Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!well!rab From: rab@well.sf.ca.us (Bob Bickford) Newsgroups: alt.hackers Subject: Re: Great[sic] Christmas Worm Message-ID: <20650@well.sf.ca.us> Date: 20 Sep 90 07:05:24 GMT References: <1411@cs.nps.navy.mil> <1990Sep13.145046.7262@Matrix.COM> Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA Lines: 29 Approved: rab@well.sf.ca.us In the referenced article, Phil writes: >ObHack: A Generic dungeon. You supply the map, rooms, objects, puzzles, >and challenges (as a text file), and it does the rest. (No operational >version, yet.) >Variation: a random dungeon. Take the generic dungeon database, and use >a random number generator to draw the map and assign the rooms. Better >yet, use an active generator to continuously remap a maze when somebody >is lost in it. Or, what th' heck - if you're in a nasty mood, remap the >entire dungeon a little bit at a time, as a person travels through it. >-- > ---Phil Actually, the original (Crowther-Woods) ADVENTURE game worked almost precisely this way; there was this big database file, which was most easily generated from a set of editable (text) files by the use of an appropriate utility, and if you edited these latter files you changed the caves around, added (or removed) rooms/treasures/etc. We did this at college (UOP, 1976-77) and had loads of fun adding truly strange and wierd treasures to the game. [Actually, the TAs in the computer lab did all the editing; I looked over shoulders and made suggestions, and eventually got so envious of the power that I looked around and found the system master usercode and password in a (world-readable) object file, in cleartext form. So I logged in. But that's another story.... -- Robert Bickford rab@well.sf.ca.us Chair, Libertarian Party /-------------------------------------\ of Marin County (CA) | Don't Blame Me: I Voted Libertarian | \-------------------------------------/