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From: go...@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz)
Subject: Q:History of Interactive Fiction
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Does anyone know the history of interactive fiction prior to
the Colossal Cave adventure? E.g. books published with multiple paths,
or at least different endings; movies like the one at Universal?
(_Murder She Wrote_) where the audience can influence the outcome;
interactive drama.
My advisor wants an overview of IF.
The major events in computer IF that I can think of are:
(I'll check spelling & dates on these at home; hopefully I've got the info.)
1970? Colossal Cave Woods & Crowther?
1976? Zork Marc Blanc & ...?
1981? Mystery House Sierra On-Line: Ken and Roberta Williams
(first graphic adventure)
???? ??? First animated adventure
(I have "Dark Castle" or "Castle of Doom" or something from The Logical Choice
around 1984)
1992? Dactyl Nightmare First immersive VR game (any earlier?)
1993 Hell Cab First CD-ROM adventure (any earlier? is Hell Cab really
an adventure, or more like a video game/Dragon's Lair?)
I honestly can't think of anything else that's been significant. Help?
(Yes, I've got refs to Talespin.)
Phil go...@cs.buffalo.edu
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From: a...@hogpe.att.com (Andreas Meyer)
Subject: Re: Q:History of Interactive Fiction
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Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1993 17:57:39 GMT
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In rec.arts.int-fiction, go...@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz) writes:
> My advisor wants an overview of IF.
> The major events in computer IF that I can think of are:
> 1970? Colossal Cave Woods & Crowther?
Probably more like 1975 or so.
I first ran ADVENT on the DecSystem-10 at Syracuse University
around 1976.
> 1976? Zork Marc Blanc & ...?
...Dave Lebling. Before it was scaled-down and became Zork, it ran
on mainframes as DUNGEON. (There was a great full-color Dungeon map
published in an issue of _DEC Professional_ a few years back).
Anyway, I seem to remember an issue of BYTE in 1980 that was devoted
to adventure-style games, and had a history of Zork in there.
I understand you're looking for milestones here, but I think that
the Scott Adams Adventure International games did alot to bring
to bring interactive fiction into the home. I had my memory of them
refreshed this weekend when I found my CP/M set of "Adventureland"
games. (Can you believe we used to think this was fun? :-)
Cheers,
Andy
--
==--
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From: a...@imdvlf.acuson.com (Al Petrofsky)
Subject: Re: Q: History of Interactive Fiction
In-Reply-To: ahm@hogpe.att.com's message of Mon, 13 Sep 1993 17: 57:39 GMT
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In article < CDB0K...@cbnews.cb.att.com> a...@hogpe.att.com (Andreas Meyer)
writes:
...Dave Lebling. Before it was scaled-down and became Zork, it ran
on mainframes as DUNGEON. (There was a great full-color Dungeon map
published in an issue of _DEC Professional_ a few years back).
Anyway, I seem to remember an issue of BYTE in 1980 that was devoted
to adventure-style games, and had a history of Zork in there.
It was originally called zork, which was just a nonsense word that
could be typed quickly. At some point the name was changed to the
more descriptive "dungeon", a horrible decision that was rectified
when the game hit microcomputers. I remember this from a Status Line
"History of Zork" series.
In 1985, I played dungeon on a BSD system, BSD 4.1 I guess. I think
this was the fortran version, presumably compiled with f77. But the
only source for dungeon that I can find in ftp-space is for vms. I
tried compiling this with f2c, but to no avail. Before I put in a lot
of effort, does anyone know where the f77 port can be found?
-al