HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dgiles@Apple.COM (Darren Giles)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Bubblyhotrock (was Sense of Wonder)
Date: 16 Nov 92 09:27:30 GMT
Organization: Apple Computer Inc., Cupertino, CA

rbryan@Mail.trincoll.edu (Russell L. Bryan) writes:
>When my game is finally finished, I will welcome my beta-testers to
>suggest ANY solutions which are not implemented in the adventure.  These
>solutions WILL BE implemented before the game is released.  In fact, I
>want to start listing my puzzles HERE and NOW

Okay, I'll bite.

> You are looking down yet another deep chasm, with a river of lava
> bubbling far below (by this point of the game, you've probably seen
> enough lava to scrap your vacation plans to the volcano planet of
> Bubblyhotrock Centauri).  A rope spans the chasm from just above the
> entryway here to just above the entryway of an opening at the other side
> of the chasm.  On the other side of the chasm is a carriage of some sort.
Attached to the rope, I gather...  More detail on the carriage & attachment
would be very helpful.

> There is a lever on the wall.
Does it do anything?

>If he climbs on top of it, the carriage overbalances and swings him right off
Why?  Presumably it's hanging from the rope; if he could get this far hand-
over-hand, what's to say he can't keep holding onto the rope that the
carriage hangs from?  [Or perhaps I don't have a good enough image of the
carriage to know why this is impossible.]

> If... he climbs part of the rope and then cuts it... then if he has gone
> thirty feet across the rope he will swing right into the cave
Unhurt by the 70' plummet?  Players might rule this out as "surely lethal
even if allowed"

Also, it is necessary to allow for all other objects that could be brought
to this location.  For example, if I had a 80+ foot rope, I might try tieing
it to the first rope just before the carriage, climbing down it, and then
swinging until I reached the ledge.  I might also try to use the knife or
other tool to release the carriage from the rope so I could get past it.

To be fair, I haven't seen many games that are as realistic (or even
plausible) as I'd like.  I find the "you can't do X because I don't understand
it / the author didn't think of it / you just can't" syndrome to be the #1
problem in adventure games.  Frustration in that department is the main reason
I don't play many of 'em.

Best of luck in your adventure!

- Darren "no nickname" Giles
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Infocom Player problems
From: sh4j+@andrew.cmu.edu (Samuel Roy Helwig)
Date: 15 Nov 92 15:50:37 GMT
Organization: Sophomore, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA


    Has anyone compiled the Infocom Task Force player version avilable
from 149.171.16.16?  I've tried to compile this player on various
platforms including a DECStation 5000 (Ultrix) , 386 running 386BSD, am
IBM RT running BSD 4.3 and a Sun 4.  All these machine compile fine
using bsd mode in the makefile.  However, when I try to run the
resultant executable, I get a Seg Fault.  Anyone have a clue?  The only
thing that I can get the player to do is display it's list of parameters
(a.k.a. run it without any command-line parameters).
   Any help anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated.

                        thanx,
                        Sam
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: amead@s.psych.uiuc.edu (Alan Mead)
Subject: Re: Intelligence Assumptions
Organization: UIUC Department of Psychology
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 03:37:00 GMT

Mark 'Mark' Sachs <MBS110@psuvm.psu.edu> writes:

>What is the net.opinion on confirms in adventure games, anyway? While they
>do warn the player of some unobvious deaths, on the other hand they can almost
>always be rewritten out [...]
>presented with a message like "It's too dangerous," if the player REALLY
>wants to land in the courtyard, then... Thoughts?

My opinion as player and author is to give people the right to do stupid
things.  For TADS users, v2.0 makes this moot, I believe, with its new undo
feature (supposedly up to 100 levels under "most conditions" whatever that
means).  Somehow this seems the best of all possible worlds.  People are free
to do dumb things (ie, experiment) and yet they won't get hung up saving their
position every five minutes.

I Mean look at the puzzle posted by Russell Bryan a few days ago.  The player 
has to swing 70 feet (on a .5-.6 G world) into a cave.  I might hesitate
because I would feel sure that would be a sure death (or at least I wouldn't
try that first).

My $0.02.

