History update.

[open-adventure.git] / history.adoc

diff --git a/history.adoc b/history.adoc
index 085394462c7f300a0669a25d0a2a46d0b9c40e40..d33f448f1481f7e31b2753433a7ed9e49a7e31b4 100644 (file)
--- a/history.adoc
+++ b/history.adoc
@@ -5,6 +5,8 @@ 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.
 
 games, the grandaddy of interactive fiction, and one of the hallowed
 artifacts of hacker folklore.
 

+== Origin and history ==
+

 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
 writing what we could now call firmware for the earliest ARPANET
 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
 writing what we could now call firmware for the earliest ARPANET


@@ -48,6 +50,8 @@ that IFA's historical claims are thinly sourced and its dates for the
 earliest releases don't match either comments in the code or the
 careful reconstruction in <<SN>>.
 
 earliest releases don't match either comments in the code or the
 careful reconstruction in <<SN>>.
 

+== Open Adventure ==
+

 An attempt to untangle and document a lot of the non-mainline history
 has been made by Arthur O'Dwyer at <<QUUX>>.  For our purposes, it
 will suffice to explain the chain of provenance that led from the
 An attempt to untangle and document a lot of the non-mainline history
 has been made by Arthur O'Dwyer at <<QUUX>>.  For our purposes, it
 will suffice to explain the chain of provenance that led from the


@@ -110,6 +114,14 @@ and 2.5:
 > also details like just what _can_ you do in the dark...?
 ............................................................................
 
 > also details like just what _can_ you do in the dark...?
 ............................................................................
 

+Great care has been taken to preserve 2.5's exact gameplay as intended
+by Don.  However, under the hood Open Adventure is rather different from
+2.5.  Where 2.5 was written in FORTRAN mechanically translated into extremely
+ugly C, Open Adventure has been translated into much more modern and
+idiomatic C.  The extremely cryptic and opaque format of the original
+database of rooms, objects, and strings has been moved to YAML;
+this makes the brilliant design of it much easier to comprehend.
+

 == Earlier non-influences ==
 
 There is record of one earlier dungeon-crawling game called "dnd",
 == Earlier non-influences ==
 
 There is record of one earlier dungeon-crawling game called "dnd",