Looking for old adventure game from CDC NOS system

[m***@yahoo.com]

I've recently remembered an old game I played in the early 80's on a CDC NOS machine. Called ADVENTP, it was very similar to ADVENT (the original Adventure). The interesting thing was that it was written in Pascal and was a quarter way towards an adventure authoring system. The story was encoded in a data file, and the program implemented it. While that sounds like an authoring system, the limitation was that all the puzzles (which included all the ones from the original ADVENT plus about three more) were hard coded in the program. The only thing it allowed was for you to assign a "puzzle" to an exit from a room.

A few things I remember about the game - you could pick up the dwarves knives. If you didn't throw them at the dwarves, they couldn't throw them back. If you threw the axe, they didn't pick it up. So the game was safer.

There was a central lake, and a boat that allowed you go sail on it. There was a location that was only reachable by boat.

One of the new puzzles was to get wood, hammer (and nails?) to a location, and build a bride to cross a ravine.

You also got one point for each room you visited. Thus to get a perfect score, you had to go to every room.

I looked through my old listings, and don't have it. It wouldn't be hard to re-implement in Inform, but I just don't remember enough of the game.

I have trouble believing that anything is lost on the internet, but I have searched, and have not found it. Anyone else remember this game? Anyone have a pointer to a copy?

(The Pascal code was very elegant, iirc. One thing it did was use records for rooms, and pointers for exits. So someone had written an assembler program that would write out memory into a loadable program, so the data file and recreating the data structure wouldn't have to be done every run. Never figured out how that worked, but I wasn't a loader expert, then or now.)

Tom A.

[Tom A]

On Tuesday, August 11, 2015 at 10:05:16 AM UTC-5, Tom A wrote:
<snip>

Post by m***@yahoo.com
I have trouble believing that anything is lost on the internet, but I have searched, and have not found it. Anyone else remember this game? Anyone have a pointer to a copy?
(The Pascal code was very elegant, iirc. One thing it did was use records for rooms, and pointers for exits. So someone had written an assembler program that would write out memory into a loadable program, so the data file and recreating the data structure wouldn't have to be done every run. Never figured out how that worked, but I wasn't a loader expert, then or now.)
Tom A.

In an unopened plastic bag (the print room sealed them back then) with a cover sheet dated 86/05/23, I found the program source. Still don't have the data file.

In the initial block comment it says:
ADVENTURE IN PASCAL - MARCH 1979

WRITTEN BY
GEORGE H. RICHMOND
STORAGE TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION

WITH THE SUPPORT OF
MIKE PRESTON
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER
ENGLISH DEPARTEMENT

AND THE
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO COMPUTING CENTER

-----

Sill looking for the data file.

Tom A.

[rpresser]

Post by Tom A
ADVENTURE IN PASCAL - MARCH 1979
WRITTEN BY
GEORGE H. RICHMOND
STORAGE TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION

Found some contributory evidence, though nothing really useful:

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/pascalNews/15_Pascal_News_Sep79.pdf

page 88 has a letter from George H. Richmond, talking generally about
Pascal, but with these lines of interest:

"In my spare time, I have worked on a number of large PASCAL programs. The first
is a version of Adventure written in PASCAL. The original work was done on a CDC
machine using the Release 2 Zurich compiler. Then I transported it to an IBM
machine using our modified AAEC compiler. The IBM operating system is MVS with
TSO. It took about two weeks of occasional work to accomodate the character set
differences and compiler changes. Then the program executed perfectly on the first
run. Even the interactive PASCAL solution used for the CDC system worked fine on
the IBM system.

I believe there is a machine readable copy of my Adventure in Minneapolis. You
have my permission to add it to the Release 3 distribution software if appropriate."

[Tom A]

Yes, I found that, too. No current email address for Mr. Richmond, though. I tried using an OCR on my listing, and despite being a crisp, clean laser printed copy that's been sealed for 20+ years, it only got about 1/4 of the characters correct.

So I've been typing it in. I figure I'm about half way done with the 44 pages (eliminating compiler bugs as I go). But I'm still missing the data file.

