Bulletin Board

Readers helping other readers

First, here's a response we received to a query in XYZZYnews #14 from a reader looking for a text adventure game called Asylum:

This game was actually around for about five years--but most of them were spent only on the TRS-80. The game was written by William Denman and published by Med Systems Software. Your summation of the game's simple plot (escape from a lunatic asylum) is correct, as is your recollection that looking up anywhere in the game causes a piano to fall on you.

Asylum was notable for being a graphic adventure with a "3D" Doom-like perspective (yes, even on the TRS-80). It had about 1,000 locations; this is a misleading figure in that most of the "locations" were hallway segments, but it was still very large. Even though it was graphic, it used text for most communication, and all commands other than movement were typed in; its full-sentence parser was slightly above that of the early Infocom games. One of its other interesting features was the command "VOCABULARY," which would list all the keywords the game knew (in the neighborhood of 600, as I recall). Its puzzles relied on being bizarre rather than making you guess the vocabulary word, and they were indeed bizarre: at one point in the game, for instance, you find a note reading "LOOK UP" (how most people find out about the piano). Later on, you are sealed in a loop of a maze with an axe-wielding maniac. The only way to kill him is to hand him the note: he looks up and the piano falls on him.

Med Systems Software produced several graphic adventures using this system, including "Labyrinth" and "Deathmaze 5000" (both with Scott Adams-style parsers), and "Asylum" and its sequel "Asylum II." When they decided the TRS-80 market was shrinking, they changed their name to Screenplay. The game "Asylum" that they released for other computers was actually a port of "Asylum II."

These games may be accessible through emulation software on other machines; I haven't checked the net for intact copies yet.

Watts Martin
mika@solluna.org

...and below are some new queries I've received recently from readers looking for hard-to-find games, or who are in need of specific help. If you can help answer any of these requests, please don't be shy about chiming in with an answer! --EM

To XYZZYnews,

Hi. I'm a new reader, and a long-time fan of IF. I'm curious to know if you have any idea how I might be ale to get my hands on a copy of Robert Pinsky's Mindwheel for PC. I've been trying to get one as long as I can remember.

Jonathan Allen
wallen@tallships.istar.ca

To XYZZYnews,

I've been a fan of IF since 1984 and I've just recently re- discovered my passion when I bought a Palm Pilot. My question is this: do you know of any IF games that that are hacker/cyberpunk related? I'd appreciate any help you can give me.

Thanks,

John Kirchen
jbk@laughlin.com

To XYZZYnews:

I started to download some issues of your e-zine and I think you're perhaps the person who could help me:

I don't know if you are fond of programming but I have a little problem. For many years I dreamed about an interactive fiction application I could program. I made a few tries, I wrote a lot (on paper) of technical ideas, but something is lacking: I need to find a track, a way to know where to start first. I mean : the task of doing "if" program is incredibly complex, and even if I have some ideas it takes me some knowledge. I think this knowledge could come from people who worked a lot on the subject. For the moment the papers about the Oz project have two problems

• a lot of information is missing, even in the thesis
• it relies a lot on LISP and others strange dialects (I would like to use only C++)

Thus, perhaps do you have some information on WHERE on the Net I could find technical docs which could help me to implement some principles of IF: a lot of articles and papers deals with "something missing" or "why do not..." or "it could be interesting to" or "the most real thing is..." but with few programming solutions or ideas.

Thanks.

Chris
chris@kandji.com

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