out and use it for wall paper. or etch it on silicon.

I was at my wit's end

but fortunately I had the source.

--
phunctor

movie

I'll wait for the movie to come out...

This is very important

Maybe a lot of today's nerds are too young to remember, but ADVENT was one of the most important computer games ever written. Its influence is still with us today, from mere hacker jargon to standard features of many modern games. Scoff if you want, but this discovery has historical significance. There has been a great deal of speculation and debate over the years about Crowther's and Woods's relative contributions to the game, and Crowther's source code puts numerous questions to rest. If the history of computers, and particularly of computer games, is at all a subject worthy of study, then this source code has to be considered a major find.

Full source published

An old copy of Creative Computing magazine had a spoof edition which, among other amusements, (IIRC) listed the entire source code for Adventure. I have it in storage somewhere; will dig it out this week and see if it matches TFA's discovery.

History - Looking for Scheme tarball 1986-87 era

The adventure source is a great find. I've been looking for the Scheme source tarball from the 1986-1987 period (i.e. when SICP was still new) for over a year, with no success. The changelog is online, and shows the work that was done in that period, but none of the tarballs still exists. Anyone have a Scheme distribution tarball from late 1987? I would like to run the code from that time along with the book to do screen captures, etc for something I'm working on.

Fight the power

Even though they are obviously overtaken by Graphical MMOs like WoW, MUDs are still fairly prevalent. There are still thousands of active MUDs/MUSHs/MOOs/BBSs and (extremely hard to calculate accurately) roughly 15,000 active players in the community.

Ironic

Ironically, I used to have the source code to an adventure game called The Holy Grail. :-D

At Last!

Now, I will finally be able to unlock the Hot Coffee mod.

EAMON!!!!

This was fun. I remember running it on a teletype terminal in programming class (damn, thats old) BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. You couldn't do a quick CLS to hide the evidence when the instructor came by, "Do you think paper grows on trees?" he yell. Of course all was forgiven when we showed him our course work was done. Then, he made us write our own dungeon code.

Much later, Don Brown(?) came out with EAMON [wikipedia.org], with a write your own framework. Fun fun fun.

Rel. Links

For those of you who don't want to read through the google groups archive (I recommend you do, but this is slashdot), here are some relevant links:
Original source, ported to g77 [russotto.net]
The above, compiled as a windows binary [ifarchive.org]

Does anyone remember...

...the version that was available for the IBM PC? It was one of the original programs available on the PC and was, presumably ported, by that little company that provides DOS, Microsoft. In a nod to the future of DRM, it was also the first program I came across that was "copy protected"; you could make a single copy and then that was it.

Man, that game was just so much freaking fun; I can still see that little bird driving the snake away to this day.

XYZZY forever, baby!

Useable code

In the thread about it someone posted modified code that can actually compile.. (Even with cygwin!)
http://www.russotto.net/~russotto/ADVENT/ [russotto.net]
I just compiled and it was flawless, so cheers

C Source code in OpenBSD

For those who are interested, a C version of the game is part of OpenBSD:
ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/src/games/advent ure [openbsd.org]

I first played Adventure in 1979 via a TI Silent 700 [texasinstr...epairs.com] thermal paper terminal (with built in 300 baud acoustic modem) connected to a PDP-11/83 [pdp11.co.uk] running Seventh Edition UNIX [wikipedia.org] at Bell Labs. Yep, I'm that old.

Original Zork source code in MDL

Zork was the reason I got on the ARPANET, back around 1980 or so. I was using Bruce's Northstar BBS that had an adventure game that Bruce had written in Basic, and he told me how to play Zork: first, dial up the NBS TIP, connect to MIT-AI (the command was "@L 134", because the ARPANET had 8 bit host numbers, and AI was 134), and apply for an account to learn Lisp. Once that was granted, I connected to MIT-DM ("@L 70"), and logged in as URANUS, password RINGS, used :CHUNAME to change my user name, and waited until one of the two people playing Zork quit, to take their slot. Later somebody told me the magic words to use to get an account on DM, so I applied for my own account on DM, claiming that I wanted to "Learn MDL for calculus and algebraic applications". The source code to Zork was well hidden. DM ran a weird version of ITS that had some kind of file security or cloaking, it was rumored. I was always looking for the Zork sources, but never found it on DM.

Years later I googled for a unique phrase that was only in the original DM version of Zork, and this URL popped up: http://retro.co.za/adventure/zork-mdl/ [retro.co.za]

The original MDL source to Zork is really beautiful code that's almost as fun to read as it was to play. I had discovered a bug in the InfoCom version of Zork, which turned out to be in the original sources. When you're fighting the troll who's wielding an Axe, you can give anything to the troll and he will eat it. So I tried "give axe to troll" and he ate his axe, then cowered in the corner! Better yet you can go "give troll to troll" and he will eat himself and disappear, unfortunately not clearing the troll flag that is required to leave the room, so if you try to leave it prints a message saying the troll fends you off with a menacing gesture, and stops you from leaving. Sure enough, in the original sources [retro.co.za], there is a troll flag!

-Don

Re:Original Zork source code in MDL

I wore an onion on my belt

That was a great story the last time you told it [slashdot.org], too.

ancient text-based games

Along with Adventure, we spent a lot of time on a VAX 11/785 (I believe) playing a game called Hunt. It was multiplayer and each screen showed a top-down section of the maze you were in, like larn, only past that it was like a FPS -- you wandered around, finding ammo, then shooting at other players you saw, using different weapons. A certain amount of ammo let you shoot a bullet, somewhat more a grenade, somewhat more yet an enormous blast that blew up part of the maze, and a whole lot of ammo let you shoot napalm, that ran along corridors without destroying anything (but would pursue people who were running.) I've been trying to find the sourcecode for it for years but haven't even found anyone who has heard of it. Anyone here?