X-Git-Url: https://jxself.org/git/?p=open-adventure.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=history.adoc;h=43bc350286a24892b1261285e09135c27e0d0e09;hp=743ed619af2d0fd906572abfa50c9ec83e3b08f6;hb=c7aecb7249930ba3eafccfcd61e5b1af203a8b53;hpb=720146740b72ec26712d61a88a8384ecdfe29a2a diff --git a/history.adoc b/history.adoc index 743ed61..43bc350 100644 --- 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 @@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ Kentucky, including fewer of 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 1977 +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. @@ -114,55 +114,26 @@ There is record of one earlier dungeon-crawling game called "dnd", written in 1974-75 on the PLATO system at University of Illinois <>. This was in some ways similar to later roguelike games but not to Adventure. The designers of later roguelikes frequently site -Adventure as an explanation, but not dnd; like PLATO itself, dnd seems -not to have become known outside of its home university until +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 <>, written by Gregory Yob in -1972. Though the wumpus was later included as a monster in the Nethack -roguelike game, 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. - -== 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. - -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) -will be reproducible. - -A -l command-line option has been added. When this is given (with a -file path argument) each command entered will be logged to the -specified file. Additionally, a generated "seed" command will be put -early in the file capturing the randomized start state of the PRNG -so that replays of the log will be reproducible. - -Using "seed" and -l, the distribution now includes a regression-test -suite for the game. Any log captured with -l (and thus containing -a "seed" command) will replay reliably, including random events. - -The adventure.text file is no longer required at runtime. Instead, it -is compiled at build time to a source module containing C structures, -which is then linked to the advent binary. +1972. 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. + +(I was a developer of the Nethack roguelike early in that game's +history; we knew of Hunt The Wumpus then from its early Unix port, but +it didn't influence us either, nor in any apparent way the designers +of other early roguelikes. After my time the wumpus was included as a +monster in Nethack, but this was done in a spirit of conscious +museumization after historians rediscovered Yob's game.) + +Neither of these games used an attempt at a natural-language parser +even as primitive as Adventure's. == Sources ==