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."

THIS IS A HOAX

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:THIS IS A HOAX

[pla]

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

[White Yeti]

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

[Frumious Wombat]

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.

Stop picking on Fortran, and stop using PHP!

[SimHacker]

Hey, stop picking on Fortran. Sure it's a lame language, but it has an excuse: it's very old now, and didn't know any better at the time, when computer science was young.

PHP is MUCH WORSE than Fortran, yet it was written many years later. The foolish PHP implementors had no excuse to make such a horrible language. They could have learned from the mistakes of the past, but instead they repeated them much worse, and added many original mistakes that nobody had even been stupid enough to make before.

-Do

rogue for me

[fifedrum]

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:

[somersault]

He was using an emulator, running on a binary abacus

A good example of how coding has progressed

[Anonymous Coward]

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:

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy Grail? More like finding the Arc of the Covenant. As it's being opened.

Looking upon this madness leads only to ruin!

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed

[SIGBUS]

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

[morgan_greywolf]

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:

[Jugalator]

Yes, holy goto madness! I don't even understand the goto statements here:

GOTO (5014,5000,2026,2010)KQ
        PAUSE 'NO NO'
2026 JVERB=K
        JSPK=JSPKT(JVERB)
        IF(JTWO.NE.0)GOTO 2028
        IF(JOBJ.EQ.0)GOTO 2036
2027 GOTO(9000,5066,3000,5031,2009,5031,9404,9406,5081, 5200,
        1 5200,5300,5506,5502,5504,5505)JVERB

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed

[LMacG]

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:

[PCM2]

AppleSoft BASIC had something similar that I used to write adventure games for the Apple ][:

ON KQ GOTO 5014,5000,...

(where KQ was an integer variable)

Re:

[ajs318]

British BASIC dialects had something even better.

The TRULY calculated GOTO/GOSUB statement!

On a Beeb or Speccy, you could quite happily write stuff like

50 INPUT A
55 IF A<1 OR A>5 THEN GOTO 50
60 GOTO 900+100*A

This sort of thing didn't work on machines running Microsoft BASIC (which even used to throw a hissy fit if you tried to GOTO a non-existent line number. Beebs and Speccies just carried on from the next higher line number. Meant you could aim GOTO statements at REM statements without

Re:

[PCM2]

If I remember right, Apple Integer BASIC (the version, written by Woz, that shipped in ROM on the original Apple II) would let you to GOTO A (where A was a variable). The Apple ][+ and later used Applesoft BASIC (based on Microsoft code), which removed the capability. But that's just a fleeting memory... I could be totally wrong.

The decimal line numbering IS totally classic, though. Integer BASIC on the Apple had one main disadvantage when compared to Applesoft BASIC, and that was that all numbers were inte

Re:

[fm6]

...written by Woz...

Please. It's "The Woz".

Re:

[ajs318]

The Lynx was very much the exception, even in the UK (where most people wrote their own BASIC rather than licence one from Microsoft). It had no concept at all of integers; every number was stored within the program as a floating-point number (and only rendered at display time). If you used "2.5E4" for a line number, it would show up in any LISTing as 25000, because 25000 has few enough digits not to need to be displayed in scientific notation. If you used PEEK, you'd see instead of the ASCII codes for

Re:

[belmolis]

In a way, it wasn't a dead end. The computed goto is the ancestor of the switch construct of languages like C. The difference is that with a switch the consequents are associated with the trigger values, whereas the computed goto keeps all the trigger values grouped together.

Re:

[prockcore]

The computed goto is the ancestor of the switch construct of languages like C.

In fact, a switch in Java gets compiled into a computed goto in jasmin.

If I remember my FORTRAN at all...

[SIGBUS]

That last GOTO would be like this in BASIC:

2027 ON JVERB GOTO 9000,5066,3000,5031,2009,5031,9404,9406,5081,5200, 5200,5300,5506,5502,5504,5505

i.e. a multiple-branch GOTO where the destination depends on the value of JVERB. That extra "1" on the second line indicatates that line 2027 got split over two physical lines; FORTRAN dates back to the days of 80-column punch cards.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed,

[junge_m]

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:

[Mr. Underbridge]

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

Well...it doesn't *look* like Perl...

