[HN Gopher] The Classic Adventures Solution Archive
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       The Classic Adventures Solution Archive
        
       Author : elvis70
       Score  : 44 points
       Date   : 2024-03-03 15:16 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.solutionarchive.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.solutionarchive.com)
        
       | rerx wrote:
       | Huge archive that's heavily biased towards text adventures /
       | interactive fiction. There are only three titles published by
       | Lucasfilm Games, and they predate Monkey Island.
        
       | extesy wrote:
       | I always loved playing adventures from Level 9 Computing [1],
       | particularly The Worm in Paradise. At that time, no solutions
       | were available, so there was a lot of trial and error involved. I
       | played on Spectrum, and I remember being amazed at their graphics
       | engine that managed to present a full-screen (well, technically a
       | half-screen) illustration for every location in the game. There
       | definitely wasn't enough memory for that, so they probably have
       | used some generative algorithm.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.solutionarchive.com/list/company%2C4/
        
         | pm215 wrote:
         | Looking at the Level 9 interpreter sources from
         | https://github.com/DavidKinder/Level9 it looks like the pre-
         | bitmap games stored their images as little bytecode programs
         | (with instructions for move, draw, fill, etc, plus a gosub
         | opcode so you could have "draw the same complex shape several
         | times", opcodes for reflecting and scaling, etc) -- check the
         | getinstruction() function in level9.c.
         | 
         | So likely hand-composed, not generative algorithm, I think.
        
       | philips wrote:
       | Any recommendations of text based adventure games for kids?
       | 
       | My one child loves playing the Sorcery[1] series with me- I read
       | out loud and they make the choices.
       | 
       | [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcery!_(video_game)
        
         | 7thaccount wrote:
         | For kids, I tend to skip IF and instead just make up role
         | playing games with them. My kid will ask me to come up with
         | like a my little pony themed adventure and she'll control two
         | characters and I'll also control a character and play the DM.
         | By being a character myself it adds some richness and allows me
         | to give less obvious hints and push the story to a degree while
         | still giving her room and autonomy. It works really well with
         | kids ~5-7 so far, although it takes a bit out of me lol.
         | 
         | For IF, my kid has enjoyed doing some Zork with me, but the
         | puzzles are pretty difficult.
        
           | alisonatwork wrote:
           | My dad did this for my sister and I growing up and it was
           | excellent.
           | 
           | We also played some text adventures, but I wouldn't recommend
           | them for today's kids. Back then it was just cool to sit in
           | front of a computer in the first place so bashing our heads
           | against the wall for months trying to get a babel fish didn't
           | seem as frustrating as it actually was.
           | 
           | VNs and Twine style IF would be less frustrating, although a
           | lot of those are probably not age appropriate for younger
           | kids.
        
             | 7thaccount wrote:
             | With regards to twine, it's so easy to make and share a
             | simple game that most parents could do it and tailor it for
             | their kid.
        
           | throwaway86530 wrote:
           | That resonates with my experience, role playing with my 4
           | year old daughter was a blast. Playing a character while
           | being DM is a very good idea to pass hints and have more fun,
           | I did not thought about this.
           | 
           | > although it takes a bit out of me lol
           | 
           | So much this. Preparation took time, and the game itself
           | consumed a lot of my time and mental energy. Sadly, this came
           | to a point were my daughter was highly motivated to play, but
           | I was often not in the mood for that or had enough time to
           | play, so our sessions became less and less frequent, to
           | disappear entirely. I think it's been more than one year we
           | did not play (she is 7 now).
           | 
           | Nevertheless it was a great experience. All fathers should
           | consider give it a try. For the record, I never really played
           | this kind of game before, just witnessed some.
           | 
           | We probably played more than 30 games. Toward the end it
           | followed the same template where she was a witch (a gentle
           | witch of course) that went from towns to towns to solve
           | issues (generally related to magic). Most often she had to
           | learn a new incantation along the way to help her in this
           | adventure. Sometimes she also had to use previously learned
           | incantations written on her notebook. That was a bit a trick
           | on my part to get her read a bit. Drawing a basic plan of the
           | city helped a bit, so toward the end we did that a lot.
           | 
           | In one year or so, his brother will be old enough to play, so
           | I might try again. Something that would help is pre-made
           | campaigns (just in case someone knows some nice resources for
           | that). As I am thinking about this, I guess generative IA can
           | be leveraged for this purpose.
        
         | olvy0 wrote:
         | I'd recommend Chuk and the Arena [0], it's IF but link based
         | rather than parser based (twine), and imo suitable for kids. I
         | played it with my own kids and they liked it. Had to help them
         | a bit with some of the more obscure puzzles, but overall it's
         | fairly easy. Play it yourself before making up your mind
         | though. It's free on the IF archive and itch.io. Personally I
         | enjoyed it very much.
         | 
         | And thanks for the Sorcery recommendation, I haven't played it
         | myself and from reading about it in the past I wasn't sure if
         | it's age appropriate.
         | 
         | [0] https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=2fa5imp327k84ox
        
         | ZeroGravitas wrote:
         | Lost Pig might work for younger kids.
         | 
         | It's a modern interactive fiction game:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Pig
        
         | anthk wrote:
         | A bear's night out?
        
       | dwheeler wrote:
       | Some of these games are available via the Interactive Fiction
       | Archive; it has many interactive fiction (text adventure) games:
       | https://www.ifarchive.org/
        
       | omoikane wrote:
       | I thought it was odd that it listed only one Infocom game, only
       | then did I realize there was company named _Inforcom_ that
       | produced Russian games.
        
       | beej71 wrote:
       | Whoa--some of these games feature SLAG hints [1] which is a Perl
       | script I wrote a zillion years ago to produce .z5 runnable
       | Invisiclues files. I had no idea anyone had ever seen or used it.
       | What a fun way to start a Sunday!
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://www.solutionarchive.com/game/id%2C615/Zork+I%3A+The+...
        
       | Luc wrote:
       | I'd like to play Zork e.a. while the map gets auto-generated in
       | an adjacent window as I play.
       | 
       | I'm pretty sure I've seen this auto-mapping software some years
       | ago. Can anybody point me in the right direction?
       | 
       | Edit: it's not in this list:
       | https://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/mapping-tools/
        
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       (page generated 2024-03-03 23:01 UTC)