More history.

[open-adventure.git] / history.adoc

diff --git a/history.adoc b/history.adoc
index ff887af6dc1e121c3bf7849e80e0e6d02e9424e5..1686645f08430c74d070059ff43a7d5aac1bae7d 100644 (file)
--- a/history.adoc
+++ b/history.adoc
@@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
 = A brief history of Colossal Cave Adventure =
 by Eric S. Raymond
 
-Adventure is the fons et origo of all later dungeon-crawling games,
-the grandaddy of interactive fiction, and one of the hallowed artifacts
-of hacker folklore.
+Adventure is the fons et origo of all later dungeon-crawling computer
+games, the grandaddy of interactive fiction, and one of the hallowed
+artifacts of hacker folklore.
 
 The very first version was released by Crowther in 1976, in FORTRAN on
 the PDP-10 at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman. (Crowther was at the time
@@ -108,6 +108,28 @@ and 2.5:
 > also details like just what _can_ you do in the dark...?
 ............................................................................
 
+== Earlier non-influences ==
+
+There is record of one earlier dungeon-crawling game called "dnd",
+written in 1974-75 on the PLATO system at University of Illinois
+<<DND>>.  This was in some ways similar to later roguelike games but
+not to Adventure.  The designers of later roguelikes frequently site
+Adventure as an influence, but not dnd; like PLATO itself, dnd seems
+not to have become known outside of its own user community until
+rediscovered by computer historians many years after Adventure
+shipped.
+
+There was also Hunt The Wumpus <<WUMPUS>>, written by Gregory Yob in
+1972. Though the wumpus was (much) later included as a monster in the
+Nethack roguelike game, this was done in a spirit of conscious
+museumization well after early roguelikes. There is no evidence that
+Yob's original (circulated in BASIC among microcomputer enthusiasts)
+was known to the ARPANET- and minicomputer-centered culture Crowther
+and Woods were part of until well after Adventure was written.
+
+Neither of these games used an attempt at a natural-language parser
+even as primitive as Adventure's.
+
 == Nomenclature ==
 
 This project is called "Open Adventure" because it's not at all clear
@@ -117,11 +139,16 @@ versions 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and for all I know higher than that.  It seems
 best just to start a new numbering series while acknowledging the
 links back.
 
-We have reverted to "Advent" for the binary to avoid a name collision
+We have reverted to "advent" for the binary to avoid a name collision
 with the BSD Games version.
 
 == Functional changes in Open Adventure ==
 
+By default, advent issues "> " as a command prompt.  This feature
+became common in many variants after the original 350-point version,
+but was never backported into Crowther & Woods's main line before now.
+The "-o" (oldstyle) version reverts the behavior.
+
 A "seed" command has been added.  This is not intended for human use
 but as a way for game logs to set the PRNG (pseudorandom-number generator) so
 that random events (dwarf & pirate appearances, the bird's magic word)
@@ -150,3 +177,7 @@ which is then linked to the advent binary.
 - [[[DA]]] http://www.filfre.net/sitemap/
 
 - [[[SN]]] http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/1/2/000009/000009.html
+
+- [[[DND]]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnd_(video_game)
+
+- [[[WUMPUS]]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt_the_Wumpus