Re:

[ajs318]

In perl, the relevant construct would be more like

goto +(9000,5066,3000,5031,2009,5031,9404,9406,5081, 5200,5200,5300,5506,5502,5504,5505)[$jverb];

(You need the + to force the expression to be evaluated in a scalar context. In perl 5, unary + coerces to scalar. In perl 6, if it's ever released, unary + will coerce to numeric and unary ~ -- the tilde is the "new" string-joining operator, taking the place of . which is now used instead of -> -- will coerce to string. Presumably there's a whole new

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed

[fm6]

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:

[j00r0m4nc3r]

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

I would call it self-obfuscating.

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed

[fm6]

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

[fm6]

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:

[Fortran IV]

The IBM 1130 [ibm1130.org] had a FORTRAN compiler that could run in 4K "words" (8KB). It was somewhat limited—for instance, the arithmetic IF was the only branching statement available. But it could compile quite large programs, I was told; my school had a FORTRAN circuit-analysis program 20,000 cards long (5 full drawers in a card cabinet) that could allegedly be compiled successfully—over a period of several hours, presumably.

Re:A good example of how coding has progressed

[russotto]

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.

Found? When was it lost?

[Smallpond]

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?

[dmpyron]

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?

[ari_j]

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.

Re:

[Green Light]

Umm, I think you missed his joke. Did you get the memo about the TPSREPORT?

I must not be old enough

[ArcadeX]

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

[Mr. Slippery]

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.

Re:

[zero_offset]

You have illuminated my light bulb. Thank you, sir.

Holy Grail

[biocute]

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.

Re:

[raddan]

Case in point: I rediscovered Scott Adams' text adventure stuff a few years ago. I grew up playing those games on my TI99/4A. I fondly remember playing Strange Odyssey and Pirate Adventure, thinking that games couldn't have gotten better than this. Anyway, games I spent weeks chugging through when I was a kid, I plowed through in about a half-hour. Fun, but not quite the same thing anymore. Another one, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, though hilarious to me when I was a kid, is now mostly annoying (s

Re:

[FauxPasIII]

> 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.

Then your fandom is WEAK.
/me cuddles his masterpiece edition Optimus Prime

at last!

[pbjones]

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

I was at my wit's end

[phunctor]

but fortunately I had the source.

--
phunctor

This is very important

[Anonymous Coward]

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 co

Full source published

[dazedNconfuzed]

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.

Re:

[drxenos]

I doubt it, as this version is before Woods turned it into a game (The original Crowther's version was just a simulation for his kids). But please do dig it out. I have made a hobby out of collecting all the various versions of Adventure (and also Zork--AKA Dungeon--,and Rogue).

Re:

[Mr2001]

I doubt it, as this version is before Woods turned it into a game (The original Crowther's version was just a simulation for his kids).

Not true, RTFA [uiuc.edu]! It explains that Crowther's original had puzzles and fantasy elements, intentionally changed parts of the map, and was designed with adults in mind.

Re:

[Dennis G. Jerz]

Crowther's original was a game, and you can play it for yourself. Matthew Russoto tweaked the recovered source code so that it will compile under g77.

http://www.russotto.net/~russotto/ADVENT/ [russotto.net] ... and David Kinder published a Windows executable.

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

That file will move eventually... you will probably be able to find it from here:

http://www.wurb.com/if/person/2 [wurb.com]

There are also photos of the inside of the real Colossal Cave, including photos of what

Re:

[drxenos]

I did RTFA. I'm the one who ask for it to be posted here. Crowther's didn't write it be a "game" in the typical sense. He was going through a divorce and was missing his daughters. He was a spelunker and wrote a simulation of Mammoth Cave for them to play to be "closer" to them. He did not write it with adults in mind!

