Warp escreveu:
> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> if you happen to get hooked to interactive fiction, I'll at least leave 
>> a few pointers besides zarfhome:
> 
>   Back in the 80's when I had a ZX Spectrum 128 I played a lot of text
> adventures. You don't get anything like that anymore.
> 
>   The key difference between text adventures of the 80's and modern
> "interactive fiction" is that the former had graphics.

That's actually a later development (or derailing).  Here are the 3 
pionneer pure text adventures from the late 70's, early 80's that set 
the mark for the genre and were actually sleeper hits in their era:

http://iplayif.com/?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Advent.z5.js
http://iplayif.com/?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Adventureland.z5.js
http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/infocom/ (search for Zork)

Aside from Infocom's Zork, that began life as a mainframe rival to 
ADVENT, they are ports to modern authoring systems.  Zork is the same 
code of old, running in an implementation for its historic zmachine VM. 
  Scott Adam's Adventureland was the first commercial text adventure for 
microcomputers.  It had to run on 16KB, so it's pretty bare.

Here's the history of the influential mainframe game ADVENT:
http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/a_history.html

>   In most games the picture itself gave you clues about what to do next.
> For example, there might have been a tree with an apple. This apple might
> not have been described in the text at all, but you could see it in the
> picture so you could interact with it. Usually if you eg. took the apple,
> it would disappear from the picture (and things like doors would open,
> and so on).

If something isn't described in the text, it doesn't exist, unless it 
was a game poorly designed (like indeed were many of the early dungeon 
crawlers of early days).  Modern IF by renowed authors are built around 
a set of design rules and theories developed through the years. 
Descriptions should provide enough clues or hints, and there's always 
help or hint indeed as meta-commands.

That said, the game I posted is pretty short and sweet.  It was 
developed for a "escape room" competition at JayIsGames, where it won 
second spot.

BTW, ADVENT is still playable and fair enough today.  Can you say the 
same for Atari's Adventure, Ultima 1 or Mistery House?  Presentation for 
ADVENT is the same today as was yesterday:  text descriptions as spare 
or rich as your mind can make them.  The others are butt-ugly pixels in 
flat colors.


-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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