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Crowther's Original Adventure Source Code Found

Posted by kdawson on Tue Aug 14, 2007 07:08 AM
from the hollow-voice-says-plugh dept.
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."

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  • Wow.... (Score:1)

    by ookabooka (731013) on Tuesday August 14, @07:13AM (#20223221)

    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.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by PrescriptionWarning (932687) on Tuesday August 14, @07:47AM (#20223483)
      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
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Wow.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, @07:59AM (#20223601)
      "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!
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:Wow.... by Selivanow (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @09:20AM
      • Re:Wow.... by Meski (Score:1) Wednesday August 15, @12:39AM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:Wow.... by Tmack (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @11:42AM
      • Re:Wow.... by GPL Apostate (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @09:53PM
      • Re:Wow.... by Architect_sasyr (Score:2) Thursday August 16, @02:05AM
        • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • THIS IS A HOAX (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, @07:14AM (#20223229)
    4chan is responsible. Who else would call FORTRAN a "text adventure"?
  • rogue for me (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fifedrum (611338) on Tuesday August 14, @07:14AM (#20223231)
    (Last Journal: Monday June 09 2003, @01:59PM)
    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.
    • Re:rogue for me by jgrahn (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @02:04PM
    • Re:rogue for me by computer_redneck (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @08:15AM
      • 1976?? by YankeeInExile (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @09:45AM
        • Re:1976?? by somersault (Score:3) Tuesday August 14, @11:32AM
        • Re:1976?? by computer_redneck (Score:1) Wednesday August 15, @08:15AM
      • Re:rogue for me by mikael (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @11:19AM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, @07:16AM (#20223235)
    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?

  • The Holy Grail? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, @07:17AM (#20223249)
    Bad, bad Zoot. I'm sorry that's just the grail shaped light.
  • 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? (Score:4, Funny)

      by dmpyron (1069290) on Tuesday August 14, @10:51AM (#20225601)
      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.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Found? When was it lost? by prockcore (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @05:35PM
    • Re:Found? When was it lost? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ari_j (90255) on Tuesday August 14, @09:06AM (#20224255)
      (http://theari.com/)
      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.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Found? When was it lost? by eudaemon (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @09:10AM
    • Re:Found? When was it lost? by Green Light (Score:3) Tuesday August 14, @10:29AM
    • Re:Found? When was it lost? by jesterzog (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @07:05PM
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • command (Score:1, Redundant)

    by suso (153703) * on Tuesday August 14, @07:20AM (#20223271)
    (http://suso.suso.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday March 09 2004, @12:03AM)
    xyzzy
    • Re:command by Krisbee (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @07:26AM
    • Re:command by Gill Bates (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @07:27AM
    • Re:command by Bloody Peasant (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @07:27AM
    • comparison? by catbertscousin (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @07:29AM
    • Re:command by cthulhu11 (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @11:48PM
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • This sounds familiar (Score:1, Funny)

    by thatskinnyguy (1129515) on Tuesday August 14, @07:23AM (#20223279)
    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.
  • I must not be old enough (Score:3, Informative)

    by ArcadeX (866171) on Tuesday August 14, @07:24AM (#20223283)
    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.
  • Holy Grail (Score:2, Insightful)

    by biocute (936687) on Tuesday August 14, @07:25AM (#20223287)
    (http://xmoo.com/)
    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! (Score:4, Funny)

    by pbjones (315127) on Tuesday August 14, @07:25AM (#20223295)
    I may print it out and use it for wall paper. or etch it on silicon.
  • I was at my wit's end (Score:2, Funny)

    by phunctor (964194) on Tuesday August 14, @07:28AM (#20223315)
    but fortunately I had the source.

    --
    phunctor
  • movie (Score:1)

    by Dethboy (136650) on Tuesday August 14, @07:31AM (#20223341)
    I'll wait for the movie to come out...
    • Re:movie by psbrogna (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @09:04AM
      • Re:movie by NickFitz (Score:3) Tuesday August 14, @11:37AM
        • Re:movie by OakDragon (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @09:51PM
          • Re:movie by NickFitz (Score:2) Wednesday August 15, @03:25AM
    • Movie by onkelonkel (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @09:41AM
    • Re:movie by MrNiceguy_KS (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @09:54AM
  • This is very important (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, @07:34AM (#20223363)
    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.
  • by dazedNconfuzed (154242) on Tuesday August 14, @07:43AM (#20223435)
    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.
  • 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 (Score:2, Informative)

    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 (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14, @07:57AM (#20223577)
    Ironically, I used to have the source code to an adventure game called The Holy Grail. :-D
  • At Last! (Score:3, Funny)

    by corby (56462) on Tuesday August 14, @08:07AM (#20223675)
    Now, I will finally be able to unlock the Hot Coffee mod.
    • Re:At Last! by Gregg.Baker (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @08:55AM
    • Re:At Last! by StikyPad (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @08:04PM
  • 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.

