25 lines
3.4 KiB
HTML
25 lines
3.4 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>wumpus</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../W.html" title="W"/><link rel="previous" href="wugga-wugga.html" title="wugga wugga"/><link rel="next" href="WYSIAYG.html" title="WYSIAYG"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">wumpus</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="wugga-wugga.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">W</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="WYSIAYG.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="wumpus"/><dt xmlns="" id="wumpus"><b>wumpus</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="pronunciation">/wuhm´p@s/</span>, <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> The central monster (and, in many versions, the name) of a famous
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family of very early computer games called <i class="citetitle">Hunt The
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Wumpus</i>. The original was invented in 1970 (several years
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before <a href="../A/ADVENT.html"><i class="glossterm">ADVENT</i></a>) by Gregory Yob. The wumpus lived
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somewhere in a cave with the topology of an dodecahedron's edge/vertex
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graph (later versions supported other topologies, including an icosahedron
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and Möbius strip). The player started somewhere at random in the cave
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with five ‘crooked arrows’; these could be shot through up to
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three connected rooms, and would kill the wumpus on a hit (later versions
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introduced the wounded wumpus, which got very angry). Unfortunately for
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players, the movement necessary to map the maze was made hazardous not
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merely by the wumpus (which would eat you if you stepped on him) but also
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by bottomless pits and colonies of super bats that would pick you up and
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drop you at a random location (later versions added ‘anaerobic
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termites’ that ate arrows, bat migrations, and earthquakes that
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randomly changed pit locations).</p><p>This game appears to have been the first to use a non-random
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graph-structured map (as opposed to a rectangular grid like the even older
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Star Trek games). In this respect, as in the dungeon-like setting and its
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terse, amusing messages, it prefigured <a href="../A/ADVENT.html"><i class="glossterm">ADVENT</i></a> and
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<a href="../Z/Zork.html"><i class="glossterm">Zork</i></a> and was directly ancestral to the latter (Zork
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acknowledged this heritage by including a super-bat colony). A C emulation
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of the original Basic game is available at the Retrocomputing Museum,
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<a href="http://www.catb.org/retro/" target="_top">http://www.catb.org/retro/</a>.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="wugga-wugga.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../W.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="WYSIAYG.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">wugga wugga </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> WYSIAYG</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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