-alan
From: let@quicksand.cis.ufl.edu (Luis E. Torres)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Comments on two adventure languages.
Date: 20 Nov 92 17:28:49 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Florida CIS Dept.

In the last week I have checked two adventure languages, ALAN 2.4 and OASYS.
I just wanted to make a few comments about the systems. I am guessing the authors
are probably reading this newsgroup, so this will provide some feedback to them.
If anybody else has used or plans on using any of these languages to write an
adventure (aren't we all!), then maybe we can all exchange ideas.

OASYS (short for Object-Oriented Adventure System) is small. The interpreter and
the compiler are approx. 20K long each. It includes a small manual, and a couple
of example files. It looks a lot like C to me, which means I probably wouldn't
try using it. It has few commands, so most of the code you see is composed of
words like METHOD, CLASS, IF, PRINT, RETURN, THIS, and others. The good thing is,
it WORKS. It compiles an adventure program which works; I've checked the code and
it makes sense. The object-oriented thing looks helpful too. Nothing is
pre-defined, however; you have to build even the most basic verbs yourself.

ALAN 2.4 (short for Adventure Language) uses commands like SCRIPT, ACTOR, OBJECT,
CONTAINER, LOCATION, MAKE, and others, to build the adventures. The system seems
very promising. I haven't tried anything in it yet, by I am going to try. The
biggest drawback in my opinion, is the language reference section. It uses
BNF-form to explain all the grammar. I find this is not very easy to read or
follow. Many commands would probably be left unused simply because they are not
easy to find. Also, I have not seen any reference to mentioning direct objects in
the command line, but I'm sure there must be a way to implement that; I probably
missed the part on direct objects in the manual. I find chapter 6 of the manual,
Hints and Tips, to be very useful. It describes how to do some common things with
the language, like breaking a mirror, opening doors, drinking water from a
bottle. Some uncommon things are included too, like how to implement imaginary
objects (a mountain in the distance, for example, or a song), in one or many
locations, or how to make the player "breathe" air, or use a belt. I think that
chapter alone is worth the effort of getting the program, and it also shows that 
the authors know what many of the needs of adventure programmers, and that counts. 
Also, it seems to run on PCs, Amigas, SUNstations and VAX.

As I said at the beginning of this posting, I've only had this stuff for a week
(five days, to be exact). So I have probably overlooked many useful things from
both programs.

If anybody can add anything to this discussion, or has any more comments, please,
post or email.

Luis E. Torres
let@cis.ufl.edu
From: roger@oit.itd.umich.edu (Roger Espinosa)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Searching for a sense of wonder
Date: 16 Nov 1992 01:20:43 GMT
Organization: Instructional Technology Laboratory, University of Michigan
NNTP-Posting-Host: helen.oit.itd.umich.edu


About that time travelling in Trinity: we could probably argue forever
that you start an irrational act (time travelling) by a fairly simple process,
just walking through a white door (that other animals are entering). And
sure, there are enough clues at the bomb shelter (the origami birds scattered
everywhere, the rice paper) that it makes sense that the rice paper and
the little girl hold some game significance, but the puzzle of "how to get
to the white door" doesn't readily connect with origami birds flapping 
their wings skyward. At least, not to me it didn't. :-)

And I doubt that IF could ever really get anywhere without some *type* of
puzzle embedded in it -- I never said to make "ASCII Virtual Reality", where
you do day-by-day stuff, forever, and in exact real-life detail. Ack. I'm
still searching to understand what kind of puzzles do grab me. The puzzle
dilemma in IF is the same thing as plot machinations in writing: sure, there's
usually an easy way to resolve everything, but then there's no story. The
sense of wonder I'd kill to implement is the kind that seems important
to advance the story, but is subtle enough that you don't see "PUZZLE" 
written all over it. I'm not sure I could give examples one way or the
other...I *am* hoping that going through LTOI's less-sci-fi-type stories
(and less fantasy-type stories) will give me a better clue.