    • Re:EAMON!!!! by AtomicSnarl (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @09:53AM
      • Re:EAMON!!!! by WED Fan (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @07:24PM
    • Re:EAMON!!!! by jd (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @04:12PM
  • Rel. Links (Score:2)

    by SighKoPath (956085) on Tuesday August 14, @09:05AM (#20224239)
    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]
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • by wandazulu (265281) on Tuesday August 14, @09:08AM (#20224279)
    ...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 (Score:1)

    by qwp (694253) on Tuesday August 14, @09:10AM (#20224303)
    (http://dragonfort.net/ | Last Journal: Thursday December 23 2004, @02:21AM)
    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
  • by saddino (183491) on Tuesday August 14, @09:30AM (#20224521)
    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 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SimHacker (180785) * on Tuesday August 14, @09:41AM (#20224707)
    (http://www.donhopkins.com/ | Last Journal: Monday February 23 2004, @09:48AM)

    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

  • ancient text-based games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by smellsofbikes (890263) on Tuesday August 14, @09:45AM (#20224757)
    (Last Journal: Wednesday October 05 2005, @10:39AM)
    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?
  • I can't post the ASCII graphics because slashdot says "Please use fewer 'junk' characters", but you can search for "Don Woods Commemerative stamp" in the Zork source code here [retro.co.za], near the end of the file. Also check out the One Hundred Royal Zorkmids and the portrait of J. Pierpont Flathead!

    One Lousy Point
    GUE Postage
    f.m.l.c.
    Donald Woods, Editor
    Spelunker Today

    100 GREAT UNDERGROUND EMPIRE 100
    B30332744D
    IN FROBS WE TRUST
    DIMWIT FLATHEAD
    Series 719GUE
    LD Flathead
    Treasurer
    One Hundred Royal Zorkmids

    I had the honor of working with Don Woods on the NeWS window system at Sun Microsystems, back in 1990. He's a great guy, and a kick-ass PostScript programmer!

    -Don

  • by sizzzzlerz (714878) on Tuesday August 14, @10:13AM (#20225123)
    I got tired of running through the same mazes and features that I wrote some sort of script that allowed me to automate play up to the last point where I either got killed or was stuck. It worked most of the time but there was an element of randomness with regards to those damned dwarves randomly throwing their damned axes. Even so, I was finally able to solve the entire puzzle and had a script that walked through it from beginning to end including the twisty little mazes that all look alike. I also recall obtaining the Fortran source code from some where as well.

    What fun and what very fond memories.
  • Is it just me...? (Score:2)

