[HN Gopher] Lists and Lists: Basics of Lisp through interactive ...
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Lists and Lists: Basics of Lisp through interactive fiction (1996)
Author : prathyvsh
Score : 73 points
Date : 2025-08-07 08:04 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (eblong.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (eblong.com)
| protocolture wrote:
| Hey, that door wasn't there last time you walked by this spot.
| What the heck?
|
| Lists And Lists An Interactive Tutorial Copyright 1996 by Andrew
| Plotkin. (First-time players should type "about".) Release 3 /
| Serial number 960823 / Inform v1502 Library 5/12 Standard
| interpreter 1.0
|
| A Familiar Place Everything here is just like it always is,
| except for that door.
|
| >Cool That's not a verb I recognise.
|
| >Ok and That's not a verb I recognise.
|
| >Hows that my problem That's not a verb I recognise.
|
| >I dont like your tone. I only understood you as far as wanting
| to inventory.
|
| >No inventory I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
|
| >Fuck off That's not a verb I recognise.
|
| >You arent a verb I recognise That's not a verb I recognise.
|
| >No u I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
|
| >No u I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
|
| >No u I only understood you as far as wanting to no.
|
| The website is being mean to me.
| kqr wrote:
| Suggestions for first commands:
|
| >I
|
| You are carrying nothing.
|
| >X ME
|
| As good-looking as ever.
|
| >X DOOR
|
| The door to the north is ancient, stained, knotted wood. It
| looks terribly out of place here. In fact, it is out of place
| here. The door is closed.
|
| >OPEN DOOR
|
| You push the door open. It doesn't creak at all.
|
| >ENTER DOOR
|
| White Room
|
| This is a comfortably cluttered room. Cluttered with
| bookshelves, mostly. To one side is a large desk, on which a
| computer squats regally. A lumpy couch is the only other
| furniture of note.
|
| Beside the computer is a small glass box.
|
| Resting on the couch, and snoring in a manner which you suspect
| infringes copyrights owned by several local earthquakes, is a
| huge genie. Honest.
|
| From there the world's your oyster. I recommend examining
| (abbreviated X) any noun mentioned (shelves, desk, computer,
| box, genie, toys, puzzles, keyboard) and otherwise interacting
| with things as you might expect. This cheat sheet may help:
| https://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/play-if-card.pdf
|
| Maybe try PRESS GREEN to launch into a REPL. To get to learn
| the objective, BREAK BOX might be necessary.
| pasc1878 wrote:
| How do you get the genie to check your answer?
| kqr wrote:
| Exit REPL with :q, run CHECK.
| II2II wrote:
| In order to truly appreciate what you are looking at you may
| need to: acquire a teletype machine, purge your memory of
| everything you know about computers (except FORTRAN and COBOL),
| and travel back to 1976. I guarantee you that you will be
| astonished by this amazing leap in technology.
|
| More seriously though, _Lists and Lists_ is a concept game from
| 1996 based upon the text adventure games that were popular in
| the 1980 's. It implements a subset of Scheme for the
| z-machine, which was an early virtual machine in the JVM sense
| of a virtual machine (both from a technical perspective, and
| the "write once, run anywhere" perspective). While it's ability
| to interpret language was quite limited, it was certainly
| sufficient for exploring complex virtual worlds.
| kqr wrote:
| Took me a while to realise it is based on Scheme and not the
| Lisps I have used in the past. Did not occur to me to try
| ~define~ to setq variables!
|
| Also this appears to be more of a set of logic puzzles, right?
| Going off of the flavour of the second challenge, which is
|
| _Define values for cat and dog so that cat and dog are equal?
| but not eqv?. Furthermore, cdr(cat) and cdr(dog) must be eqv?._
|
| One is assumed to know the difference between equal? and eqv? and
| the challenge is in coming up with data that satisfies the
| constraints given.
| baruz wrote:
| I did the same thing, used setq and set ' before I did :r and
| saw the "define" verbiage.
|
| > assumed to know the difference
|
| :m for the manual and it's under Comparisons
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| Ah. The world of interactive fiction. Brings back so many
| memories.
|
| For "newer" folk, who are interested, you should try to get your
| hands on a copy of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Lamp and
| watch it. It covers the history of the games and everything else.
| Everyone relevant is interviewed with the notable exception of
| Graham Nelson (author of the Inform language). The tag line sums
| it up pretty well - "before the first person shooter, there was
| the second person thinker."
|
| Plotkin himself is a bit of a heavyweight in the IF world. I'm
| not surprised that this was by him.
|
| I tinkered with the language and environment a little. Inform 7,
| with it's natural language style of writing, is a fascinating
| environment.
| kqr wrote:
| I think Aaron Reed's _50 Years of Text Adventures_ is an even
| better intro. Starts earlier, ends later, covers each era in
| greater depth, and comes in a more manageable format: tables,
| transcripts, and quality prose rather than cut tracks of
| talking heads.
|
| (Don't get me wrong: Get Lamp is good. 50 Years is _even
| better_.)
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| Thank you. Added to my list.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Ah, back to the MUD days.
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