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From: svanegmo@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Stephen van Egmond)
Subject: rec.games.int-fiction FAQ 3/3 (etc.)
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Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 10:30:54 GMT
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Now, let's take a look here... Well, you probably deserve another chance.
I can't quite fi-

            You go dizzy for a few seconds
             then your head clears again.

    This is part 3 of the Frequently Asked Questions list for the group
    rec.games.int-fiction, a Usenet newsgroup for the discussion of
    Interactive Fiction games and related topics.  To read a specific
    question, use your newsreader's search function on the string "(n)",
    where n is the question number.

    Contents of this file:
    3.0 Companies and systems that aren't Infocom
        3.1 About other companies
        3.2 Level 9 and its games
        3.3 The Level 9 FTP site
        3.4 Adventure Software Inc. and its games
        3.5 The ongoing development of Interactive Fiction

    Part 1 covers the elements of rec.games.int-fiction.
    Part 2 covers Infocom.

    The current maintainer is Stephen van Egmond.  Questions and
    information should be mailed to svanegmo@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca.

You are in an amphitheater.  The sound of the crowd comes from all
around.  There is a gladiator here, holding a weapon and advancing
toward you.  The gladiator says:

    "Infocom wasn't the only adventure game company, you know"        (3.1)

    There were 2 other companies dedicated to the production of interactive
    fiction games:  Level 9 and Adventure International ("Scott Adams
    adventures").  In reality, there were much more than two, but these two
    seem to have a noticeable following on rec.games.int-fiction.  If you
    have a personal favourite, ask about it, and someone will probably know.


    Level 9 was formed by three brothers in 1982.  Their first product was
    a port of Adventure to the 8-bit computers that dominated the English
    market at the time.  Until their shutdown in 1991, they produced over a
    dozen adventure games for these machines, the 32K BBC family, and the
    Sinclair Spectrum 48K.

    Level 9 used a high degree of compression:  a typical game of 210
    locations, 70 objects, and lots of text could fit into 32K.  The
    adventure engine had 5 major versions:

    . Basic Text: black on white with noun/verb parser
    . Advanced Text: yellow on black with faster display
    . Basic Graphics: simple line drawings for each location, at a cost
                       to the amount of text in the game
    . Advanced Graphics: dramatically improved parser and the usual
                          amount of text.
    . Interactive Characters: grid-like maps, digitized graphics, and
                              improved parser with interactive,
                              independent characters.

    Each game was available in three versions for the Sinclair Spectrum:
    48K all-text, 48K graphics with reduced text, and 128K graphics with
    full text, multiple UNDO and save/restore in RAM.


    Adventure International is a company founded by Scott Adams, whose games
    used a datafile and interpreter system similar to that of Infocom.
    There is a freely distributable interpreter, Scottfree, on ftp.gmd.de.
    There were interpreters released for a large number of 8-bit machines,
    like the TRS-80, Apple II, Atari 400/800, and Commodore's 8-bit lineup.

    The adventures were written using a noun/verb parser, but are considered
    to have exciting story lines.  I still remember playing the cartridge
    version of "Impossible Mission" on my friend's VIC-20.

The gladiator advances menacingly.

>ASK THE GLADIATOR ABOUT LEVEL 9                                      (3.2)

    Level 9's games were usually released in triolgies, some more
    interrelated than others:

    Colossal Adventure, similar to Crowther and Woods'
    Adventure Quest, defeat the evil lord with the magic foob
    Dungeon Adventure, loot the dead lord's tower, solving the many puzzles

    The above three were packaged into a Middle Earth Trilogy (renamed by
    the lawyers to Colossal Trilogy).  Later, a second Trilogy, this time
    with graphics, a nicer parser and some text tweaks, named the Jewels of
    Darkness appeared.

    Snowball, save the starship from terrorists
    Return to Eden, the starship lands and you must find your colony
    Worm in Paradise, your colony is now politically corrupt and Orwellian

    The above three were packaged into the Silicon Dream Trilogy.

    Lords of Time, prance through time to get the artifacts and save us all
    Red Moon, Level 9's version of Enchanter
    The Price of Magic, a gothic horror -- defeat a corrupted sorcerer;
                        a follow-on to Red Moon

    Time Into Magic is a trilogy of Lords of Time, Red Moon, and The Price
    of Magic.

    The following games don't appear in any "trilogy":
    Emerald Isle, graphical game where you're stranded on an island
    Eric the Viking, a which-way type of adventure
    The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, another choose-your-own-path adventure

    Knight Orc, a 16-bit game merging the Silicon Dream Trilogy and The
                Jewels of Darkness.

    Gnome Ranger, help your female gnome Ingrid find her way home.

    Lancelot, a game closely based on the myths presented in "The Once and
              Future King".

    Gnome Ranger II: Ingrid's Back, where Ingrid must save the village
                     hall from being bulldozed.

    Scape Ghost, where a police officer killed while on duty gets revenge
                 and saves another officer.

The gladiator advances menacingly!

>SHOW ZX SPECTRUM TO GLADIATOR

    "Would you like to get some games for that?"                    (3.3)

    There is an ftp archive of many of the games that were released by
    Level 9, Adventure Software, Brian Howarth, and some others of 
    unclear origin.
    <ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/spectrum/>

    The games are in the format of the ZX Spectrum; you will probably not
    find one these days.  PC owners can use the ZX emulator at
    <ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/emulators/spectrum/>

The gladiator's weapon swishes through the air, narrowly missing you!

>ASK THE GLADIATOR ABOUT SCOTT ADAMS                                  (3.4)

    "Mr. Adams was never in the business of writing the Scott Adams adventure
    games."
                                           - _The Dilbert FAQ_ by Dogbert

    Adventure International released several lines of games using the same
    datafile format and various interpreter revisions.