    by mark-t (151149) <marktNO@SPAMlynx.bc.ca> on Tuesday August 14, @10:14AM (#20225135)
    (Last Journal: Tuesday September 12 2006, @03:31PM)
    I'm probably going to get modded as either flamebait or troll for saying this, but I really fail to see the attraction here. As I see it, although the original code might be desirable to keep around as a reference for historical purposes, the state of the art in program design has advanced well beyond what that program has implemented. I'm not talking about the lack of any graphics or fancy features, what I mean is that this old code is almost structureless, difficult to understand, and appears virtually impossible to modify (not that one would ever want to, mind you, it's the principle of the thing). I understand that some of the modern program design methodologies we use today had not yet been discovered when this Crowther wrote this, but other than serving as an example of how _not_ to write a computer program today, the only significant thing that I can see could potentially be gained from this is discovering if in any of the alleged "100% accurate" clones that have since been made, there are deviations in the game from how it played out in the original, and correcting the newer versions to comply. Beyond that... meh.
    • Re:Is it just me...? by Slurm-V (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @10:57AM
    • Re:Is it just me...? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drxenos (573895) on Tuesday August 14, @11:09AM (#20225851)
      I think you are looking at it from the wrong perspective. Do not look at its merits as a program, especially when compared to modern day games. Imagine you were a coin collector, and happened across an old coin thought to not even exist anymore. Or a comic collector finding a MINT copy of Detective #27 (there are no known mint copies). That is what it is like for me as a collector. Granted it does not have the monetary value of my examples, but money is not the point. It the historical value, and nostalgia for me.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Is it just me...? by Dennis G. Jerz (Score:1) Tuesday August 14, @11:24AM
    • Re:Is it just me...? by jgrahn (Score:2) Tuesday August 14, @02:27PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • by joe_n_bloe (244407) on Tuesday August 14, @11:47AM (#20226415)
    (http://www.5sigma.com/joseph)
    I had the source for the original FORTRAN ADVENT for ages (running on CP/M) and am pretty sure I have seen it numerous times elsewhere over the years. Also, I had the source for some early (or initial) release of UCSD Pascal. Remember the P-machine?
  • by GRNXNM (204086) on Tuesday August 14, @12:21PM (#20226839)
    A while back (uh... 18 years ago) I was involved in a project that was an attempt to revive the Scepter of Goth multiplayer text game. I may be wrong here but I believe that "Scepter" was the first commercial multiplayer fantasy game. A few months ago when I was throwing out old boxes I ran across a 3.5" floppy with all of the Scepter source, and using VMs and an old build of QNX was able to extract it from an image of the floppy. Amazingly a QNX file system check of the floppy passed with no errors after all that time. I then forwarded it to the owner (who had long since lost it) and requested that he GPL the source and release it to the public for the purpose of historical preservation. Got no response though. :( Maybe he's not aware of the fact that there are thousands of free MUDs out there and so this old Scepter code has no real commercial value.
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
  • Version history? (Score:2)

    by Kazoo the Clown (644526) on Tuesday August 14, @12:48PM (#20227145)
    The version I remember playing had both "maze of twisty little passages, all alike," but also the brilliant enhancement-- "twisty little maze of passages, all different," where each description had the words in a different order-- I'm curious as to when that got added, as it would appear to be after this original source...
  • in FORTRAN.

    Well, technically, in WATFOR. And I coded it by hand on punch cards, even though I waited until the 360 operator went on a break to steal the main console and execute my runs for my players.

    Selkirk College rules!
  • Wake me up (Score:2)

    When Ken Thompson's 1969 Space Travel [wikipedia.org]'s source code is found.

  • Compiled binaries for Windows (Score:3, Informative)

    by Da VinMan (7669) on Tuesday August 14, @01:24PM (#20227661)
    This site is really slow right now, but at a mere 68 KB, this old gem is worth a look.

    Have a look:
    http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/unprocessed/ad v_crowther_win.zip [ifarchive.org]

    Not my work BTW. Credit goes to the crew on rec.arts.int-fiction.
  • Is Empire, Wargame of the Century. You can get the original PDP-10 FORTRAN source code from classicempire.com [classicempire.com].
  • by The_Rook (136658) on Tuesday August 14, @02:30PM (#20228793)
    so whose going to take on the job of porting 'Adventue' to the iPhone?
  • Now I REALLY feel old... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mr. Protocol (73424) on Tuesday August 14, @04:16PM (#20230175)
    This story mildly creeps me out.

    I worked down the hall from Willie Crowther when I was at BBN, and I asked him about why he wrote it ("I had some ideas on parsing response analysis I wanted to try"). I think I at least used to have a copy of the Fortran source code salted away on my account somewhere, though I'd probably have a problem laying my hands on it now. I just wasn't aware that anyone was looking for it.
  • by Fortran IV (737299) on Tuesday August 14, @06:05PM (#20231223)
    (Last Journal: Tuesday August 14, @05:41PM)
    The Da Vinci source code?

    Seriously, this is a cool find (if a couple of years old). I first played Adventure in 1981, on a Xerox Sigma 7 running CP-V, in a FORTRAN implementation that had been customized a bit by the locals. (For instance, in the original game you could say "XYZZY" in the well house [or wherever] and bypass the locked grate; our version had that hole plugged.)

    Later, around 1983-4, we had a Honeywell CP-6 system with an updated Adventure written in PL-6 (a pretty neat system language with customizable data structures and bit-level addressing). Somewhere, I may still have the PL-6 source for that one on 5.25" floppies. That system also included the pre-Zork Dungeon game; "the Tomb of the Implementers" and "Feel free" soon became catch-phrases around the office.