Re:

[Dennis G. Jerz]

Crowther also had adult playtesters, including his sister (who asked for a cheat code, leading to the invention of "XYZZY") and his colleagues at BBN. One of the vocabulary words it recognizes is "f*ck". Woods added the scoring and reincarnation system, a timer, and the game's conclusion. But Crowther's version had treasures, simple puzzles, basic combat, and magic (the crystal bridge, teleportation). Crowther's version was definitely a game. It's all in the Digital Humanities Quarterly article.

Re:

[drxenos]

I didn't mean that it wasn't "game" per se. What I was trying to convey is that it not the same as what people are use to finding floating around the web, in magazines or other sources. What people are use to seeing are incarnations after Don Wood's took it and expanded it into a "real" game. That's why I think this is a valuable find, because it predates Mr. Wood's changes. I've collections many, many versions over the years. This is like none of them.

Re:

[slapout]

The text of some issues of Creative Computing magazine: http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/index/ [atarimagazines.com]

Not sure if they have the issue you mention though.

History - Looking for Scheme tarball 1986-87 era

[scottsk]

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

[ShawnCplus]

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.

Re:

[Rhys]

I'm continually amazed that I still get email from folks trying to install pieces of MUSH code I wrote nearly 10 years ago. As far as I know it would still work on the most recent version of PennMUSH, even if it is missing some key pieces of code (ex: chargen).

Re:

[ShawnCplus]

I wouldn't really be surprised even though Diku and SMAUG are the most prevalent there are a lot of PennMUSH servers out there. Though people have destroyed Richard Woolcock's Godwars codebase and flooded the proverbial market with them I'm continually amazed at innovations people make in new games and many times I come across some that are much more complex than any graphical MMO. Richard Woolcock's Godwars 2/Gladiator Pits 3 codebase is insanely complex and has a fighting system that's richer and deeper t

At Last!

[corby]

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

Re:

[Gregg.Baker]

Does this mean the ESRB is going to retroactively give it an AO rating for ASCII boobies?

EAMON!!!!

[WED Fan]

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

[SighKoPath]

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...

[wandazulu]

...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!

Re:

[drxenos]

Yes, I have it. It created by Softwin Associates and published by MS. I also have the version they did for the Apple II (same DRM crap). There are "boot-loader" versions floating around the web. I also have another version for the Apple (I think done by Applesoft). No DRM, per se, but the disk is tricky to load and copy because it was a 13-sector disk.

C Source code in OpenBSD

[saddino]

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

[SimHacker]

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

[Just Some Guy]

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

[smellsofbikes]

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?

Is it just me...?

[mark-t]

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

Re:Is it just me...?

[drxenos]

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.

Compiled binaries for Windows

[Da VinMan]

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.

Now I REALLY feel old...

[Mr. Protocol]

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.

Re:This sounds familiar

[Barny]

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

Reversed causation

[dazedNconfuzed]

Those interactive books came about because of Adventure.

Re:This sounds familiar

[Xiaran]

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:

[spun]

My first exposure was when I was six. My friend's dad was a comp-sci professor at UNLV. He had a teleprinter at home, and could dial in to the mainframe at school. He would dial in and set me up in the games directory where I would waste reams of paper playing Colossal Cave Adventure, Hunt the Wumpus, and Lunar Lander. That experience definitely helped shape my love of computers and technology.

Re:

[dknj]

they had fortran, we had basic (soon after, qbasic). they had millions of punch cards, we had millions of 5 1/4" 160KB floppy disks. they had pong, we had test drive (4 color CGA goodness). i think we had a good childhood :-)

i got into computing in 1987 with an 8088 (with a whooping 20mb hd!) i did the unix/dos thing until 92 when i got my hands on windows 3.1. funny thing is my mom actually taught me fortran, which i had zero use for. thats about when i hit the demo scene....

Why it was special...

[maillemaker]

I'm old enough to remember, though I was a kid.