I will be creating a data file as I go, for testing. The part that reads in the vocabulary and map is working; Just getting to the adventure part. Trying to leave the original code as much alone as possible, but there are things that don't work (when did they take the built in CARD function out of Pascal?) and variables that are now reserved words (raise, on, class). And I don't like his indentation scheme. :-)

Will post updates here.

Tom A

Post by rpresser

Post by Tom A
ADVENTURE IN PASCAL - MARCH 1979
WRITTEN BY
GEORGE H. RICHMOND
STORAGE TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/pascalNews/15_Pascal_News_Sep79.pdf
page 88 has a letter from George H. Richmond, talking generally about
"In my spare time, I have worked on a number of large PASCAL programs. The first
is a version of Adventure written in PASCAL. The original work was done on a CDC
machine using the Release 2 Zurich compiler. Then I transported it to an IBM
machine using our modified AAEC compiler. The IBM operating system is MVS with
TSO. It took about two weeks of occasional work to accomodate the character set
differences and compiler changes. Then the program executed perfectly on the first
run. Even the interactive PASCAL solution used for the CDC system worked fine on
the IBM system.
I believe there is a machine readable copy of my Adventure in Minneapolis. You
have my permission to add it to the Release 3 distribution software if appropriate."

[Kerr Mudd-John]

Post by Tom A
Yes, I found that, too. No current email address for Mr. Richmond,
though. I tried using an OCR on my listing, and despite being a crisp,
clean laser printed copy that's been sealed for 20+ years, it only got
about 1/4 of the characters correct.
So I've been typing it in. I figure I'm about half way done with the 44
pages (eliminating compiler bugs as I go). But I'm still missing the
data file.
I will be creating a data file as I go, for testing. The part that
reads in the vocabulary and map is working; Just getting to the
adventure part. Trying to leave the original code as much alone as
possible, but there are things that don't work (when did they take the
built in CARD function out of Pascal?) and variables that are now
reserved words (raise, on, class). And I don't like his indentation
scheme. :-)
Will post updates here.
Tom A

Post by rpresser

Post by Tom A
ADVENTURE IN PASCAL - MARCH 1979
WRITTEN BY
GEORGE H. RICHMOND
STORAGE TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/pascalNews/15_Pascal_News_Sep79.pdf
page 88 has a letter from George H. Richmond, talking generally about
"In my spare time, I have worked on a number of large PASCAL programs. The first
is a version of Adventure written in PASCAL. The original work was done on a CDC
machine using the Release 2 Zurich compiler. Then I transported it to an IBM
machine using our modified AAEC compiler. The IBM operating system is MVS with
TSO. It took about two weeks of occasional work to accomodate the character set
differences and compiler changes. Then the program executed perfectly on the first
run. Even the interactive PASCAL solution used for the CDC system worked fine on
the IBM system.
I believe there is a machine readable copy of my Adventure in
Minneapolis. You
have my permission to add it to the Release 3 distribution software if appropriate."

I recall playing Adventure (TSO command "ADVENT") on an IBM mainframe back
in 1979/80. There was a shift cyphered text file that we decoded and I may
have a print out somewhere. I know I gave my map to a fellow enthusiast,
who may have saved some of the files, but we parted ways in 1983. He has
an unusual name, but I've not come across him on the internet.

I feel it was probably the fortran version we had.

There's an early ADV.DAT here
http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/crowther/advdat.77-03-31
but I imagine you're already aware of it.

[s***@gmail.com]

I don't know if this is what you'r looking for but I found a webpage where you can play the game.
But if you want a verson of the game you can play witout internet and with editable levels i found something the original code just edited to function on a modern computer a while back, and would gladly send you a link to thet too if you wish.

Link: http://www.amc.com/shows/halt-and-catch-fire/exclusives/colossal-cave-adventure

[rpresser]

Post by s***@gmail.com
I don't know if this is what you'r looking for but I found a webpage where you can play the game.
But if you want a verson of the game you can play witout internet and with editable levels i found something the original code just edited to function on a modern computer a while back, and would gladly send you a link to thet too if you wish.

It's nice that there's a version of Adventure on amc.com.
But there's no evidence at all that this has anything to do with the ADVENTP version Tom was looking for.