From: Eric S. Raymond Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2017 12:41:11 +0000 (-0400) Subject: More history. X-Git-Tag: 0.90~1 X-Git-Url: https://jxself.org/git/?p=open-adventure.git;a=commitdiff_plain;h=87779b71eff236df838b8d9f71b95fed71c19d0c More history. --- diff --git a/history.adoc b/history.adoc index 743ed61..1686645 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 @@ -114,17 +114,21 @@ 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. +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 ==