7 ms·
Kindle gets text-based adventure games
- teilo 16y agoFTA: "Before computer games arrived on the scene, kids amused themselves with choose-your-own-adventure books that allowed you to explore fantastic worlds that were described without the aid of fancy graphics. "As computers became a little more powerful, these were translated into text-only adventure games that retained the spartan aesthetic, but allowed the player a little more control over their exploration of the world. For example, you'd type "north" to move north, where you'd then "look" around a scene before deciding how to interact further." Uh... No. "Colossal Cave", the first text based Adventure game: 1976, by William Crowther, running on a PDP-10. By '77 it had been ported to Unix. "The Cave of Time", the first Choose Your Own Adventure book: 1979.
- teilo 16y agoCorrection: The first interactive novel was Sugarcane Island, published in '76. Two others ones, rather obscure and unknown, were published in '77, and '78: "Deadwood City" and "Third Planet from Altair". The idea didn't really kick off, however, until the Choose Your Own Adventure series began in 1979. It seems clear that the development of Adventure-style games and the interactive novel were independent of one another.
- 8ren 16y agoThe article's version of events yields a more intuitive narrative flow. > ...the Editors of the Guide were sued by the families of those who had died as a result of taking the entry on the planet Traal literally (it said "Ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal for visiting tourists" instead of "Ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal of visiting tourists") they claimed that the first version of the sentence was the more aesthetically pleasing, summoned a qualified poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped thereby to prove that the guilty party was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or true. The judges concurred, and in a moving speech held that Life itself was in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all those there present before going off to enjoy a pleasant evening's ultragolf. http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book2.html http://flag.blackened.net/dinsdale/dna/book2.html
- stcredzero 16y agoIn other words, the Wired author just made up stuff that sounded good.
- GavinB 16y agoPackard wrote one of the first known books of this type, Sugarcane Island, in 1969 and saw it first published in 1976 by Vermont Crossroads Press http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Packard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Packard It seems to me that the two ideas developed more or less in parallel. It says something about the way that culture develops that this idea arrived in print only when digital technology was just making it possible (but far from mainstream). Dungeons and Dragons also independently arrived at the same time--first published in 1974, so clearly in development before that. It seems like our culture was just ready.
- mcantor 16y agoDid a Hacker News post just give me warm fuzzies...? I think it did.
- stcredzero 16y ago"You are in a maze of twisty little book reviews, all alike."
- 8ren 16y agoIf it works for text adventure games, then it will work for the command line, vi and other tools of that era (apart from the missing "ESC" key), with multi-week battery life.
- stcredzero 16y agoBut with a large keypress lag. I wonder how it would do for Nethack? Perhaps MUDs will make a comeback?
- jonhendry 16y agoNot really. It's web-based. So you're using the wifi or 3G network, which eats battery.
- jmspring 16y agoThis might almost be a reason to get a Kindle. I'm a big fan of playing games I find on the Interactive Fiction Archive -- http://ifarchive.org http://ifarchive.org Good stuff.
- mquander 16y agoNote that there is already a very high-quality Z-machine interpreter in Javascript available to any device that has a modern web browser (e.g. tablets:) http://parchment.toolness.com/ http://parchment.toolness.com/
- mootothemax 16y agoHere's the website they're talking about: http://www.portablequest.com http://www.portablequest.com
- michaels0620 16y agoI played it for 5 minutes and then seriously considered getting a pencil and paper to start drawing out a map like I used to do. I forgot how addictive these games were!
- Groxx 16y agoSomeone correct me if I'm missing something, but this has nothing to do with the Kindle. It's a website that lets you play the games[1]. A minimalist website, slightly more minimal than any I've seen which does this, but a website nonetheless. Any device which has a web browser has access to this website, the Kindle is just an example of one. They could've labelled it for the Nook, or Sony's e-readers, or anything. The iPhone has access to it as well. It's news only because someone decided such websites are worthy of news, and made one into a high-profile example. The only thing which has any relevance to the Kindle is that there's a referral link to buy one on the site. [1]: http://www.portablequest.com/ http://www.portablequest.com/
- blahedo 16y agoThe Kindle connection is really just setup for this (fantastic) closing paragraph: > Of course, with the e-readers' lack of a backlight, you won't be able to play in the dark. But that's probably just as well. You might get eaten by a grue.
- Groxx 16y agoThen you should light lantern first.
- mquander 16y agoSurprise, it's Wired. The news is that it's minimal enough that it functions on e-reader browsers, and the Kindle is the dominant e-reader.
- ja27 16y agoThere's a port of Frotz for iPhone / iOS and an app named Twisty on Android that are z-Machine interpreters (so they can play these games offline.)
- aw3c2 16y agoWhile we are on the topic of text games, I highly recommend Jason Scott's (textfiles.com, BBS Documentary) documentary on text adventures: GET LAMP http://www.getlamp.com/ http://www.getlamp.com/ It might seem expensive compared to the latest hollywood movie but think of it as enabling a computer nostalgist to preserve our history.
- tibbon 16y agoI just got done watching the 2nd DVD from Get Lamp and I was throughly impressed. I'd watched it at PAX East prior, and then the 1st DVD a few weeks ago. The 2nd DVD goes into some excellent depth. Plus he isn't just making movies, but like you say, preserving history with his massive archives.
- bcl 16y agoThanks for reminding me, its sitting here in my stack of books. I've watched the 1st disc and it was excellent!
- zavulon 16y agoSorry to rain on Kindle's parade... but iPhone/iPad has been able to do it since the beginning of time: http://code.google.com/p/iphonefrotz/ http://code.google.com/p/iphonefrotz/
- bcl 16y agoFor more Interactive Fiction, including a mirror of the IF archive and Infocom game packages check out http://guetech.org http://guetech.org
- charlesju 16y agoCan you play MUDs from the Kindle?
- jonhendry 16y agoIt would be much better as a kindle app. I applied to enter the kindle developer program, saying I was interested in doing an interactive fiction interpreter, but I've heard nada.
- davidmurphy 16y agoWhen I was in middle school, someone had a TI calculator that was programmed with a rudimentary choose your own adventure style game. It was really cool!