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From: jim@randvax.UUCP (Jim Gillogly)
Newsgroups: net.sources.games,net.wanted.sources
Subject: Re: Adventure Games Sought
Message-ID: <418@randvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Jul-86 23:04:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: randvax.418
Posted: Fri Jul 18 23:04:27 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jul-86 04:47:14 EDT
References: <515@ur-tut.UUCP> <869@ucbcad.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Banzai Institute
Lines: 22
Xref: watmath net.sources.games:718 net.wanted.sources:2563
Summary: Adventure games for micros often written in high level langs

In article <869@ucbcad.BERKELEY.EDU> chapman@pavepaws.UUCP (Brent Chapman) writes:
>In any case, most microcomputer adventure games (especially the earlier
>ones, such as the Scott Adams stuff, and ZORK and such) were written in
>assembler.  Decent high level languages for such micros are a fairly
>recent (within the last two to four years) invention.  There was, at the
>time, no other way to get what was deemed reasonable performance.

Buzz.  Wrong.  The ZORK games were written in ZDL (recursive acronym for
Zork Definition Language).  ZDL was a sort of subset of MDL (pronounced
MUDDLE) which in turn was a superset of LISP.  ZDL was written up in Byte
a few years ago, I believe.  The original Adventure was written in
FORTRAN.  I rewrote it in C in 1976, and ported the C version to an H89
in about 1979 or 1980.  The performance was and is reasonable.  There
have been several dungeon definition languages marketed as well.

To be fair, some adventure games have been done in assembler as well.
J. Gordon Lettwin's excellent port of Adventure was in 8080 assembler,
for example.
-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	{decvax, sdcrdcf}!randvax!jim
	jim@rand-unix.arpa