Roger
From: dmb@case.ai.mit.edu (David Baggett)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: So you want to write a text adventure?
Date: 19 Nov 92 20:35:38 GMT
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
NNTP-Posting-Host: case.ai.mit.edu

In article <JERAS.92Nov17185450@hqsun2.oracle.com> jeras@oracle.com (John Eras) writes:
>But I think it's a little more complicated than this.  There are some
>things High Energy would have to consider before allowing other people
>to do TADS ports, such as:
>
>  - How do you compensate the porter(s)?  Should they get anything besides
>    the pleasure of using TADS on their favorite BitMaster 2000 (tm)
>    machine.
>  - Who sells the new product?  High Energy or the porter?
>  - Who supports the new product?  High Energy can't.  What if the porter
>    is not prepared to do this either?  What incentive would the porter
>    have for supporting the product?
>  - How do you deal with bug fixes and upgrades?  This could be a real
>    coordination hassle.
>  - Etc., etc.

Good points.  But there's always the argument that a badly (or un-)
supported product is better than none at all.  The issues of
compensation and ownership would, I assume, be worked out on a
case-by-case basis.  Judging from the amount of mail I've gotten on the
subject, there are dozens of people who would be more than happy to
port TADS to the Amiga for no compensation at all.

>You sounded pretty sure that there would be other TADS ports in the
>future (I presume you've talked to Mike about this). 

I'm *very* sure that at least one port will be done, because I'm
porting it to the Atari ST myself.  And sure, if I have to support it
all myself, support won't be as good as if it were supported by High
Energy.  But on the other hand, High Energy could certainly still be a
contact point, still distribute the system, etc.  And, again, it's
better than nothing even if I don't support it at all, provided that it
runs correctly.

Finally, you asked what incentive people would have to port TADS.
There's always the incentive that if TADS runs on more machines, you
have more potential users of your adventures.  And there's the
incentive that some Amiga and Unix users have, which is that they'd
really like to be able to write TADS games on their favorite machine.

Dave Baggett
--
dmb@ai.mit.edu           MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory                  
ADVENTIONS: interactive fiction (text adventures) for the 90's!
dmb@ai.mit.edu *** Compu$erve: 76440,2671 *** GEnie: ADVENTIONS
From: uerics@mcl.ucsb.edu (Eric D. Shepherd)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Infocom Player problems
Date: 17 Nov 92 04:50:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: mcl.uerics.721975805

Which version of the ITF program are you trying to compile?  I'm in the
process of doing a major port of the program, and the games play just fine
(using v4.01).  I no longer have the original source code - mine has all
the conditional stuff removed to save disk space (and - heh, heh, heh -
compile time).  But it runs beautifully.

A friend and I are working on building it into a fully windowed system
with macros and pull-down menus.  It's really cool.

- Eric S.

--
Eric D. Shepherd                   | Apple II Alliance Charter Member
InterNet: uerics@mcl.mcl.ucsb.edu  |           ACM Member
FidoNet:  1:206/2713 Eric Shepherd | Programming Law #1: "When in
AOL:      Sheppy                   | doubt, rewrite from scratch."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: blasius@gmd.de (Volker Blasius)
Subject: Re: Parser heresy (was Re: Searching for a sense of wonder)
Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, Germany
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 21:14:33 GMT

In article <1ea71uINNkv1@life.ai.mit.edu> dmb@xbar.ai.mit.edu (David Baggett)
writes:

>...  Purely for playability reasons, we
>would NOT want to add, say, adverbs to our parser.  Can you *imagine*
>the following:

>*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*
>>get the book from the troll
>The troll sees your lame attempt from a mile away.  He laughs in your face.

>>get the book from the troll very quickly
>You snatch the book away with a lightning-fast jerk.

>*** Your score just went up ***
>*-----------------------------------------------------------------------------*

>I have one thing to say:  "NOT!"

To be honest, I can and I saw it in WORLD: some things you had to do slowly 
or cautiously or some such, and it seemed quite natural to me - life isn't 
just a binary do-don't. Where is the problem? Does it complicate the game 
too much? To use your example, should 'snatch the book from the troll' work,
just because it is orthodox syntax? I just don't understand your argument.

Volker

---
Origin: a maze of twisty little passages, all different (2:243/50.37)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.misc
From: ssingh@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (Ice )
Subject: zmachine occasionally garbles letters.
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 06:56:55 GMT

I have just compliled zmachine on ISC unix, but it
occasionally garbles letters at the end of the line and
at the beginning.