    From glancing over the code, I can tell it's been a long time since I even thought seriously about writing FORTRAN (my first real language). I don't miss FORMAT statements, but I do miss the relative simplicity of most of the syntax (particularly when faced with a punctuation nightmare like LISP). In early FORTRAN, when a statement ended, it was over. You didn't have to count levels of punctuation or IF/DO/WHILE nesting across thousands of lines of code.

    You only had to follow hundreds of GOTO statements....
  • Best (Score:1)

    by youknitty (1142821) on Tuesday August 14, @07:40PM (#20231869)
    Best.Game.Ever. Nuff Said.
  • by BubbaJonBoy (691386) on Wednesday August 15, @08:33AM (#20235641)
    I seriously doubt that the code was really "lost". My gosh - it used to be on *every* Unix system delivered!
    I'm pretty sure I have on tape somewhere the original Fortran code - I remember trying to compile it on the Apple II - we did compile it on the MicroVAX's both Ultra and VMS. There were also flavors where people had used it as an exercise in converting to RatFOR. Anyway - I think "re-discovered" would be more appropriate - not lost and found.
    Regards,
    Jon
  • Intricate Code (Score:1)

    by ricksmith (137318) on Friday August 17, @09:48AM (#20261073)
    (http://www.cryptosmith.com/)
    I worked with some of Willie's assembly language code when working on Pluribus software back in the late '70s. He'd moved on to PARC or Stanford or something, and left behind some intricate 16-bit assembly code that took care of part of the Arpanet protocols. As a colleague said, "Willie's code is hard to read because he'd optimize as he wrote."

  • Re:I am hoping (Score:2)

    by drxenos (573895) on Tuesday August 14, @07:29AM (#20223327)
    If you look at the posting in the link to the usenet group, someone has converted the code to compile with g77.
    [ Parent ]
  • by rgravina (520410) on Tuesday August 14, @07:34AM (#20223365)
    I'd love to see it done with lots of design patterns, sort of a contrast between the old and new! You could even go nuts and over apply them just for the hell of it. Actually, the GoF Design Patterns book uses a maze example to illustrate the various creational patterns, so we already know we need a AdventureFactory in there somewhere :)

    [ Parent ]
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  • Re:he was meant to say (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by mwvdlee (775178) on Tuesday August 14, @07:44AM (#20223453)
    (http://www.vanderlee.com/)
    Yeah dude, nurd are... uh... nuuuuuurds! Headbutt, jock-buddy! Yeah!
    [ Parent ]
  • Re:he was meant to say (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ant P. (974313) <anthony.parsons@manx.net> on Tuesday August 14, @07:53AM (#20223531)
    You know, I'd rather have other people see me as a nerd than as someone gratuitously illiterate and idiotic.
    [ Parent ]
  • by wwmedia (950346) on Tuesday August 14, @07:55AM (#20223551)
    (http://www.footballfans.tv/)
    i didnt mean it in a bad why

    lol

    funny seing peoples reaction even tho bellow the slashdot logo it says "news for nurds, stuff that matters"
    [ Parent ]
  • by Weaselmancer (533834) on Tuesday August 14, @09:11AM (#20224311)

    I know, you've had a bad week. Here, have a cookie.

    [ Parent ]
  • Re:Wait for the Game... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spun (1352) <loverevolutionary.yahoo@com> on Tuesday August 14, @10:07AM (#20225035)
    (Last Journal: Tuesday August 07, @01:18PM)
    You are in a debris room filled with stuff washed in from the surface. A low wide passage with cobbles becomes plugged with mud and debris here, but an awkward canyon leads upward and west. There is a PDP-10 with a card reader and terminal here. A box of punchcards sits nearby.
    > get box
    You now have the box of punchcards.
    > input cards
    You carefully feed the cards into the card reader.
    > look terminal
    The terminal says:
    YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK
    BUILDING. AROUND YOU IS A FOREST. A SMALL
    STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND DOWN A GULLY.
    [ Parent ]
  • by meringuoid (568297) on Tuesday August 14, @12:16PM (#20226769)
    For nurds like me, this is like finding the Holy Grail

    If you're going to emphasise a word in bold, you really ought to take care to spell it correctly. Especially when it's right there in the site title at the top of every page.

    [ Parent ]
  • I still have that issue, the one with the dragon on the cover art? It's the one issue I kept when I gave away all my CC magazines.
    It didn't have the FORTRAN code to Adventure but did have articles such as 'How to fit a bit program into a small machine' describing Zork and ZIL (Zork Interpretive Language), a BASIC text adventure or two, and a few others.
    [ Parent ]
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