    The Scott Adams Classic Adventure Series:
     Adventure Land: Ordinary treasure hunting.
     Pirate Adventure / Pirate's Cove: Search an island.
     Mission Impossible / Secret Mission / Impossible Mission:  Stop the
        reactor from going kaboom.
     There was also Vodoo Castle, The Count, Strange Odyssey, Fun House
        Mystery, Pyramid of Doom, Ghost Town, Savage Island parts 1 and 2,
        Golden Voyage, Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle, and Adventures of
        Buckaroo Bonzai.

    Questprobe Series:  The adventures in this series feature characters
    from Marvel Comics.
     The Hulk, Spiderman, and Fantastic Four.  The latter used a different
        adventure engine to allow control of two different characters.

    There was a separate line of games sold by Adventure International using
    a different datafile format:  Curse of Crowley Manor, Escape from Traam,
    San Francisco 1906, and Saigon:  The Final Days.

    Other games include Labyrinth of Crete, Return to Pirate's Island, Stone
    of Sisyphus, and Morton's fork.

    In the UK, there were many companies related to Adventure International,
    such as Horrorsoft, Tynesoft, Adventure Soft UK, and Adventure
    International UK.  More information can be found in Adventure Game
    History, by Hans Persson, from whose work all of the above comes.

    Scott Adams is on the Net and passes through rec.*.int-fiction from time
    to time.  He is reportedly working on a new work of IF (yes, it's in text)
    for Windows 95 only.

The gladiator swings his sword, remo-

            You go dizzy for a few seconds
             then your head clears again.

Darkness

It is pitch dark, and you can't see a thing.

>LIGHT
What do you want to light?

>LANTERN
You switch the brass lantern on.

In Debris Room
You are in a debris room filled with stuff washed in from the surface.  A
low wide passage with cobbles becomes plugged with mud and debris here, but
an awkward canyon leads upward and west.

A note on the wall says, "Magic word XYZZY."

A three foot black rod with a rusty star on one end lies nearby.

A cheerful little bird is sitting here singing.

>ASK BIRD ABOUT NEW INTERACTIVE FICTION

    "The ongoing development of interactive fiction works"            (3.5)

    The interactive fiction genre is by no means dead!  There is ongoing,
    high-quality development efforts taking place right now.

    The majority of the public-domain and shareware efforts are in text
    adventures, for a number of reasons:  the production costs of text are
    extremely low, compared to graphical, raytraced, and/or animated
    offerings; the authoring tools for text are fairly sophisticated,
    accessible, and next to (or precisely) free; and they can usually be
    done in a much shorter time.

    Games generally are developed around one of either TADS or Inform
    development systems, a decision occasionally the subject of discussion
    on rec.arts.int-fiction.  As mentioned in part 2, Inform outputs
    Z-code which can be played by a ZIP, many of which have source code;
    TADS code is proprietary.  The salient point of this to
    rec.games.int-fiction readers is that TADS games have a possible
    playing audience that is a subset of that possible with an Inform
    game:  modern TADS interpreters aren't available for the Amiga and
    Acorn Archimedes, among others.  For a genre supported by enthusiasts,
    who are likely to own enthusiast-type computers like the Amiga and the
    Acorn, this is significant.

    Mike Roberts (TADS' developer) has stopped further development of
    TADS and released his source code.  Further development of the base system
    hasn't been officially taken on by anyone yet.  Inform continues to be
    developed by Graham Nelson.  A newer system called Hugo is available
    and continues to be developed by its author, Kent Tessman.  More 
    information on development systems can be found in the 
    rec.arts.int-fiction FAQ.

    Games like Legend, Curses, the Unnkulia Series, Enhanced, Shades of
    Grey, Jigsaw, Christminster, and many more are available, whose
    quality rivals that of games released in the 'Golden Age' of text
    adventures.  These can be found under "games" in the if-archive; some
    of the busier games directories, in terms of new arrivals, are
    ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/inform
    ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/tads
    ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/hugo
    
    The annual text adventure competition is a reliable source of interesting
    and well-crafted games (there's some lemons, too).  These can be found
    at
    ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition95/
    ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition96/


    A list of people interested in collaborating on a project is available.
    These people are skilled in either programming or writing, and want
    to work with someone who can complement their skill.
    http://homeges.ihug.co.nz/~daleys/ifcollab.html


    Commercial companies continue to produce adventure-type software;
    products like Myst, The Seventh Guest, The 11th Hour, and Return To
    Zork are the closest conceptually to IF of the past.  Many don't
    consider these to be real interactive fiction -- or, consider them
    inferior IF works -- since the games don't offer the same richness in
    details, variety in actions, or challenge in puzzles as is expected of
    text IF today.  As a point of note (but by no means policy),
    Activision's graphical releases in the "Infocom Universe" like
    Zork:Nemesis and Planetfall 2:The Search For Floyd are often discussed
    on rec.games.int-fiction, and Myst and "other" graphical IF on the
    relevant comp.sys.*.games newsgroups.


    There is researching also being done in areas that could move
    interactive fiction forward into several exciting new areas.  The Oz
    Project are Carnegie-Mellon University is researching areas such as
    computer simulation of character emotional dynamics, realistic
    interactions with the "universe" of the actor, and much more.
    Pointers to the Oz project's home page are available as links
    from almost any of the interactive fiction Web pages mentioned in
    part 1 of this FAQ, or through any of the usual WWW search engines.

    It's somewhere on http://www.cs.cmu.edu/.  The webmaster there seems
    fond of moving documents around, so a permanent URL would be useless.

Your lantern flickers slightly, brightens, then suddenly goes out!

>WEST
Oh, no!  A lurking grue slithered into the room and devoured you!

   ****  You have died  ****

Press any key to continue
