Original Colossal Cave Adventure Now Playable On Alexa

Last month Eric Raymond announced the open sourcing of the world's very first text adventure. Now Slashdot reader teri1337 brings news about their own special project: A few old-timers here may recall with fond memories the phrase "Somewhere nearby is Colossal Cave..." Well, a voice-playable version of Colossal Cave "Adventure" is now available on Amazon Echo devices as a [free] Alexa Skill. This is a port of the original 1976 text adventure game written by Willie Crowther and Don Woods, which started the interactive fiction genre and led to later games like Infocom's Zork. This version was written from scratch as an AWS Lamda function incorporating the original 350-point game database, and made available with permission from Don Woods.

Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Very. Very.

Re:Good.

[FatdogHaiku]

When I first ran across this it was a few years old. Someone wanted me to port it to Pick Basic as a way to get me interested in programming. It was called Adventure then. Inform has their port source here:
http://inform-fiction.org/examples/index.html [inform-fiction.org]

StoryHarp from 1998 for voice-activated IF

[Paul Fernhout]

By me: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/... [kurtz-fernhout.com]

It's a tool for quickly editing interactive fiction that can be driven by voice recognition.

I actually applied (with mixed feelings, given Alexa's possibilities for privacy violation) to Amazon's Alexa developer funding program to port StoryHarp to Alexa's system just after Alexa came out, but nothing came of it.

ME: GO NORTH

[Marlin Schwanke]

Alexa: You can't go that direction.

Yup, going to be LOTS of fun

Re:

[teri1337]

Author's note: I tried to keep this version of Adventure as faithful to the original as possible, though I did add a few 'optional' commands to help game-play through a voice interface. For example, for a one-time 2-point score penalty you can ask Alexa for possible paths from your current location by asking for a path hint. This option was added to help mitigate the very point you raise. :)

XYZZY

[TechyImmigrant]

'nuff said.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Lord you're up early to start whoring your affiliate links!

Re:

[110010001000]

And now you earn $55k (with bonus) in IT in Silicon Valley.

I know what Colossal Cave cave is

[OrangeTide]

But what is Alexa?

(is what I'm saying right now, and what people 20 years from now will say when questioned about popculture fads like Alexa)

Re:I know what Colossal Cave cave is

[110010001000]

Alexa is a voice interface hooked to a database that logs personal information about you and your family and sells that information to anyone that Amazon can sell it to.

Re:

[OrangeTide]

Orwell is spinning in his grave.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed he his, I just checked his grave cam.

A great way to play this kind of game

[Tony Isaac]

Hearing a voice read the text would make it easier for your mind to create mental pictures as you play. I like it!

Re:

[pubwvj]

For some people. For others verbal is far harder. I would much rather read than listen. Reading is 10x faster and easier to remember and reference, for me. Verbal memory is far slower, very linear and inefficient, for me.

What? No light?

[nospam007]

I hope they will get eaten by a grue.

Re:XYZZY

[teri1337]

Don Woods informed me that he pronounces it "zizzy". As such, the skill allows both the pronunciation "zizzy" or spelling out the letters individually as "X-Y-Z-Z-Y" to work equally.

Pretty cool

[chispito]

It's a little bit like playing a freeform pen and paper RPG with a computer as DM. It's also a painful reminder of how simple the Adventure/Colossal Cave parser is.