Letters

Second Reader Survey Results

• What major are student readers of XYZZYnews pursuing? Almost half of the respondents said they were computer science majors. Other responses that came up more than once were math, physics, and archeology.
• Do XYZZYnews readers like reading in general, and what are the preferred genres and authors? Science fiction and fantasy were most frequently mentioned, as was fiction in general. The most frequently named favorite authors included Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, H.P. Lovecraft, and J.R.R. Tolkien.
• How many of the readers have written any IF? Five of the 28 said they have written an adventure, although all but one included self- disparaging comments about the games' quality! :) Interestingly, 20 said they would like to write a game or are in the middle of writing one.
• Do the readers like other forms of puzzles? The respondents were somewhat split on this question: about half said yes, with some distinguishing between math/logic puzzles and word puzzles, and the other half mainly responded with no or pleaded a lack of time to play such puzzles.
• What number of IF games has the average reader finished? No consensus emerged here; responses ranged from none to "about 50-55 games."

To XYZZYnews:

Would you tell Doug Atkinson that I loved his "You Know You've Played Too Much Infocom When..." [Issue #7]

Reminds me of a running MAD magazine gag (only this time about something I love, IF, and frankly his were funnier than MAD's usually are).

Haven't read all of the issue yet, but I laughed my head off at his list,especially #33, about the afterlife and restoring, restarting or quitting and that you keep everything you own in the living room, have sugar cubes you've named, touch every mirror and look in it being prepared to be insulted...well I could go on and on. But that was priceless, absolutely priceless as good as or better than stuff in the old Status Line. Better I think.

Marnie A. Parker
103005.1513@compuserve.com

To XYZZYnews:

In reply to two inquiries (from Finland and Denmark) that arose because of my letter being published in XYZZYnews, I have dug out the old floppy disks and (with some kind help) managed to get 32 additional AGT games uploaded toftp.gmd.de/if-archive. These include a number of contest "honorable mentions" from the second through seventh contests, as well as several very old games written using GAGS or the very first release of AGT.

By my count, there are now more than 80 games written using GAGS and AGT posted in the interactive fiction archive, about a third posted with complete source code.

The files are currently in ftp.gmd.de/incoming/if-archive but I have sent a message to blasius@gmd.de and I assume the files will shortly be transferred to the appropriate games and source directories.

Mark J. Welch
i855741@trivalley.com

Dear XYZZYnews:

Frankly , I'm a little annoyed at all the AGT bashing I see going around. Here in XYZZYnews, the review of TimeSquared cites that its being a good game is amazing in light of its being AGT. On Baf's Guide to the IF archive, he lists the reasons a game could be poor as (and I paraphrase) "Being poorly written, having a picky parser, or being written in AGT."

AGT has produced many excellent games, Klaustrophobia, The Multi-Dimensional Thief, and others I won't even list. People keep on commenting on its "guess-the verb" games. All the included verbs are the most common ones (open, close, look, inventory, score, n, s, e, w, up, down, enter, exit: what else does one need?) but if common synonyms don't work, it's because the designer didn't put them in. Without the designer's influence, even the much-praised Inform wouldn't know that a CD, compact disc, disc, disk, and round flat plastic thing were all the same object!

Despite the fact that AGT is much less powerful than inform, it has one major power over it: It's easy to use. I have a genius-level IQ, can write in BASIC, and a little pascal, but I can't seem to do much with Inform. (I even tried typing in an example verbatim from the manual, and it didn't work!) John Menichelli's modification to the source code in the form of AGT v1.83 is as much like the Infocom format as Inform (well,almost). It has a built-in undo feature, twice-a-turn metacommand processing, and loads of other features that would take more programming in Inform than I care to contemplate.

Thanks for letting me whine...

L. Ross "Write Me" Raszewski
rraszews@skipjack.bluecrab.org

Hi, Eileen!

I'm yet another old-time adventurer who's recently discovered the underground IF world. Have you considered providing a checklist to help us newcomers write our opening paragraphs? Something like:

1. Just stumbled onto XYZZY Web page (Y/N)
2. Am old-time Infocom fan (Y/N)
3. Have since rekindled old love thanks to blah blah blah (Y/N)
4. Am planning to try my hand at writing my own blah blah blah (Y/N)

This would probably save all of us a lot of time. Thanks for doing such a great job with this magazine!

Kory Heath
103111.3267@compuserve.com

Infocom Bugs List Updates

The second release of Zork I neatly avoids it by having "IT" refer to the mailbox initially.

Here's how the bug looks in Zork 2, Release 7 (UG3AU5), on the Apple II

>LOOK AT IT
I SEE NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT THE    BUT      ZU.

Technical stuff: The bug is actually in the story files -- the code attempts to get a property from object 0, which doesn't exist. This is undefined behavior.

Matthew Russotto
russotto@pond.com

To XYZZYnews:

How embarrassing ... I tried to send this to Graeme Cree and cc it to eileen@interport.net, and managed to misspell the word "net" :-)

Here, as I promised, are some bug reports for Infocom's "Journey," release 26/890316:

While looking for the white stone (after having found the dwarf-, nymph- and elf stones), I sent Hurth down a hole, where he found a key and a skull. Although Esher was at the top of the pit, the description when asking him to examine the key still starts with "Esher took the key and looked it over." This seems even more strange if you consider that the pit was too deep for the rope to reach all the way down.

Earlier in this search, Bergon is wounded. It is possible to heal him, but out of curiosity, I wanted to see what would happen if I left him to die. On getting out of the caves, the party is trapped by some half-sentinent trees. Although Bergon was no longer in the party, he remarked darkly that he had seen those trees before (when looking for westflake root, or whatever it was that could cure the bite of Nightfang).

To get to the Misty Isle, you have to use the 'wind' spell. If you haven't figured out the direction, the game will prompt you for if you really want to chance it. If you do, the party will perish. If you don't, you still use up one unit of air essence, even though the text says Praxix puts the essence back into his pouch.

On using the 'wind' spell to successfully get to the Misty Isle, Praxix is struck unconscious. Even though he is out cold, he still remarks that the spell used up the last of the air essence.

Dropping the rope while Praxix is unconscious still earns a reprimand from him. That's all I can think of at the moment, but I only replayed parts of it. One of these days, I'll have to go back and play through the whole thing. If nothing else, Praxix's encounter with the talking tree would make it well worth it. :-)

Torbjorn Andersson
d91tan@minsk.docs.uu.se

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