Does anyone know what is causing this, and what to
do about it?

Please e-mail. I don't have the time to read news these
days. :-(.

Thanks in advance. Will forward responses / re-post on
request.

Ice()	ice@skynet.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca
From: djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: So you want to write a text adventure?
Date: 16 Nov 92 20:11:45 GMT
Organization: =CSE Dept., U.C. San Diego

>Have you ever actually built an application?  Have you ever spent years
>working on the source code for a game?  It's not so easy then to just
>"post the code."

I was kinda tongue in cheek, since I knew TADS was commercial.
I haven't spent years on any one program, but I suppose I wouldn't
feel bad about just giving it away.  I've done that with other
programs I've spent lots of time on.  But, I understand and
can respect if people don't want to.

>And since Mike is distributing TADS as shareware, why would he want
>everyone to see how he implemented the game?

Um, pride, ego?  Unless how he implemented it looks really crufty...

>Understand that a lot of
>people could use his algorithms, adjust his parser just a bit, and make
>some of their own modifications, thus completely legally creating their
>own application while doing a third of the work.  Does that sound like a
>very inviting proposition to you?

Yep.  Better than spending years on a similar system in order to get
something people could use.  Right now, TADS and any adventures
people have written in TADS (even adventures people want to give
away for free) are *useless* to me and many other people.
(However, it *always* seems to be that case that whenever people
ask about good adventure writing systems, TADS is always touted,
even though it won't run on most machines)

This is a religious argument, so alt.religion.computers is probably
the place for it - and where people can flame to their hearts
content without having to feel guilty about it.
-- 
Darin Johnson
djohnson@ucsd.edu
    Macintosh - you can buy better, but you can't pay more!
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: dalton@nevada.edu (William Turlough Cat)
Subject: counters
Organization: NCC 1701-F USS Enterprise
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 07:15:49 GMT

I need to be able to have an object count the number of times something is
done to it.  Specifically, I want to be able to use something for a certain
number of times.  I can't seem to find anything to do with counting except
in functions.

William Turlough Cat aka beiad
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
From: Russell L. Bryan <rbryan@Mail.trincoll.edu>
Subject: Re: So you want to write a text adventure?
X-Xxmessage-Id: <A72D798D5B013165@downes1-101.dynamic.trincoll.edu>
X-Xxdate: Mon, 16 Nov 92 21:15:09 GMT
Organization: Starving Writers of America (sole member)
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d12
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 21:12:27 GMT

In article <41084@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> Darin Johnson, djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu
writes:
>This is a religious argument, so alt.religion.computers is probably
>the place for it - and where people can flame to their hearts
>content without having to feel guilty about it.

Ces't la Vie -- flaming isn't my way.

Guess that thread's burnt.

-- Russ
From: linhart@acdc.rutgers.edu (Mike Threepoint)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: Intelligence Assumptions
Date: 20 Nov 92 17:52:51 GMT
Organization: Frobozz Magic Amulet of Yendor Company

mechalas@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (John P. Mechalas) writes:
> As far as I know, you can't UNDO being dead...  If you die, you have to
> restore.  I don't know if this is true for TADS 2.0, but it is for Infocom
> games that support undo...or at least all the ones I have played..

Not so.  When you die in an Infocom game with UNDO enabled, when you
die, you get the choices RESTART, RESTORE, UNDO, or QUIT.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction,rec.games.int-fiction
From: gnat@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Nathan Torkington)
Subject: Intelligence Assumptions
Organization: Contract to CSC, Victoria Uni, Wellington, New Zealand
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 09:50:55 GMT
	<1992Nov15.155951.3262@starbase.trincoll.edu>
	<BxttrL.E6x@acsu.buffalo.edu> <1ea71uINNkv1@life.ai.mit.edu>
	<blasius.88.722034873@gmd.de> <1ef5ajINNs2l@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>

How much intelligence is it safe to assume?  Most games that I've
played have been reluctant to automatically open doors for you, and I
have just followed suit.  But given the (convincing) argument that the
character you control should be responding to your commands as if you
had issued them via voice to a sensible human being (eg "waldo -- go
north"), any sensible human being would try the door to the north
before saying "I can't go north from here, Dave."

