by Eric S. Raymond
Adventure is the fons et origo of all later dungeon-crawling games,
-the gandaddy of interacive fiction, and one of the hallowed artifacts
+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
writing what we could now call firmware for the earliest ARPANET
-routers) It was a maze game based on the Colossal Cave complex in
-Kentucy, lacking the D&D-like elements now associated with the game.
+routers.) It was a maze game based on the Colossal Cave complex in
+Kentucky, lacking the D&D-like elements now associated with the game.
Adventure as we now know it, the ancestor of all later versions, was
-was released on a PDP-10 at the Stanford AI Lab by Don Woods in 1976
-(some sources, apparentl erroneously, say 1977). That version is
+was released on a PDP-10 at the Stanford AI Lab by Don Woods in 1977
+(some sources, apparently erroneously, say 1976). That version is
sometimes known as 350-point Adventure.
-Between 1976 and 1995 Crowther and Woods themselves continued to work
-intermittently on the game. This main line of development cuminated
+Between 1977 and 1995 Crowther and Woods themselves continued to work
+intermittently on the game. This main line of development culminated
in the 1995 release of Adventure 2.5, also known as 430-point Adventure
The earliest port to C was by Jim Gillogly under an early Unix running
-at the Rand Corporation in 1976; this version was later, and still is,
+at the Rand Corporation in 1977; this version was later, and still is,
included in the BSD Games collection. It was blessed by Crowther and
Woods and briefly marketed in 1981 under the name "The Original
Adventure".
some in other languages - so the maximum point score is not
completely disambiguating.
+Same articles at <<DA>> are a narrative of the history of the
+game. There is an in-depth study of its origins at <<SN>>.
Many versions are collected at The Interactive Fiction Archive
-<<IFA>>. Same articles at <<DA>> are a narrative of the history of the
-game. There is some divergence of dates between these; I have
-preferred <<IF>> because its chronology makes better internal sense.
+<<IFA>>; note however that its dates for the earliest releases
+don't match other comments in the code or the careful reconstruction
+in <<SN>>.
-Future versions of this document may attempt to untangle some of that
-history. For now, it will suffice to explain the chain of provenance
-that led from the original Adventure to the version distributed with
-this document.
+Future versions of this document may attempt to untangle some of the
+non-mainline history. For now, it will suffice to explain the chain of
+provenance that led from the original Adventure to the version
+distributed with this document.
The original 350-point ADVENT on the PDP-10 had been one of my
formative experiences as a fledgling hacker in 1976-77. Forty years
I wrote to Don asking permission to release 2.5 under 2-clause BSD;
he replied on 15 May giving both permission and encouragement.
+== Nomenclature ==
+
+This project is called "Open Adventure" because it's not at all clear
+to number Adventure past 2.5 without misleading or causing
+collisions. Various of the non-mainline versions have claimed to be
+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. I have reverted to "Advent" to avoid a name collision
+with the BSD Games version.
+
== Sources ==
[bibliography]
- [[[IFA]]] http://rickadams.org/adventure/
- [[[[DA]]] http://www.filfre.net/sitemap/
+
+- [[[SN]]] http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/1/2/000009/000009.html
projects / open-adventure.git / blobdiff