I'm not sure I can explain the sense of wonder. It was like the first time I got my modem working and realized I was _connected_to_another_computer! It was amazing to be able to type in a command or a question and have the computer _talk_back_to_you. Even though we all _knew_ it wasn't real AI, it felt like AI.

It wasn't the format of the _game_ that was special. Like was said, there were books that could do something similar. It was the fact that you were,

Re:Why it was special...

[ian_mackereth]

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.)

Cool

[maillemaker]

Cool story.

Re:

[jollyreaper]

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.)

That's probably the geekiest thing I've ever read. I'm proud of you. Nothing like that happened for me when I beat The Pit.

Re:

[rk]

Things were so different even just 20 or so years ago. In 1985, I hacked my college's VAX 11/750 to give me all privs. The system manager found me out, and just reset the privs, locked my account for a week, and asked how I did it so he could fix the problem. Wound up doing a lot of work for him until he left for greener pastures. It formally never happened, even though it could certainly have been elevated up the disciplinary chain.

If I did that today, no doubt I would've been kicked out of school, a

Re:This sounds familiar

[Targon]

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.

Re:

[hateful monkey]

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. If you didn't pick up the mail that is casually mentioned in the first few moments of the game, you are essentially screwed once you get on the Vogon ship. If you didn't by the extra "hint" books some of these things where almost impossible.

Re:

[OwnedByTwoCats]

My recollection is that you needed the mail to get the babelfish. You put the mail on something so that when the cleaning robot rolled out, the mail went flying with the fish, and the flying robot scooped up the mail instead of the fish, and you got the fish and got to keep on going.

Of course, getting onto the vogon ship was pretty early on in the adventure. It's not like buying the stale sandwich at the bar, which is crucial much later on in the game (and I only learned that was the solution by reading t

Re:

[Bigbutt]

It took me 2 years of playing back in the mid 80's to finally beat hack (1.0.3 I believe or possibly nethack). That was a proud moment to me.

[John]

Re:

[91degrees]

The 70's era computers weren't so bad. You had a command line interface and generally human understandable commands.

A few of the classics are available as free downloads. They became more sophisticated over time. Have a look at Zork [thcnet.net] for an example of one of the popular ones.

So try it

[metamatic]

Download and install a copy of the original [rickadams.org], or read about the history of it [rickadams.org].

Re:

[marian]

We oldies remember playing this on VAX in the early 80's. Fortunately, I can still play it 'cause Don Woods is a great friend and ported it to IRIX for me about 10 years ago. It's STILL fun.

Though, the very thought of FORTRAN does make me cringe. Too many bad memories of my very first CS class in college. *shudder*

Re:

[Bloody Peasant]

suso wrote:

xyzzy

PLUGH!

Re:

[drxenos]

If you look at the posting in the link to the usenet group, someone has converted the code to compile with g77.

Re:

[KiloByte]

someone has converted the code to compile with g77.

An a href [russotto.net] would be nice. Fixed that for you.

Re:

[drxenos]

I didn't wish to hammer the poor guy's site. The lazy will always click the link. Only those truly interested would take the time to look for it. The man is doing people a favorite, and now your going to punish him by slashdotting his site.

Re:Wow....

[PrescriptionWarning]

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....

[Anonymous Coward]

"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!

Re:

[Ant P.]

You know, I'd rather have other people see me as a nerd than as someone gratuitously illiterate and idiotic.

Re:

[psbrogna]

That's a HUGE idea. You should put together a script and court Hollywood. You could get The Rock to star- he did good work in Doom. I think to stay true to the period though Adventure The Movie should be in b&w.

Re:

[NickFitz]

I think to stay true to the period though Adventure The Movie should be in b&w.

To stay properly true to the original, it should just be a film of a roll of paper coming out of a Teletype.

Movie

[onkelonkel]

Bad Idea. What if Uwe Boll gets to direct. Oh Noes, the horror.

Re:

[MrNiceguy_KS]

GOOD GOD!!! Don't say that out loud! Uwe Boll might hear you!

Still pouting, Darl?

[Weaselmancer]

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

Re:Wait for the Game...

[spun]

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.