Letters

IF for Handheld Devices

I was reading the article "Have IF, Will Travel: A Primer on Playing Text Adventures on PDAs" in XYZZYnews issue #17, when I came across the following words:

"...when you're on the go, you're toting far more portable potential than your fellow commuters armed with Game Boys. So why not have at least as much fun?"

I'll direct you to 2 URLs. The first -- http://www.work.de/ nocash/infgmb.htm -- is an Infocom Interpreter for Nintendo Gameboy.

The second -- http://bung.simplenet.com/porducts/xchanger.htm -- is for a device that allows data to be transferred back and forth between a Doctor GB card (a writable GameBoy cartridge) and any computer that has a parallel port.

So me and my Gameboy have even more fun, I guess. Just thought I'd Inform you (you must get that pun a lot).

Terence Bowlby
x-spectre@home.net

Dear Eileen,

A good site for Interactive Fiction games converted for the Palm is PalmPilot Entertainment Zone Interactive Games Area: http://www.fortunecity.com/underworld/rpg/22/

Yours,

Andrew Stables
astables@globalnet.co.uk

Say It with Text Adventures

This is in response to the letter of Bob Langer [XYZZYnews #17], specifically, about speech recognition and synthesization in text adventure games:

I read an article on Compute! magazine, Nov. 1987, titled "The future of Computer Games: Ten Industry Leaders Speak Out" here is a quotation, from the section "Michael Dornbrook, Infocom":

"...'As machines become more powerful, as memory costs go down and things like compact disks come onto the market, you can still have the same type of story, but move away from reading.'

"Text adventures without reading? 'Imagine if you could lie in bed and have a voice-recognition system. When you say, "Open the door," you hear a creak or shrieks in the distance. You could play in the dark -- the game would be all aural. You could have great narrators, different voices for different people. There would be a much wider potential market for something like that - simply because there are so many people who don't read.'

"Will Infocom be a part of these new media? 'Absolutely. We're interactive storytellers. When we see a medium that lets stories be told, we're going to jump at it.'"

Alan Manuel K. Gloria
alan@i-manila.com.ph

XYZZY Awards

Dear Eileen,

Many thanks for your great work on XYZZYnews, as well as the annual XYZZY awards.

It is in relation to the latter that I am writing you this. I would like to propose two new awards.

The first one, I suggest this simply because I am as interested in the inner workings of IF as in the actual pieces of art that come out of it.

And, undoubtedly, we are all depending heavily on having powerful tools. I therefore want to propose a "technology" award. This is to be given to the best and/or most interesting new authoring system, virtual machine, IF- machine port,library routines, a.s.o. published during the year. Perhaps it could even be given to new hardware devices? Sample code for beginners?

The second is an "advocacy" award for the most significant promotion of IF outside of the established IF community. Perhaps it could even happen that it's *given* to someone outside of the established IF community? ;-)

I am also posting this on r.a.i-f, for "the people" to debate it.

All the best,

Jacob
jacob@pop.stud.ntnu.no

Bulletin Board Responses

Hello!

[Re Paul Forbes's query in XYZZYnews #17, Bulletin Board]

<< I know it wasn't the classic text adventure, "Adventure," because it had Ultima I-like vector-based graphics for going into a dungeon, finding a Vampire or Balrog, and seeing its representation on screen. I remember some details about the game, like being ranked with other players based upon the success of your character. >>

I think you mean NetHack. NetHack has a simple GUI, but a great IF-like humor (e.g., try the tourist and you will be equipped with a credit card, a Hawaii T-shirt and a camera as "weapons".) The Macintosh port is completely with menus including all commands and even mouse support for moving your character. There are even some sounds hidden, but I never heard them in the game. You can even customize the user interface, e.g., to simulate the good-old terminal look.

NetHack is available on nearly every computer platform and I play version 3.2 on my Apple PowerBook with the newest version of the MacOS.

I don't know the exact URL, but I would recommend to search NetHack via Yahoo! or write an e-mail to nethack- bugs@linc.cis.upenn.edu.

Enjoy!

Lorenz Szabo
LorenzSzabo@csi.com

Infocom bugs, continued

In issue #17, a reader named Piquan asked a few questions about the following Zork III bug:

> DUNGEON MASTER, KILL ME WITH THE STAFF

"If you wish," he replies.

If you insist...

Poof, you're dead!

**** The dungeon 
master has died ****

The dungeon master follows you.

Your sword has begun to glow very brightly.

The game sees that the command is directed at the DM, so it 
prints out 

"If you wish," he replies.

I think that at this point, in accordance with Piquan's theory, the game temporarily treats the DM as the player and acts as if he typed "KILL ME WITH THE STAFF". At this point, I can think of two possibilities: either the phrase "KILL ME" is reserved as a special case -- where the interpreter skips the standard battle rules (It would be silly to say, "The you parries") and just calls the subject's "suicide" routine -- or, alternatively, any "ME" in this context would be interpreted as referring to the DM.

I don't have any experimental evidence, but I'm leaning towards the first possibility; after all, if the second one were true, a command like DUNGEON MASTER, FOLLOW ME would cause the poor guy to start following himself around.

Anyway, assuming the interpreter has reduced the instruction to "MAKE THE DM COMMIT SUICIDE", it would rightfully print out "If you insist... Poof, you're dead!", which is the standard output when you commit suicide. Then a different level of the game code notices that the guy just died, and prints out that message.

Quick tangent: I bet that when the programmers were writing the make-the-DM-follow-the-player routine, they probably made it work something like this:

If the DM is in follow-the-player mode, and he's not in the room, then:

• print "The dungeon master follows you"
• change the DM's location to match the player's

That way, whenever the player moves to a new room, the routine is called.

So anyway, now the DM is dead, which probably is internally accomplished by setting his location to some null room. He's still in follow-the-player mode. So the "if" statement is true. So the text is printed out, and the DM's location is set to the room the player is in, so suddenly he's alive again.

I have no idea, however, why the sword is glowing brightly. It's only supposed to do that if it's in the same room as an evil object.

Then again, maybe the game is smarter than we think -- I'd be pretty scared of an undead corpse, Dungeon Master or otherwise. :)

Mike Schiraldi
mgs21@columbia.edu

Dear Eileen,

I don't know if you're interested in more Infocom bugs, but I discovered one in the LTOI2 Bureaucracy. After you take the burger in the fast-food restaurant, you can leave (without paying) thru the back door, go around and come back, deal with the waitress, go out back again, go back around again, and order from the waiter. He will then bring you another burger, which you can take, but you will still only have one burger.

John David
tonyscam@email.msn.com

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