Do we:
 --> open doors?
 --> try all the keys we have in locked doors?
 --> refuse to do things that would get us killed ("jump off ledge")?

Nat
-- 
Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz is the Electronic Text and MS-DOS archivist
for the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.  Work mail to:
[(msdos-archive),(etext-archive),(wais-admin),(gopher-admin),(roget-admin),
(compose-faq),(pratchett-faq),(douglas-adams-faq),(games-list)]@vuw.ac.nz
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 20:48:02 -0500 
From: "Jonathan R. Ferro" <jf41+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: Intelligence Assumptions
	<1ehhjoINNqbm@agate.berkeley.edu>

lippin@wish-bone.berkeley.edu (The Apathist) writes:
> From the tinkling keys of gnat@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Nathan Torkington):
> > --> refuse to do things that would get us killed ("jump off ledge")?
> 
> Don't flatly refuse -- I jumped off a ledge in Zork Zero just to see
> what I'd hit when I landed.  But I think it's good to warn people when
> a command that would ordinarily be safe is now dangerous.  The player
> might, for example, have lost track of what room he's in.

As many people who have played Loom and/or LGOP II can attest, flatly
refusing to let people dig their own graves can make the game very
boring quite quickly.  I found that discovering novel ways to die in
Zork II was often very interesting and possibly quite informative.  My
favorite, other than the standard trip through the spheres, was
overheating the balloon and popping out of the top of the volcano shaft
to the sight of a somewhat familiar landscape before crash-landing.

-- Jon Ferro               Einsprachigkeit ist heilbar
From: mollems@wkuvx1.bitnet
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: counters
Date: 20 Nov 92 10:45:35 CST
Organization: Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY

In article <1992Nov20.071549.19959@nevada.edu>, dalton@nevada.edu (William Turlough Cat) writes:
> I need to be able to have an object count the number of times something is
> done to it.  Specifically, I want to be able to use something for a certain
> number of times.  I can't seem to find anything to do with counting except
> in functions.
> 
> William Turlough Cat aka beiad

One possible solution to this (assuming you are using TADS, though the
basic idea works no matter what you're doing) is to give the object an
attribute called STATE.  Then, each time it's used, the object's state
is increased by one.  For example, if you had a magic wand with three
charges, which was used by waving it, you could do the following:

magicwand : item
	noun = 'wand'
	adjective = 'magic'
	sdesc = "magic wand"
	thedesc = "the magic wand"
	ldesc = "The wand is really nifty; it's got lots of little
	stars and planets embossed on it, with some sharp gold trim.
	A label on the side of the wand proclaims it to be the
	\"Acme Dam Yooseful Magik Cheez (tm) Phrodukshun Devyse.\""
	state = 0
	verDoWave (actor) =
	{
		if (self.state = 3) 
			"Waving the wand produces a tiny droplet of
			Cheez (tm), but nothing more.";
	}
	doWave (actor) =
	{
		self.state := self.state + 1;
		"You wave the wand, and the tip begins to glow
		brightly.  Suddenly, there is a loud rushing noise
		which sounds like a freight train, and a torrent of
		Cheez (tm) comes gushing from the wand, covering
		everything in the area (including yourself).";
	}
;

Thus, the first time you wave the wand, its state becomes one, the
second time, two, the third time, three, and the fourth time it gets
caught by the verDoWave potion of the item definition.

Sean
---
M. Sean Molley, CS Department, Western Kentucky University
.sig is currently in the shop for 30,000 line tune-up and maintenance
From: djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Subject: Re: So you want to write a text adventure?
Date: 16 Nov 92 00:46:39 GMT
Article-I.D.: sdcc12.41028
Organization: =CSE Dept., U.C. San Diego

>Just understand that this is not a major software
>distributor we're talking about here -- the money-grubbing of commercial
>software is not at question, but the time required to conduct the porting
>operation is.

So post the code and let people port it :-)
-- 
Darin Johnson
djohnson@ucsd.edu
  - Grad school - just say no.