Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcs!mnetor!seismo!umcp-cs!chris From: chris@umcp-cs.UUCP Newsgroups: net.sources.games,net.wanted.sources Subject: Re: Adventure Games Sought Message-ID: <2467@umcp-cs.UUCP> Date: Fri, 18-Jul-86 08:24:39 EDT Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.2467 Posted: Fri Jul 18 08:24:39 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 18-Jul-86 23:47:57 EDT References: <515@ur-tut.UUCP> <869@ucbcad.BERKELEY.EDU> Reply-To: chris@maryland.UUCP (Chris Torek) Organization: University of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Sci. Lines: 64 Xref: utcs net.sources.games:713 net.wanted.sources:2572 >In article <515@ur-tut.UUCP> sag2@ur-tut.UUCP (Dent Arthur Dent) writes: >>The recent posting of Adventure has once again reminded me of those >>Scott Adams Adventure games, like Adventureland, Pirates Island, Mission >>Impossible, etc.... Does anyone out there know of where I might be >>able to acquire the source to these games, especially adventureland. In article <869@ucbcad.BERKELEY.EDU> chapman@pavepaws.UUCP (Brent Chapman) replies: >I doubt you'll be able to obtain source to any of the games you mentioned. Actually, that depends. The `real thing' may be unobtainable, but I have versions of both Adventure Land and Pirate's Adventure. Not so long ago (about six years), in a place not very far away (30 miles by road from where now I sit), someone gave me two BASIC programs that implemented these two adventures. The programs themselves were identical save for a series of DATA statements. (Incidentally, to forestall a potential argument, I recall no copyright notices in the programs.) Curious, I traced the logic of the program, and discovered that the numbers in the DATA statements were composed of pairs of bytes, and each byte an instruction: a word value, a test, or an action. The strings in the DATA statements were rather more obvious. I made a list of these instructions and decomposed all the magic values. I then knew just what went into the adventures. One of the first things I did after I got my Unix(R) account, and had learned enough C, was to write an adventure compiler and interpreter. (I used yacc to write the compiler: a rather curious way to learn formal grammar. Incidentally, the compiler itself was terrible. So was the interpreter, for that matter; but that should be expected from one so inexperienced. Ah well.) In due course the interpreter ran. It used curses. Some years later, while cleaning out my old files, I stumbled across those dusty directories, and decided to give those programs some well-deserved polishing. I rewrote much of the interpreter, and used my window library to do the display, eliminating one of the more serious problems inherited from curses: it would now use line delete, if a terminal supported that. I reformatted the compiler sources, but left them largely unchanged, for it was not worth more effort: it needed replacement, not tuning. To shorten the story---though it will get nothing but longer as I type---, I posted this later version of the interpreter, and the compiled data files for Adventure Land and Pirate's Adventure, to net.sources.games. Chris Miller of Heriot-Watt University in Scotland provided changes to the interpreter to once again use curses (for few have access to my window library), and also wrote a decent compiler for it. He even turned both data files back into source! So, in sum, you *can* get copies of two very Scott-Adams-like adventures. No doubt they have some differences from the `official' versions; and if those do indeed still sell, they may even be illegal (though for the nonce I shall assume otherwise); but they are out there. They are available. (The files involved are rather large, so unless you are very close to umcp-cs uucp-wise, or have exhausted all shorter routes, please do not ask me for copies: your local net.sources.games packrat likely has one that will not cost seismo money to send.) -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 1516) UUCP: seismo!umcp-cs!chris CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris@mimsy.umd.edu