X-Git-Url: https://jxself.org/git/?p=open-adventure.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=history.adoc;h=47e1ce1377f02801c36a1e6e4ef138a56e2ef65d;hp=ff887af6dc1e121c3bf7849e80e0e6d02e9424e5;hb=91c9fa30665ef1c628b8e08eb790d08f58ef51db;hpb=0f126b0cb5f8539f456f2d7f2c06d8f32c2491c2 diff --git a/history.adoc b/history.adoc index ff887af..47e1ce1 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. @@ -23,15 +23,16 @@ 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 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". +included in the BSD Games collection. I have it from Don Woods directly +that "[Jim Gillogly] was one of the first to request and receive a copy +of the source" but that Woods did not actually know of the BSD port +until I briefed him on it in 2017. (This contradicts some implications +in third-party histories.) Many other people ported and extended the game in various directions. A notable version was the first game shipped for the IBM Personal -Computer in 1981; this, for which neither Crowther nor Woods nor -Gillogly were paid royalties, what "The Original" was competing -against. +Computer in 1981; neither Crowther nor Woods nor Gillogly were paid +royalties. The history of these non-mainline versions is complex and murky. Functional differences were generally marked by changes in the @@ -64,7 +65,7 @@ open-source licensing were not yet fully established. The Makefile contained a rights reservation by Don Woods and that was it. I wrote to Don asking permission to release 2.5 under 2-clause BSD; -he replied on 15 May giving both permission and encouragement. +he replied on 15 May 2017 giving both permission and encouragement. Here is what Don said about differences between the original Adventure and 2.5: @@ -108,38 +109,32 @@ and 2.5: > also details like just what _can_ you do in the dark...? ............................................................................ -== 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 == - -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. +== 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 +<>. 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 <>, written by Gregory Yob in +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 == @@ -150,3 +145,7 @@ 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