2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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ADVENT
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/advent/ , n. The prototypical computer adventure game, first designed by
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Will Crowther on the PDP-10 in the mid-1970s as an attempt at
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computer-refereed fantasy gaming, and expanded into a puzzle-oriented game
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by Don Woods at Stanford in 1976. (Woods had been one of the authors of
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INTERCAL. ) Now better known as Adventure or Colossal Cave Adventure, but
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the TOPS-10 operating system permitted only six-letter filenames in
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uppercase. See also vadding , Zork , and Infocom. Figure1.Screen shot of the
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original ADVENT game Orange River Chamber You are in a splendid chamber
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thirty feet high. The walls are frozen rivers of orange stone. An awkward
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canyon and a good passage exit from east and west sidesof the chamber. A
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cheerful little bird is sitting here singing. drop rod Dropped. take bird
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You catch the bird in the wicker cage. take rod Taken. w At Top of Small Pit
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At your feet is a small pit breathing traces of white mist. A west passage
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ends here except for a small crack leading on. Rough stone steps lead down
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the pit. down In Hall of Mists You are at one end of a vast hall stretching
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forward out of sight to the west. There are openings to either side. Nearby,
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a wide stone staircase leads downward. The hall is filled with wisps of
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white mist swaying to and fro almost as if alive. A cold wind blows up the
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staircase. There is a passage at the top of a dome behind you. Rough stone
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steps lead up the dome. This game defined the terse, dryly humorous style
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since expected in text adventure games, and popularized several tag lines
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that have become fixtures of hacker-speak: A huge green fierce snake bars
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the way! I see no X here (for some noun X). You are in a maze of twisty
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little passages, all alike. You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all
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different. The magic words xyzzy and plugh also derive from this game.
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Crowther, by the way, participated in the exploration of the Mammoth Flint
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Ridge cave system; it actually has a Colossal Cave and a Bedquilt as in the
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game, and the Y2 that also turns up is cavers' jargon for a map reference to
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a secondary entrance. ADVENT sources are available for FTP at
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ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/doc/misc/if-archive/games/source/advent.tar.Z. You can
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also play it as a Java applet. There is a good page of resources at the
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Colossal Cave Adventure Page.
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